Slashdot Coming Attractions

We've been busy at Slashdot. As you have probably noticed, we've added a couple of new Slashboxes recently:

• Most Discussed: Highlighting recent stories with the most active discussions
• This Day on Slashdot: Featuring the biggest Slashdot stories of the day all the way back to the beginning.

We also pushed through a number of fixes to the user experience and upgrades to the site infrastructure in recent months including:

• Upgrading Slashdot to modern hardware and new versions of MySQL and Apache
• Cleaning up the topics pages
• Improving methods for sharing submissions
• Thumbnails for articles with videos
• Flag-a-comment abuse reporting
• Removal of old and unused Slashboxes
• A much overdue overhauling of the FAQ
• Fixes to user preferences
• The launch of the Slashdot Hall of Fame (that little badge icon next to the logo)
• Fixes to the D2 comment system. Highlights include bug fixes to the comment score slider, a better abbreviated view (if you quote the parent, that's removed so people can see your first sentence instead), and general reliability improvements to the AJAX magic
• And many more...

In addition, we're working on modules to highlight top submissions and we've launched Slashdot TV at http://tv.slashdot.org/ . We plan on launching more in the weeks to come. Some of these new sections will feature original content that isn't normally run on the front page. We're also planning a new mobile experience and we'll need your feedback to help us with the look and usability. Our goal through all these changes is to make your Slashdot experience a good one. We are listening to your complaints and concerns and promise to keep giving you News for Nerds and Stuff that Matters.

So, readers, what do you want to see in the coming months?

Comments

Timeline

[BillCable]

Clearly you should switch to Timeline format for all content.

Re:Timeline

[miknix]

Like

Re:Timeline

[Elbart]

+1

Re:Timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been around here for over 15 years and seen it change over time. The latest incarnation with its automatic loading and fancy inline data retrieval sucks balls.

So new Slashdot... Is it good or is it whack?

Re:Timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

1. create Index on number_of_comments

2. brag about it in a slashdot article

3. profit

Re:Timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

We want Taco!

We want to eat Taco!

Hot, spicy Taco!

Did I mention Taco?

Taco!

Re:Timeline

[Larryish]

New site design sucks balls.

Why is there no "html only, no javascript, AJAX, or other cycle-wasting garbage" option in the control panel?

With just 3 tabs open in Firefox on Linux, all of them Slashdot stories:

Every time I scroll the page, CPU usage jumps to 100%

That doesn't happen on any other sites except mainstream ad-laden garbage sites like Facobook or CNN.

Re:Timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

Also fix the website. Many functions are broken.

Re:Timeline

[Skuld-Chan]

Fdisk format reinstall - do dah do dah...

Re:Timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

+1
Yes, I said +1.

"This exact comment has already been posted"? Well, fuck you. I want to post that, too. It's exactly what I want to say, so STFU.

You really want to bring my machine to its knees

[line-bundle]

Don't you?

Source code

[NighthawkFoo]

Do you still provide the source code that runs the site? I remember that slashcode.com would track your changes in the past. Is this still true? I see that the last post there was in 2009.

Re:Source code

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll say what the hive mind has been thinking for a while: Let's fork /. !!

Re:Source code

[gl4ss]

The people here are as much of a problem as the site.

there's plenty of "forks" of slashdot. slashdot is one of the oldest tech news blogs with a comment section - before blogs were blogs. reddit&etc are all forks of slashdot in one way. most communities forked are pretty much about tits and ass though, not tech - and there's plenty of tits and ass on the internet thank you very much already.

but the things which make slashdot different is that there's been traditionally no deletion of posts, no editing to change you seem like a winner in a troll fest - just the raw deal. if you want to say fuck you, then you can say fuck you. just keep the train going and keep the "featured" stories the fuck off - and book reviews posted only on slashdot the fuck off too - actually any stories apart from ask slashdot which aren't links to actual stories somewhere the fuck off. usually it doesn't even matter that the submission blurb is faulty - the comments fix that usually fast enough.

btw. ajax blows. and gnaa trolls should have free reign, you don't want to see that stuff then don't read at -1. it's still entertaining to see what is the flavor of the month in that section.

if something new needs? well, a wordlist that would automatically +(for the viewer using it) comments which had a word from that wordlist. that way you could see gnaa posts or whatever you wanted.

Re:Source code

[Anonymous Coward]

not sure if you noticed, but my OP about forking was removed..talk about censorship!

Re:Source code

[HiThere]

If you're going to have a wordlist that automatically gives a +1 to any comment using a word on the list, also have one that gives a -1,

Hell, merge the two, just have a list of words and score adjustments from -5 to +5, user selectable, thus:
balls 0
fuck -1
gigo +1
serpentine +3
quantum -1
etc.

Re:Source code

[Bill Dog]

Three wishes for Slashdot that I'm hoping come true:
1) The trn interface is implemented [if UNIX is so awesome, then why not?], including regex-based killfiling. It's called D3.
2) Barring that, user preference score modifiers are optionally made to apply up instead of down, to filter out posts modded higher than a certain threshold.
3) SlashdotTV becomes SlashdotT&A. ;)

Re:Source code

[mbadolato]

Do you still provide the source code that runs the site? I remember that slashcode.com [slashcode.com] would track your changes in the past. Is this still true? I see that the last post there was in 2009.

The last time the public repository had any activity was September 2009. Trying to checkout the SF git repository appears to not work because there's no master branch, but it's easy enough to get at if you're familiar with git. However, last time I grabbed it, I put it on github to preserve it and get at it easier.

Just this week I decided to see if I could get the code running somewhere, because I was interested in seeing how Slashdot ran from an Admin perspective. It was a lot of work to get it going, but I finally got it (all told, maybe 6 hours of time). I used a Debian 6 (Lenny) image in VMWare Fusion because I was having problems getting it to work on a newer FreeBSD image. Also, mod_perl 1 will not compile if newer versions of Perl are on the system, but Lenny's default 5.10 worked fine.

For the most part, the INSTALL instructions were ok, and I found a few system packages I needed to have in order for the install to work properly. Also the MySQL SQL file for creating the database tables is broken and I had to fix it (syntax errors, plus some small tweaks to work with MySQL 5.1). In addition, the file is named differently than what the Slashcode install script is looking for, so it borked when running.

The git repository I linked above has my fixes on the 'development' branch. I also ran into a slight problem of ISE 500 when everything was up and I tried to hit the site, but that was simply a matter of tweaking the Apache config that was created. I now have a working Slash site on my home network to play around with.

Re:Source code

[yakatz]

I asked one of the developers: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2649559&cid=38948521

A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[realityimpaired]

Seriously... a bit late, no? A lot of this flies directly in the face of stuff that Slashdot has been saying for years... comment reporting for abuse? Does this mean that abusive comments can be removed? That kinda defeats the point of the kind of discussion that Slashdot has been built on....

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[game kid]

A lot of this flies directly in the face of stuff that Slashdot has been saying for years... comment reporting for abuse? Does this mean that abusive comments can be removed?

That was when Slashdot was Slashdot. Now they're Slashdot, an entirely different husk of the old one. ;)

That reminds me, I wanna write up a "fierce independence" pledge that devs can take, should they want to do some honest commerce and show that they're full-on indie, and not just calling themselves "indie" as some nebulous "Honchos" pull the strings. It'll probably exclude-by-design bunches of self-proclaimed "indie"s and "nonprofit"s (certain browser makers, game companies, and tech websites come to mind) but it seems more and more necessary. Something analogous (but not functionally equivalent) to a GPL for governance, I guess; but hopefully not as extreme as a "Declaration of Hipsterness" or whatever either. I mean, I still buy stuff after they become cool.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[LurkerXXX]

It was a request by all the vendors who pay for the slashvertisements we've had lately. Err, I mean 'stories'.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[roman_mir]

How about abusive moderation?

I have entire pages of comments (in fact if you just look at my comments right now, it's filled with that stuff), with comments that had been moderated up and down a few times, +5 to -1 to +5 to -1 or 0. All that while there are many replies to them, so clearly, these comments generate 'interest', whatever it is.

Does it make sense to have wild swings in comment moderation in that case, doesn't it mean that in reality those comments are at least 'interesting' enough to a large number of people?

It looks to me, the real problem with /. is a weird moderation scheme that encourages people to moderate not based on merit of the comment, but instead based on their own biases and it's used to silence opinions.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously... a bit late, no? A lot of this flies directly in the face of stuff that Slashdot has been saying for years... comment reporting for abuse? Does this mean that abusive comments can be removed? That kinda defeats the point of the kind of discussion that Slashdot has been built on....

It depends on how it's implemented. If comments can be removed or censored, that's bad, but if flagging past a certain threshold just triggers a review of the user by the editors, who if they deem them to be nothing but a troll, would then be banned (but all comments would remain)? That's reasonable.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[mcgrew]

The abuse flag doesn't remove a comment or mod it down, it's for spam and GNAA trolls. Click the flag and a /. editor will have a look. It's up to them to remove it.

The "Hall of fame" page apparently doesn't count anything before the page was first posted; it says I have no submissions when in fact I've had dozens of accepted submissions. Just not recently.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[TheRaven64]

According to the Hall of Fame, I'm the most active commenter for this quarter (I really need to stop procrastinating), which probably means I will be ignored by the Slashdot overlords more than more people, but here are my inflation-adjusted two cents:

Most Discussed. Don't care. It's not like it's hard to see the comment counts on the front page.

This Day on Slashdot. Might be interesting. Probably not though - lots of slow news days. Sounds like an attempt at recycling old content.

Upgrading Slashdot to modern hardware and new versions of MySQL and Apache. Irrelevant to most users. Upgrading to a real database and a more modern web server might be interesting, if only for the flame war in the comments that it would provoke.

Cleaning up the topics pages. Long overdue. Although part of the problem is that most of the current crop of 'editors' are stunningly ignorant of their subject matter and so routinely file things in the wrong category.

Improving methods for sharing submissions. Yes, Slashdot needs more Facebook integration. And more Twitter integration. And it definitely needs to jump on the Google+ bandwagon! The last changes to this crap meant that my user CSS no longer blocks the share button, as it previously blocked the little 'I am an attention whore so desperate for approval that I want to help companies build a database about me' buttons. Please, please, please, provide a user option to turn off all of this crap, if you must have it.

Thumbnails for articles with videos. Even better would be an option of hiding all articles with videos from the front page. The last ones have all been spam, so I wouldn't even have wanted to read them in text form. I usually read Slashdot while waiting for a compile job to finish or while having a short procrastination break, so things that require 100% attention such as videos are of no interest to me. Stick them all in videos.slashdot.org and make it as easy to ignore as idle.

Flag-a-comment abuse reporting. As you say, a step backwards. Slashdot isn't Slashdot without trolls. Mod them down, but don't delete them.

Removal of old and unused Slashboxes. If they're unused, no one will notice or care, so this is irrelevant to everyone. If, as I suspect, by 'unused' you mean 'some people use them, but I don't' then you're just trying to bill removing a feature that people use as an improvement. I suggest you quit Slashdot and get a job at Apple.

A much overdue overhauling of the FAQ. Again, long overdue. Note that overhaul usually implies improvement and please remember that when you do it.

Fixes to user preferences. Bug fixes are good. Currently lots of this stuff was broken by the Web 2.0!11111eleventyone rewrite.

The launch of the Slashdot Hall of Fame. Dear God No! The 'achievements' section was bad enough. I thought this was an April Fools joke when it was launched, but it stuck around. Now we have more of this crap. Clever people are able to learn from the mistakes of others. Most people can learn from their own mistakes. The sign of total idiocy is failing to learn from your own mistakes. Now we have a hall of fame which is going to promote exactly the same behaviour as the old public karma numbers, a system Slashdot abandoned for very good reasons. Please, learn from your mistakes, don't keep repeating them.

Fixes to the D2 comment system. Maybe next time you could do this before making it default? For the record, I mostly like the D2 system. The biggest bug, however, is that you can type a long comment and then accidentally hit cancel instead of preview and lose it (which you couldn't with the old one, as browsers would warn you if you tried to navigate off a page with a full text field). Fix that first! Slashdot always embodied the ugly-but-functional school of design. The rewrite made it no less ugly, but made it less functional. We're happy with Slashdot being ugly, but please make it actually work. Another example: it still requi

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Majik Sheff]

If your comments consistently produce large discussions and your mods swing several times during that discussion, I would say you're doing it right. Or you're a master troll. Either way you're producing value to the operators of the site by encouraging user interaction.

On a related note, I would like to request an achievement for getting a +3 or greater Troll/Flamebait Mod.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[roman_mir]

Either way you're producing value to the operators of the site by encouraging user interaction.

- Ok, but if that were the case, then why would wild swings in comment moderation affect 'karma', which gives moderators the ability to silence the commentator? Karma on this is not just a meaningless number, it is used to shut down a poster, so just pushing it down a bit prevents one from making more than 25 comments, then less than that, eventually the ability to comment disappears altogether.

In fact I argue that /. moderating mechanism causes (probably unintentionally) posters whose comments generate that sort of activity to be prevented from commenting. If that is on purpose, then that's fine, if that's an unintended consequence, then it's a really bad one.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[arth1]

On a related note, I would like to request an achievement for getting a +3 or greater Troll/Flamebait Mod.

No. That can be easily gamed with sock puppets.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[mcgrew]

I'd like to see the old metamoderation system reinstated; the new one doesn't work nearly as well. The day before yesterday had a LOT of bad mods.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Unknown Lamer]

The flag feature just puts the comment into a report; editors can then choose to ignore the report, or magically downmod to -1. The comment can still be moderated back up if other folks decide to do so. In theory, it's a great way to avoid burning mod points on trolls and to instead use them for modding up insightful commentary.

Hope that clears things up!

Feel free to tell me to choke on a whiffle bat, however ;)

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[samzenpus]

The comment abuse flag is just a way to more quickly catch robo-trolls and spammers. We do ban spammers, but as long as you're not trying to sell shoes, handbags, pills, or treasure maps you have nothing to worry about. On second thought, I probably won't ban you if you're trying to sell treasure maps.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Sponge Bath]

...moderate not based on merit of the comment, but instead based on their own biases

Everyone makes biased judgements and sometimes abuses happen. If your post is unfairly buried, repost to make yourself heard. Abusive mods eventually run out of points.

How important is any one post though? In a contentious thread, most sides have plenty of redundant posts. When I get slapped down I usually just shrug and move on. The current mob rule system works well enough. Not perfect, but surprisingly effective.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[gbjbaanb]

I think this is important. A long time back I always used to metamod, there was practically a permanent link at the top of the page, and I'd click it, give a bit of feedback and then go on to browse /.

today, apart from the fact that I don't fully understand if I should be metamodding bad mods as + or -, or if its the post I'm +/- on that matches to the mod +/-... the link is never there, so I don't bother.

The metamod was very important to keep the moderators honest. It is more important than the moderation and deserves more attention from the devs because of that.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[roman_mir]

If your post is unfairly buried, repost to make yourself heard. Abusive mods eventually run out of points.

- that works if you are not limited to 5 comments because those wild swings prevent you from posting.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Majik Sheff]

If I understand the mod system correctly, all it takes is one insightful/informative/interesting to kill the troll/flamebait moniker. Getting a +3 troll is virtually impossible because it requires all of your upmods to be "underrated".

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[gstrickler]

What about ocean-front property in Arizona? I've got lots of that and treasure maps too.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[nitehawk214]

What about ocean-front property in Arizona? I've got lots of that and treasure maps too.

I have a bridge in Arizona to sell you.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[eln]

It's not really all that unusual or all that difficult. A lot of less scrupulous moderators abuse the underrated/overrated mods because they're immune to meta-moderation. Also, Ibelieve the label on it is just the last moderation to be applied, so a +4, informative could become a +3, troll with a single troll moderation.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I flagged yours with a "reason" of "Funny". Also, it seems you can flag a comment multiple times.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone posts something factually incorrect, and that post is labeled Informative by someone else, the correct moderation is Overrated. I down rate for this while simultaneously up rating a response that provides correct information.

Likewise, if someone posts something labeled Insightful that is actually trite or shallow, the correct moderation is Overrated. In this case, though, I try to just up rate a response that provides real insight, but lacking one I will sometimes down rate the original post. Overall I think Insightful is the worst moderation option because it implies the posts provide a deeper understanding on an issue, but usually they just parrot one or another special interest groups' talking points.

I don't down rate posts labeled Interesting using Overrated. Interesting is wholly subjective without implying any level of accuracy, so there's no justification to down rate. I will down rate an Interesting post if I think it's a cleverly-disguised Troll, but that of course has its own moderation option.

With regard to posts bouncing up to +5 then back down, I think there are two types of moderators. The first type farm points to push their agendas, and actively burn through them to raise posts using inaccurate moderation. The second time are actual readers, who just happen to have moderation points and find interest in the topic. These come by later and react to the initial moderation. Most likely these provide a more accurate measure, though they may swing a bit too far. In other words, if you post something that "should" stay at +2, and agenda moderators push it to +5 Informative, the user moderators might overcompensate down to 0.

I doubt any moderators return to old stories to down rate posts, so in general I consider final moderations (good or bad) to be the most accurate moderations. In other words, if you post something and it ends at 2 or below, it probably wasn't worthy even if it briefly bounced to +5.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

- that works if you are not limited to 5 comments because those wild swings prevent you from posting.

Which has happened to you when? Oh, yeah, never. So why are you complaining about something that hasn't happened to you? What causes you to think that it even could happen, period? You've already posted 8 comments today, so clearly you are under no such restriction.

Just because your cult hasn't elevated you to the position of supreme high reverend fuhrer already doesn't mean that you need you complain any time someone of an incorrect philosophy moderates down your comments. Besides, the unwashed masses will be driven out of here soon enough, don't worry.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[roman_mir]

I doubt any moderators return to old stories to down rate posts

- wrong. Quite a number of moderators do this often enough.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[DigiShaman]

Trolling (as I know it to be) is quite rare among Slashdot members. AC postings are rife with them including dropping the "N" word along with the constant Golden Girls theme re-posts. But almost always the posts I've seen marked as -1 Troll really translates to either Flamebait or pure political disagreements. The Troll moderation has got to be the single most abused and misused moderation available.

Speaking of abuse. The whole idea of marking a post for "abuse" will be abused in of itself. I predict once implemented, it will get yanked right back out.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[sconeu]

I find this comment offensive. I'm going to use the abuse report button to send it to the AZ Attorney General.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[guanxi]

Could you call it 'flag spam'? 'Flag abuse' feels like giving people the option to complain rather than to respond like an adult. It appears on every post which could affect the culture.

I haven't had any problem with spam, but maybe that's due to your efforts behind the scenes.

Thanks.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[WankersRevenge]

The button doesn't read "flag as spammer" or "flag as robo-troll". It reads "flag as inappropriate". Are you guys looking for a whole slew false positives? You'll be getting notified about minor argument on the site.

And honestly, in the ten years I've been visiting this site, I've rarely seen the robo-trolls. You guys are doing a fine job already. You don't need our help.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[thsths]

> That said, I would be perfectly happy with the existing Slashdot infrastructure if the editors would do their jobs!

Seconded. The problem in a nutshell right there.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

DigiShaman=bloody cunt

And I am NOT trolling, just sayin' the truth!

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opinions are not truths.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a strange guy DigiShaman.
You'll show us your gaping anus.
You'll let us know how much you enjoyed eating a huge turd you found in a toilet at the mall.
But you won't say nigger.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[cyber-vandal]

You annoy a lot of people with huge long posts in defence of your views. Some of them will abuse the mod system to get back at you. You should continue doing what you do as your off the wall opinions liven up slashdot no end.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have entire pages of comments (in fact if you just look at my comments right now, it's filled with that stuff), with comments that had been moderated up and down a few times, +5 to -1 to +5 to -1 or 0.

That would be because you regularly make retarded posts that pander to the extreme libertarian minority here - which mod you Insightful - and then us sane people come and see that crap and mod it Troll where it belongs.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[roman_mir]

Watch this thread if you want to see it in action. It's been up and down already, it will be probably another couple of times. It's pretty consistent, there is a pattern there.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[BotnetZombie]

Also, Ibelieve the label on it is just the last moderation to be applied, so a +4, informative could become a +3, troll with a single troll moderation.

Actually, I don't think that's the case. I've often modded something as interesting and seen it go from +3 undefined to +4 insightful (and vice versa).

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

The Troll moderation has got to be the single most abused and misused moderation available.

No that would be "overrated" aka the "I disagree" mod.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[waveclaw]

Removal of old and unused Slashboxes. If they're unused, no one will notice or care, so this is irrelevant to everyone. If, as I suspect, by 'unused' you mean 'some people use them, but I don't' then you're just trying to bill removing a feature that people use as an improvement. I suggest you quit Slashdot and get a job at Apple.

Well, to be fair most the webcomics linked in the Funnies slashbox stopped updating somewhere around the middle of Bush, Jr.'s second term in office.

Having been around to participate in the comic vs. news debate back in the day and seeing a lot of full-of-themselves trolls leave just over that, I would have liked to see some spiffing of it up. But not quite as sexy as a fresh coat of CPU chewing javascript, of course. Or ads in the whitespace on the left which run up under the top left logo in chrome and firefox creating a colorful 'slashdot' title where the white one was.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Start looking for that bat...

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Megane]

On a related note, I would like to request an achievement for getting a +3 or greater Troll/Flamebait Mod.

I've tried (as a mod) to do this. Even if you use "Underrated", the title will change to a non-negative description when it hits +2. Or at least it will change to that of any previous non-negative moderation. I suppose if a post got modded Troll, then three or four mods chose Underrated, and nobody else mods it up other than with Underrated, it might be possible.

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[chihowa]

FYI, if you use AdBlock, adding this to the custom filters will get rid of the Share buttons. I had completely forgotten they were still there.

slashdot.org##SPAN[id*="sharethis-"]
slashdot.org##A[class="comment_share_toggle btn link"]

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Lost Race]

This line in userContent.css will do it too:

a.comment_share_toggle.btn:link { visibility: hidden !important; }

Re:A bit late for April Fools, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but you are a parasite. You write only about politics. This is technology site, not masturbation site for libertarian retard.
Slashdot, not Fox News.

Unicode

[MisterMidi]

Finally proper unicode support.

Re:Unicode

[scdeimos]

Second this!

Re:Unicode

[M. Baranczak]

Nope, still broken.

Re:Unicode

[Anonymous Coward]

Please proper Unicode support!

Re:Unicode

[MisterMidi]

Yes, I know. It was a response to TFA's question :)

Re:Unicode

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking yes please!

For a technologically oriented site, the inability to use anything but ASCII is regrettable.

And no, it won't end up with Zalgo invading the comments. Comments abusing the character set will be modded down and nobody will see them, so I don't see why that would be a problem.

Re:Unicode

[JamesP]

Well, Slashdot offers complete Unicode support!

  But it's limited to the U+0000 to U+007F range

Re:Unicode

[Arker]

Hear hear. HTML should be the top priority on the technical side, and then unicode support. So far as the rest, less slashvertisements and more news would be good. This has been the same answer posted to this sort of question consistently for years. And no one ever seems to listen.

Re:Unicode

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally proper unicorn support.

Re:Unicode

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, sure, just after proper unicorn support.

Looking forward to exploring the changes...

[gtvr]

As a casual user, I do find that some of these features are less than immediately obvious - is there a beginner's guide to some of these features?

Re:Looking forward to exploring the changes...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are asking for documentation? You must be new here.....oh wait!

Unicode?

[OzPeter]

I think its the 21st Century in the real world, but here it seems like its the 20th Century

Re:Unicode?

[Stides]

And we want to keep it that way, now get off my lawn.

Fix the CSS on my Android

[erroneus]

The top of the page is inaccessible for some reason on my phone. I can't click on my user link because it's "behind" the address bar. Other pages do not do this. Something weird with the CSS I think. So as long as things are being changed and stuff, fix the CSS eh?

Re:Fix the CSS on my Android

[Cyko_01]

same here - samsung galaxy ace. and no search box on android either

Re:Fix the CSS on my Android

[mcgrew]

It's like that on my work computer too (XP, IE7).

Re:Fix the CSS on my Android

[swanzilla]

Completely borked on Lynx. Can't click on anything.

Stick a fork in it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's dead, Jim.
 
Report abuse? Really? So not only do we have to deal with the Overrated mod on unpopular (yet true) comments, we now will also have to deal with people flagging them as abusive? Unreal.

Re:Stick a fork in it

[Curunir_wolf]

I flagged your comment as "unreal"

Re:Stick a fork in it

[itsthebin]

I think a spam mod would be more helpful - flag posts for review

Re:Stick a fork in it

[AtomicJake]

I think a spam mod would be more helpful - flag posts for review

We rather need it to flag some stories lately ...

Re:Stick a fork in it

[mcgrew]

That's what the little black flag is for. You don't have to have mod points to flag.

Re:Stick a fork in it

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to be logged in either. I'm waiting for someone to write a both that uses public open proxy lists to flag thousands of posts so that the people who look at the queue can't delete their spam so easy.

Comment abuse reporting? WTF?

[arcade]

*Sigh*.

So, that's how it's gonna be no that CmdrTaco is gone.

From my heart - to whomever the moron who made this decision was: FUCK YOU.

My wish...

[lxs]

So, readers, what do you want to see in the coming months?

  A clear separation between ads and stories.

Re:My wish...

[TheRaven64]

That's there already. The ads are the ones posted on Slashdot.

Re:My wish...

[guanxi]

A clear separation between ads and stories.

Agreed. The most important change is to be transparent about it.

Typos???

[Anonymous Coward]

"Our goal though all these changes"

Suggestion: Stop making dumb typos. Really, this is the age of smart phone texting and it is killing grammar and proper spelling. Don't fall into that trap.

Journal entry

[tqft]

I just tried to post a journal entry

It may have worked.

Couldn't convince the link to linkify (fish slap with John Cleese at 72).

Couldn't be assed working on it, coz so much stuff has been broken and no idea what will or won't work.

Re:Journal entry

[mcgrew]

It's posted. http://slashdot.org/journal/280729/fish-slap

I see they changed the naming structure for journals (and a few other things too).

In all seriousness

[jayhawk88]

Slashdot right now is the place to go when you want to read about 2 day old news. These days there's very little I see here that I haven't already seen on Ars, Engadget, Giz, TechDirt, BSG, etc.

I know the mission statement probably doesn't care all that much about Slashdot being a news breaker, it's always been more about the discussion, but the discussion becomes a bit stale when the story goes up 18 hours after the rest of the world posted about it. If you want the quality of commenting to rise again, make a concerted effort to get articles up in a more timely manner.

Re:In all seriousness

[myspys]

If something that is 2 days old doesn't count as news, then I don't read news.

The people who want news the second it's released can go somewhere else, I'm here for the discussions.

Re:In all seriousness

[QuasiSteve]

I know the mission statement probably doesn't care all that much about Slashdot being a news breaker, it's always been more about the discussion, but the discussion becomes a bit stale when the story goes up 18 hours after the rest of the world posted about it.

While I appreciate the desire for timely news, there are also up sides to the delay.
One big up side is that the story has somewhat settled down and there's more facts going around than speculation and knee-jerk reactions.

In that respect, though, I do miss Slashback. You'd essentially get the best of both worlds most of the time.
On the one hand you'd have articles posted quickly, loads of knee-jerk comments, as well as some more noteworthy comments.
On the other, after a few days, there would be a Slashback post summarizing a few of the news articles, developments since the original ones, and sometimes including some of the top comments from the previous posts, which then served as a basis for further discussion with a far greater SNR.

http://slashdot.org/archive.pl?op=topics&keyword=slashback
( Look for the ones beginning with "Slashback:" )

Re:In all seriousness

[Kneo24]

A lot of those other places have discussion systems in place. The point they were trying to make is that after two days, the topic has been known and discussed elsewhere in depth.

Re:In all seriousness

[mcbridematt]

On the other hand, the SNR seems to be much better than other venues, both in content and discussions. Which is why I keep coming.

Re:In all seriousness

[jayhawk88]

While I appreciate the desire for timely news, there are also up sides to the delay.
One big up side is that the story has somewhat settled down and there's more facts going around than speculation and knee-jerk reactions.

True, but at the the same time, doing this also removes a lot of input from people who aren't necessarily going to be interested in the topic still. Which may not be a bad thing, but at the same time it removes a lot of the momentum from the conversation, and potentially results in a lot of "dead" topics.

If you're going to try for something like this, doing it sort of like Ars tries to do with their "feature stories" seems like the way to go. Let an expert/writer try to offer their own take initially, perhaps come at it with a different angle, and then let a new conversation spring from that. Of course then the problem is that you have to have people who can generate unique content of some length, rather than just reposting articles with maybe a short blurb.

And let me be clear: I'm not suggesting that Slashdot has to "Go Giz" on us, rushing to get stories up so quickly that half the time it looks like a second grader wrote it, but I do think there's benefit in putting up submissions for most stories earlier. SlashCode is pretty good for allowing long, detailed discussions on topics, and most of us have plenty of practice doing so. The community here used to be epic, and it's still pretty good, but I'm convinced that a lot of quality commenters don't show up here any longer mostly because they've gotten used to offering their comments/opinions on other sites. When something interesting happens, you naturally want to discuss it, and it's just frustrating knowing that you might have to wait a significant amount of time for Slashdot to put up an article on it.

Re:In all seriousness

[quacking duck]

A lot of those other discussion systems are crap. Poor threading, infinite up/down votes, pre-moderation (think Apple app store: you can spend lots of time writing a great comment, but it doesn't mean it'll get posted), etc. Worse, articles can be updated as the story changes, after comments have already been made, so the initial comments can be wildly off base.

The level of intelligence in commenters on those is typically far lower too. Trolls from both sides of the political spectrum can derail a perfectly good discussion.

Re:In all seriousness

[Anonymous Coward]

half the time it looks like a second grader wrote it

Please, please, PLEASE make it so that the quality of writing increases enough to look as though a second grader wrote it.

Re:In all seriousness

[Anonymous Coward]

discussed elsewhere in depth.

Really?

Re:In all seriousness

[SydShamino]

I'm not sure I value the comments of the people who are only interested before we have any facts. I could read plenty of those on CNN.com and choose not to.

I do think, though, that having editors create and submit some of their own stories could help speed the flow of content. If something happens that they know will be a slashdot story, it might make sense to write a blurb and post it as an editor, rather than wait for it to make it through the firehose process. It can always be posted again two days later when a better-written blurb makes it through the firehose. ;)

reply to comments STILL broken - please fix!

[datapharmer]

For the love of Linus please fix the bug that causes me to always have a notification that there is a reply to one of my comments. I have tried everything to delete it and nothing works. It is super annoying! If I click on the message it just says that message xxxxxxxxxx isn't found (where xxxxxxxxxx = message ID). Arghh!!!

Re:reply to comments STILL broken - please fix!

[balaband]

+1

Re:reply to comments STILL broken - please fix!

[LurkerXXX]

It's called MySQL.

Shill problem

[improfane]

You are right, this will be just as abused just like the current moderation system by shills.

I really would like a user preference that lets me block users greater than a certain UID. This is because there are very few genuine users over a certain ID.

Anyone with me? How do we slow down the shills?

Re:Shill problem

[scdeimos]

New feature: Shill tagging. If a user gets enough of their posts shill tagged (by unique UIDs) within a week/month then their account automatically gets suspended. They can appeal to the /. gods to be unsuspended, otherwise it's suspended for good.

Re:Shill problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, that way anyone who has anything good to say about Microsoft or Google or Apple or Oracle or whoever the boogeyman is in a given thread can be strung up proper like.

Re:Shill problem

[zero0ne]

I am a real person :(

What about a way to block specific users, which in turn ALSO blocks all their moderation?

Say some group of shills mods post Y down to oblivion, by having them on your block list, those down mods are invisible and not counted. You now see the post for how it is, and if anyone else modded it +1 whatever, you would see that as well, as long as they aren't on your block list as well.

Of course, this could be the way it is currently, but as a /. noob, I don't have a good enough idea of what users to block.

Re:Shill problem

[TheRaven64]

There are very few interesting posters over the 2M UID mark... but there are some. There are now over half a million accounts in that range, so it would be a bit surprising if none of them ever said anything interesting. That said, there are probably a lot of patterns that you can watch for to spot mod abuse. For example:

• Don't allow (silently drop) moderations by one account of another from the same IP address
• Look for clusters of accounts that each moderate the others up (or down). Even when this isn't abuse, it just generates an echo chamber. Reduce the probability of these accounts getting mod points.

Or you could just bring back the old metamod system. You know, the one that actually worked, where anyone in the oldest 90% of accounts could do it, but had no control over the posts that they metamoderated.

Re:Shill problem

[mcgrew]

Nothing happens when you click the flag. Nothing, that is, except it's flagged for a /. admin to look at and decide what to do with the comment. It's not like moderation at all.

You might want to peruse the FAQ (Unless you're using IE7; the first few paragraphs are unreadable because the CSS covers text with other text). I quote:

How do I report abuse?
Below and to the right of each comment is a small "Anti" symbol; click on this, and (optionally) explain why you consider the comment abusive. (Slashdot discussions are and should be robust; only cry "Abuse!" for comments that are utterly without redeeming value -- spam, racist ranting, etc. For everything else, use the other moderation options.) Reported comments will be reviewed and moderated by the editors, if appropriate.

Re:Shill problem

[SydShamino]

Now the people who farm accounts for mod points can use all those accounts to get other opinions banned!

No moderator would be able to tell if an account is or isn't a shill. Sorry, this just won't work.

Re:Shill problem

[TheGothicGuardian]

Do people really need to farm for mod points? I've had mod points every day (with less than a full day between sets of 5) since Thanksgiving. I don't even always use them all. They just keep coming.

Re:Shill problem

[shutdown -p now]

The way it works, I think, is that the more you post, the fewer points you get.

Re:Shill problem

[GLMDesigns]

I'm a poster over the 2M UID. For years I ONLY used Anonymous Coward as I'm a privacy geek. I changed when I realized that my entire life is already online: anybody researching me can find out which buildings I bought, which companies I've been an officer in, corporate newsletters in which I've been mentioned (hence knowing where I've worked) and many other things.

So, last year, during the SOPA nonsense I decided to start get another account. (I had an account yrs ago and never used it and didn't have access to the hotmail acct which I used for it.) I'm certain that I'm not the only long term lurker who opens a new Slashdot acct.

Re:Shill problem

[SydShamino]

You don't get mod points unless your account has been in "good standing" for a certain amount of time. A new account won't receive them immediately; it may be a year or more.

Hence, in order to have at least five accounts at any given time with mod points (so you can slam a single post from +5 to 0 on your own) you need to have planned ahead and set up 7-10 accounts at least a year in advance. And as some accounts could get banned, you might need some extras going too. Hence, "farming" - but of accounts for mod points, not of mod points directly.

What do I want?

[g051051]

I want Slashdot back!

Lose the gimmicks. Slashdot was great because it focused on hard tech news, and tended to post things that the Slashdot community were interested in. Now, it seems to be at the whims of a few submitters (MrSeb, Hugh Pickens) with the editors asleep at the switch and posting stuff that's not even remotely tech news, typically biased political propaganda.

Stop creating your own vanity projects. You need to stop fantasizing that you're a news *source* and get back to being a tech news *aggregator*. We don't want you to create custom content, and especially not tripe like device destruction porn, reviews, reports from conventions (is there any bigger waste of video than a "from the convention floor" type report?) You're such a late entry to this space that it'll take years to get even remotely good at it, if ever. Find the great content out there, and post stories and links. That's it!

It's just absurd to think that these recent missteps were simple errors in judgement. The claim that the infamous hoodie video was intended (per Soulskill) as "a quick, silly, completely non-serious video" is suspect. Why would something *intended* as a silly video even be on the front page and not in Idle? How out of touch do you need to be to think that the readers wouldn't be offended and instantly assume an ad masquerading as a story?

And in spite of the massive negative feedback (which must have been massive indeed to rouse the editors from their slumber to actually acknowledge the problem), you *still* ran that atrocious Plantronics tripe, and pretended to be surprised that people hated it.

Honestly, the recent changes stink of you trying to pad your resumes.

Re:What do I want?

[thsths]

> I want Slashdot back!

Seconded. This is not Slashdot, this is Slashdot theatre, stages by bad actors with no technical expertise whatsoever.

It has gone from a place were you would find serious technical news stories to one of the worst places on the net. Always looking for the next outcry and the next provocation posting, worse than even the tabloid press.

Re:What do I want?

[TaoPhoenix]

And I want my comments back!

At my glacial pace, I am finally thinking of starting a blog. It occurred to me that I have a wealth of comments I have posted over the years here. Give us a "12-click" method that exports all of your comments out into your choice of a few file types.

For a site that talks about the evils of lock-in, I made a half hearted attempt to neo-google (Startpage) my comments from Slashdot by using a web search engine.

Re:What do I want?

[Kneo24]

Now, it seems to be at the whims of a few submitters (MrSeb, Hugh Pickens) with the editors asleep at the switch and posting stuff that's not even remotely tech news, typically biased political propaganda.

Slashdot has always been at the whim of a few submitters. Now lately I noticed they've been trying to change that, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still like that. Years ago I tried to participate in the submission system and a few of the stories I submitted were not added, but only a day or two later they were added, word for word, with a different submitter.

Re:What do I want?

[mcgrew]

Slashdot was great because it focused on hard tech news, and tended to post things that the Slashdot community were interested in. Now, it seems to be at the whims of a few submitters (MrSeb, Hugh Pickens) with the editors asleep at the switch and posting stuff that's not even remotely tech news, typically biased political propaganda.

There's the firehose to vote down stories you don't like. And, er, YOUR submissions look exactly like what you're bitching about. Yeah, they were probably just journals that weren't meant as submissions, but I don't see how you can bitch about bad stories when you haven't submitted any good ones yourself.

Re:What do I want?

[mcgrew]

I don't think that's staff's fault. Back when slashdot was young, almost everyone on the internet was a nerd. Now everyone and his dog is on the internet, and what's worse, we've gone from being social pariahs to being kewl (Damn but I never thought I'd live to see that). So you have hordes of semiliterate and aliterate muggles who think they're nerds because they can boot Windows and use an iPhone, and they're coming to slashdot submitting stories, voting in the firehose, etc.

We're even outnumbered at slashdot. Used to be we weren't even outnumbered on the internet.

Re:What do I want?

[g051051]

No, they weren't journal entries (allowing automatic submission of journal entries as stories is an idiotic idea, frankly.) Of the 3 things I submitted, on was a legitimate story which I thought was interesting and had a tech angle that was frankly better than the stuff we're getting now. The other 2 were complaints about the site, and apparently submitting them is the only way to get any attention, as the "editors" seem to be completely uncommunicative and unresponsive to most direct queries.

I can bitch about bad stories because I've been around long enough to recognize bad ones. I don't post submissions because that's not my primary interest. I was iffy on the PS2 forgeries, and since it wasn't accepted, I took that as a lesson learned.

Nice try with the Poisoning the well attack, though.

Re:What do I want?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too true.

Re:What do I want?

[mcgrew]

Not poisoning the well, just pointing out that it's us, the users, who make slashdot good or bad. I haven't submitted many myslef lately, the last one accepted was last july. About one in three I submitted were accepted. And there's the firehose as well. If only non-nerds vote on stories in the firehose, you're going to get bad submissions accepted.

It's our fault, not theirs.

Re:What do I want?

[g051051]

I blame the editors for not doing their jobs. I watch the submission queue, and I'm always amazed at the things people submit. While it's pretty easy to weed out the obvious spam off-topic spam, the editors should definitely be eyeing every submission through the "News for nerds, Stuff that matters" filter and simply rejecting stuff that doesn't reach that bar, regardless of the ratings on the firehose.

Dear Slashdot Management

[improfane]

Your website's profitability depends on the comments posted below. You depend on User Generated Content (UGC). This is where most users extract value from your site and the reason why people actually still visit Slashdot.

It's not the articles themselves, people only rarely read those.

If you allow your user base to be diluted by commercial interests, your profits will dwindle as less users come here to socialize and learn. That is why you need to keep the comments off limits for gaming by media and PR companies. If you post a Slashvertisement, not that I like them at least it is separate from the comment section so you're not pretending to be anything but a shill for another company. However, the comment section should represent real users and trolls -- not shills.

Re:Dear Slashdot Management

[Anonymous Coward]

...as less users come here to socialize ...

You call this socializing?

No wonder geeks have no social skills.

But it just not geeks now. Facebook has everyone "socializing" online and the World is getting lonelier. What a paradox! We can connect to hundreds of millions of people, but it just more isolating and I hate it. My local LUG groups closed down because everyone is online, as an example.

If the internet wasn't a necessity these days (try getting work without it), I'd unplug the fucker.

Re:Dear Slashdot Management

[openfrog]

If you allow your user base to be diluted by commercial interests, your profits will dwindle as less users come here to socialize and learn. That is why you need to keep the comments off limits for gaming by media and PR companies.

Seconded. I originally came to Slashdot for the quality of the discussion and of the comments, some truly enlightening, and the feeling that a collectivity was forging opinions on subject matters important to us all, reflected by the apt slogan 'Stuff that matters'. I could read Steve Wozniak, NewYorkCountryLawyer, etc, many people at the forefront of stories they were commenting. Not only celebrities, but some pillars of this community, people like eldavojohn, etc. whom you would always count on to intervene wisely in a discussion.

Only Slashdot has managed to attract and cultivate such a community --people who normally don't have time or interest for social networks, so perhaps the term 'socialize' is less apt here than the one of 'community interests'-- and if Slashdot were to lose these people, it would be to never being able to regain them, and to lose its essence. So do all the innovating you want, but please never lose sight of the essential.

Game reviews?

[gr3yh47]

I'd love to see more game reviews

So right

[improfane]

The problem I think is that geeks no longer run Slashdot, they no longer choose the stories to post. Instead it's by social media/blogger types which is not what Slashdot's target audience is interested in...

Re:So right

[tomhath]

Instead it's by social media/blogger types which is not what Slashdot's target audience is interested in

Sad, but apparently true. Certain topics (e.g. politics, social issues like race or gay rights, green energy/global warming, etc.) always draw more comments/page hits/advertising. I left Fark because it turned into a cesspool of blogger wannabes shouting at each other. Please keep the News For Nerds angle here, especially in an election year when every other media outlet is full of Unbiased Reporting (patent applied for 2012).

Re:So right

[TheRaven64]

So true. And one thing that occurred to me recently: I've been reading Slashdot for over 10 years and I've seen editors come and go, but I have never seen an advert for the job of Slashdot editor advertised. Every tech news site I read has posted ads for editors and writers in that period, but not Slashdot. It is the one site that doesn't try to recruit staff from its readership. It's also interesting to see how high the UIDs are for a lot of the Slashdot editors - several of them apparently didn't even have Slashdot accounts until after they got the job. It's therefore not really surprising that they'd be a bit useless.

Re:So right

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the biggest issue in my opinion. It used to be people who thought like us posting the stories (sad saps), but these days it seems more interested in getting your attention to find that it's nothing relevant.

I don't think Slashdot was ever meant to be (or should be) such a commercial endeavor. There are literally thousands of those out there. The "warm and fuzzy" feeling of Slashdot seems to be missing here.

Re:So right

[jellomizer]

No geeks run it... They just got older wiser, and probably sold out a little. Back when Slashdot started, for the most part you were already a geek just because you were using the Internet outside of AOL keywords.
Linux was just starting to get noticed as a viable alternative to Unix. and the height of the Tech boom where most of the posters where making 6 figure salaries in jobs that pay them to sit in been bags chairs and play pin ball most of the day with some time in the middle where you got some work done. So the average poster had money to waste on fun technology, and free time to tinker. Good Times... However unfortunately it wasn't a sustainable and us Techs have been humbled back to our lot in life as Middle class work, in the cube, not bad but not great either. So as time went on a lot of technology had became far more made for consumer market, and now small size is really popular making DIY projects less likely, DYI cell phone will look more like a Zack Moris 1980 cell phone. As the DYI do not have the resources to much such a densely packed system.

Re:So right

[eclectro]

It's also interesting to see how high the UIDs are

Kinda like how your UID is high??

Re:So right

[PCM2]

He's right though. I'm in the tech media business and I've never seen an ad posted for /. anywhere. Especially not on the site itself -- which you'd think might be the obvious place to look. Have you (with your low UID and all)?

Re:So right

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a quick apology - I am one of what is probably a silent majority, generating clicks on non-technical topics with a high degree of predictability. I would happily stop doing this or avoid slashdot altogether if properly discouraged. I admire the kind of discussion that comes from this site, but I don't contribute meaningfully. It's a real problem, since many arts students do read this site to understand modern tech with fewer ads and alliterations, but we might be (above) crowding out the productive users. suggestions? get more technical? require some kind of peer approval for posting? get rid of trackable/clickable links, in favor of some other way of suggesting content? I like insight, but boy do I hate ads. It's a tough world out there.

Re:So right

[qwak23]

UID's are overrated. Hell, I've had like 4 of them.

Thanks

[Keick]

I know you often hear more complaints than compliments so I just want to say thanks!!!. The whole staff is doing a bang up job and if I could buy you all a round I would.

Re:Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, shills for Slashdot itself now.

Go out gracefully

[Swampash]

Let's be honest. Slashdot's time has past. It's now a place to see "news for nerds" that everyone has already seen and discussed to death for days elsewhere, and to see "stuff that matters" but only where "mattering" is a some connection, any connection, anything to get the word "Apple" in the headline of an article.

The advertisements posted as articles were the straw that broke the camel's back.

Go out gracefully, Slashdot.

Re:Go out gracefully

[wye43]

Related articles, next, previous, most discussed, this day on slashdot, all unnecessary cross-linking for an obvious reason.

Slashdot looks like a SEO link farm these days. Its simply disgusting.

Capture the value of the experts

[CoryFoy]

I spend a lot of time on reddit as of late, but putting aside the idiocy that can be present, there's one thing that I really like. When I see a story - especially a science/tech story - I can click onto the comments and immediately see the top-rated ones. What I like about that is that well-informed opinions have opportunities to rise to the top. I know the slider switch is a way of handling that, but I really wish there was a way that I could click on a story and see the highest comments sorted as such. The one thing that has kept me coming back to /. after all these years is that the people are great and can have a lot of knowledge to share. I wish we had a way to highlight that in a better way. One thing I do love about Slashdot - if I saw a cool story yesterday, I can actually find it. I like the timeline aspect of that.

Fix copy and paste on the iPad

[Richard_at_work]

At the moment (iOS5.1) I cannot highlight anything on the page outside of a text area so I can't copy and paste...

More Brests

[Anonymous Coward]

You asked, I always like to see them any shape any size big little doesn't much matter as long as they are not man boobs

Re:More Brests

[thsths]

I am sure they would have done that already, but the editors can't find page 3 :-)

A list

[ZeroSerenity]

Spell-check
Grammar-check
Repeat Story Detector
More Cowbell

Re:A list

[gstrickler]

This^^^. Better editing of submissions. At least, spell check, grammar check, and URL validation. Way too many spelling and major grammar errors on initial posting of submissions. Spelling and grammar checking of comments on the preview would also be nice, but I'm mostly concerned with the quality of the submissions that get posted, comments are secondary. This is the #1 request I see mentioned daily.

Banning Flash based ads (and videos that require Flash). Yes, my karma is high enough that I can simply disable ads, but I don't because I presume you make some money on showing them. However, I do not have Flash installed, and yet about 50% of the time Firefox tells me "additional plugins are necessary...". No additional plugins are necessary, and none will be installed, Flash sucks and it's finally dying.

Add support for the tag. Strikethrough is extremely useful in some comments.

Finally, Javascript that gives a nice electric shock to moderators who mod-down comments simply because they disagree with an opinion. And when you figure out how to do that, be sure to patent it and give an open license to it so MegaCorp doesn't patent it afterward and sue you.

Re:A list

[mcgrew]

Spell-check

1. Dew knot truss yore spill checker.
2. Unless you're using IE, your browser has spill chuck. Not that it will do you any good if you don't know the difference between lose and loose.

Re:A list

[ZeroSerenity]

This would be spell check for articles.

Re:A list

[mcgrew]

I'd rather they just did a better job proofreading. People today put way too much faith in spell checkers."Loose" is a verb that means "set free" and "lose" means "not be able to find something", so when someone says "that business should loose money" they aren't saying what they mean to say. Then you have other idiocies like using "their" when it should be "there" or "they're." Those kind of mistakes that a spell checker can't catch hinder communication, while a misspelling (like spelling "Beer" as "Ber") that a spell checker will catch will only slow down a reader's speed, and not really by that much.

Mobile bugfixes

[NathanE]

How about fixing the mobile version of the site? Its been broken for months:

- In Safari on my iPhone, going to slashdot.org fetches the 5 most recent stories. At the bottom of the page is a "Many More" link. Clicking it doesn't actually fetch the _next_ 5 oldest. Instead it fetches stories from earlier in the day SORTED IN THE REVERSE ORDER. This makes it very difficult to use the mobile site to catch up on news missed during the day. It wouldn't be so bad if .....

- The "Fullscreen" link at the bottom of the mobile version would actually work. The text says "Change view: Mobile - Fullscreen", leading one to believe that the fullscreen link should take you to the normal version of the site. But clicking it simply reloads the mobile version of the page with the "ss=0" URL parameter.

Re:Mobile bugfixes

[Anonymous Coward]

A website that uses Javascript as much as Slashdot does currently, clearly doesn't give a damn about viewers with "lesser" browsers, like mobile phones or RSS feeds - those can't "see" all the comments that JS hides. Dammit, a website "for nerds" should render completely fine on Lynx, and pretty much anything. All comments included.

No more Ads in the Articles!

[begleysm]

I think most slashdot users would to no longer see advertisements in the articles section!

Wasn't very broken, don't fix much

[msk]

I've been here a while and my opinion is that Slashdot was fine until ads and videos started to steal space at the top of the page.

For the most part, it wasn't broken. Be very careful in what you fix. Gawker has gone to Hades with its redesign.

Re:Wasn't very broken, don't fix much

[Captain Hook]

For me at least, Gawker is completely inaccessible without javascript and they don't offer enough for me to be bothered to turn it on each time I visit, so I just stopped visiting.

Re:Wasn't very broken, don't fix much

[Compaqt]

Yeah, this. Who sold them that Koolaid? Just give people a page, and let them view it.

Who was screaming for a "web app" style experience to visit a website? Don't people want to open links in multiple browsers? (I guess not Gawkers readers--what's left of them. Readership is down.)

Almost the only time I'm on one of their sites is if it comes up in Google, and I just open the Cached link.

Stop using fsdn.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you put your stylesheet, icons, etc on fsdn.com instead of within slashdot.org? I ask because my work blocks fsdn.com (and no, they're not going to change it) since to corporate it's apparently either filled with porn or evil hackers. Which turns browsing slashdot.org back to using a lynx browser.

Host site critical elements in your own domain.

I still can't log in

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere along the line, Slashdot broke nicknames with punctuation. Since my cookie expired, I have been unable to log in. The only work around is for an admin to change the nickname. How about we just fix the bug, please?

Re:I still can't log in

[devjoe]

Somewhere along the line, Slashdot broke nicknames with punctuation. Since my cookie expired, I have been unable to log in. The only work around is for an admin to change the nickname. How about we just fix the bug, please?

Ditto, though I was able to log in using openID. This may not work if you can't verify your Slashdot account's email through some openID provider, though.

Re:I still can't log in

[NighthawkFoo]

I had to change my long-standing nickname to log back in. I've had an account here since 2001 or so.

Re:I still can't log in

[_anomaly_]

I feel your pain. I had a nickname associated with an email address that went defunct before I could change it on slashdot. I emailed the admins back in, I dunno, 2004 or so to see if I could get it back. "They" of course denied the request. The account was created in '98 or '99. I want my old nick/UID back :-(

This is what is needed

[metrix007]

• A revamp of all JS code. Minimialize it. It should be fast and snappy, not.....what it is. For example, no code needs to be run when I just want to close the tab.
• UNICODE support. Slashdot is US Centric. It's users are not. Even if they were, not all stories are.
• Don't require manual HTML paragraphs to break up text. Allow HTML, but don't mandate it just to get readable text.
• Automatically expand or disallow URL shortness. They are not needed and only used for malicious purposes on this site.
• Submit stories of note. Stop submitting slashvertisments or trolling articles to get hits. Incorporate some basic editing. Hire an editor if necessary.

Re:This is what is needed

[thegarbz]

I don't understand the complaint about HTML paragraphs.
This post here contains no HTML tags at all.

Notice it breaks paragraphs just fine?

Re:This is what is needed

[metrix007]

Well...then I must be doing something wrong. This should be a new paragraph. But it clearly is not.

Re:This is what is needed

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

It's configurable. At the top right of the screen, click "Account", then click the "Posting" link/tab; for Comment Post Mode, choose "Plain Old Text".

Re:This is what is needed

[sirdude]

I believe that the preferences page is/was buggy as I used to have the same issue until I visiting it again and re-saved.

You can also access the same preferences page by clicking on the "gear" icon above the comment subject field. However, saving any changes will force a page refreshing and consequently result in a loss of any data in the comment textarea. Very friendly.

Re:This is what is needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is US Centric. It's users are not.

[Citation Needed]

Re:This is what is needed

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the complaint about HTML paragraphs.
This post here contains no HTML tags at all.

Notice it breaks paragraphs just fine?

It seems Slashcode now automatically adds <p> and </p> when you press enter. It used to not do that and any enters would just be eaten.

This is pretty new, I think.

Re:This is what is needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Automatic paragraph formatting is a feature of the Plain Old Text posting mode. It always has been.

Re:This is what is needed

[shutdown -p now]

Automatically expand or disallow URL shortness. They are not needed and only used for malicious purposes on this site.

They are needed if you want to fit a typical URL in your sig, and your sig is longer than two or three words.

(of course, a proper fix for that would be to not count invisible markup when determining length of the sig...)

slash code should work on more browsers.

[smillie]

I've tried 6 different browsers on 4 different platforms and none of them render slashdot properly. All of them render something different than the others. Firefox on Solaris was so bad I gave up reading slashdot at work. I would think Firefox on Linux would render it properly but it leaves out major chunks of screen that show up in Opera.

Is anyone going to acturally quality test your changes this time?

Viewing comments

[NathanE]

Having to click 7 times to view all the comments on this page is very annoying. The link at the bottom of the page says "Get N more comments" where N is the total number of comments on the article. Clicking it only returns 5 at a time. This makes it hard to read discussions when you have to continually scroll to the bottom of the page, click a link, scroll back up, continue reading for a little bit, scroll back down, click a link, repeat.

Working spinner won't go away

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an annoying "Working" status control on the Bottom of the main page that won't go away even after everything is loaded. iOS 5.1. Occurred after I hit "More".

Stop refreshing

[RedHat Rocky]

I'm not a fan of having the home page constantly refresh. I prefer to do that when I'm ready. You know, the way it worked for years. ;)

Unfortunately, with the way it is currently working, I actually end up reading slashdot less, as I lose my place.

And no, I don't RSS or other feed junk, have always hated that.

Lose "Many More" link and provide per-date URLs

[Morgaine]

Slashdot used to have a perfectly working front page for "today", plus specific URLs for the day before, the day before that, and so on. It used to employ some of the good principles of Roy Fielding's thesis on REST, where each page is a resource with a distinct address that makes sense. You could give someone a link and know exactly what they're seeing. Well no more.

Instead of that sane technical design, now we have some kind of utterly broken page expansion system linked through "Many More", and you never know what the hell you're looking at, and when you return from a nested page you're seeing something totally different. It's a technical disaster, and given that this pretends to be a technical site, its technical design is quite beyond the pale.

Bring back a bit of sane web technology please. Lose the totally unhelpful "Many More" which is a wholly broken design, and bring back dated pages.

Re:Lose "Many More" link and provide per-date URLs

[jandar]

Since "Many More" I'm often frustrated by not being able to navigate the article-stream in a meaningful way.

The feature I'm missing most (after getting rid of "Many More" ;-)) is a mode to read from old posts to the newer ones with current position saved between visits.

Re:Lose "Many More" link and provide per-date URLs

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. The webbies went totally mental and threw stream navigation out the window. "WTF?" doesn't begin to describe it.

I can only guess that they've lost all their real techs and only webbies are left, so technical competence and design insight has been replaced by "Oh this is cool."

Re:Lose "Many More" link and provide per-date URLs

[WhiteDragon]

Since "Many More" I'm often frustrated by not being able to navigate the article-stream in a meaningful way.

The feature I'm missing most (after getting rid of "Many More" ;-)) is a mode to read from old posts to the newer ones with current position saved between visits.

hear, hear!

Re:Lose "Many More" link and provide per-date URLs

[StuffMaster]

Oh hell yes. I've been cursing slashdot regularly since they ruined the pagination.

Re:Lose "Many More" link and provide per-date URLs

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still view previous dates using some URL magic though its much more obtuse than it used to be (its how I read /.).

For example, to view the stories from the Thursday 5th April 2012, you'd use this URL:
http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?view=stories&startdate=20120405&page=0

That will get you first half of the day. Increment page=1 to get the second half:
http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?view=stories&startdate=20120405&page=1

Quiet days don't necessarily have a second page. Don't ask why they thought it needed to be split. Some very rare days have a page=2, but that's not common.

First, take the haters with a grain of salt

[Phoenix666]

Most adults know you editors don't work for free, just as we don't work for free, and that the bills have to be paid somehow to keep Slashdot running; and we know that advertising is one of those ways. So please ignore all those ragging on you for the presence of advertising. You provide real value to the world so don't let the haters distract you from that fact.

And to all the haters doing the hating: grow up.

Re:First, take the haters with a grain of salt

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, someone actually *pays* the editors for the horrendous job they do? Good lord.

Re:First, take the haters with a grain of salt

[paimin]

Ads are fine. Ads pretending to be stories are NOT fine.

Re:First, take the haters with a grain of salt

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Nobody is complaining about the advertisements that are marked as advertisements.

The complaints are about the advertisements masquerading as articles. I don't see a lot (1-2 a day, if that) but it does happen. The question is - are these advertisers paying slashdot (unlikely), paying the folks who pick the articles (possible but still not very likely) or have they simply found a way to abuse the submission process (most likely).

Suggestions

[e.colli]

Would be nice a more democratic comment voting system like reddit/facebook instead of the current moderation points model. And lighter comment boxes could lessen eye fatigue.

Re:Suggestions

[Compaqt]

Um, what?

Slashdot has by far a better signal to noise ratio than Facebook and Reddit.

There might be some problems with moderation, but again, far better than the detritus on those two sites.

Re:Suggestions

[mcgrew]

I don't agree. If you're making crap comments yourself, you're likely to mod others' crap comments up.

What I'd like to see is removal of the "time between posting" limit removed for comments in your own journal, and responding to comments that show up in your "notifications" page. If you get a highly rated comment you're likely to have lots of responses, many of which demand answers or further comments. And some of us read pretty fast.

Why I'm anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope the view customisations are easier. I stopped signing in cos my settings hid most of the posts (and for the life of me I can't fix it).

Aahh, that's why you are so slow recently

[Yaa 101]

Aahh, that's why you are so slow recently...

Thanks for that.

Re:You really want to bring my machine to its knee

[felipekk]

It's the retribution. For years we've been Slashdotting all these websites who had some cool content to show us. Now it's time for retribution and Slashdot all the reader's computers.

Don't ask for suggestions

[JoeCommodore]

The more you are guided by random user feedback instead of having someone giding the site consistently the more messed up it will probably get. Do what you think is right, and if it feels bad, make it better.

Stupid filter

[Etylowy]

The project is mature enough - time to start using it http://stupidfilter.org/

Flagging?

[thesandtiger]

What constitutes a flaggable comment?

Will it be like the "overrated" mod, which basically means, "I disagree with you and want to shut you up, but I'm too much of a chickenshit to risk internet karma points if other people disagree with me"?

Re:Flagging?

[mcgrew]

The FAQ is linked in TFS and answers your question.

Re:Flagging?

[thesandtiger]

Except it doesn't.

I've seen tons of comments here that I would absolutely consider racist that have been modded +5 insightful, so just saying "editors will check it out" doesn't mean anything to me. I've also seen comments that were insightful but happened to go against the groupthink modded to -1.

Further, given the ... Quality... Of editing here, I don't know that I would feel any better with that system than with moderation allowing people to be put to -1. Worse, actually - it being deleted means nobody case it even if they want to.

The only time I could see a comment being justifiably deleted would be if it contained personally identifying information for someone other than the poster. But as soon as Slashdot starts going down the road of removing posts (rather than just down modding them) it's going to be a less interesting place.

Mobile Slashdot

[Phoenix666]

As an android user there are three issues I've noticed when visiting the site.

The first is that when you tap the link "Many More" at the bottom of the page and then read one of the article it exposes, when you go back you're not back where you started but at the beginning again and have to click "Many More" again. That's not so bad when you only previously clicked it once, but when it was 2-3 times to get to what you wanted to read, and given the delay for "Many More" to work, it tends to break the mobile experience.

The second is when you do click "Many More" the presentation of the oldest previous articles thus exposed gets shown first, so that it appears that no new articles have been posted since the last time you visited the site. You have to persevere clicking "Many More" to get to the actual new articles. That triggers the aforementioned first issue ;-)

Third is that the CSS needs a little help adjusting page widths. You can't read threaded comments in normal letter mode, so you have to tilt your phone to landscape orientation to make it legible. But the page width on the site doesn't always automatically adjust.

So right now reading the site on a regular laptop is a much better experience, in terms of usability. The mobile issues I mentioned are sub-optimal, but I am still grateful to be able to get a Slashdot fix on the go.

From An Old Fart

[lobiusmoop]

In 1995 I bought a Psion Series 3 organizer.. Back then, 16 years ago, it was state-of-the-art. Despite modern advances, I'm still using it occasionally today, mostly as a small database and pocket-typewriter, even though it runs at 7MHz with 2MB ot storage/RAM. The reason is simple - you really don't need GHz of compute horsepower and billions of bytes of storage/memory when you're only working with text. I like this ethos in our media-saturated world, but Slashdot does seem to be railing against it, with pageviews gobbling up hundreds of K of bandwidth for what is essentially a few K of entropy.
I guess what I'm trying to say is "Don't be ashamed of keeping it simple guys. "

Expand All Comments

[Phoenix666]

This may not apply to the newcomers who read the site in AJAX mode. I prefer the classic mode (yes, I'm that old).

When reading comments I would appreciate a toggle to "expand all comments" so that I can see comments ranked below my default viewing threshhold. It mostly applies when I'm moderating and would love to be able to browse at 0 or -1 to catch the good comments that were late to the first post party; given that you can only see "Re: [parent post title" instead of the body of the comment, you tend to not bother clicking on them to avoid an endless dance of "click, hit -Back" to see what they wrote.

There are also occasionally discussions where I would be interested to see the back-and-forth between others because they seem particularly well-informed or even funny but their subsequent replies aren't modded as highly as their originals, so you have to enter the "click, hit -Back" game again if you want to see the whole thing.

I still love Slashdot, but having that "expand all comments" option would improve my experience.

Re:Expand All Comments

[visualight]

I've always thought the AJAX code was intentionally terrible to force people to login and get a tolerable UI.

I don't think anyone likes the ajax crap and even though it's been complained about more than anything, it's still forced on us. So I doubt anyone is actually "listening to us".

Re:Expand All Comments

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I like it. It works well for me, and avoids constant page loads/back navigation.

That said, I suspect they look at usage patterns - of course a vocal minority will complain because a vocal minority always complains. The question is what the silent majority (and if /. is like any other forum, the vast majority of people read plenty but never post a single comment) do. If the changes had caused readership to actually drop off, they would have revisited them.

Re:Expand All Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

All too true as the classic discussion system is no longer even available to the true ACs who don't have or use a login. Only a very few comments are even viewable to us. I have been coming here for many years and never had any interest in setting up an account and only still come here mostly for article links since most comments are no longer readable without enabling the abrasive AJAX, not that the AJAX is really "readable" either, the classic system was infinitely better and easier on the eyes, even when flamed.

Moderator Points

[Anonymous Coward]

When did the number of mod points change to 15? Or did I just reach some magical level where the heavens open up and rain down continual mod points.

(Posting anon so as not to piss off the Gods of Slashdot)

Re:Moderator Points

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like the more you mod, the more points you get. Don't let your points expire or you get 5 next time around.

What about actually seeing who modded what? At the very least have a breakdown that shows how the final score was derived: 15 x (+1) + 13 x (-1) = +4 Insightful.

GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm disappointed to see utter bullshit like "Flag-a-comment abuse reporting" and "Thumbnails for articles with videos" and "general reliability improvements to the AJAX magic" included in this list.

I intentionally avoid sites like reddit, StackOverflow, and especially Hacker News, because of the high degree of censorship that goes on at such places. You can't hold, never mind express, a non-mainstream opinion there. It really stifles the discussion. At least Slashdot allows differing opinions and ideas to be expressed, without the outright censorship we see elsewhere.

The worst part about the censorship is that it happened to people who were expressing absolutely correct, yet unpopular, ideas. Many of them were merely years ahead of the rest of the crowd. For example, some people who I saw get targeted a lot were those who didn't have a raging hard-on for Ruby on Rails. They'd correctly point out that Rails is a pretty typical framework, and similar functionality had been available in Perl, PHP and Python years earlier. They'd correctly point out that there's nothing special about Rails' ORM. They'd correctly point out that Ruby's and Rails' performance is actually quite horrible. Yet despite being completely correct, they'd receive hundreds or even thousands of unjustified "mod-downs" and in some cases would have their comments removed and they'd then be banned from the subreddit. As somebody who came from Slashdot, I found that behavior to be abhorrent. At least I could see such discussion at Slashdot, where it was just gone at some of these other sites.

What's all this video crap, too? Reading is so much more efficient than watching video. I'm not going to waste 15 minutes watching some useless video when I could read a transcript or even an article expressing the same information in one or two minutes. So don't even bother with this thumbnail bullshit. As users, we don't want videos. The only people really pushing videos are those who want to cram more "vibrant" advertising nonsense down the throats of "consumers".

And for crying out loud, we don't need "general reliability improvements" to the AJAX crap. STRIP IT THE FUCK OUT! Get rid of it! Go back to the good ol' dropdowns for selecting the moderation level and the number of posts to view. Go back to using to using proven techniques that, get this, actually work and are usable!

I was hopeful that we'd see some great changes when Slashdot first came to us asking for suggestions. But now I fear that Slashdot will become another intolerant shitheap among the reddits and Diggs and Hacker Newses of the Internet. We don't want censorship. We don't want bullshit videos. We don't want half-assed, buzzword-compliant functionality ruining the site.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

>At least Slashdot allows differing opinions and ideas to be expressed, without the outright censorship we see elsewhere.

No, it doesn't. I've had comments removed and been banned simply for stating a dislike of the USA gun laws.

This place is censured. Live with it.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[arth1]

Hear, hear!

<RANT>
The changes have NOT been for the better lately.
Slashdot is turning into yet another video blog, and can't pull that off for two reasons - it's too late in the game, and the users who bring the content that gives the site value don't communicate in video. Remember the old saying that a picture takes up more bandwidth than a thousand words. It's true. And videos? The signal/byte ratio is so low that it's worthless for a tech forum.

And the "share" icons for Facebook/Google/Twitter? If we wanted to do social networking, we would go to a social networking site! If we wanted our friends there to see what we posted here, we'd ask them to come here! Don't give Facebook tracking information about me by including their icon, god damn it.

And fix the text input parser. Never mind Unicode, it can't even handle ISO-8859-1, for cripes' sake! Anything not US English and a very limited number of other characters fails.
Oh, and what worked before, like <UL> lists, doesn't anymore. Because the "designer", and I use this term loosely, decided that his or her view of presentation was more important than the actual tags.
So half the tags listed under "Allowed HTML" don't work anymore, or do a completely wrong thing. Either fix it, or get rid of them.

No, slashdot has not become better. Some of us old farts stick around here for old times sake. And it's not that we don't embrace the new - we do, when it makes sense. We don't sit hacking on PDP-11s, we move with the times. But Slashdot doesn't move with the times, it implements broken stuff for its own sake, without solving any problem or making the experience anythiing but crappier.

Oh, and get rid of the Varnish cache if you can't keep it running correctly. I'm SO sick of seeing Varnish error messages or a front page that suddenly reverts to an older version with the top story gone unless I force reload until I get a fresh varnish cache. Don't you have any sysadmins anymore?
</RANT>

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[samzenpus]

Nobody removed or banned you for "stating a dislike of the USA gun laws." If you'd like you can mail me your username or uid and I can take a look, (assuming something really did happen to your account and your not just trolling.)

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Anne Thwacks]

I have been ranting about US gun laws for a very long time, (and a lot else besides) and I am still here!

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[emag]

Some of us old farts stick around here for old times sake.

That's about the only reason I stick around, too.

And a 6 digit claiming to be an old fart makes me feel positively ancient...

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

general reliability improvements to the AJAX magic

This made me laugh, like "real" magic it's a bunch of superstitious bullshit that doesn't work. How are the slashdot staff going to improve this mystical comment system, are they going to have a seance or go dowsing? Will this allow me to read a discussion at -1 with javascript disabled?

Seconding a return to a web 1.0 and a usable interface with HTML dropdown form controls and good old HTTP requests.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[istartedi]

And for crying out loud, we don't need "general reliability improvements" to the AJAX crap. STRIP IT THE FUCK OUT!

But, but... you don't understand. There was this bridge. People were jumping off it. Jumping, I tell you!

Also there is a meme spread by hardware vendors telling us to jump off this bridge. My 5 year old Lenovo with XP and 1 Gig of RAM was still working well to browse the web. Somebody had to put a stop to that--for the benefit of the economy, you know.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Flammon]

I agree with the comment flagging. A user threatened to sexually molest my children years ago on this site. My blood was boiling and I was getting ready to pay him a visit. I'm looking for the actual comment but can't find it at the moment. The user was eventually banned because of complaints from other users.

I'm a big proponent of freedom of speech and my views are rarely conventional and I'm sure that I inadvertently offend people with my comments but I don't attack other people's children and threaten to molest them. As much as you believe there's no limit, there is a limit.

Flagging is just that. Let the flagging be moderated and meta moderated. It's a good balance.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Snirt]

Where is the slashdot poll?

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

So half the tags listed under "Allowed HTML" don't work anymore

I can confirm the <RANT> tag is working properly!

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the internet, now grow up and realize that people are out to troll you and you just let them win by being a faggot.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been watching this, and most of the people whining about their posts being "removed" are simply modded to -1 and too stupid to look in their post history (or posted AC) and/or too stupid to adjust the threshold to see their post.

Then they whine about how slashdot is against them. I won't like and say that people don't mod down shit they don't like, but generally the -1 post got there due to being a display of their stupidity, not groupthink.

I bookmarked a spam post I flagged as spam using the spam tool. It is still there, it's still viewable from the article, if you don't have -1 posts hidden.

To everyone whining: fix your thresholds so that -1 is abbreviated and 3 or 4 is full, and enjoy.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Flammon]

No. I don't mind the trolling. See, I'm responding to your post.

It's the uncivilized and violent attacks and physical threats that I don't care for. If violence becomes an accepted culture here, I'll move on. And it's not just the Internet.

Thanks for trolling. It gave me a chance to post another comment and continue the discussion.

Now it's time for you to grow up and participate in a civilized manner.

And yes, I know that I'm feeding the troll but thousands of others are listening. This isn't a private email.

One more thing, if you plan on posting another trolling post NO CARRIER

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Requiem18th]

On the bright side the facebook icon comes from http://a.fsdn.com/sd/commentshareicons.png and it's fused with the g+ and t ones. So unless you click on them facebook isn't getting any tracking info.

But yes, the problems of slashdot could be simplified as "does not understand it's userbase" we could said that slashdot is doing an ubuntu, trashing their users wishes and hoping for "better users". Given the huge fraction ofr slashdot readers who use adblock, they might even be right, Maybe that's the whoe point attracting the same low common denominator from reddit and turning away the senior members who, in many ways make Slashdot what it is.

I miss cmrTaco so much.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[lgw]

Do you guys remove GNAA posts and the like these days, or have the crapflooders actually gone elsewhere? I can't remember the last time I saw an ascii-art goatse. Inquiring minds want to know.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[lgw]

We didn't all get UIDs at first, you know. There wasn't much point before the mod system was added.

But to echo the GPP: Slashdot, please fix the list-related tags. They've been borked for a while now.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[lgw]

A threat on the internet is only "serious business" if a reasonable person would take it seriously. I'm having a hard time imagining a context in which a threat to molest someone's children would be taken seriously, as opposed to just being as offensive as possible. If it were, though, that's one of the very rare cases where I'd support the mods deleting/banning, not just downmodding. But if it's just offensive? You don't need electronic assistance to ignore it

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Flammon]

He knew a little too much about my children. Name, age etc. He must have done a search, found the information and used it in the message. It was very difficult to not take the threat seriously, especially that it was directed at my 3 year old.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Magius_AR]

And for crying out loud, we don't need "general reliability improvements" to the AJAX crap. STRIP IT THE FUCK OUT! Get rid of it! Go back to the good ol' dropdowns for selecting the moderation level and the number of posts to view. Go back to using to using proven techniques that, get this, actually work and are usable!

Seconded.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[lgw]

Yeah, that is where the /. editors need to step in with the banhammer. But that's not usually what people complain about around here, when they want post removal, so I'm not surprised your OP was taken the wrong way. There's a new generation of very-coddled young adults joining, who do just need to grow a thicker skin.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

StackOverflow is not about opinion and subjective matter, rather it's about objective fact. That's not always adhered to but it's the aspiration. It's extremely successful because lot's of people find it very useful. I use it all the time and so do close to a million other users.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[unity]

amen, fuck a bunch of video bullshit. waste of time. if i can't read it or it isn't transcribed Im not gonna waste my time with it. oh and screw the ajax and formatting on slashdot nowadays too. it is a crying shame

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[arth1]

I'm a big proponent of freedom of speech and my views are rarely conventional and I'm sure that I inadvertently offend people with my comments but I don't attack other people's children and threaten to molest them. As much as you believe there's no limit, there is a limit.

The problem is placing the limit so firmly that it can't be shifted. I would much rather see a thousand offensive posts stand than a single man's opinion censored.
And if there is any risk of shifting goal posts, I would rather not see them in the first place. "Causes real fear" easily shifts to "can be interpreted to cause fear" and used as a pretext to squash behaviour one merely detests or don't want to see. I don't want to risk that, even if it implies the risk of you fearing for your child's life. If you did, I am sure you went to the police, right? They are the right people to contact for worrisome death threats, slashdot isn't, even if slashdot is the media.

After all, if you got it in the mail, you wouldn't ask the post office to start reading and censoring mail, would you?

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Flammon]

I'm not talking about opinions and I'm not talking about censorship!

I'm talking about direct personal threats. An entire post with just that. Someone going off on how he's going to come over and sexually molest my children. Why on earth would that be acceptable and what purpose would it have? It's about hiding the post it's about flagging it. I don't want it to be censored, who said anything about censorship? In fact, I'd want the opposite. I would want the threats to be exposed for everyone to see. I think you've mixed flagging with censorship.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[arth1]

I'm not talking about opinions and I'm not talking about censorship!

I'm talking about direct personal threats. An entire post with just that. Someone going off on how he's going to come over and sexually molest my children. Why on earth would that be acceptable and what purpose would it have?

It isn't acceptable, and you need to go to the police. We pay them to deal with situations like this. They can get the required court orders needed to track down the fucker and send the party van.
What do you expect slashdot to do? Be judge and jury over what breaks the law, and impose a sentence of an easily circumvented banning? If not, what purpose would flagging have?

As for the purpose, I can only guess, but think it's likely that the purpose was to enrage you. So a "-1 Troll" is probably appropriate from a /. point of view. From a human point of view, though, our society does not accept threats of this nature, and the police is the right venue for ensuring it doesn't happen again. A flag would only serve to deter people from using the proper reporting mechanisms, giving them a false belief that clicking it will do something to deal with the problem.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[GLMDesigns]

Couldn't agree more with everything arth1 said. More than anything else - get rid of the "share" icons.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[Flammon]

I would like Slashdot to be aware of the activity and ban the account. Flagging is the quickest way to get that done. Obviously Slashdot can't do much beyond that but it's better than nothing and it will hopefully keep the site cleaner.

Going to police is the thing to do but that's a different subject. We're talking about flagging posts and whether that's a wanted feature or not and from my experience, flagging posts is a welcome feature as long as it's not used to censor opinions or bad language or anything of that sort.

Re:GOD DAMN IT, THIS IS WHY I AVOID REDDIT!

[GLMDesigns]

Exactly - two people can be pro and con on the same topic and have no worries about being banned. That's the way it should be. I can see being moderated down if you are being insulting ("only a piece of sh*t fool/idiot can be in favor of 'X'") and not providing facts or relevant opinions. But the moderation down should only apply to that particular conversation. I don't curse and rant and rave anymore, but then I'm passed my script-kiddie phase. :-)

Fix login so I can use my account

[Anonymous Coward]

Please fix the login so I can use my account. It will no longer accept my username, either in the login screen or directly in the URL, I would guess it's most likely because the username contains "!=". I've tried using the bug reporting feature to no effect, it's been almost a year since I've been able to use my account. If it can't be fixed, then at least give me a way to change the user name or login by ID number.

Posting=!Working as Anonymous Coward.

Re:Fix login so I can use my account

[GiMP]

Username changes would be very appreciated...

Re:Fix login so I can use my account

[samzenpus]

Write me with your info and I can help you out. rrozeboom@geek.net

Better Archiving and Bookmarking

[Phoenix666]

Over the years since Slashdot started I have often read articles and insightful comments that I have later tried to find again, but to no avail. Google provides some relief, but searching through Slashdot's own system is a lost cause.

I have always wanted two things to change that:

1. A better archiving system, perhaps tab based or somesuch so that I can easily zip back through everything on, say, SCO.

2. The ability to flag or save interesting articles or even comments on articles such that I have a personal folder where I can save an article on Copyleft and then fold the comments such that Lawrence Lessig's insightful one remains visible underneath the article summary. Slashdot would be an even better geek touchstone then than it already is.

Re:Better Archiving and Bookmarking

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

"saving" comments to an optionally shareable folder would be most excellent indeed. I often find that a comment has links or even just ideas that I want to explore when I have more time.

Don't Like the Idea of Abuse Reporting

[Hugh Pickens writes]

Slashdot is the one place on the web where you can find unfiltered comments if you choose to read at -1.

We don't need censorship on Slashdot. If you don't like a comment just mod it down.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Abuse reporting is going to create a host of new problems.

Re:Don't Like the Idea of Abuse Reporting

[smurd]

I agree, one of the things that impressed me in the beginning was that the was no "censoring". When the Scientology post was removed under a court order, it was known and discussed.

I've read the FAQ, and nowhere does it explicitly state a comment wont just quietly "disappear" because someone decided it was "abuse".

FAQ usability

[Anonymous Coward]

The FAQ content is great but requires me to click on every section and subsection I want to read, making perusing it hard. A table of contents and then all content inline below it would be more readable.

NNTP

[value_added]

Yeah, there's probably still some mention of it in the FAQ, but seriously, how plausible is it that a few Slashdot readers opting to use their favourite news client to read what's on these pages represents a serious loss of advertising revenue?

Slashdot's gotten "prettier" over the years, but no amount of Web 2.0 is going to offer features (commonplace 20 years ago) that encourage and facilitate proper discussions.

As it is now, I'm inclined to view the words on my screen like grafitti on a bathroom wall. Some of it may be worth reading, but trying to make real sense of it often isn't worth the trouble.

Re:NNTP

[Compaqt]

Well, I guess it could be possible for Slashdot subscribers.

What about IPv6

[pantaril]

On 8 June, 2012, second world IPv6 day is planned. This time, varisous service providers will keep IPv6 active on their sites even after this date.

Will Slashdot join the IPv6 world day this time? I'd expect it from good technology site focused on geek audience, but maybe it's too much to expect it from slashdot?

Re:What about IPv6

[Prolixium]

I'm really surprised that there isn't at least an experimental ipv6.slashdot.org site, at this point. Even ipv6.aol.com has been around for at least a year. It's almost embarrassing!

- Mark

Re:What about IPv6

[Midnight Thunder]

Some of the Perl libraries haven't been updated to support IPv6 yet. This is a major problem and just one of the issues why I don't have much faith in Perl or CPAN.

Maybe time to rewrite in PHP or something that is progressing with the times?

BTW IPv6 world day is not just an experiment this time: http://www.worldipv6launch.org/

Block Annoying Users

[Phoenix666]

I would appreciate being able to block an annoying user within a threaded discussion. Just, a "please be invisible right now because you post way too much" button. I've tried switching my relationship to those folks and it does nothing.

Re:Block Annoying Users

[Anonymous Coward]

It's me you're talking about, isn't it? Fuck you!

Re:Block Annoying Users

[AnyoneEB]

I am not sure if this is exactly what you want, but you could get pretty close by setting your foe modifier to -6 (assuming you never browse at -1, of course) and marking those users as foes (and perhaps removing them from your foes list later if you think they might write something you would want to read in a later discussion). You can set modifiers here, which I got to by clicking on the score of a comment and clicking the edit link next to a modifier. Also, if you do want to block any comments from the sibling poster, you can set your anonymous modifier to -6.

Raise the 200 friends limit please

[advid.net]

I've reached the 200 friends limit on slashdot, so I decided to keep track of certain friends (confirmed) or to queue new ones in case a friend an inactive friend frees a slot.

I hope the 200 limit will be raised. 1000 should be fine for everybody !
New hardware often means more power...

My journal tell more about that, some other readers agrees.

Just don't screw up the UI / layout.

[AbRASiON]

I'm using 'classic mode (well, I believe I am anyhow)
When I log in to the site with my username and password it looks correct to me. IIRC you guys did a re-design a couple of years back which was repugnant, don't kill off the classic one.

(If you can forward this to the idiots @ IMDB as well, I'd appreciate it. I still quake in fear at the thought of ever having to use their new layout)

My requests

[kiwimate]

1. Test your code. Forget adding buckets of new stuff. Focus on quality for a while. Make stuff work. I have no idea what new features are in Slashdot because I use it the same way I've been using it for the last five, eight, ten years. Why? Because every neat new feature is always broken and stays broken for so long that I give up trying it.
2. Expose your infrastructure. This is a geek site. You're moving to new hardware? Cool - tell us about it. About two or three years ago, I think, there was some story about a big migration, and a promise of a follow-up story "shortly" to go in-depth into the infrastructure. It never came. I posted a question one day asking about it, and got modded up to +5, so there were other people who were interested, too. You get a lot of traffic - what does it take to handle that? What lessons have you learned over the years?
3. Edit. Do a spell check. Check for obvious dupes. If a submission is clearly, obviously lacking in details, send back to the submitter and tell them thanks, but there's stuff missing.
4. But quit the editorializing. Maybe this is just me, but I get irritated to no end by the posting editor including his own snarky and biased jibe at the end of a submission. If you want to comment, do it in the comments section.
5. Some kind of standards, please. Go back and look at that Plantronics video from earlier this week. Lame. Totally devoid of content. Read over the transcript so you're not distracted by the blonde PR person. Ask yourself if this is really what would be of interest to a technically astute and geeky audience.

Re:My requests

[Anonymous Coward]

Lame. Totally devoid of content. Read over the transcript so you're not distracted by the blonde PR person.

But, but, boobies! ?

Re:My requests

[Anonymous Coward]

Edit. Do a spell check. Check for obvious dupes. If a submission is clearly, obviously lacking in details, send back to the submitter and tell them thanks, but there's stuff missing.

Well that suggestion sure goes against the "bring back the old slashdot" grain.

Poorly edited duplicate stories are some of the few characteristics of this site that seem to have stood the test of time.

Article Submissions

[Phoenix666]

There ought to be a way for longer term community members or those who consistently are ahead of the curve with the news cycle to accrue a greater chance of having their article submissions accepted. Even better would be a way for community members to give each other props in that regard, as in "I'd like to hear more from Joe, he always has insightful things to say on the subject of artificial DNA."

Perhaps I'm wrong, but neither karma nor consistently high mods appear to be linked to submissions chances that way. Of course there is the potential for abuse from shills, but you the editors ought to be able to quickly check out the bona fides of a userID's contributions and vet the validity of the acclaim.

Re:Article Submissions

[PCM2]

There ought to be a way for longer term community members or those who consistently are ahead of the curve with the news cycle to accrue a greater chance of having their article submissions accepted.

One problem with that is that you seem to be describing a vicious cycle. If you luck out and have a few submissions accepted, all of a sudden you have a greater chance of having your submissions accepted -- even if you're not necessarily all that interesting.

The other problem with being "consistently ahead of the curve with the news cycle" is that the people who are farthest ahead of the curve are the people who work for the news sites. You can see where that leads.

The goal of giving everyone access to the Firehose was to let the community spot which stories they thought were most interesting. I don't think it really worked, though.

more

[Anonymous Coward]

more bitcoin articles and more placed 'video articles' (advertisements) like that one a few days ago about some db company that was still in startup mode 11 years after founding cuz the management were retards

Moderation (censorship) is always abused.

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, let's understand that "moderation" is a very misleading term. When comments can be flagged and then subsequently removed, it's censorship.

Second of all, censorship of any form is always abused. It doesn't matter who is involved, or the medium in question, or the topics being discussed. The moment censorship is allowed, it will be abused.

You say it'll only be applied in cases of "spam" and "GNAA trolls". Well, that's already too far. In case you haven't realized it, those "GNAA trolls" are actually very insightful and witty parodies of the RIAA, MPAA, and similar organizations. All it takes is one user who is too feeble-minded to see that, and one editor who is too dim-witted, and now a very worthwhile comment is gone.

As we've seen at basically any other site with any form of censorship, perfectly legitimate comments are disappeared far too frequently. Your comment doesn't rave incessantly about Apple's over-hyped device of the day, and this hurts somebody's feelings, so it's deleted. Your comment points out that PHP is full of security holes, and this offends somebody, so it's deleted. Your comment suggests that nginx is more lightweight than Apache, and this makes somebody angry, so it's deleted. Perfectly legitimate opinions are crushed under such a system.

At least Slashdot has managed to avoid that kind of blatant censorship for the most part. I can at least read comments that others dislike. Most of the time, the most interesting, insightful, and intellectually-deep comments are found with a -1 rating. But if such comments are now just gone, those of us who want to read the best content don't even have the ability to do so.

Bug response time and exclusions

[Kalten]

I'd like to see all sections added to the "Exclusions" preferences – TV in particular.

Response to bug reports in a reasonable amount of time would also be nice, particularly if you're going to be adding new features.

How about coralling TV?

[zoward]

While it's nice that you're adding new forms of content, how about giving TV it's own section/icon so those of us who don't want to or can't stream can safely ignore it?

bring back the old comments system

[Anonymous Coward]

The comments system has been shit ever since you can't actually read a thread anymore so you get a +4 comment replying to a +5 but the middle comment mysteriously dissappeared and then you have to dick around for 30 seconds to get the hidden (but part of the thread) comment to be shown. Sure, "old timers" might put up with this shit but this stupid and confusing system just makes young kids slam the browser window shut and go on twitter instead.

Seriously? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reddit now sets the bar for style and simplicity.

Re:Seriously? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 Overrated

Re:Seriously? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW

Re:Sounds like an AC troll is upset

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have just accidentally modded down your own comment through your abysmal use of language. I have no idea what you're trying to say.

Running Slashdot w/o Javascript

[Compaqt]

I just wanted to say thanks to the site people for making Slashdot work without Javascript again (for commenting and modding). It stopped working for modding in the past year, so I just stopped modding.

Since this is a geek community, some people may be running without Javascript at some times.

Re: further changes-- I like most of it, it's just small additions. No need to change the very foundations, though.

Obligatory...

[_anomaly_]

In soviet Russia, Slashdot slashdots YOU.

Re:Obligatory...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Yo dog I see you like Slashdotting so we put some Javascript in yo Slashdot so you can get Slashdotted while you Slashdot.

Re:Obligatory...

[mattack2]

No...

In soviet Russia, Slashdot slashdots slashdot.

Re:Obligatory...

[JigJag]

Is this guy speaking Smurf?

Re:Obligatory...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Almost.

Re:Comment abuse reporting? WTF?

[mcgrew]

You might want to read the FAQ.

How do I report abuse?
Below and to the right of each comment is a small "Anti" symbol; click on this, and (optionally) explain why you consider the comment abusive. (Slashdot discussions are and should be robust; only cry "Abuse!" for comments that are utterly without redeeming value -- spam, racist ranting, etc. For everything else, use the other moderation options.) Reported comments will be reviewed and moderated by the editors, if appropriate.

In "faq" everyone should, because it appears there have been some changes to moderation.

What is karma?
Your karma is a reference that primarily represents how your comments have been moderated. Karma is used to determine who moderates and who doesn't. You can improve your karma by posting intelligent, funny, informative or comments generally impressive to your fellow readers.

The old FAQ stated that Funny gains no karma, because you could post something so utterly stupid that it made intelligent people laugh at you. Apparently this has now changed.

Personally, I liked it better when trying to be funny was hazardous to your karma.

tv.slashdot.org and Flash

[Mojo66]

I see that you check the User Agent string for Mobile Safari to serve HTML5 video to my iPhone. But why am I getting served crappy Flash with Safari 5 on Mac OS X? That's not nerd-like. I had expected more from /.

The bug that made me stop reading Slashdot

[zombie_monkey]

is still not fixed. It was just the final straw, I am literally forced to read comments not logged in, as to be able to see all the comments. This one: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2292696&cid=36649522/ For example, in the previous story (Belfast), the interface is telling me I'm supposed to see five comments, but I am seeing three. Logged out, I can read the missing ones; but anything I do with the interface while logged in does now show the missing ones I see logged out. This has been the case for at least a year, I think.

IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you really need to add IPv6 support.

How about less politics on the front page?

[damn_registrars]

We have seen a lot of articles with serious political - and little to no technical - bend to them make it through as front page stories lately. If I wanted to see conservative viewpoints expressed so blatantly I would go read drudge, townhall, or any of a long list of others. Slashdot editors should keep their editorial viewpoints off the front page.

Video is for pr0n

[CohibaVancouver]

...not Slashdot.

ads on videos

[Cyko_01]

If I have to watch an ad before I can view my video I am not going to watch the video. Lose the pre-video ads and don't interupt while it is playing either. You can surround the video with ads for all I care, just don't mess with the video part itself. Also you should really switch to HTML5 video considering this is a site for nerds, by nerds. My samsung galaxy ace (android) does not have flash and I wish I didn't need it on my PC either. Flash should be used only as a fallback for browsers that do not support HTML5 video, NOT the other way around

Surprised there is no JS-free portal

[Anonymous Coward]

The Slashdot devs can't be under any misapprehension about their Javascript being universally condemned and hated, as the problems have been described here ad nauseum. But they don't care, they are supremely confident that they know best and all the complaints are worthless, so it falls on deaf ears.

I suspect they will never admit to the damage they're doing through their misguided JS code, but perhaps we could help them save face by suggesting that they provide a JS-free portal to the same content, ie. a dual headed website. It would give us what we want, and leave them free to mess up their JS-ridden front end as much as they want without suffering our complaints.

How about more technology stories?

[Whatsmynickname]

How about less politics and more technology stories? If I want to read about politics, I'll go to a political web site.

Re:How about more technology stories?

[relaxofficefurniture]

the politics are not for some one every body is a politician I think so ?

Editing. Proper journalistic editing

[Anonymous Coward]

Too many stories are ungrammatical, incomprehensible, do not provide explanations of the terms used or are just plain bad writing.

I think you have the funds to hire a proper writer to fix them before publication.

I DON'T LIKE CHANGE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well kind sir, in that case I will not be sampling this publication any longer. Cheerio!

News

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, for nerds.

Simpler, less AJAX

[wonkavader]

I'd like it to load fast and use a LOT less AJAX.

I'd like less features, not because I hate features, but because they usually add more crap which needs to be loaded.

I'd love it if you got rid of the whole hiding comments thing, for example. It plays hell with searching and scrolling. Just show 'em all. That'll help you with flagging inappropriate, anyhow. You'll get a lot more feedback if you put everything in front of everyone's eyeballs.

Re:Simpler, less AJAX

[Arker]

YES.

Slashdot has never been a place I would point someone at looking for a well-formed webpage, but over the years it just keeps getting worse. After the last 'upgrade' the site is completely unusable without blocking the javascript. It really is ridiculous. A tech site should really learn to use HTML and generate webpages.

Re:Simpler, less AJAX

[Valdrax]

ALL OF THE ABOVE.

I have logged in to post for the first time in years. Why haven't I logged in in years? BECAUSE of all of this crap.

There seems to be a contest by the maintainers of this site to illustrate as many ways as possible that Web 2.0 can be used to annoy users, and the horrendous misuse of AJAX on this website is culprit number one.

• It should not take half a dozen clicks to see all the comments on a page. I used to come here for the comments, so hiding them is a large part of why I don't come here as often. Also, the current system stifles ACs, who have been a vital and essential part of the Slashdot's culture, good and bad.
• A browser's back & forwards buttons should still have some utility and meaning on the site. If I want to read articles from yesterday or two days ago, hitting the back button should not stick me back at the front page to go through all the hassle of pulling those articles up and finding my place again.
• If you don't want to do that for the whole site, then at least give an option of having a front page that works like an actual page instead of as some kid's first Hypercard stack.
• I should not have to click on every single individual reply to a message to see each one. The use of fancy Javascript to pull up each comment is an example of form trumping functionality in the worst way.
• Logging in on a page should take me TO THAT PAGE. Not to the front page. To the page I was on. I logged in FOR THAT PAGE and not because I was eager to go look at something that didn't capture my interest. Yet another example of how the people who maintain Slashcode don't even pay lip service to concepts of workflow.
• The site should work without Javascript for security conscious users and those on slower devices. (Yes that includes your ad network if you want me to see ads, 'cause I'm not turning on any more Javascript than the minimum I need to use the site. Tough shit.)
• I don't want Video. It's slow and time-wasting, and it doesn't play nicely with viewing Slashdot at work. You have to devote full attention to it, and you can't really enjoy it at your own pace.
• If you want to put Facebook and other social network crap on the site, give an option to disable it. I have no use for it, and it's just wasted screen real estate as far as I'm concerned.

In short, give me back Slashdot from 5 years ago when the site was actually usable.

Until then, I'm logging back out and to hell with you all.

Abuse of Unicode (5:erocS)

[tepples]

And no, it won't end up with Zalgo invading the comments. Comments abusing the character set will be modded down and nobody will see them

Last time it happened, it was worse than Zalgo (use of diacritic stacking to "dirty" up a post). People were putting bidirectionality override characters into comments to break the layout.

Re:Abuse of Unicode (5:erocS)

[rastos1]

Last time it happened, it was worse than ...

Right. Last time I tried riding a bicycle, I fell. So I'm not going to try again. Ever.

Doesn't it sound stupid to you? When was actually this "last time" you speak off? I read /. since 1998 at least. And I don't remember this "disaster" (though, I've read that reasoning a few times). Even if you are right, why isn't just a few tens of most useful characters added to the whitelist - such as currency signs, typographic quotes, math/greek symbols, etc

Re:Abuse of Unicode (5:erocS)

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, nobody wants Slashdot to include that unicode set.

Re:Abuse of Unicode (5:erocS)

[Anonymous Coward]

Filtering out control characters should not be an issue. Seriously.

Re:Abuse of Unicode (5:erocS)

[yuhong]

Fortunately, HTML now includes the bdi tag, which is implemented in recent browsers such as Firefox 10, to solve this problem.

You guys don't get it.

[sirdude]

What we always want is fresh, interesting news coupled with better editing. You might be incorporating new features, but you're falling behind on these core requirements. I don't know whether I switched off some button somewhere. But I'm happy that I'm seeing far fewer book reviews (and I use the word review quite wrongly) nowadays.

That would break the confidentiality of moderation

[tepples]

What about a way to block specific users, which in turn ALSO blocks all their moderation?

That would break the confidentiality of moderation. Block a user on your account and compare the scores when viewed through that account to the scores seen by Anonymous Coward. Then you can see how the user modded every comment.

Ability to edit comments after submitting

[Jon Abbott]

I can't count the number of times I've submitted a post where I noticed an error right after clicking submit. It happens even when using preview. Being able to modify our comments after submitting (at least for a few minutes) would be a nice addition.

Re:Ability to edit comments after submitting

[PCM2]

But where would that leave the Grammar Nazi faction?

S/N Ratio

[Anne_Nonymous]

I'd like to see a metric describing signal to noise ratio. This could be the ratio of the count of +5 and +4 moderated comments in a discussion to the count of 0 and -1 moderated comments.

This might be a good way to skip discussions that had degenerated into some political flamewar, and focus in on discussions where real insight was being offered.

iPhone App

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on the road a lot and would love to see an iPhone App to read my daily dose of slashdot!

AJAX magic vs. archiving the discussion

[azgard]

What I personally like is to save interesting pages to disk. You may dismiss it as a strange obsession, but archiving information I have read or seen is important to me.

Therefore, I hate any AJAX magic that prevents browser from saving the actual content of the page! I have to say though, now it works quite well. So please, if you implement AJAX magic in the future, keep in mind that some people might still want to save the discussion as a _document_.

Bring Back April Fools!!

[cayenne8]

Bring back the joke articles on April Fools!!!

I really missed that this year....

OMG...no ponies....

:(

Re:Bring Back April Fools!!

[Anonymous Coward]

When I came to Slashdot this year, I thought "SlashTV" was the Aprils Fools Joke...

I was wrong...

Re:Bring Back April Fools!!

[BasilBrush]

There should be one and only one joke per site on April Fool. The fun is in working out which is the April Fool story. It's not fun having the whole day lost to real news.

Re:Bring Back April Fools!!

[cayenne8]

There should be one and only one joke per site on April Fool. The fun is in working out which is the April Fool story. It's not fun having the whole day lost to real news.

I dunno...at least on Slashdot...one day out of 365 for just being silly...is just fine with me.

It isn't like you're gonna miss anything major, all the 'real' stories are still in queue, and will come out after the April Fool's ones.....

Re:Bring Back April Fools!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is is the April Fool's joke. It's just been delayed a week.

Why Taco left

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obvious now that CmdrTaco left because of the direction they were headed with slashdot. He probably had a much different vision and fighting this burned him out.

That is exactly what moderation is for

[damn_registrars]

I have entire pages of comments (in fact if you just look at my comments right now, it's filled with that stuff), with comments that had been moderated up and down a few times, +5 to -1 to +5 to -1 or 0. All that while there are many replies to them, so clearly, these comments generate 'interest', whatever it is.

Moderation exists so that comments are properly tagged and scored based on their characteristics. If your comments end up scored (-1, flamebait), its because people felt your comment was flamebait. Likewise if it scored (+5, insightful). There are plenty of flamebait / troll comments that get lots of replies; the presence of replies does not indicate a good comment any more than the absence of the same indicates a bad comment.

Does it make sense to have wild swings in comment moderation in that case, doesn't it mean that in reality those comments are at least 'interesting' enough to a large number of people?

Quite a few people read slashdot discussions with very low thresholds for score, and will see comments that are moderated down. People who moderate and read the instructions know that they should

It looks to me, the real problem with /. is a weird moderation scheme that encourages people to moderate not based on merit of the comment, but instead based on their own biases and it's used to silence opinions.

More often than not, flamebait and troll are applied fairly accurately. The down mod that gets abused the most by far is overrated.

in response to yer damn upgrades

[nimbius]

and while youre still standing on my damn lawn

Upgrading Slashdot to modern hardware and new versions of MySQL and Apache
back in my day we didnt need this new fangled DAC Alpha. the VAX is fine, you kids just want to change everything.

Cleaning up the topics pages
just when i was getting used to reading articles exclusively featuring a branded product like plantronics, you're taking it away? how will i know about the latest things telephones can do or what firewall to use?

Improving methods for sharing submissions
I aint got no facebook and I aint about to get one.

Thumbnails for articles with videos
I can read damnit im not illiterate. When i want a video of Bruce Schneier laying a jackboot into some fly-by-night vendor trash ill go to youtube. Unless its more Plantronics advertisements i just cant get enough of them things.

Flag-a-comment abuse reporting
there you go again changing a good thing. back in my day if youre abusing the "welcome our overlords" or "insensitive clod" memes youd earn yourself a shiny new -1. you, insensitive, clods.

Removal of old and unused Slashboxes
good. another new fangled feature what i never did use and didnt never need usin' anyway.

A much overdue overhauling of the FAQ
back in my day you didn't never need a FAQ, unless youre rewriting it for to get the latest version of Slackware runnin to curl out the pages. and it aint doin' me any good anyway I switched back to BSD 5 once i saw what they did to X11.

• Fixes to user preferences
  never set em, and i aint about to. thats what the crons for.
  
  The launch of the Slashdot Hall of Fame (that little badge icon next to the logo)
  if you have to put it in brackets youre either trying to sneak a perl joke in or you did such a piss poor job of defining the damn thing in the first place, you're hoping a little magic from Larry Wall is gonna help. kill the damned fame halls, im a geek. My fame is in a GIT commit.
  
  Fixes to the D2 comment system. Highlights include bug fixes to the comment score slider, a better abbreviated view (if you quote the parent, that's removed so people can see your first sentence instead), and general reliability improvements to the AJAX magic
  eeeeh just another damn magical thing i have to strip out of the curl feed.
  
  And many more...
  keep the damn changes. I want old slashdot the way i remembered it. Lots of fun tech stuff and science and when i turned the advertisements off they damn well stayed off. Bring back that kid that started the damn thing in the first place. you bastards are pedaling my childhood into the dirt.

Lose the ITWorld articles

[Calaf]

Get rid of the articles from ITWorld / Infoworld / Networkworld. They are weak, watered down, dull, and suitable only to PHB's, not to the techies who made Slashdot what it is (or was). I really don't understand the surge of articles from these sources in recent months. If Slashdot is receiving compensation in return for posting these stories, you really should disclose that fact.

Also, Unicode. Seriously. It's 2012 and Unicode support is long overdue.

Explain THIS "away" then (good luck)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

The pertinent quote from a journal titled "THE BEST THING ABOUT TROLLING APK":

"...posting AC undoes mods...

Not if you're logged out... You guys need to pump up the volume a bit.. I got him to blow a whole wad on my face... - by countertrolling (1585477) on Sunday June 19 2011, @12:56PM (#36491652) Journal

FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2245866&cid=36491652

* That is DIRECT from GMHowell's journal where they were doing all I stated, to me, for MONTHS here... and they have not stopped!

(E.G.-> Downmodding me for no computing technical justified valid reasons, & trolling me by ac etc. as well as unjustly modding one another up in teams that way (they are probably the same person in multiple registered sockpuppet accounts, or a couple of them with many of those accounts for that purpose))!

GmHowell?

He's "thick as thieves" with tomhudson = Barbara, not Barbie (the ring leader of the "trolltalk.com" crew around here & yes, user of multiple SOCK PUPPET accounts to game moderations upwards for himself/herself unfairly, and, to downmod her opponents with)

No questions asked - that's a CLEAR example of it happening (did to me for months)!

NOW, it gets better:

What did tomhudson LITERALLY TELL OTHERS TO DO HERE (which breaks the policies/rules here too no less)?

Ok, read for yourself:

tomhudson = stalks /. posters via ac troll replies

"Wait until he starts on another kick, then reply to him as an AC. It's the new meme". - by tomhudson (43916) on Sunday May 09 2010, @08:29PM (#32150544) Homepage Journal

QUOTED VERBATIM DIRECTLY FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1646272&cid=32150544

"BTW - if you're going to tell this guy to stop spamming his hosts file crap, make sure you do it anonymously" - by tomhudson (43916) on Saturday April 16 2011, @11:45AM (#35840680) Journal

QUOTED VERBATIM DIRECTLY FROM http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2086920&cid=35840680

---

tomhudson & crew from trolltalk.com also CHEAT THE MODERATION SYSTEM HERE, & others noted it also -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2236608&cid=36442386

"I do whatever amuses me at the moment. Sometimes that is trolling. As far as AC? I only do that to avoid undoing moderations." - by gmhowell (26755) on Wednesday April 20, @12:49AM (#35877174) Homepage

---

So - HOW do they do it?

Well, first, they mod one another up as well as their opponents/targets to harass downwards(even IF it's TOTAL bullshit they said, or for trolling).

That's the easy part & HERE'S THE PROOF OF IT:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2212152&cid=36361542

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT from "mcgrew" (another "trolltalk.com" alternate registered 'luser' account guise these idiots keep & in this case, to upmod "webmistressrachel" when she was being destroyed by downmods):

"I just get a boatload of mod points sometimes (excellent karma) when I don't comment too prolifically. I used five or so on you, but they were comments worthy of being modded up, anyway". - by mcgrew (92797) * on Tuesday June 07 2011, @08:27AM (#36361542) Journal

QUOTED VERBATIM FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2212152&cid=36361542

---

* Ne

Titties?

[chucklebutte]

Penis Penis Penis Penis Penis Penis Penis Penis Penis Penis Penis Penis.

"Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition." Neat.

Fix logging in for users with special characters

[Anonymous Coward]

Logging in with userids that start with a special character has been broken for over a year now. I've almost completely stopped visiting slashdot because I can't log in and view the site with sane settings. Emails to the admin are ignored, emails to the help address are ignored, posts to the slashcode tracker are ignored. And this comment will be ignore because it's being posted anonymous without my +1 bonus.

(startx) (37027)

Slashdot Secure HTTPS

[Hyperhaplo]

How about a short video on how Slashdot HTTPS works?

Oh. That's right. Slashdot, of all of the sites on the net which now support SSL, does not. Hmm.

How about, instead of this video tv thing you are doing you instead implement SSL for slashdot?

My thoughts of what Slashdot needs

[jonwil]

I have been reading Slashdot for years and posting for just as long and here is what I think Slashdot needs:
1.Posting that focuses more on "News for Nerds" and less on useless crap. Bring in more technical stories and less political and legal stories. A post that sued for violations of is not "news for nerds".

Looking at the front page as of now (and going a page or 2 back), "Browser Emulation of 1975 Computer Runs First 16-Bit Home Game " is a good story, its very much "news for nerds".
"MIT Institute's Gloomy Prediction: 'Global Economic Collapse' By 2030 " is not "news for nerds". Yeah sure some people ran some computer simulations but there is no geek/nerd angle.
"Yahoo Layoffs Begin, CEO Sends Employees Apologetic Letter " is also not "news for nerds". Just because its a tech company doesn't mean the fact that people are being fired is "news for nerds".

2.Better editing of what gets posted (e.g. checking for spelling errors, looking for dupes, making sure links work etc)

3.A complete ban on posting any article that is behind a pay wall or requires a login to read the content, no matter how good it might be (e.g. the recent Nature cancer study link that is pay walled). This includes linking to the New York Times unless the link works without the need to log in.

4.No more posting of "slashvertisments" (i.e. articles that are clearly written just to sell whatever product they are writing about)., The recent "Nokia Lumia 900 Reviews " article is an example of this, reviews of a new smartphone (no matter how good) is not "news for nerds" (unless its a phone like the GTA04 that is specifically built to be "open").

Same thing with endless posts about the latest iPad or other must-have gadget. Unless its specifically a geeky or nerdy product like the GTA04 or the Raspberry Pi, its not "news for nerds" and there are plenty of other places to read about that stuff. Slashdot is not Engadget. It's also not Autoblog (the recent story about the Volt sales numbers isn't "news for nerds" either. A technical article on just how the Volt battery packs work on the other hand would definatly qualify as "news for nerds")

5.Do not implement comment flagging or removal. Yes, comments get posted that shouldn't be (e.g. links to goatse) but people mod those down or post replies saying "link in parent post is NSFW". Slashdot should have a policy of never removing comments unless legally required to do so. (even spam generally gets modded down pretty fast)

6.Redo the code for the site. Get rid of a lot of the fancy Javascript and AJAX and stuff and go back to a much leaner Slashdot. Replace the "many more" link and rewrite the display system for frontpage and firehose so that its possible to bookmark (or return to) a specific state with a specific set of articles visible and so you wont loose your place when you click on a link that takes you away from the firehose page.
Make the loading of the next batch of articles for the front page or firehose much faster.

Support modern features like IPv6 and Unicode (if Google can do IPv6 there is no reason Slashdot cant do it)

7.Make it easier for people to use the fire-hose to mod articles up or down and in particular to down-vote the spam and ads that get posted there whilst allowing the legitimate articles to shine through so they can be front-paged.

8.Ban URL shorteners or pre-expand the URL before they get posted. This prevents people posting shortened URLs that really point to goatse.

9.Completely cease and desist using proprietary technologies (such as Flash) for any part of the site. If you must have video clips, use HTML5 audio/video by default (preferably with WebM rather than H.264 where possible). If you do need to use Flash (for browsers that dont have HTM5 audio/video support), make sure its only used for browsers that dont support HTML5 audio/video.

Slashdot used to have the best comments system...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it has the worst.

It wasn't broken but you just had to fix it didn't you?

What do we want?

[Khyber]

"So, readers, what do you want to see in the coming months?"

LESS ADVERTISING, MORE CONTENT AND SCIENCE.

Also, what's pathetic is you give me a box to check to disable ads, yet you still fucking blast me with them in the stories. That's not thanking me for contributing to slashdot, that's saying "Here's a token piece of happiness, we're still fucking you."

Authoritate comments to the top; one liners not

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a slashdot reader since 1998 or so. Over the decade I have found the topics useful but the comments less useful.

It would really be great if slashdot could make authoritative comments rise to the top. Example topic last week about home security systems...A valid question and several weighty answers, but many 'one liners' had "high mod count" and really didn't answer the question or "add to the body of knowledge"

Occasionally, the humor works, but most times I would prefer to skip "moderated high because its funny"

Stack overflow does it much better--especially for the "ask". Try to "do what they do"

Slashdot Hall of Flame

[JTW]

Gosh.. I almost got excited by this new feature.

Then I realized it was an Eyeball typo..

If only

No video

[Roadmaster]

I dislike video. I can read articles at my speed/leisure, skim over them while I'm doing other stuff. Video has a fixed duration, and sucks up my attention for the whole duration.

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but I dislike this tendency of the Internet turning into... TV.

I want the site to actually work

[ljhiller]

There's already 250 comments so you might not even see this. I have spent hours trying to customize my front page. I keep finding stories I want to read, collapsed. The faq says I can customize my front page by clicking on something on the left bar. THERE'S NOTHING THERE TO CUSTOMIZE MY FRONT PAGE.

My front page has stuff I want to read, collapsed, and is full of stuff I don't want to read. If I open all those up, and then start reading articles, when I come back, they are all collapsed again. When I load more articles, they all are gone when I come back, and I have to load them again. But, ARE they loading? Did they start autoloading when I scrolled to the bottom? Do I have to click the tab? Mark Andresson knew to put a progress bar in his browsers, but I have no idea what your javascript is doing at any given moment.

All this trouble with Firefox...do you not support that browser any more?

Oh, and why do I have to decide if I want HTML capabilities before I start composing my comment? Choose wrong, and I'm adding markup just to get newlines. Why do I have to lose my comment if I try to change my settings?

Things I want to see

[Megane]

Just off the top of my head...

1: make UTF-8 work properly!

2: can has cheat sheet for Firehose color codes? There used to be a slider bar or something that had the colors in it, but that went away.

3: if it wasn't already part of the FAQ change, how about explaining how the fsck the new metamod works? I understood it when it was "mod is correct/mod is incorrect", but now there's just +/- buttons. Are those +/- it's a good/bad post or +/- it;s a good/bad moderation?

Here's A Suggestion:

[FSWKU]

• Get rid of roblimo (or at least delegate him to back-end stuff that does NOT involve site content in any way)
• Stop posting PR puffery as "stories." Case in point, the recent Plantronics shill. When you give me the option to disable ads, that does NOT mean just post ads as stories. We're smarter than that, you jackasses.
• Fix the code so I don't have to see "Working" at the bottom and wait just to close a damn tab!
• Stop trying to make this site everything for everybody and go back to focusing on what made it grow to begin with.

I'm sure I can think of more later, but that's just off the top of my head.

My wishes

[sootman]

So, readers, what do you want to see in the coming months?

1. Keep the new hardware.
2. Roll back the code about 5 version (after you implemented CSS, but before JS took over)

That is all.

Day of the week?

[Joe U]

How about when it says 'last week and this week' in the story list, you actually use Sunday as the first day of the week. [Mostly because Sunday is the first day of the week.]

Re:Day of the week?

[JigJag]

Mostly because Sunday is the first day of the week

I see your Hebrew calendar here and I raise you ISO 8601: the first day of the week is Monday.

Improvements to core experience

[guanxi]

The core experience is the story selection and, most importantly, the discussion. As many others have posted, I'm not interested in the new features and gimmicks.

A couple ways to improve the experience:

  * Better story selection. There are too many press releases (from Apple, MIT, etc.) and provocative fringe science or political posts. It's just filler. Spend some time seeking out innovative, consequential stories. Look at the most interesting developments in sources like Nature, Science, and IEEE Spectrum. Maybe more economics?. You have a community that enjoys intellectual challenges which really makes Slashdot unique. Differentiate yourselves.

  * Fix the problem of discussions ending too quickly: It's an old problem that I think people just accept as fate, but it would improve the user experience: If I see a story a few hours after it's posted, it's too late to join the discussion; the posts will never be modded up. Maybe send more moderators to later posts, or somehow weigh those posts heavier.

Feature request

[MobyDisk]

How can I get a list of all the comments I have ever posted to Slashdot?

You know what would be nice??

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd really like the ability to delete one or two comments I made in the early days of Slashdot that contain a bit of personal information and still show up in search. Really.

Unicode problems? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's funny there are still issues with Unicode here after all this time. Why? Because there is also Japanese Slashdot over at http://slashdot.jp/ And what do you think that web page uses? I'll give you a hint. It's not ASCII.

A few things that would help me.

[denbesten]

1) Focus on making it readable on mobile devices. Today, the threshold selector is awkward and the indentation of child posts make it more difficult that necessary. Separate settings for layout, threshold, etc on mobile vs large screen might help too.

4) Infinite scrolling both forwards and backwards (many more is a start) in articles, even if I click the "Tuesday" link or manually set my start date.

3) A place marker. When I am a week behind ( I know it's hart to believe, but not all of us are single teenage males living in our parent's basement), It would be handy to jump to the last article I opened in the article list.

2) Provide a mechanism to show "top N comments", rather than focusing solely on the threshold.

The User Interface

[betona]

I suspect I'm probably in the minority, but I have always thought that the UI really needs some serious work. It's never obvious (to me) where to click to get the article that's being pointed out, and the comments below (which is my favorite part) really needs an overhaul in the visual design and possibly the layout. It's just so clunky and unattractive the threading as displayed makes it difficult. And it seems to have a mind of its own on what it shows you.

Put what you have now in a usability lab and I'll bet it'll hurt your feelings to see regular users trying to understand and use it. I say that as someone who's had my own heart broken by designs I thought were good... But we learned from it and the designs got way better. And traffic exploded - after one redesign, usage shot up over 900% in just one month, and was in the millions of users.

Re:Comment abuse reporting? WTF?

[Lord Apathy]

Wait. Taco boy is gone? When the hell did this happen? An why the fuck am I still here? Well I know why I'm still here. I've been here pretty much since day one. Yes, I have another account with a 4 digit IQ.

Face it, this place is useless now as a technical news site. Once long ago I could post a real question and get a real answer back. I miss the Gay Niggers from Outerspace and the penis bird. Ogg the barbarian. Natalie Portman and hot grits. Ye

We now have video on slashdot, wtf? I don't want the news read to me, I want to read it and comment on it myself. Interfacing to facebook and tweeter? Most of us make an effort to avoid shit like face book and tweeter. A flag to report abusive comments? Hell, most of my comments are abusive. If I stuck around me and the abuse editor would be on a first name bases.

No, the site is still here and its is still green but slashdots soul is gone. Most of us old timers just keep coming back out of habit.

Unicode?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, I know. Let's not be unrealistic. The Unicode standard is only ten years old.

Allow for narrow windows

[HiThere]

Slashdot never fits on my screen. Generally this hasn't been a major pain, merely a constant annoyance, but if you're fixing things, fix that. Don't presume how wide the window is. HTML has perfectly reasonable ways to deal with this, so I *know* they must be available to you.

The word for this kind of story...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a word for this kind of story, wherein slashdot is covering itself: slashturbation.

/. database

[troll]

I searched for PostgreSQL and didn't find it.
I respectfully suggest that you replace your planned database engine with PostgreSQL.
Reasons:
    1. it doesn't use litigaton as part of its profit picture;
    2. is is about as fast as the selected database when specified with similar options;
    3. it doesn't lose data as much as the selected database by a wide margin.
    4. it is tied to the academic community.
Just a few thoughts.

Ponies

[Lawrence_Bird]

but unfortunately I think I'll only get more dupes

Broken slider, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Been unable to use the slider in IE and Android browser for a while. Very annoying to rely on defaults on every story.

Please add a 'funny' comment filter!

[ThreeGigs]

One thing I'd appreciate is the ability to filter out posts that have been moderated as funny. Humor is cool, but sometimes it's just clutter to me.

Trolls w/ multiple sockpuppet accts roman_mir

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how that was done to you, mark my words. Don't take my word for it, take this fellows' instead - you might have heard of him before:

"It just takes one Ubuntu sympathizer or PR flack to minus-moderate any comment. Unfortunately, once PR agencies and so on started paying people to moderate online communities, and to have hundreds of accounts each, things changed." - by Bruce Perens (3872) on Friday July 30, @03:55PM (#33089192) Homepage Journal

SOURCE -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1738364&cid=33089192

We're all old farts, and you're Fox News

[pondlife]

I think your biggest problem is that most /. readers are either old farts or desperately wish they were (naturally, I include myself in that). Most people here seem to adhere to fairly conservative (whatever that means) technical views, i.e. Microsoft is evil, JavaScript programmers are script kiddies, the 'real world' should just go away and leave the Internet alone etc.

Unfortunately for you, that means you have a readership that has no interest in video or other 'modern' formats (just look at the arguments over ASCII art) and prides itself on holding somewhat contrarian views. On top of that, /. culture was born when everything on the internet was free; now it isn't any more, but you're scrambling to monetize a website based on the idea that a bunch of curmudgeons are entitled to bitch about whatever they like for nothing. Hence the endless debates over advertising, in its various forms. Good luck with that.

I'm not saying I have a solution (it's not clear if there's even a problem) but I think you have to accept that /. is now Fox News for Nerds. Like most news sources, it's used primarily by those who conform to its culture, and by those who want to be part of it. This is not a dynamic, cool site any more (if it ever was); it's for people who are tech conservatives and want to stay that way and regrettably for you, that position includes a rejection of 'commercial' culture.

Re:We're all old farts, and you're Fox News

[AdamHaun]

I'm not saying I have a solution (it's not clear if there's even a problem) but I think you have to accept that /. is now Fox News for Nerds. Like most news sources, it's used primarily by those who conform to its culture, and by those who want to be part of it. This is not a dynamic, cool site any more (if it ever was); it's for people who are tech conservatives and want to stay that way and regrettably for you, that position includes a rejection of 'commercial' culture.

Wow. That's... jeez, man, I think you just ruined this site for me. "Fox News for Nerds" is brilliant, even though it hit a little too close to home..

I'm going to go offline and rethink my bookmarks.

Righter than most here know (take a read)

[Anonymous Coward]

"It just takes one Ubuntu sympathizer or PR flack to minus-moderate any comment. Unfortunately, once PR agencies and so on started paying people to moderate online communities, and to have hundreds of accounts each, things changed." - by Bruce Perens (3872) on Friday July 30, @03:55PM (#33089192) Homepage Journal

FROM -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1738364&cid=33089192

Touch-friendly comment controls

[eozh]

How about a control for choosing the comment thresholds for a story that works well with touch interfaces? The slider that is there now requires to click and drag, which is not possible without a mouse. I am sure a lot of people read slashdot on their tablets and phones and would appreciate that.

Re:Something that needs change here

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, you've already bragged about how you evade slashdot bans, and now you're whining about other people breaking the rules? No honor amongst thieves, I assume.

BTW The only reason I troll you is because your posts look like some sort of MAgazInE cutout ransom note. Markup is like makeup: less is more.

Explanation

[psydeshow]

Slashdot users have been clamoring, begging, pleading for Unicode support for years.

And we never get it.

It should have been a simple fix back in 2004 or so. By 2008 it was embarrassing. In 2012, given all the other changes and upgrades to the site, it is absolutely un-fucking believable that we have to post in Latin.

So what is the REAL reason why it has never been added? There must be a non-technical explanation for something so obvious to be broken for so long.

Must. Have. One. More. Thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cowboy Named Neal.

same errors on android galaxy s browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Comments also repeat the last couple sentences when displayed, depending on length.

And clicking to expand comments works in a variety of unexpected ways - loads the comment, launches a new window with the comment, jumps down the page without expanding the comment,etc.

Slashdot is the new Digg 4.0 suckfest, apparently

[lanner]

I've noticed that you are taking the Digg 4.0 route of pissing off your readers, ignoring what the really want, pushing up the ads, all the while talking smack about how big your dick is.

Even the recent "we are listening" post made it pretty clear that you don't care what the community thinks, listening or not.

Re:Comment abuse reporting? WTF?

[FiloEleven]

Trying to be funny is still hazardous to your karma. Succeeding at being funny is now rewarded, is all.

New "Mobile Experience"

[wirelessduck]

I can only hope the new "Mobile Experience" actually works this time. Viewing slashdot on an iPhone is like playing Russian roulette. Only about 1 in 10 times will the site actually show up in the "Mobile" layout. Every other time, I'm stuck viewing slashdot in the "desktop" interface/layout on this tiny screen. Seriously, how hard can it be to detect a mobile browser and use the mobile-specific interface every time?

don't force 965 minimum width, ditch size bars

[dfries]

If my browser's width is less than 965 pixels it gives me a scroll bar preventing the browser from wrapping further even though the the main story is 478 pixels wide. That also means that portrait browsing my cell phone doesn't work because either the text is too small to read, or I zoom in and have to scroll side to side to see every line. Related to the above, give an option to ditch the side boxes completely. You go about an eighth of the way down one day's front page stories and both the left and right boxes run out and from then it it's white wasted space.

Use the inbuilt voting mechanism

[Aaron B Lingwood]

Why are we having polls about minutes-spent-on-the-phone-on-a-typical-day when the polls could ask for the community's opinion on upgrades to slashdot?

IPv6??

[daniel23]

; > DiG 9.8.1-P1 > slashdot.org aaaa ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 48554 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

because hex looks ugly? sort of embarrassing for a geek news place.

The Ability to Login

[Anonymous Coward]

What would I like to see in the next few months? How about the ability to actually login. I haven't been able to login for years due to the buggy login system, because it breaks on my username (C=64).

Yes, I could abandon my account and create a new user. But isn't the point of having user accounts and karma to give us a persistent identity and a sense of ownership over our words? If I have to worry about random site bugs forcing me to throw out my identity every so often, I'm just going to stop while I'm ahead.

Find another site

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm seriously looking for another site that's actually technical. I've been a lurker for almost 10 years and have watched the cesspool of crap overthrowing anything technical.

I don't want gadget reviews unless it dives into the details of the hardware, reasons for the hardware, maybe thoughts from the engineers of the device, details of the OS if it's new, ect. This shit containing stats you can go to the manufacture to see or with the marketing stats of the device kills my nerd soul inside.

NO VIDEO! If I want video I'll go to YouTube. Thanks.

Stop the social media shit. I don't use it, and from reading the rest of the comments it seems others don't either. The social media crap is something I try to get away from when coming here.

Anyways, unless I see a complete 360 soon I'll simply leave. Maybe me and a bunch of the nerds I know can start a site Slashdot used to be if I can't find another....

Speaking of which, does anyone else know another site that isn't shit?

Fix the broken Keyboard Shortcuts

[skware]

They used to work, now they don't so much. A couple of years ago the load article keyboard shortcut went missing. This means I can look up and down the page of articles (j/k etc.), but never load the article, or RTFA without moving to a mouse (or using a browser plugin that allows me to do this).

Pressing Tab should visually highlight the current element (it doesn't)

Broken keyboard interation changed my interaction with the site from daily use (almost every single day since launch) to once every few days.

Mod parent up

[Dadoo]

All that would be awesome, especially if they could make it something like a mail portal, where you can create your own folders for articles you want to save.

I'd also add to that: have a "brief listing" mode for articles, where there is just a single line with the article name, but there are many (hundreds?) of articles listed on each page. I sometimes can't read Slashdot every single day (like when I go on a business trip, or vacation) and something like that would make it much easier to catch up.

plain text

[swell]

I stay with Slashdot out of habit I suppose; sometimes the discussions are insightful. The moderation system is adequate. I think there's room for some clever indexing and searching of past discussions. Most of the rest is fluff and the web is saturated with it.

Slashdot could well add additional forums for other topics. If kept as simple and direct as possible, they could succeed, but they should not be mixed into the main system. Not interested in videos, but perhaps a 'future forum' that allows anticipating trends instead of reporting yesterday's news...

I was happy with the old text based BBS systems when the discussions were relevant. That kind of simplicity can keep Slashdot unique, worthwhile and accessible in places where fancy programming just doesn't work.

Great post!

[improfane]

Agree with everything.

Always look forward to reading your posts because I know they will be good.

A site for nerds... but is it made by nerds?

[gbl08ma]

I may not be a very old Slashdot user as you can tell from my ID, but from what I can tell, since I joined the "updates" to this site have been disgusting. I'm not even going to comment about the lack of proper Unicode support, or the semi-broken moderation system, or the misuse of the "report as inappropriate". I'm not going to comment for the use of JavaScript and AJAX where it's not needed, either - these are subjects that have been discussed a lot over since a lot of time ago, and in my opinion it has been given a lot of time to fix them already.

Now about Slashdot TV - what a joke (I really though it was an April Fool). Slashdot had its uniqueness because it used to focus on discussing things. If we want to discuss videos, there are already appropriate services for that - YouTube, etc. Slashdot used to be a place for discussing text, and that seems to be gone. It's an hassle to browse through comments on limited-resource devices (like old PDAs and even more recent Android devices and iDevices). And the mobile version of the website seems to be broken; support for the classic mode of Slashdot seems to be unsupported too, however, I don't use it, so I can't tell. Looks like you no longer want people to read and discuss, but instead, you want people to watch videos, while seeing a video ad every minute. So glad I use an ad-blocker combined with IP blacklisting.
I didn't watch many videos in their entirety from Slashdot TV (couldn't keep wasting my time and seeing more ads), but many people say the videos are not very interesting, and I got to agree.

More and more stories look like advertisements - the "slashvertisements" everyone talks about. I complain not only about these "slashvertisements", but also about the scope of the stories, which seem to be more banal every day that passes by - I mean, not nerd-focused at all. Not to talk about the fact that when the stories get to the home page, they are no longer news 75% of the times.

TL;DR
I feel Slashdot is turning on the back of its userbase. Slashdot's now a website that has bugs to be fixed for ages, and seems to desperately try to mimic Reddit/Endagadget/whatever and only cares about AJAX freshness and topics that bring only pageviews and flamebait discussions (i.e. "Apple"). And while it seems to exaggeratedly use JavaScript and "new web technologies" in one side, pretending to be very "nerdish", simultaneously launches a video-streaming website that uses a deprecated plug-in software for playing the videos, instead of using an open standard.

This is a website which supposedly has news for nerds, but is this a website run by real nerds?

The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

How about abusive moderation?

Make mods public: user X modded comment Y by user Z "+1 insightfull" or "-1 troll". New kinds of drama will pop up, a lot of mod abuse will at least be identifyable as such and perhaps decrease.

NNTP

[badkarmadayaccount]

Set up a Gateway. Hell, add in a drug and libertarian sections, if this is gonna be a Facebook for nerds, it goddamn better be a well desgined one. And an mailing list gateway.

slashdot is dying

[Morty]

The average number of comments per post seems to be declining. slashdot articles are less germane. The code is rotting. The new videos are useless and/or slashvertisements.

Looks like slashdot is dying.

Well done on the updates.

[Anonymous Coward]

And well done for moving all that rich media crap to it's own domain.

Re:Aw, poor mcgrew ran outta mod points?

[Anonymous Coward]

5 days later downmoddin posts exposing crap u pull mcgrew?

Well, well, modded down unjustly again? LMAO!

[Anonymous Coward]

For asking a troll who stalks me nigh constantly here by ac trolling to stop? Please... trying to "hide the evidence" by downmods of my posts (like many here were even though they used HARD FACTS)??

APK

P.S.=> You /. trolls are TOO "set in your game", because that not only doesn't work, but it also makes this site look VERY bad as well... apk

See parent post & this

[Anonymous Coward]

See how /. "moderation" works everyone? It's bogus.

See parent post & this

[Anonymous Coward]

See how /. "moderation" works vs. facts I posted? It's bogus.

See parent post & this

[Anonymous Coward]

See /. "moderation" vs. facts I posted! It's bogus...

Modding down posts days later?

[Anonymous Coward]

See how /. "moderation" works? It's bogus! Trolls @ /. use it to "hide" their blunders.See post parent to this & the links in it: Moddowns don't hide truth and their "blunders" that way, nothing more.