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The State of Slashdot: Https, Poll Changes, Auto-Refresh, Videos, and More

As of yesterday, Slashdot now serves over https. In addition, the polls have been moved exclusively to the right rail, and will not show up with the other stories any longer. We've also disabled auto-refresh, and fixed various issues with search and other features. In the last few weeks, we've also discontinued videos, and removed the "Jobs" section of the site. You can follow all of the changes on the Slashdot blog.

20 of 546 comments (clear)

  1. How can I give you money for this? by sinij · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All moves in the right direction. To ensure lights are staying on, how can I give you money?

    1. Re:How can I give you money for this? by jensend · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've been on slashdot since quite close to the beginning. (I had another user name before this one, too bad I abandoned it before low UID was something worth bragging rights). I had never really considered subscribing before.

      After the changes you've been making, and knowing a bit about your plans, I'd be happy to subscribe just to vote with my wallet in favor of what's going on, even if a subscription doesn't have any benefits whatsoever beyond knowing that I'm supporting a good thing.

      My wallet is not very thick but I think there are thousands of others who feel similarly.

      Keep up the good work!

  2. Awesome by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Meet the new boss: so much better than the old boss. -- The Who

  3. Good, good by Wintermute__ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good, good, good, good, good... Wait, what is this? Positive changes, nothing to complain about?

    I don't even know what to do.

    Good job Slashdot, keep it up.

  4. Re:Where's my UTF8? by Sowelu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Okay you know what, the changes around here--including responsiveness to user opinions--are getting really, really nice. Thank you.

  5. Re:Where's my UTF8? by whipslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Glad you like it. We appreciate the support

  6. auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections by raymorris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thanks for getting rid of auto-refresh. It sucked to have the page refresh while typing or scrolling.

    Be careful when you do unicode. I know that's often requested, so it'll probably be done, but be aware it makes protection from injection attacks (including sql & script) much trickier. You probably want do do encoding on output and bound parameters on input, rather than trying to filter input.

    The last day or two I had error saying I was posting from an open proxy, on multiple devices and networks. It seems something went wrong with that detection- possibly detecting your own load balancer.

    1. Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections by Sowelu · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I dunno, It really doesn't seem fair to let people edit the historical record, especially when people start replying to them. Waaaay too easy to put words in someone's mouth by making it look like they're objecting to something they didn't, etc. You need something similar to gmail's undo feature, which delays sending for a few seconds instead of actually calling the mail back once it's been committed.

      Although that functionality does already exist in the "preview" button.

    2. Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Allowing editing of posts for during a grace period (10 minutes? 30 minutes?) would be a most welcome addition, if only to let me fix things when I screw up closing a italic tag.

      How about an option that forces you to use preview? That will solve your problem without affecting anyone else.

      Note, I sometimes botch a comment. If I cared, I'd always use preview.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  7. Comments link by gspear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please restore the redundant "comments" link at the bottom of the summary. If I decide after reading the summary that it's worth reading the comments, it's annoying to have to scroll back if the top link has already scrolled past.

  8. WhipLash: Second Apology by wjcofkc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Whiplash,

    When the company you work for took over SlashdotMedia and therefore Slashdot, I kinda flipped out and talked a whole lot of doom and gloom bullshit. No less, I was downright mean about it. In fact, I was mean and rude to you directly. As someone who has been here since day one, I was kinda panicked about Slashdot's continuation. In turn, your replies to my flaming were level-headed and even kind. It did not take me long to realize I was wrong about all if it and apologize. After reading this, I apologize twice over.

    Hey, can you find me three digit ID account? It was attached to a long gone ihatehotmail1979@hotmail.com - I know that is a long shot of a question.

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
  9. Do Not Disable AC by wjcofkc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sure a few people will come out of the woodwork asking for removal of the Anonymous Coward account. Please do not do so. There are times when folks around here have something to say that will genuinely add to the conversation. Something that should be +insightful or +Interesting. But anyone and everyone around here knows that the culture is so unpredictable, it is sometimes safest to post as AC. Without AC, we would be missing a lot of really good comments that in fact do get modded up. There are also times when someone has something relevant to say, but do to the nature of the story and their comment relative to working for a particular institution they do not dare post otherwise. Among a number of other things. Besides, we have meta-moderation for a reason.

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
  10. Re:Where's my IPv6 by Athanasius · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You say that, but as soon as there's any code logging/recording IPs it'll need changing to handle IPv6 as well (is that field now so much longer that it has knock-on effects on other things?). And if there's any code that tries to do checks/manipulations on the addresses then you have a load more work to do as well.

  11. Re:Greater moderation transparency? by Kierthos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd argue against seeing moderation data. Yeah, I've been modded down on comments that I thought shouldn't be modded down, but I don't really need to know who did it. We have enough noise on here without people calling out others who modded them down.

    --
    Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
  12. Sorry to be "that guy" by wardrich86 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is there an option to re-enable auto-refresh on a per-user basis? I actually appreciated that feature.

  13. Re:Where's my UTF8? by Zak3056 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just want to say that your presence in some of these threads reminds me a lot of the old days, when Taco et al. would post about what was going on, what they were doing, even comment in stories. It's been sincerely missed, and it's a VERY welcome return.

    Thanks for buying this place. It will be nice to have /. actually turn back into the awesome site that it once was. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.

    --
    What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
  14. Re:Greater moderation transparency? by reboot246 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Knowing who modded a comment makes moderation worthless. If they do that, I'm out of here. You'll never get honest moderation when the moderator has to fear retaliation.

    All you'll have left is a bunch of people who agree with each other. You can lick each others' butts without me.

  15. Slashdot: Home for nerds, community that matters by HeliumHigh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A few years ago (before the last buyout) /. was my main technical news source. I came primarily for the community, then for the content, and lastly for some humor at the polls. No, not reporting on current political campaign polls, although I do remember watching the politics section go live.

    I want to share a little bit of my story: When I was a wee lad not yet in highschool my family got dial-up. I was so excited! The internet was new and so amazing. It was a very short time until I came across slashdot and for some reason I got hooked. I think it was the engineering humor and conversation (or perhaps jokes about a gritty Natalie Portman), but something about it stuck. This site tremendously sparked and influenced my love of technology. I'm now a successful fully-employed member of society (in an IT field no less!) and I can honestly blame ./ culture for much of my development.

    I've learned services, like friends, come and go. I was active in, and then watched, Digg dissapear. I saw some of the glimmer of Kuroshin. I've piddled around in Reddit. Slashdot was always in the back there though, if sometimes only because of distantly fond memories.

    I watched as certain strategic decisions ticked the "she's not going to make it jim" flag in my mind and I began to write Slashdot off. Recently however there is a new light behind the community. There is a new vibrancy. It's because you who are in charge are like us once again (one of us, one of us!). You understand that this isn't about the monies, it isn't about pageviews and numbers, it's about technologists by day who can take a few minutes to just be nerds and talk and discuss with each other. It's about having slashdot as hobby, an interest, someplace where I can hang up the coat and hang out for a while. You've started to remember that and it is showing. We, the community, see it. I feel at home here once again.

    Keep up the good work - here's to hoping ./ and it's community can be a home for the geeks, the nerds, the techies and all those inspiring to be. Thanks guys, she's looking good again!

  16. Re:Where's my UTF8? by cluening · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Most of the time, when people say "Slashdot isn't the same as it was 15 years ago!", I reply with "You're not the same as you were 15 years ago!". Things change, and they can't always be like they were in the beginning. But this is one of those things that I miss too - having people who actually run the site comment on what's going on. And, although he probably won't see this reply due to nesting, I totally admire whipslash for diving into these threads like he/she has.

    --
    Posted from the wireless couch.
  17. Re:I call bullshit too, on you by dave420 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't confuse "having a conservative viewpoint" with "having a conservative viewpoint and spouting bollocks", as while the two overlap, the criticism you receive is usually due to the bollocks-spouting and not the conservatism. This is patently obvious judging by the plethora of conservatives who are not regularly down-modded into oblivion. It's clearly not your being a conservative that is causing the backlash, but what you are doing with your conservatism. It's rather disingenuous to ignore the highly opinionated stance you've adopted over these last few years and simply blame everything on people hating on conservatives.

    Any user on Slashdot who goes out of their way to repeatedly promote some narrative in the way you have should expect the ghosts of said narrative to follow them around.