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.

Comments

Where's my UTF8?

[OverlordQ]

Just kidding, I'm sure fixing slashcode for that is going to be a nightmare.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[whipslash]

It's coming

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[lgw]

Great start though. I too would like to see UTF8, but low-hanging fruit first. I guess it's time to change my sig.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Sowelu]

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

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[whipslash]

Glad you like it. We appreciate the support

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

I immediately noticed the transition over to TLS. I had in fact been wondering for quite some time how come a technology oriented site isn't securing traffic with TLS. Auto refresh was also annoying as hell so it's a big plus you've got rid of that (and a promise of UTF-8 sounds excellent, too).

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[KiloByte]

I've got one thing to say: "<3", and that only because U+2665 doesn't yet work.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[deadwill69]

I only I still had mod points. This should be +10

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Coren22]

Thanks for all the great work.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to disable my adblocker, but do want to support all the work you guys are doing! Adding a "tip jar" or subscription for a few bucks a month would be awesome to support all of your hard work. THIS is the type user-driven community I want to be a part of!

<3

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[SiriusStarr]

On behalf of all of us who have tried to write Chinese in a post, èè. And that will say "thanks" when it's working.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[fustakrakich]

You're just asking for trouble... Don't do it

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[doconnor]

Look like subscriptions is still a thing, assuming you have an account.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Frederic54]

Who, you mean I will be able to re-get my login "Frédéric" I chose last century but that an admin had to rename because I was not able to login anymore a few years ago? I was known as Fr%c9d%c9ric or whatever messy displayed it was :)

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[BronsCon]

And we appreciate you whipping slash into shape, Whipslash ;)

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[whipslash]

My pleasure!

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Kokuyo]

Doesn't work for me. Can't click on radio buttons nor the continue button.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[yoda-dono]

I'm actually pretty impressed with the responsiveness and smart actions (so far) of the new slashdot overlords. Keep up all the work you're doing that is good (and keep nipping anything that isn't) and you'll find more of us sticking around.

At the same time, I wasn't negative about auto-refresh, except for the whole unexpected aspect of it... Maybe a notification that there is new content, to manually refresh to see, would be a good mid-way solution? Or an auto-refresh opt-in?

Anyway, thanks for actually listening to us.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Zak3056]

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.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Aighearach]

If they're using the old slashcode, it would be trivial. Assuming they don't already have programming staff, it would take a few hours to get familiar with the code and find the different things to change, but it would all be small changes. Slashcode is Perl, it is good at string munging. ;)

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Aighearach]

This isn't the 90s where the programmers aren't used to thinking in strings, they were thinking in ascii bytes. It was never a hard thing, it was just something most American coders didn't have any experience with yet.

UTF8 is definitely low-hanging fruit.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Barny]

Yeah, slashdot was a tight little community with the devs actually a visible part of it, but all that changed when the fire nation attacked.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[justthinkit]

Sounds like it should also be a config option.

I personally like auto-refresh. Unlike some sites that auto-refresh the same page to jack up views, it seemed to me that /. only "refreshed" the home page when it was adding new content. I read every summary, so appreciate having my /. home tab being current.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[psergiu]

Same here.
The "Continue and payment type" button does not work.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[cluening]

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.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[jdavidb]

Looking great, whipslash!

Another problem I still have: I still have to wait several minutes between each comment I post. I have another tab up with comment #2 that says it's only been 4 minutes and I can't post my comment yet. This will be comment #3. It's going to take most of the night to post my comments if I want to do more than 3 comments.

Hopefully my comments are somewhat relevant and helpful to people and I'm not flagged as just a spammer.

So I got comment #2 posted, and while waiting for enough time to go by to post comment #3 (this comment), I've already written a comment #4. I have to stop - I'm supposed to get up and go into the next room. Here I am waiting, though.

Hey, maybe this is a scheme to get me to post more comments! :D

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[fisted]

/. only "refreshed" the home page when it was adding new content.

Right, the server informed your browser via magic that there's new content, so your browser can refresh to check it out.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[justthinkit]

Good point. But Slashdot is a very uniform site, in terms of number of stories a day. Pretty easy to add a new story every 60 minutes and have the refresh set at 60 or whatever.

Also, I've never seen the page I'm typing a comment on refresh. So I'm assuming most are not viewing in the mode I am? I mean, when I am typing a comment there is only one other comment on that page -- what would be the point of auto-refreshing that?

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[lgw]

Slashcode is a mess though. There is already UTF-8 support of a very limited sort, it's all just legacy code diving to figure out how to turn full support back on. If that sounds easy, you haven't seen a legacy horror.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Aighearach]

This is slashdot. I've been a consultant my entire professional career, like half the rest of the people. ;)

slashcode is just a sucky web framework. It isn't big enough or complicated enough to be scary, much less a horror. It is just a minor pile of legacy filth.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Bengie]

IPv6 will make it first.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[godefroi]

Please Note: Buying or gifting of a new subscription is not available at the moment. We apologize for the inconvenience. This downtime though does not effect your current active subscription in any way. We will keep you posted on the latest

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[ipb]

Instead of auto-refresh have something like Google+ uses. A small oval pop-down that says 'x new posts' that you can click on to refresh.

Re: Where's my UTF8?

[ChristophWeber]

(Very late to the party) I thought so too. How hard can it be to enable UTF8 end to end? Turns out Perl is its own can of worms. So we will be upgrading app servers, then work on the code base, and finally make sure database tables are all correct and web server configured to spit out the correct things. It'll take us a bit of time, but we are doing it. From whipslash on down everyone is committed.

Re:Where's my UTF8?

[Aighearach]

You don't even have a user id, why would you be a real sysadmin?

You don't think the distros that are switching to systemd have sysadmins? You don't think the people contributing to the decision to switch are sysadmins? You thought sysadmins love SysV? None of that is reasoned.

You're calling me a "whiner," what did I whine about? I gave opinions and commentary. Whining is complaining. I didn't complain, I gave an opinion you don't like, and so you're calling me names while hiding behind anonymity. That shows you're not confident enough in your opinions to discuss them. And "hypocrite?" Find a dictionary, Coward. Words have meaning.

Maybe I have paid attention, and sysadmins mostly like systemd? You use the word "whining," but isn't that exactly what the complaints about systemd are? After all, they can simply switch and use a different system. Nothing is being done to them; it is one thing to say that they choose something else for reasons, that is great. But they complain even just that systemd exists! What could be more whiny than that?

How can I give you money for this?

[sinij]

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

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[whipslash]

Those kind words of support are enough for now. Hang on to the money for now! We will be evaluating a strategy for subscriptions soon.

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[110010001000]

sinjj is willing to pay for all of our subscriptions. He volunteered.

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[sinij]

For some values of all and for some definitions of pay. Otherwise, yes. :)

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[Coren22]

As an AC, you may have never been exposed to the previous subscription model of Slashdot. It used to be you could subscribe, and you wouldn't see ads as long as you were logged in. That is all, it wasn't a forced thing, and it worked quite well. I don't recall why it was dumped though.

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[jensend]

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!

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[mrchaotica]

FYI, subscriptions never entirely went away. I paid once and did not choose to suppress ads (I wanted some of the other benefits), so my subscription never expired and I still have the little asterisk next to my name on posts to this day.

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[whipslash]

Thanks!

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[castionsosa]

Much appreciated. Since I frequent this site on a daily basis, I might as well support it.

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[Coren22]

Never noticed the *. When I joined, the subscriptions were pretty much dead, I just know about them from reading about it.

The first two subscriber "plums" I have seen while never being a subscriber, but the rest look like nice things to have.

The no ads was given to all users with good or better karma I believe, as I have a checkbox on the homepage:

Disable Advertising
As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising.

I never checked it though, and have AB+ disabled on slashdot.

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[ganjadude]

im in the same boat as you. seconded

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll have a Bitcoin wallet setup soon....

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[whoever57]

Perhaps it would be nice to give feedback on why submissions are NOT accepted. I realize that lots of submissions are spam, but as (I think) the person who submitted the story that had the highest comment count so far this year, I would really like to know why you did not think that my rejected submissions were worthy

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[justthinkit]

I'm all for membership on sites I respect. Like this one.

I chose not to subscribe because I got the impression that Slashdot would meter how often I loaded the home page. After a 1,000 loads I would have to pay up again. That is how things were when I look into it 6 or 8 years ago.

Had I been able to subscribe and not be metered, I would have done so long ago. Metering is just something I can not stand -- putting a cost to every click and punishing the most loyal.

Re:How can I give you money for this?

[mrchaotica]

Nah, what was metered was the number of page views without ads (or maybe it was days without ads, or something). Either way, subscription expiration was strictly tied to turning off ads.

BLASHPEMER!

[Thud457]

and removed the "Jobs" section of the site

You're going to pay dearly for you lack of faith when HE returns to Earth save *pple yet again.

Awesome

[110010001000]

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

Good, good

[Wintermute__]

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.

Re:Good, good

[whipslash]

Thanks for the support! Times they are a changin

Re:Good, good

[sinij]

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

Please, we will always have Bennett and Beta.

Re:Good, good

[Junta]

Well, someone probably could complain about auto-refresh, though I personally found it a silly waste of the servers' resources.

Re:Good, good

[Wintermute__]

I suppose someone could complain about that - or about any number of things. I only meant that I found nothing to complain about.

Personally the removal of auto-refresh is my favorite change of all. So annoying when I'm reading the summary of an article halfway down the page, and the whole thing reloads, invariably scrolling the summary I was reading off the screen. Good riddance!

Re:Good, good

[Junta]

Yeah, nice to see nothing I'd miss go away, and the annoying stuff go...

Re:Good, good

[Trailer Trash]

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

Actually, I'm pissed that there's nothing to complain about. The videos sucked, and they got rid of them. I guess I can still complain about unicode until they fix that.

Re:Good, good

[Coren22]

APK? StartsWithABang? FORBES!?

Re:Good, good

[Kiaser Zohsay]

Step 4: PROFIT!

Re:Good, good

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Well, someone probably could complain about auto-refresh, though I personally found it a silly waste of the servers' resources.

My biggest complaint is that the green color used in the header bars clashes with the curtains in my office.

Re:Good, good

[JazzLad]

When is the last time APK posted a reply to you? I've only seen him twice in a long time ...

Re:Good, good

[Kokuyo]

It sure does seem like it. Although my paranoid subconscious keeps telling me to wait for the other shoe to drop.
I'm starting to wonder whether your working environment might resemble your dedication to customers.

Re:Good, good

[serviscope_minor]

If only Bennett Hassleton were still here. He'd have a solution.

Re:Good, good

[Coren22]

I've seen him twice in this comment section.

It has been a while since he last went crazy posting on everything I posted, so perhaps something was done about it.

Re:Good, good

[phantomfive]

"News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" is no longer in the headline.

Re:Good, good

[JazzLad]

Crap, I spoke before scrolling down, lol :)

Re:Good, good

[godrik]

nothing to complain about?

That's MY complain! Now that these things are getting fixed. What are we goign to complain about ? We are gogni to need creativity in our complaints!

Re:Good, good

[Mr. Shotgun]

It's a trick. Get an ax.

Re:Good, good

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If only Bennett Hassleton were still here. He'd have a solution.

Except that Bennett Hassleton clashed with everything else in my office, including me.

Re:Good, good

[JazzLad]

yeah, we're at 4 and counting ... I really don't mind 1 post when it is relevent (occasionally it is). Still spammy, but ... whatever. Compared to what he used to do, 4 is tame, but 4 is already unacceptable.

I'm torn, though, blocking stories with StartsWithABang or Forbes, etc makes sense, but I hate to see comment filtering that isn't a user setting. If I had the option, would I tick the "block all APK posts (beta)" box? Yeah, I think I would. But do I want them just doing it? Duhno, not a fan of censorship. I'd happily never see another post with the 'n-word' (yes, I expect to be trolled for the near future for that comment), but let me decide (actually, please let me decide so I can block my future racist stalkers, heh).

Re:Good, good

[dknj]

If whipslash brings back cmdrtaco, I think we would all explode

Re:Good, good

[AmiMoJo]

It's still working for me, and I like it. I'm on the classic theme if that makes any difference... I lost track of what the default is, between all the beta and other random crap from the Dice era.

Re:Good, good

[Coren22]

I don't so much have a problem with his posts, though I disagree with him on his implementation. The thing that bothers me is that there are limits on AC posting, and he is clearly breaking them wide open. If there are limits, there should be limits, just as there are limits on logged in posting.

Re:Good, good

[JazzLad]

I think the new proxy policy should slow him down, but I'm concerned that someone may not post something because they can't obfuscate themselves via proxy ... Sometimes we have to defend speech we won't like to secure speech we do. That's how I look at APK.

At the risk of Godwinning, first they came for APK and everyone cheered ...

Re:Good, good

[Reziac]

Hmm. I have javascript disabled, but I wonder if that was what had made the layout look funny lately (harder to read) cuz now that problem seems to have gone away.

Anyway, it's great that Slashdot is once again about the users. Thumbs up.

Re:Can't Post

[whipslash]

There might be some hiccups like this. Email feedback@slashdot.org if you find any. We will investigate this mobile posting ASAP.

Props to the new management, finally getting stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW! Props to the new management, finally getting stuff done.

Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: thank you. It's good to have you here.

Re:Thank you

[whipslash]

Thanks for the support! Glad to be here

Re:Thank you

[youngatheart]

First, thank you, your responsiveness impresses me. I don't know how you manage to keep up. The changes are good choices for big impact fast.

Second, I saw a discussion about making moderations public earlier. I think that's a bad idea unless it's handled very, very carefully. Some people tend to be quite passionate about their comments and perceived friends and enemies. Rational and thoughtful people may be the most prevalent here, but it only takes a small percentage of jerks to ruin something. If I make somebody terribly angry by moderating their post down, I don't want to worry that they'll come to my house to get even.

Third, you'd asked previously for APK examples and I'm sort of glad to see them back in this discussion. https://meta.slashdot.org/comm... (Glad because it gives an example of what issues are real problems.) I've given it some thought and I think it would be dangerous to set up something as an authority driven blocking mechanism. Rather I'd like the option to block comments with text or regular expressions that I enter for myself. If you want to go a step further you could give people the option to subscribe to lists, perhaps lists created by other users and give us an option to make our list public, or perhaps subscribe to a list of "top ten most popular blocking rules on slashdot" as an example.

Re:Thank you

[whipslash]

Good ideas thanks for the suggestions

Re:Thank you

[jlv]

Agreed!
But they are taking away yet another advantage of soylentnews.org. :(

Re:Disable ads is a fraud

[whipslash]

Yes there are some issues here we will address soon

Re:Can't Post

[corychristison]

I am unable to log in to the mobile site. I simply get a message that says "You didn't log in! You apparently put in the wrong password, or the wrong username."

I'm guessing this may be related to the switch to HTTPS.

Re:Can't Post

[whipslash]

Ok thanks. Investigating now

Congratulations, thats a big step

[vivaoporto]

Congratulations to the new team, thats a big step towards keeping their loyal audience regaining goodwill among the tech crowd.

The quality of the improvements and the effort of the new team is visible, it even gets an A on ssl quality test.

Good job and don't rest on the laurels, get working on the Unicode support because that's one of the missing features.

Re:Congratulations, thats a big step

[whipslash]

Thanks! Yep Unicode support is coming

Re:Congratulations, thats a big step

[vivaoporto]

Also, taking advantage of the moment, don't forget to review the both the quality of the ads on this site and also to fix the "Thank you, here, have no ads" flag that seems to unset itself all too often and, both on Desktop but also on mobile, happens to miss some ads (screenshot for reference).

About ads, it seems that now most ads on sourceforge are tech related: JumpCloud, Intel, AdWords, Gmail, etc. Slashdot, on the other hand, suffers with all kinds of unrelated ads motivating the users to block them either with the above mentioned flag or outright with adblock. On mobile it used even worse, to the point of being outrageous: autoplaying popover videos whose close button was inaccessible on mobile.

Re:Disable ads is a fraud

[narcc]

I like the 'disable ads' checkbox. I just want it to actually disable the ads.

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[whipslash]

Looking into this

Where's my IPv6

[bbn]

IPv6 please. It is easy. A tech site for geeks should have had IPv6 a decade ago.

Re:Where's my IPv6

[rickb928]

I don't think IPv6 is a coding issue...

Re:Where's my IPv6

[whipslash]

It's coming!

Re:Where's my IPv6

[Athanasius]

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.

Re:Where's my IPv6

[sjames]

You might be surprised. For example, logging and such too many functions assume IPv4.

Re:Where's my IPv6

[paulej72]

There is a ton of code is slash (the codebase that /. runs on) that works with IPv4 only addresses. It takes a bit of work to make all of that code work properly with IPv6. One interesting issue is subnets. Some of slash's limit put on users is also put on the subnet as well mostly to block AC's that may use many IP address within a subnet. On IPv6 the notion of a subnet in the way it is used in slash is a hard to pin down. Some major decisions must be made to make IPv6 work similar to what IPv4 slash does in these cases.

Note: this is based on the older code that /. ran on when D2 was a child, the last time that the code was updated and open source. It may have change drastically since then, but I doubt it.

Re:Where's my IPv6

[repvik]

You might wanna look at what headers slashdot sends as well: https://securityheaders.io/?q=...

Re:Where's my IPv6

[Aighearach]

In Perl it is often not a problem. In Ruby it is more of an issue, because Ruby just puts a thin wrapper on the C libraries.

If somebody is actually trying to scrape an IP out of a field, that would need to be fixed (by replacing it) but that is rarely done these days. If you're parsing ASCII logs like an old man, then the log parser would usually already have the needed support.

The types of things that have this problem are the steaming parts that need replacement anyways.

Re:Where's my IPv6

[Cow Jones]

You might wanna look at what headers slashdot sends as well

Yes, please! Bring back the X-Fry and X-Bender headers!

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[whipslash]

Can you email feedback@slashdot.org with your username

Re:Fixing mobile site?

[whipslash]

Yeah it definitely needs work. We are looking to improve it or release a responsive design

Get off my...

[monkeyman.kix]

...oh wait, nothing to complain about...well just make sure you don't step on my lawn then..move along

auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[raymorris]

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.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[whipslash]

Noted. Yes we had an issue with the proxy detection, but we've since fixed it.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[KlomDark]

Good to know, I got hit by that yesterday from work and thought our over-zealous security guy was at it again.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I've been reading slashdot for a long, long time, but only started posting within the last year or so.

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.

But either way, thanks. It looks like you guys are working hard to make slashdot as good or better than it used to be.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[Sowelu]

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.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[sherr]

That's what preview is for.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[epine]

Does anyone actually want Unicode, or just a small subset of features missing from whatever encoding they now use, in the dominant encoding of the era? We've lived with parsimony for a long time now, just scrub everything in Unicode that isn't obviously a feature with a minimal down-side.

Here's a sane approach. Go to the New York Times or The Atlantic or the WSJ or The Economist, download the top 1000 articles from the last 100 days and include every character you consistently find there (plus obvious gap fillers). That's all I ever wanted. Few or none of these characters will facilitate injection attacks. Then people can suggest other parts of Unicode on a case by case basis.

Good grief, why would anyone adopt the whole seething enchilada all at once?

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[Teun]

Agreed, you can already hit that Preview as often as you like, use it.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[BlackPignouf]

Just a very small white-listed subset of UTF-8 would be fine. accents, USD, Euro, degree, square would cover 99% of my UTF-8 needs on slashdot.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[markdavis]

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

BINGO. I *hate* pages that auto-refresh. I can't tell you how many times Slashdot ticked me off reloading for no reason why I was either trying to read something or even while scrolling and then I had to stop and find where I was again.

Also like the polls being where they should be.... on the right.

Don't care about https much, though. I prefer having choice, not being forced to https.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[Pikoro]

Sometimes the preview doesn't actually show what will be posted. Formatting or tags that don't show up in the final comment, dropped characters, etc.. Make them match and preview will become useful again.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[Drishmung]

The ability to see past edits would address that. But really, we just need better editing. Preview helps, but a live preview would be better, prefereably with spelling, grammar and link checking. The legitimate uses for after the fact editing seem to be catching something you missed in the preview, so fixing that at source seems to me to be the better option.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[Aighearach]

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...

I agree with both sides.

On other sites, like ArsTechnica, there is a culture of adding an "edit: typo" type subscript. But that wouldn't work here, because it is only by custom and this place is a bit more gladiatorial.

So my proposal for a technical solution would be to allow the addition of a post-script for 10 minutes or something. Like a few minutes ago I made an embarrassing their/there error, and like usual I saw the typo right after pressing submit, not during the preview (which I did use). I'd be able to add "s/their/there/" and feel better about it. And it would only go into the postscript.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[wbr1]

A button to show changes on edited posts is all that is needed (and extra DB fields for storing and tracking revisions). A revision limit could help with this.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[shutdown -p now]

They could simply allow editing so long as there are no replies/mods on the comment, as LJ does.

Or, better yet, do editing history, like Facebook (of all things) does.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[shutdown -p now]

Because it's a website for geeks, and that includes geeky language stuff.

At the very minimum, Greek should be enabled to facilitate math.

Ideally, I'd want full Unicode. You never know when someone might need to post something interesting in Tibetan script, say (even if they still have to provide the translation, as well).

There are better ways of handling "injection" attacks than blacklisting most non-Latin alphabets.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[KGIII]

Like these?

£ € ¥ © ® ñ ú ü ¼ ½ ¾ × ÷?

There's also HTML entities: < > © &

Press reply, press copy parent post (no need to reply), and all should become clear.

I probably won't be here so the first row is inserted with the International Keyboard layout using AltGr method or you can do it with the International Keyboard(s) in Windows. It's also possible to use fcitx's search functionality - sometimes. Slashdot supports Unicode, some of it. It's missing a few that I'd like (like micro) but it's not that bad.

Hopefully you will figure it out. In about four hours, I should know if I'm able to go spend a few days in Cuba before the throngs of people get there. So, I won't be able to follow up if you don't figure it out. At least not with any quickness.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[AmiMoJo]

The pound symbol would be nice. I know you can do it with some escape string thing, but screw that. I just want to be able to type. Euros, the east Asian currency symbol (the Y with two lines though it) as well.

Beyond that some ability to do basic maths stuff like Greek characters and some symbols would be good. Personally I'd like Japanese support as well, but I appreciate it's not something that would get used much.

In any case, the Soylent managed to do Unicode pretty quickly and it hasn't caused problems. That site has other issues, but Unicode isn't one of them.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[allo]

I doubt you even get all umlauts from english sites.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[BlackPignouf]

Thanks a lot for the answer. Sure, you can use HTML code.
I didn't succeed in writing "superscript two" for square meter, though.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[KGIII]

No, no super and no sub. There's a subset. Lemme see if I can get most of them (there's a couple of odd dashes that are in there with HTML entities but I'm too lazy to go find 'em and I don't have much time right now.)

€^‘’¥÷×½¼¾
öóíúüëéåäÄÅÉËÜÚÍÓÖ“”¦
øïhgfðßáÁÐFGHÏñb®©æ
ƮB

That should be most of 'em except the < and the dashes. I don't know of any others.

Hopefully, in about a half hour, I start getting phone calls and making phone calls. I'm off to Cuba. I hope... No 'net but I've been before (twice now) and want to go again before they get too Americanized. The above was made with the Right Alt key and then Shift + Right Alt. Your keyboard layout might be different. I use US International AltGr with Deadkeys. Or something like that.

Wait, the dashes are: — –

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

How about an option that forces you to use preview?

The problem is that I'm human; even with preview I occasionally make a mistake.

Perhaps a 2-minute grace period would suffice, and maybe even lock that out if there have been replies or moderation to the comment.

If people are really worried about back-editing to make responders look foolish, just quote the original post (or relevant parts) to preclude that kind of mischief.

Seriously, this is not a life and death issue, allowing a simple edit for a minute or two shouldn't cause such a panic.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[drinkypoo]

Seriously, this is not a life and death issue, allowing a simple edit for a minute or two shouldn't cause such a panic.

Neither should botching a comment. This is Slashdot, not something important.

Re:auto-refresh sucked. Beware UTF8 injections

[hene]

Agreed, you can already hit that Preview as often as you like, use it.

Actually, that preview button might make things worse sometimes. As I struggle with English grammar and edit my messages little by little while reviewing them in the preview, I sometimes forgot to take effects of all those modifications in the account and the end result is awkward. Like changing something crucially at the beginning of the message and leave later references unchanged accordingly. There is just too many things to think, and something slips trough. While this is my personal shortcoming and I'm working actively to improve my situation, this would be avoided in most cases by having short edit window, not after responses though.

I do realize that you mainly want quality posts, but even with my crappy grammar, I may someday hit the gold, you just wait and see.

Great job!

[NaCh0]

It's amazing what applying some focus can do in a short period of time.

Kudos.

Re:Fixing mobile site?

[sinij]

While I proffered old design, existing commenting system works fine. I'd rather keep it as-is than go through another round of beta.

Bandwagon

[drfishy]

Just had jump on and thank you guys for what you've done with the place so far. Much appreciated.

Re:Bandwagon

[whipslash]

The thank yous are also appreciated!

Updated mod categories?

[sinij]

How about: -1 Wrong, +1 Recommend ?

Re:Updated mod categories?

[ganjadude]

i would be for a neutral (unweighted) vote option to go along side the mods as it. think of it as groupthink mod (old digg) and what we have now working in conjunction.

let all users vote up or down a comment (like current ars technica) and also have the slashdot mod system in place.

Re:Updated mod categories?

[amicusNYCL]

-1 That's, like, your opinion, man

Re:Updated mod categories?

[malditaenvidia]

Could the new administration implement a feature to ban redditors on sight?

Examining the certificate

[XanC]

When connecting to Slashdot, I'm now cryptographically guaranteed to be talking to (drumroll please) Dice Holdings, Inc!

So... are we being MitM'd by Dice, trying to get their old property back?

Re:Examining the certificate

[sinij]

It expires July 16, 2016 so I guess they made a decision to save couple $ and wait until July to update it?

Re:Examining the certificate

[phantomfive]

That shows how reliable the chain of trust is.

Re:Examining the certificate

[XanC]

How exactly is verifying a site's identity by relying on the site itself, via the same channel, any better than zero authentication at all?

Re:Examining the certificate

[roman_mir]

Because then different users of the site could exchange and compare keys that they get on the page in a distributed manner.

Re:Examining the certificate

[XanC]

Posting the key would be extremely counterproductive, then. They should get the key from their browser.

Re:Examining the certificate

[XanC]

I'm not disagreeing with you. But posting the key in the content would make people look there instead of at the real key.

A real solution is probably something automatic like Perspectives.

Of course, there's also key-pinning, which can help a lot.

Re:Examining the certificate

[toddestan]

You still get the benefits of encryption, which would prevent your employer....err...ISP from knowing what articles you read on slashdot, or whatever. Of course, assuming that they don't run a fake-slashdot and redirect you to it, which is of course idea behind verifying the chain. Which is good for things like online banking, but perhaps is overkill for things like Bob's blog.

Basically, there needs to be a middle ground for browsers and servers to be able to use encryption, but where the user still has to trust that they're connected to the real server*. You can do that now with a self-signed certificate, but every browser out there right now screams bloody murder if it sees one. So you either have to get a signed certificate (which granted, is easier now than it was), or revert back to sending everything plaintext.

This would also help with some other problems, such as two websites now can't share the same IP but use have different certificates (at least not with every browser screaming bloody murder). Of course, IPv6 would also solve that problem.

*Things like the browser warning you if a certificate changes, or allowing users to view and compare them could work here.

Where's the like button?

[Frag-A-Muffin]

No, not the facebook one!

All these changes were exactly what bugged me for the past little while here on /. , and I've been here for a while. Kudos!

Re:Where's the like button?

[AmiMoJo]

Speaking of, can we get rid of the share buttons and replace them with the classic "Read more..." link? Or just stick it to the left of the share buttons or something.

The title bar link is kinda broken, in that sometimes when it you click it the summary is shown/hidden.

Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[__aaclcg7560]

Back in the old days (circa 1999), Slashdot was an awesome place because everyone signed in under their own name and few ever use AC on a regular basis. These days ACs outnumbers registered users and the comment threads have devolved into a cesspool. Time to send the ACs packing.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[sinij]

Absolutely not. AC is integral part of /.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[bill_mcgonigle]

everyone signed in under their own name

Seriously? My UID is so high because when they added user accounts, I figured that non-anonymous stuff was bullshit for a while. I think it was when they added a few sign-in plums (no need to preview, shorter posting delay) that I finally signed up for an account.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[bobaferret]

You and everyone else. I think I finally gave in when we could start disabling ads. Obviously that was a little while after you... ;-)

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[dstyle5]

I was in the same boat when they added accounts but waited a "bit" longer than you to sign up. Well maybe a few months-ish longer, doh.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[__aaclcg7560]

"Wahh, my fragile ego gets damaged when I have to share my opinions in a forum where partisanship and groupthink cannot quash anyone who disagrees with me"

I've been hearing that from ACs for years now.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[tbannist]

You means, it's what differentiates /.?

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[tbannist]

I'm not sure if that would have much effect. There's a lot of crazies who post while logged in too...

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[c0d3g33k]

Yep. Plenty of people were mighty suspicious of user accounts, in part due to privacy concerns and didn't actually sign up for quite awhile. I held out quite a bit longer than you, though we were probably around for about the same time (pretty much from the start). And when they did sign up, they usually used a nick, not their own name.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the same AC. The groupthink is a problem. There are also inherent biases in Slashdot. Misleading anti-Microsoft posts are often modded up disproportionately to factual posts that portray Microsoft in a more favorable way, even in the same article. An example is the debate over Windows 10 telemetry. Xenophobic and ultranationalist posts are moderated much more positively if the source appears to be European rather than American. There's also an inherent liberal (American definition of liberal) bias to Slashdot users. That's the nature of the site. The problem is when people use moderation to silence views they don't like and posters who hold those views. When someone throws five overrated downmods to five posts from a user, some of which are a few days old, it's clear they're using moderation to silence that user. It happens even to good users, and I recall reading at least drinkypoo and BarbaraHudson complaining about this. Posting as AC limits the ability of someone to abuse moderation in that manner. There are enough immature logged-in users willing to abuse moderation in that manner to make AC posting worthwhile. You're most likely to be a target of that abuse if you hold views that are contrary to the biases of Slashdot.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[lgw]

Yup, didn't get an account until they added moderation. The early, mostly anon years were fun, trolls and all.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[__aaclcg7560]

You're most likely to be a target of that abuse if you hold views that are contrary to the biases of Slashdot.

I'm always targeted because I use a short form of my real name and stand behind my opinions (right or wrong).

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[hierofalcon]

How about just adding and I agree / I disagree counter pair separate from the moderation system?

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[__aaclcg7560]

I would love to factor out the ACs from Slashdot.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as much as I would love to factor out you. I have been here 15 years and don't have an account.

If you don't like the comment, DONT FUCKING READ IT. I'm sick of little pussies like you with their hurt feelings blaming your Facebook "sad face" sticker situation on the ACs

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[__aaclcg7560]

If you don't like the comment, DONT FUCKING READ IT.

Logical fail. The only way I can tell if I like a comment or not is to read it.

I'm sick of little pussies like you with their hurt feelings blaming your Facebook "sad face" sticker situation on the ACs

You must have me confused with someone else. I don't do Facebook.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[__aaclcg7560]

I don't have a problem with moderation. I'm usually up voted more often than I'm down voted. Back in the day, I used to be called a karma whore. An expression I haven't seen in years.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[__aaclcg7560]

About a decade ago, Slashdot made the decision to restrict users with terrible karma (those who automatically post at -1) to only posting twice a day.

It's been years since I burned up my karma all the way down to -1. These days I post whatever I want and take the abuse that comes my way. On Slashdot and elsewhere.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[c0d3g33k]

Wow - it's a reunion. Good times. :-)

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[__aaclcg7560]

Instead of getting rid of AC posts, the focus needs to be on bringing back good logged in users, the nerds who made Slashdot great.

Good point.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[PCM2]

Yup, didn't get an account until they added moderation.

Wha--? Seems to me they've had moderation as long as I've been here, unless I'm remembering wrong.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[werepants]

Woah now. No reason to be so divisive.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[__aaclcg7560]

I'm tired of dealing with the lowest common denominator on Slashdot. ;).

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[lgw]

Not at first, to my memory. Can't remember how long it was, but at least the first year, maybe two, before Taco et al gave up on moderating everything themselves and added the mod point system, tied to karma. (It's possible I'm confused and it was the karma part they added, it was a damn long time ago.) That was about the same time as page widening trolls breaking the site, and rampant goatse clickbait. I don't remember much moderation when the new memes were OOG THE CAVEMAN (a sad casualty of the caps filter), Natalie Portman naked and petrified, the "hot grits" story, and so on.

IIRC, the rising frequency of goatse clickbait was a big part of why the change happened - it and the early crapflooding were just too much for a handful of mods to stay on top of. I do remember Karma was uncapped at first, and the system (including the link target annotation) was so good at suppressing goatse trolls that they moved to posting ASCII-art goatse, prompting the ASCII-art filter.

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[werepants]

But surely you must admit that there are occasional prime comments by AC's. :)

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[__aaclcg7560]

Also, we've agreed on a number of articles here that the ability to retain one's anonymity is essential to freedom of speech.

Free speech allows you to shout from the rooftops, "The president is a [church bells]!" (to paraphrase Mel Brooks). But there are consequences to calling the president or any black person a "[church bells]", such as being ignored, ridiculed, beaten or arrested. That's the argument for free speech these days: being able to denigrate someone without suffering the consequences. If you want freedom of speech, you have to pay the price. The problem is that most people are unwilling to pay the price.

[...] a site that is supposed to be all about freedom and free speech.

As we say in California, what are you smoking and where I can get some?

Re:Disable Anonymous Cowards...

[RuffMasterD]

Occasionally, yes. But mostly ACs use the anonymity to go on a tangent.

I wonder if...

[Archtech]

...I can post yet without being rejected for running an open proxy.

Re:I wonder if...

[whipslash]

What's the verdict?

Changes are always good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep on moving. Congrats for the job well done.

ipv6?

[Bert64]

still no ipv6 support?

thank you

[zlives]

just saying thanx

Comments link

[gspear]

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.

Re:Comments link

[Maow]

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.

Definitely want to second this request, and add a related one:

Please de-format the "comments" link so the "visited" state is indicated -- sometimes I forget if I've read the comments on Slashdot's story, and there's no "visited" styling to let me know if I've clicked it before.

Also, personally prefer it if clicking links does not open link in new tab / window, but I can understand that change, just prefer the old way.

Thanks whipslash, all these changes so far are very appreciated.

I have a bit of déja vu from when Wheeler took over the FCC and turned out to be not a dingo. You sir are no dingo.

Re:Comments link

[Megane]

Yes, the "quote of the day" comments are taken from a default set that has a lot of really stupid stuff. Even without being stupid, they're still completely out of place. I've never liked them. They were part of the original Slashcode that nobody ever cared enough to remove.

Re:Comments link

[Megane]

Oh, now I see that you were talking about the "get more comments" link or something like that. My comment still stands as something at the bottom of the page that should have something done about it, or at least reviewed as to whether it should be kept.

Re:Comments link

[gatzke]

I have not posted here for a while because of all the UI design changes. But now that they have made significant reversions, I am back!

That missing comments link is about the only think I still miss.

Nice work! Curated tech stories plus decent comments and discussion is why we came here all those years ago.

Terrific!

[jenningsthecat]

Maybe the quality of comments and summaries will improve too, now that the site's owners are moving away from suckage and towards sense. Good job!

Re:Best adblocker (& more for speed + security

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you implement code to auto delete any post that contains "APK" ?

Re:Disable ads is a fraud

[Xenna]

I hope you will. Sorry for getting irritated...

HTTPS and Interstitials.

[TechyImmigrant]

When I connect to wifi hotspots in things like Coffee shops, they intercept the web access and route the connection to their "accept our stupid legal thing you didn't read".

If I connect to a https web site, this doesn't work, because the redirected endpoint doesn't present the correct cert.

So I always start by connecting to Slashdot, because it's not https. Now I'm going to have to find a different non-https web site.

Re:HTTPS and Interstitials.

[sconeu]

I use sco.com. Might as well make the litigious bastards do SOMETHING useful...

Re:HTTPS and Interstitials.

[shawn2772]

So I always start by connecting to Slashdot, because it's not https. Now I'm going to have to find a different non-https web site.

Slashdot should still work fine for that. When you type "slashdot.org" into your browser it goes to the HTTP site first and gets redirected to the HTTPS version. The coffee shops, etc., will intercept that first request and do their thing there. You won't get the redirect until you actually make a connection to http://slashdot.org./

Personally, I use http://google.com/ for that same purpose. It has redirected to HTTTPS for quite some time now, but it still works fine, for the same reason.

Re:HTTPS and Interstitials.

[repvik]

It really shouldn't work.

The plaintext version of slashdot uses http 301 (moved permanently), which causes the browser to simply skip connecting to the plaintext version the next time and connect directly to the redirected https URL.
Google.com however, uses http 302 (moved), which does not cause this caching to occur, and will work just fine for this purpose.

If Slashdot had used the "Strict-Transport-Security" header as well, your browser should categorically refuse to connect to the plaintext version (after your first connection) until the expiry date has been reached (usually quite a few weeks into the future)

If you can use http://slashdot.org/ the same way you use http://google.com/ your browser has security issues.

Re:HTTPS and Interstitials.

[shawn2772]

The plaintext version of slashdot uses http 301 (moved permanently), which causes the browser to simply skip connecting to the plaintext version the next time and connect directly to the redirected https URL. Google.com however, uses http 302 (moved), which does not cause this caching to occur, and will work just fine for this purpose.

Heh. I should have looked to see how they were doing the redirect. You're right, it shouldn't work.

Re:HTTPS and Interstitials.

[jdavidb]

I always go to example.com. I got tired of my browser totally mis-caching legal agreement pages in the place of real URLs that I like to visit.

Re:HTTPS and Interstitials.

[bluegutang]

XKCD

Re:HTTPS and Interstitials.

[TechyImmigrant]

asdgaf

Thanks

[dmbasso]

Now I can finally remove the [FUCK BETA] tag from my sig. Took only two years, but better late than never! :)

Re:RSS feed

[whipslash]

Looks like Feedburner is default non https. Will look into this

FSCK Beta

[Carcass666]

Just kidding! Props to you guys for being responsive. It is making a significant difference.

Thank You

[c0d3g33k]

At one point in the last couple of years, I was on the verge of bringing up the change password dialog, typing a bunch of random characters, NOT recording it and logging out. So I would not be able to log in again even if tempted.

After some consideration, rather than just give up on the site, I moved /. to the bottom of my daily links list and started focusing my time and attention elsewhere, while checking back only occasionally.

I'm beginning to be glad I didn't. Thanks for the positive changes.

The real challenge will be to get those who did give up to return and give /. another try (and then stick around).

What's that strange feeling? Why, I believe it's hope. How unusual.

Fabulous!

[Spinlock_1977]

Wonderful, thank you!!

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[Gaygirlie]

I created an account several months ago and I'm not eligible to metamoderate. My account has excellent karma. Why is this? I understand that the newest users probably shouldn't get mod points right away, but why not make it a few weeks after account creation? It seems like a bigger pool of moderators and metamoderators would be better.

I've never been able to moderate, even though I've been here for several years now. I don't even know how one is supposed to moderate posts, but I assume you get something to click on when viewing posts -- if so, I've never had those. I don't really mind it all that much as I don't generally downvote/downmoderate things anywhere else either, and the posts that I would upvote/upmoderate tend to get upvoted anyways; it's just been a bit puzzling as I've been under the impression that I should have been able to moderate at least some posts by now, after the several years I been here.

WhipLash: Second Apology

[wjcofkc]

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.

Re:WhipLash: Second Apology

[whipslash]

Apology accepted. I am not sure about finding you a three digit UID though, I mean look at my UID :(

Re:WhipLash: Second Apology

[caferace]

I could be tempted to sell mine for a small fee. ;)

Excellent

[mcclungsr]

All welcome changes. Thanks.

auto upfate

[stanbrown]

I will mis auto update. Slashdot is the only site, besides Google News, that I keep open that provides tis functionality. Perhaps it could be made a configurable option?

Re:Best adblocker (& more for speed + security

[basscomm]

Can you implement code to auto delete any post that contains "APK" ?

If that happened, how would we be able to discuss the latest and greatest Android application packages?

Nice Changes For Sure, But......

[zenlessyank]

Can the articles reference a non pay walled article?? I understand NYT etc. want sub money, but there is USUALLY a 'free' article somewhere else. And if not....well,... fuck'em. Also, there seems to be (to me anyways), a lot of political and opinion pieces. I understand it is good for getting folks to comment, but it just seems there is a little too much in comparison to factual descriptive tech pieces. .... Cool..I finished before the page refreshed ;)

Re:Nice Changes For Sure, But......

[whipslash]

We've made a concerted effort to stop linking to paywalled sites. Only exception would be if its breaking news not covered anywhere else

Re:Nice Changes For Sure, But......

[qubezz]

Also good would be to get closer to the original source material when editing, especially for and including scientific papers. I wonder about whether many of these are paid link-outs when they lead to aggregator sites with very bland and dumbed-down coverage, but with lots of obnoxious ads and even the pop-over "sign up for spam".

Re:Nice Changes For Sure, But......

[ShaunC]

This right here is an awesome change. Forbes and Wired, while they both seem to have quality content, are huge offenders in this space now. I hope they're both on your shitlist.

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[basscomm]

You go here to meta moderate. Though I've long wondered about the utility of marking a comment as 'good or bad' over the old metamod's 'moderating the moderations', and I'm not even sure what meta moderating even does these days.

Wow!

[virtualXTC]

I for one welcome my new Slashdot overloads! Thanks for the positive changes guys!

Slashdot? Paying attention to user opinions?

[Nova Express]

And the moon became as blood...

Re:Slashdot? Paying attention to user opinions?

[Lodlaiden]

Next week.

I don't know what to say...

[Pollux]

If you keep this up, we soon will run out of things to complain about.

Or are you just being this good, because you have a plan to bring back Jon Katz?

Re:I don't know what to say...

[whipslash]

Just working for the people! The users are what make Slashdot Slashdot after all

Re:Can't Post

[rickb928]

I've had that problem for a few days now. Adding https:/// gives me a page not loading. If I request the desktop site, it points me to https://slashdot.org/mylogin, which isn't quite what I expected.

You know, m.slashdot.org is a hot mess on Android Chrome and Chrome Dev. This is merely the latest insult.

Thanks, good work.

[Bearhouse]

Been here a good while, come most days...guess I like the place although Dice sure did their best to ruin it.
Glad I stuck it through, and "thanks" for the positive changes.

Against the flow, (but then again, I am a BSD neckbeard), don't listen to the bunnies screaming for UTF8.

It'll increase your attack surface, hence give you a butthurt of work if you do it right, for...what?

I've never seen a funny or insightful post that would have somehow been more hilarious or intelligent if it had accents in it.

Re:Thanks, good work.

[billybob2001]

I've never seen a funny or insightful post that would have somehow been more hilarious or intelligent if it had accents in it.

What aboot this one, eh?

HTTPS \o/

[Skiron]

I can now say "BOMB"

we wuv you

[Cederic]

thank you

New owners rock

[Anonymous Coward]

These are all fantastic improvements, thanks for all the work and listening to users!

Re:New owners rock

[whipslash]

You're very welcome

Autorefreshign still refreshing

[Macdude]

If you got rid of auto-refreshing, why is my system still auto-refreshing? Note: The URL doesn't change to include /autorefresh anymore, the page just auto-refreshes.

Re:Autorefreshign still refreshing

[whipslash]

Where is this happening for you? Homepage?

Do Not Disable AC

[wjcofkc]

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.

Re:Do Not Disable AC

[whipslash]

We are not disabling AC

Re:Do Not Disable AC

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. AC comments are frequently abused but necessary in order to speak the mind freely and ask embarrassing questions. If we don't celebrate freedom from persecution of thought, we will surely stifle creative productivity.

Re:Do Not Disable AC

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had some AC posts just disappear in thin air. No matter how I set the filter, I can't see them. And I realise the irony of posting this as AC, but maybe this time..? It's like, if you can read this, my complaint isn't valid :(

Re:Do Not Disable AC

[JazzLad]

Thank you.

Re:Can't Post

[Coren22]

The proxy issue was apparently a bug and was corrected. From higher in this comment section:
https://meta.slashdot.org/comm...

Re:Best adblocker (& more for speed + security

[Coren22]

All of my posts would get deleted as well...
(see my sig)

iOS testing much?

[BlackSabbath]

Are you fucking kidding me?

Crank up http://m.slashdot.org./ I'm not logged in. Ok, log in. Apparently I put in the wrong (saved) password. Wtf, I'll change it anyway. Reset password (reset page from desktop site with a hover asking me "mobile?", try that and what reset page?). So anyway, reset password. I'm logged in on the desktop site. Switching to mobile view. Oops. Not logged in. Try and log in. "Wrong password". On a hunch I switch back to desktop site. I'm logged in!
Switch to mobile site. Not logged in. Switch to desktop, log off and log in - sweet. Switch to mobile - pa-pow - can't log in.

Seriously, what the actual fuck.

Re:iOS testing much?

[BlackSabbath]

Almost forgot.
Try https://m.slashdot.org/ ...
Page loads to a blank screen.

Re:iOS testing much?

[whipslash]

We will have this fixed soon

Re:Best adblocker (& more for speed + security

[Coren22]

Hosts do more 4 speed (hardcodes + adblocks)

Totally agree, using a hosts file definately does more to stop speedy browsing than anything else. Thanks for offering up this solution to my speedy internet experience!

Thanks

[saberworks]

Just wanted to say thanks, improvements are very welcome.

Hey, nifty.

[ki4iib]

Thanks a bunch. I just logged in for the first time in forever.

Re:Hey, nifty.

[whipslash]

Good to have you back

Re:Hey, nifty.

[ki4iib]

Sure thing. It's only been... ...good lord, it's been 11 years? Well then.

Re:Hey, nifty.

[whipslash]

Haha wow. Better late than never

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[Coren22]

It looks like the AC is talking about two different things. You got an answer about metamoderation, but there is also mod points which is normal moderation. Mod points are only given to users with excellent karma (I think), which shows on this page: https://slashdot.org/~Gaygirli... but I think only for you. I seem to get 5 or 15 points a week to use to moderate posts, which is done by clicking on a drop box that shows next to the Share link on the bottom of each post, but only when you have mod points.

If you have excellent karma, and still don't get mod points ever, it may be that your account was blacklisted by an editor for something, but that would be an unusual thing for them to do. Whipslash may be able to look into it and let you know why you never get mod points.

long(ish) time user saying thanks!

[Froze]

It is a pleasure to peruse the site again after its digression into... commercialism?!. I had almost given up on it. Thank you for working to bring it back.

Awesome guys, thanks!

[freality]

I'm a long time user (mid-90s?) and happy to see the site breathing a breath of fresh air!

Re:Awesome guys, thanks!

[dam.capsule.org]

Yep indeed, and let's start an "I have a smaller id than you" thread to celebrate this, because, you know, I've been here for a longer time ;)

Re:Awesome guys, thanks!

[jbwolfe]

I recall logging in first in 1999. Slashdot itself was founded in 1997. I'd say you also logged in first in 1999. While my UID dates from 1999, I'd been a reader for about a year or so before I ever wanted to post anything.

Re:Awesome guys, thanks!

[freality]

Yeah, got me thinking.. I remember it as about half-way through college, which was '97. Didn't get an account for a while though.

Markdown please

[erapert]

Good work so far.

One thing though: can we please have GitHub flavored markdown for comments?
1. Faster/easier to type than verbose and pedantic HTML. (no more typing <br> after and between lines!)
2. It should make it easier on your end to sanitize input.
3. It should make it much easier to support posting snippets of code.
4. Previews could be generated as-you-type or on-click on the client-side. For example, see the StackEdit extension on Chrome.

Re:Markdown please

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't want to learn yet another proprietary markup language. So can we please keep it a standards based markup instead of flavor of the month? Thanks.

Re:Markdown please

[erapert]

But markdown is like correct_horse_battery_staple: you've already memorized it.

Re:Markdown please

[JazzLad]

I understand some people signed up by accident using their G+ etc credentials, but if we could lose the icons altogether ... they add nothing to the conversation.

Re:Markdown please

[erapert]

1. I did not sign up by accident with my g+ ID. I did it on purpose so that I wouldn't have to remember yet another set of credentials just to use the site.
2. I agree, the icon does nothing for me.

Re:Markdown please

[munch117]

2. It should make it easier on your end to sanitize input.

How? By sticking your head in the sand and pretending that since it's a text-based format, you don't need to parse it, you can just shove it into whatever library came up as the first hit in a search for "convert markdown html perl"?

markdown is a DWIM syntax, and that sort of thing is always extremely complicated. HTML is simple and predictable to parse. markdown is anything but. If you disagree, show me an EBNF for markdown.

I do agree that better support for posting snippets of code would be nice. But then they could just implement <pre>.

Re:Markdown please

[JazzLad]

Could have perhaps worded that better, I mentioned it because in the past I saw someone get flamed for his icon & he said he didn't realize it would happen & it was too late then. Either way, the icon serves nothing but a visual distraction (the only red in the comments).

Re:Markdown please

[shutdown -p now]

Given the existence of things like <ecode>, what do you mean by "keep it a standards based markup"?

And Markdown is not the "flavor of the month". Some dialects are, but basic stuff - which includes code snippets (a must for a tech geek site!) - has been stable and popular for many years now. Between StackOverflow and GitHub, it is the standard.

The big problem with /. existing markup, regardless of how standard or non-standard it is, is that inserting code is a pain in the ass. At best you get <ecode>, but that always formats code as a block. If you need code references inline, you have to use <tt> and manually escape everything that needs to be escaped - like < and >. Typing this very comment required me to escape things 8 times (and it took 2 previews to get it all right).

In comparison, in Markdown, you just use `foo` for inline code, and ``` for code blocks - and no escaping is necessary, sans backticks, which are much rarer, and are escaped in a much more obvious way (with a backslash).

Re:Markdown please

[jdavidb]

I lost them a year or two back with adblock filtering.

Re:Markdown please

[TubeSteak]

1. Faster/easier to type than verbose and pedantic HTML. (no more typing
  after and between lines!)

Uh.... To the left of the Preview button is a drop down menu.

If you dig around in your user preferences, you can set Plain Old Text as the default.
It automatically recognizes line breaks and will put html tags around any raw link you post (see below).

Speaking of preferences
I think I'm going to hang onto the [Fuck Beta] sig until the "classic" SlashCode is unfucked.
With javascript disabled, all these links show the exact same Slashboxes pref page

https://slashdot.org/prefs/
https://slashdot.org/prefs/d1
https://slashdot.org/prefs/d2_...
https://slashdot.org/prefs/thr...
https://slashdot.org/prefs/tim...
https://slashdot.org/prefs/use...
https://slashdot.org/prefs/pas...
https://slashdot.org/prefs/mes...
https://slashdot.org/prefs/123...

And if our overlords are taking requests, please unfutz whatever it was that the previous slave masters did to the links.
Whoever thought that links posted under Plain Old Text should be truncated... they were out of their minds
It only serves to dirty up the conversation. I chose POT so I wouldn't have to type out any markup in my posts.

/Heck, consider defaulting everyone to Plain Old Text
//It's like half of /. forgot it exists as an option

Re:Markdown please

[dave420]

There are plenty of libraries which parse markdown just fine, are easy to implement, and have highly predictable output. Complaining about this is just bizarre.

Nice!

[EmeraldBot]

Fantastic work! Everybody spoke poorly at the start, but you guys definitely deserved the chance, and you've made excellent use of it. I've been around Slashdot for many years, and this is the first time in a long time where I haven't felt, "oh fuck, what's wrong now?", but actual hope for meaningful change. HTTPS was something really long in the coming, and I wondered for many years why the previous owners never switched. I mean, the average reader here could probably do it... Anyway, thank you so much again for improving Slashdot, and I'm sure everybody's excited to see what the future brings.

Re:Nice!

[whipslash]

Thanks for the support my friend

Re:Disable ads is a fraud

[KlomDark]

I never knew that. I've been eligible for "disable ads" for years, but thought it to be unfair to disable them. So never knew it didn't work. :)

Great job on all the improvements new guys!!

Such improvements!

[Aerokii]

Lots of good stuff here! Now the only real problem left are the people leaving comments!

Great Job

[nrjyzerbuny]

I just turned off AdBlock for the first time in years.

Re:Great Job

[whipslash]

Much appreciated.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Kierthos]

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.

Videos

[wonkey_monkey]

On the subject of video, it's not inherently a bad thing. It was just never done well before. Poor editing and poor sound, poor choice of subjects, etc. I seem to remember one of some maker talking all about how his project worked, but no-one thought to actually get a decent shot of the thing in question.

If you've got a story about a new kind of 3D printer which, I dunno, prints sideways or something, I wouldn't say no to a short, small, illustrative video.

Now, have you fixed it so the "Ads disabled" button will stay ticked forever?

A simple thank you!

[Bugler412]

Thank you!

Open Souce the code

[paulej72]

At one time Slashdot's code was open source, and was available for download (and this older version still is available on GitHub). Is there any chance to see the current code made open source again. I would love to see what has changed in the code to make it what it is today.

Thanks

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Thanks for fixing the "you're on an open proxy- you can't post here" bug. It had me scratching my head wondering what was going on, especially since it happened right after we lost and then regained power here.

I was pretty sure my router/modem had reconfigured itself in some weird way but an email to you guys was answered promptly with an explanation that the bug was on your end and had been fixed.

Good job, and thank you.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Pope Raymond Lama]

It is just like moderation value around here is over-hipped. Just take a look at stackoverlflow - almost anyone can downvote and upvote everything, unlimited times, and it is not like it sunk down in a singularity.

I for one, do not care for having /. "moderation points" I have to carefully spent over 5 days for a while.

Thanks

[feufeu]

I am going to finally change my bookmark from https://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 :)

future?

[jtayon]

So far so good.

I would definitively would like to hear from how the new team is wishing to make this sustainable ($) and the long term goals.

Since the team changed, my karma is positive. I guess it is unrelated, but on site like HN, I noticed that OP with interest in promoting their contents had also a tendency to fight opinions contrary to their views. Sometimes fairly, sometimes not. It is just a guess, but it could be checked by measuring the total sum of plus and minus per posts per threads on average and compare it between non advertised news and advertised one. (Just curious and to lazy to do it, when I know a DB can do it fast).

So I my intuition is the removal publi-informations is quite a good news and may had a positive effect at least for me. At least, it makes me feel more likely to accept news without a constant questioning on the motives of the OP, which is already probably making me less trollish and a partial explanation of my new state.

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[ganjadude]

my mod points seem to come in waves,sometimes ill go 3 weeks a month with none, others get 5-15 points 3 times a week.

Re:Best adblocker (& more for speed + security

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Is it true that APK has a child molestation conviction? Because that's what I heard.

Sorry to be "that guy"

[wardrich86]

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

Re:Sorry to be "that guy"

[wardrich86]

I tried the ask and google toolbars, but they don't have the feature. Maybe the Download.com or Email Magic one will have the feature I need!

But seriously, I'd rather not add another plugin... I just did a huge cleanup of ones I don't need anymore. I shouldn't have to install a plugin to restore a site's feature.

Great, but I'll miss auto-refresh

[kevmeister]

YES! Really good to see HTTPS support at long last.

I'd like to see auto-refresh available as an option, though. It could be annoying, but I really liked it.

Thank God

[jishak]

Disabling Auto Refresh is the best thing to happen to slashdot in a long time. Auto-refresh is the worst feature I never wanted.

No More Videos!

[twmcneil]

Yeah!!! I hate videos. I hate seeing links to them. Thank you getting rid of them. And for all the other nice things you have done to restore the integrity of /. Good work friends!

Polls need to be moved back into the feed

[Not-a-Neg]

With the degrading of the site by moving the polls back to the right we can no longer vote on polls without it forcing the load of the comments. When the polls were in the feed users could vote in a poll and immediately see the results while continuing to read the headlines for the day. Please restore this superior functionality to the site, or replace whatever code is handling the polls on the right with the code that was used in the feed. Ignore the graybeards, they are just senile and forgot to take their medicine.

Thank you!

[Roger Wilcox]

Way to listen to the userbase and make us feel at home again! Many thanks and keep up the good work!

the "back" key just doesn't work.

[LocutusOfBorg1]

As said, when browsing from my android phone, sometimes pressing the "" keys, don't bring the previous or next story. Sometimes you even end up in an infinite loop. It happens each day or so. Pretty annoying if you like to read all the news, because it forces to go on the main site, find the next story, enter and start browsing again. Thanks for fixing

Re:the "back" key just doesn't work.

[LocutusOfBorg1]

< and > I mean, damn html

Mobile site mods issue

[Hussman32]

Thanks for listening to the users, the mood has been pretty good lately.

One thing that I've noticed is that when I'm viewing the site on my iPad, if I have mod points the mobile version of the site doesn't accept mods...if you press the mod button, you get the options, but it doesn't register. It has been a while since I've tried, so I don't know if it works or not.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[deadwill69]

How about the option for Moderators to comment on down votes? I had my first down vote today, while i don't care one way or the other on the anonymity, I would have happily added a "Dude! that was just inappropriate" comment. Anonymity is nice and all when moderating a public forum such as this. Especially since it a rotating privilege, but I'll keep using mine to up vote. But some comments...

Autorefresh

[DiSKiLLeR]

OMG THANK YOU FOR REMOVING AUTO REFRESH.

That was the single most frustrating and annoying thing in the history of everything on the internet. It was worse than obnoxious ads even. The text you reading simply vanishing before your eyes and refreshing and landing in a difference spot every time and then having to find where you were at was just... urgh!!

RIGHT Friggin ON:::!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

News 4 Nerdz is back..
Congrats on the new place, I'm glad to see the various improvements that have been made since the departure of our previous "over-Lords."

I hope this new adventure fair's well for both sides. I was missing /. for quite a long time,, clawing and scratching to keep the dream alive. They almost took it away from me.. But you stepped in and restored my faith...
I hope this comment does get read and modded correctly, if not we must all realize we cannot live in a perfect world and relegate to that..

REgardless,,
Thank you, thank you..

Looking forward to a positive future,
GK.

Re:RIGHT Friggin ON:::!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for the Mod point..

GK

Thanks

[CharlieG]

Maybe this actual long time member might find the site relevant again.
(Geez, what is it coming to when folks with 6 digit IDs are 'long time users - and this is my 2nd ID, because I lost access to the first via a job change and not having access to the email)

HTTPS is okay unless...

[fahrbot-bot]

I'm using Proxomitron, which can't handle HTTPS, to filter out (um...) "unwanted stuff" and kill audio auto-play. So if that stuff is gone or can otherwise be disabled via preferences (hint), then fine. Otherwise, I'll have to find another solution to make things more palatable - if anyone has suggestions I'd be grateful.

<style>
.railad { display: none !important; }
.fhitem-poll { display: none !important; }
.nav-social { display: none !important; }
.popularity { display: none !important; }
.button-group { display: none !important; }
</style>

Consider a mission statement for stories

[jafiwam]

Consider a mission statement for stories and submissions.

Sit down with the folks that decide these things, have a meeting, and figure out what you want to cover. Write it down, hash it out, and maybe find some examples.

Along with that, look at past stories and decide which ones you don't want.

That could be the basis for accepting stories you want to have on the site.

It seems, as an outside observer, that a small handful of folks have learned how to type out a summary that appeals to the hind-brain of the mods that accept stories and are gaming the system. From my point of view, a lot of crap is getting through that has no place here. The SJW stuff has mostly stopped (thank you), but there are still obvious, literal, and blatant agenda-politically driven stories being submitted and then posted, some of which is outright lies and bad science. Some of these guys are churning out junk for what is obviously ad revenue on their blog sites or whatever. Go through a few layers, find the real article, don't link to Forbes, don't link to any paywall site, get a virtual red pen and send it back to submitter "NOT GOOD ENOUGH."

Perhaps this is a chicken and the egg problem, a wide variety of knowledgeable, literate and educated submitters aren't submitting... (which you need) then you have to rely on a small cadre of self-appointed bullshit artists that submit a lot of crap. But if there wasn't so much crap, then maybe you'd get better stories submitted.

I suggest finding a way to break out of the cycle. Don't let the same jerk submit the same shit with the same bad science 8 months in a row.

I can get political bullshit and conspiracy crap about chemtrails on just about any other site. I don't need it here. Having the same anti-nuke dickwad get stories that are _FALSE_ is just goddamn insulting to your readers.

A guideline, and then a bit more choosiness to fit that guideline that makes for overall more factually correct articles would help a lot. We don't need to know what that guideline is, but right now it seems like it's random, and as a result, a lot of crap is getting through.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Teun]

The problem here is that even just one single incorrect downmod can take a perfectly fine comment and hide it by default.

This prevents other users from being able to see such comments, unless they jump through hoops to browse at -1,

Nonsence, since ever I've set my prefs for browsing at -1, absolutely no problem.

which in turns renders the entire moderation system pointless.

Why is that?
Moderation isn't about hiding stuff, it's about highlighting.

Hiding a good comment that was wrongly downmodded also often prevents the incorrect downmod from being undone swiftly.

Come on, just browse at -1! You can have a quick scan at 4 or 5 and then return to -1 before modding.

Even if that incorrect downmod is undone, this inherently wastes a mod point that could've been used to promote some other quality comment.

It may sound irrelevant when thinking about it in terms of a single comment, but when it happens again and again (as it does very regularly) it becomes very disruptive to this site.

On a large scale, Slashdot ends up being no better than a site like Reddit or Hacker News, where groupthink takes what would otherwise be excellent discussion and shapes it into worthless, mindless, self-reinforcing demagoguery.

Opening links in same window

[CanadianMacFan]

I noticed recently that links to external sites now open in a new tab. This is a new behaviour as they always used to open in the same window/tab for me. Was this a change on the site or something that happened on my end?

If I want to open a link in a new tab or window then I'll make that choice. Site developers don't know how I work and are not in the best position to choose whether to open a link in the same tab or a new one.

Re:Opening links in same window

[whipslash]

Yes that is a new behavior. It has been a requested feature for some time now so that people would not accidentally lose their place on our homepage when scrolling through stories.

Re:Opening links in same window

[CanadianMacFan]

Can you make it an optional behaviour? Because it's a pain in the ass. And why is it only external links that do that if people are worried about losing their place when scrolling? This is happening when I view the story on it's own page to the logic doesn't really apply.

It's annoying enough that I'll leave /. if it continues. There isn't a work around for me to open the link in the same tab while the other people could always right click to bring up the option to open it in a new tab/window.

Re:Opening links in same window

[whipslash]

Yes we'll look into this

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[Megane]

Right now, you show percentages that often don't add up to 100%

It only shows the top three types of moderation, and it also rounds them to the nearest 10%. That was probably a result of when a single post would get 10 or 20 mods, which made it too obvious that it was controversial and would attract more moderation wars. In other words, it was to de-gamify the moderation process.

Re:Can't Post

[MachineShedFred]

It's not just on Android / Chrome. It's terrible on iOS / Safari too.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[hawguy]

The problem here is that even just one single incorrect downmod can take a perfectly fine comment and hide it by default.

The problem is that many moderators equate "I don't agree with you" as "Troll", so lots of high quality comments get modded down without any reason other the moderator doesn't agree with you.

Maybe meta moderation was once a good mitigation, but the moderation quality has really suffered in recent years, and I suspect meta moderation has suffered too.

Good job

[Compuser]

Just another low ID user offering some encouragement.

Re:Good job

[whipslash]

thanks!

Re:Best adblocker (& more for speed + security

[MachineShedFred]

News flash: blacklists suck. Stop posting this garbage.

Thank you.

[JimMcc]

Thank you.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am consistently modded down for having a conservative viewpoint

I doubt that. Mod-martyrs like to pretend they're being attacked for speaking truth to power, but the truth is 99% of the time their downmods are being caused by the childish tone of the posts in question. And this happens just as frequently with liberal-minded shitposts as conservative ones.

The fact is, you're NOT fighting the good fight out there, you're NOT bravely suffering the slings and arrows of those who want to hide the truth, and you DO deserve your downmods.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[david_thornley]

Metamoderation used to be "Here's a comment and a moderation to it, was that moderation appropriate?". Last opportunity I had it was "Here's a comment. Should it have been moderated up or down?" even if I wouldn't spend a mod point on it if the point were highly radioactive.

Re:Disable ads is a fraud

[david_thornley]

Me too. I only disable ads if I feel compelled, either if I think they're dangerous, out of line, or make it hard to read. I've never been tempted on Slashdot (and I hope I never am).

Count me back in.

[garvon]

With these changes I will go back to reading slashdot daily like i used to.

Re:Count me back in.

[whipslash]

Good to have you back!

Re:Count me back in.

[Wolfrider]

--Your efforts are appreciated. Keep up the good work :-)

--Aside: A few weeks back I wanted to get in contact with you to recommend something, but it didn't coalesce - so at the risk of going a bit offtopic I will post it here. You may want to see if you can work a deal with O'Reilly books to sell at a discount to Slashdot users. It's tech-related and would seem to be a good match for the site. Just a thought.

Re:Disable ads is a fraud

[Mr. Shotgun]

I suggest you remove the disable ads checkbox because it's useless crap. I wonder when you'll start serving malware to make a little extra money.

The disable ads check box did work a long time ago, but then after Dice took over it began to block less and less ads until it was completely useless. Whipslash did post previously that they intend to remove the crap Dice left behind, it is just taking time.

I call bullshit.

[Chas]

I am consistently modded down for having a conservative viewpoint. I generally don't even log-in anymore because when I do post a conservative viewpoint, my inbox is shortly after filled with "fu republican" type posts.

Funny. I've been posting as an evil, stealing-candy-from-babies Republican here for years (Note the nominally low UID? Yeah, that long.).

I can think of maybe, MAYBE one or two rude messages I've received from fellow users over the years.
And my karma's quite good...

So...Unless you're posting some absolutely whack-job stuff, I call bullshit.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[reboot246]

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.

Slashdot: Home for nerds, community that matters

[HeliumHigh]

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!

On the money.

[hattable]

Changes done right, and quickly have noticeably raised spirited on the site. Thanks for all of the hard work that is welcomed by the community. 3 /. and your feedback look with us whipslash

Re:On the money.

[hattable]

*spirits

On second thought maybe adding spellcheck :-D I kid I kid.
Thanks again!

Thank you :-)

[Morgaine]

Thank you, whipslash!

And thanks also to your colleagues who did the work, provided support, and indeed those who made the tea or supplied the jokes. It's all useful, and progress has been made on Slashdot!

Thank you

[penguinoid]

We appreciate it.

Thank you!

[johnlenin1]

Very nice news, we really appreciate it! Looking forward to what you do next.

This is awesome! Thank you for doing this!

[MikeTheGreat]

It's really, really nice to make Slashdot part of my 'daily rounds' of websites again. Thank you so very much for everything you've done!

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Jarik C-Bol]

I usually just spend all my mod points in one or two articles, provided they are interesting articles with lively debate therein.

Re:Slashdot: Home for nerds, community that matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Old timers will come back in no time. There has never been something so precious in the entire WWW as this site. A long time lurker [17 years - never signed in], I've learned many things here, and I still do. Kudos Slashdot.

Thanks

[Abbalah]

As a long time lurker, since 99 or so if i have to guess. I've slept since then... I really appreciate the changes you are making. It's nice seeing optimism among the community, that's been a rare sight the past few years. Anyway, thanks and keep it up!

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[Gaygirlie]

It looks like the AC is talking about two different things. You got an answer about metamoderation, but there is also mod points which is normal moderation.

Ah, yes, that clarifies it a tad.

Mod points are only given to users with excellent karma (I think), which shows on this page: https://slashdot.org/~Gaygirli... but I think only for you. I seem to get 5 or 15 points a week to use to moderate posts, which is done by clicking on a drop box that shows next to the Share link on the bottom of each post, but only when you have mod points.

If you have excellent karma, and still don't get mod points ever, it may be that your account was blacklisted by an editor for something, but that would be an unusual thing for them to do. Whipslash may be able to look into it and let you know why you never get mod points.

Yeah, I've never gotten any mod-points, ever, and thus no such option to moderate posts, even though it's always said my karma is excellent. Odd.

Identity Management

[Drishmung]

My registered email address no longer exists, and hasn't for years. It doesn't exist because the ISP no longer exists. I therefor have a problem with changing my email address to a valid one, since it will try to confirm to an email address that is no longer reachable.

It's a minor problem, but as you do the rewrite, I'd appreciate it if you gave it a few milliseconds of thought :)

Re:Best adblocker (& more for speed + security

[amicusNYCL]

There's no reason to believe any of APK's claims, he's a proven liar. Here he is claiming that he's not going to post on Slashdot any more. His word doesn't mean anything, and anyone who deals with spammers knows that the first rule when dealing with spammers is that they lie. Even though he looks for posts mentioning ad blocking or the like where he posts his spam, and therefore try and claim the high ground of being on-topic, if he wasn't a spammer then he wouldn't re-post the same thing when it gets modded down. He's not on topic, he's just spamming. If his word doesn't mean anything, if honesty and integrity don't mean anything to him, and if he voluntarily chooses to advertise his software via spamming, why would anyone knowingly download and run his code?

That explains why I couldn't post from Comcast

[qubezz]

Got an "open proxy" error yesterday as did others when trying to post, but now it's fixed if you can see this.

http://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Basic-Internet-Connectivity-And/open-http-proxy/m-p/2719805

Won't miss videos

[WillAffleckUW]

At all.

Also, all polls must have a Cowboy Neal option. Write that down.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Aighearach]

I'm a centrist who believes that there should be a lot of compromise, and your party currently hates compromise, so from my perspective if you're giving a "conservative viewpoint" that is the same as the Republican talking points, I'm going to down-mod for 2 reasons; it isn't actually your perspective, just party-flag-waving regurgitation, and it is probably not a reasoned viewpoint that allows other views to exist.

I down-mod people on the left for the same reason, usually from the Green Party. Democrats at least support compromise and their views don't exclude Republican views; they are openly and explicitly willing to compromise.

So I can see that depending on the actual common views in each party over time, there would be a different balance of down-mods for not being constructive, and just asserting conclusions, etc.

A lot of slashdot users are actually quite conservative, but they're not Republican Party flag-wavers and they don't regurgitate talking points. They're conservatives who still believe in compromise, in civic duty, in honesty.

What percent of modern "conservatives" will even agree that Democrats love America and love the Constitution? 1%? 2%? "They're tryin' to take er guns!" "Who?" "Them their liberaaals!" "But they say they support the 2nd Amendment too, and you can keep your guns." "FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS YOU HIPPIE!" That is basically how the conversation goes.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Aighearach]

You claim I should live in fear, but I laugh in your face.

Check out meta-moderation.

And no, one instance of down-modding can't hurt; the next up-mod destroys it. That is why there is a low positive limit, instead of a total score, and why there is an even-lower negative limit.

Early in the history of slashdot there was considerable discussion about moderation, and different things were tried. Meta-moderation was invented. Technical solutions were found.

We don't live in fear of moderation. Fear not the opinions of others; there are a lot of mediocre others in the world.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Aighearach]

That is because you're posting anonymously on a free site, and start with a low score. Anonymous comments, like yours, are generally lower quality than the comments from logged-in users. If you were a user with good "karma," then you might be starting at 2 and there would be no problem.

A significant percentage of my comments that finish at +5 or +4 were first given a -1. It is not a problem. And these days there are few enough comments, you don't need strict filtering like you did 15 years ago when it was a crowded room.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Aighearach]

A lot of times the reason I disagree with it is because instead of talking about the subject, a person just drags in their person favorite topics and says something nasty. That is just a type of trolling in my opinion. And if they say something nasty that is on-topic, they'll get "flamebait" because what else are you trying to do than start a flame war if you're being nasty?

If I simply disagree with their opinion or conclusion, but they state it as just their own opinion or analysis, I would never downmod that. And I see quite frequently that there are positive, constructive, different/opposing opinions all getting high ratings.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Aighearach]

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.

Exactly. I already get clusters of down-mods sometimes, from days past, after making a controversial post, like saying something positive about systemd.

IPv6

[nnet]

IPv6.

Thank-you for...

[istartedi]

Thank you for potentially making Slashdot a model for how not to Digg yourself into a hole. Also, I don't care about UTF-8. I can live without umlauts and accents, and I definitely don't want emoji.

Until late 2013, ad networks didn't support HTTPS

[tepples]

I had in fact been wondering for quite some time how come a technology oriented site isn't securing traffic with TLS.

Because until relatively recently (September 2013), ad networks did not support HTTPS. Thus browsers would block ads as mixed content. So in order to make the ads appear, Slashdot would redirect HTTPS visits from non-subscribers to HTTP.

Re:Until late 2013, ad networks didn't support HTT

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

That's actually rather interesting, did not know it used to be so.

Good Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Slashdot! Good work.

HSTS, HTTPS Everywhere

[tepples]

When you type "slashdot.org" into your browser it goes to the HTTP site first and gets redirected to the HTTPS version.

This will work only until Slashdot starts sending Strict-Transport-Security headers or gets included in the ruleset for EFF's HTTPS Everywhere browser extension. Then you'll have to resort to what I do: http://example.com/

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[justthinkit]

@Aighearach:
This is exactly why political threads should have zero moderation, with all comments, including AC posting at the same level.

Thanks, and Keep Posting!

[WheezyJoe]

Real nice to have an actual human posting up about what's going on, and responding to comments.
Thanks for thinking about us users (yeah, how about that!) and glad to be looking forward to future /.

Thank You

[KermodeBear]

Thank you very much for your efforts.

We complain a lot because, well, it's easy to complain, but also because we care. I know it can be a real pain in the butt to put up with the negativity, but it's all rooted in a love for what Slashdot was and what it could be once more.

good!

[daniel23]

just to add my 2c this is very good news, I appreciate each of these changes and it is very good to see a dev active and responding again, after so long.
picking https as the first is reasonable and IPv6 and utf8 will hopefully follow soon.

Thanks for this change of modus operndi!
 

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Gadget_Guy]

I am consistently modded down for having a conservative viewpoint. I generally don't even log-in anymore because when I do post a conservative viewpoint, my inbox is shortly after filled with "fu republican" type posts.

Then imagine what your inbox would look like if you started modding down some of the trolls that do deserve to be modded. Some people take comments that they don't like very personally to the extent that they send abusive PMs or even harrass you by replying to all your posts in other discussions to continue the fight. But think how much worse would that be if they knew exactly who modded them down to -1.

When you are moderating, you don't want to be so scared of certain, vindictive people that you avoid doing your duty for fear of retaliation.

Strict-Transport-Security

[manu0601]

Now you run https only, it would be a good idea to send a Strict-Transport-Security header so that clients do not try http anymore.

How does moderation work?

[mutherhacker]

I've been on /. for many years.. and it always struck me as weird how I NEVER got moderation points!! I thought comments were crowd-source moderated...

Re:You're missing something!

[whipslash]

Coming eventually

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds to me like you want an environment where you can moderate in an abusive manner without any repercussions.

What repercussions, exactly? Because all I can think of is revenge modding, which would introduce more problems than it solves. If a post is wrongfully downmodded, others can correct this without needing to know who did the downmodding.
Please link to some posts that you believe have been wrongfully moderated. I'm very curious to see.

Why Unicode?

[MikeTheGreat]

Can I (genuinely) ask why people want Unicode?
It seems like all the articles that are linked to are in English (or a European language with the same alphabet + accent marks) so I don't quite follow why people want read article text and post comments in Unicode.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Aighearach]

That's just hand-waving and assertion, because it seems even more likely that that is why it is working well as it is. You state conclusion, based only on what I said, but your conclusion doesn't follow from what I said. You are missing all the stuff in the middle, where the ideas are.

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[pop ebp]

Mod points are not only given to users with excellent karma.
In fact, I got from "Normal" to "Good" karma just by moderating.

I call bullshit too, on you

[cold fjord]

Sorry Chas, but posting from a Republican / conservative / center-center right / "classic liberal" viewpoint (as recognized in the US, and not so much in Europe/CA/AU/NZ) will often get you modded down on Slashdot, and even mod bombed over the years. It doesn't take "whack-job" posts either. All you need to do is post a dissenting viewpoint. It happens to me frequently. I can';t tell you how many times my posts have been picked out of a thread and marked "off-topic", "troll", or "flamebait" when I'm writing about the same subject as everyone else, but I have a different perspective. Citing major media, government or academic sources in support of a post is another good way to get marked "troll" too. I've seen other people repeatedly down modded until they had little karma and stopped coming back to Slashdot.

You apparently think that only "whack-job" posts cause enmity, but you seem to overlook the possibility that other people here can be whack-jobs, or otherwise have bad values, act in a thoughtless or ill-considered manner, or even suffer from some sort of mental or emotional disorder, including various obsessions and inability to tolerate contrary views.

Remember this recent story I submitted? Stephen Hawking and 150 Royal Society Scientists: Brexit Disaster For UK

There are people whining about my views on the completely unrelated topic of Snowden & the NSA. One of them keeps posting the same nonsense in multiple stories, and not so different from people that believe that soap operas are real seems to think that I agree with everything going on in the stories I submit. Just sad. This is hardly the only time this has happened.

Over at Soylentnews someone registered my username so it wouldn't be available. (I have a nice alternative picked out in case I ever want to go there.) In more than one discussion there was a comment along the lines of, "I'm glad we don't have that guy here!" Of course someone else answered that maybe that wasn't such a good thing since even though the poster seldom agreed with me, my views provided plenty of food for thought.

Do you remember "coid fjord"? C-O-I-D, not C-O-L-D. Because of the fonts used on Slashdot it is very difficult to tell the difference, especially since the L in my account becomes a capital i. That is one of two or three accounts created to harass me and troll other people by making misleading or harassing comments in threads. Another person so upset by my views that he became unhinged.

There are at least one or two threads (maybe more) in some stories within the last few years that have death wishes directed at me modded +5. In at least one of those threads I posted a comment pointing out the questionable nature of such a post and my post was modded -1 as I recall. I wouldn't even even bother trying to count the many other "die in a fire" and various other death wishes directed at me that didn't get modded up.

You might suspect that this has affected my karma, and it has. I've been repeatedly modbombed over the years, and there are apparently a few people that are still up to it when they can.

William F. Buckley once said,"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." Participation on Slashdot can help one appreciate the wisdom of that statement.

So Chas, if you haven't experienced negative affects due to posting from a Republican viewpoint I would say you should rejoice for that, but I don't think your experience is necessarily reflective of the typical experience of Republicans or conservatives. Your call of "bullshit" isn't adequately justified.

Re:I call bullshit too, on you

[dave420]

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.

IPv6

[stephaniemota]

When slashdot will have IPv6? And congrats with this great site!

Yay!!! :-D

[legumes]

All the things I've been waiting for at once! ;)

Definite improvements

[folderol]

Last year I thought /. was headed for the cliff to oblivion.
It seems someone not only found the brakes, but also the steering wheel.

Mobile site is bugged ?

[dargaud]

If I go to http://m.slashdot.org/ on firefox desktop, it redirects to https://slashdot.org/ (thanks for the new https BTW), if I do the same in Firefox for Android, I get a blank page. You should make it trivial to switch between desktop and mobile version, try not to guess 'm.' or not, and respect the 'request desktop site' option of some browsers. In other words, fix the bugs and respect the version of the site the user want, never mind their actual OS.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Blaskowicz]

I did have a few technical problems to browse at -1 :
- on a mobile browser, the slider didn't appear to work, or I was failing to "drag" it with the touch screen. (I could have logged in instead but was not willing to)
- on limited / special browsers especially those with no javascript whatsoever, it's hard to do set browsing at -1.
- on same browsers, it may be hard or seemingly impossible to log in so as to benefit from the "-1" setting. (e.g. I don't really know how to log in from Dillo 3.0.3)
- I was told about enabling the classic discussion system in account preferences but I don't want to toggle it on and off constantly. I'm thinking about creating a dummy account just for that and/or the -1 setting when reading from some mobile browser though I would rather not bother.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[dave420]

Will you be ok? Should we shut down the internet to protect you from the horrible people out there? Maybe we should start a Kickstarter to get you through these terrible times...

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[AmiMoJo]

I'm going to down-mod for 2 reasons; it isn't actually your perspective, just party-flag-waving regurgitation, and it is probably not a reasoned viewpoint that allows other views to exist.

You are doing it wrong, neither of those is a reason to down-mod and actions like that are what screw the moderation system up. Political modding like that is where the mod system tends to be weakest.

The available down-mods are:

Flamebait - Comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage
Troll - Anti-social, disruptive behaviour
Offtopic - Unrelated to the story/discussion
Redundant - Repetition
Overrated - The up-mods this post received are unjustified

Note that there is no "disagree" or "not staying true to political principals" mod. Down-modding is only there for posts that detract from the discussion, not for things you just think are not very good or don't like.

Less comments & dial-up issues?

[antdude]

https://groups.google.com/foru... mentions dial-up issues. Is anyone else seeing this? I would test it, but I don't have a copper phone line anymore to try it with my dial-up modems. :(

Is it me or are there way less comments lately on /.?

THANK YOU!!

[jshipp]

I love you BizX

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[AmiMoJo]

I seem to recall it was changed to better correct bad mods, while not having to sanction the person making the bad mod. Originally if you bad lots of bad mods you would lose future mod points and effectively be shadow-banned from moderation. The problem with that was good moderators would be hammered by asshats bulk meta-moderating for political reasons.

So they changed it so that there is either no or much less negative effect on the moderators, but he meta-moderators' changes have a direct effect on score. In some ways it's better, as mod-bombed comments often recover due to meta-mods, but at the same time it allows the mod-modbombers to get away and do the same thing the next day.

Previously site admins occasionally issued shadow-bans to stop accounts that engaged in mod-bombing from ever getting more mod points, but it requires careful monitoring.

Thank you

[fygment]

Just that.

Re:Please No New Tabs!

[jafiwam]

Like it or not, industry standard is to open a new tab when going to a site run by someone else. This has been the case for the last 12 or more years.

Links in user comments should always have the target attribute set for a new tab or window.

Now days, using a bit more memory, and a teeny bit of screen space at the top is less offensive than the obnoxious load time of an ad-laden site. So letting that happen in an unused window is better.

There's room for argument on links between locations on slashdot.org, but for links to other sites... it should stay a new window / tab.

Re:Where's my UTF8? :-)

[burhop]

It's coming

I can't wait to start commenting in my native language, emoticon.

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[Coren22]

I have the same experience, though the last few weeks, when I ran out of mod points one day, the next I have 15 (or 5) again, then for last week and this week, none. Which is all good, when I have mod points, I feel I need to spend them before posting and so end up not posting for a while till they are spent.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[david_thornley]

I can see that they might want to change the effects. I just get frustrated trying to mod comments I'd never mod.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Aighearach]

You're not very bright if you think I'm "doing it wrong."

No, I'm not exercising my prerogatives wrong; you're attempting to exercise my prerogatives, which is wrong.

Slightly different.

Re:Slashdot VS FBI

[jlv]

Since you are an AC, you don't have a password to descrypt.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[tehcyder]

after making a controversial post, like saying something positive about systemd

You're a braver man than me. That's the slashdot equivalent of calling the Pope the Anti-Christ on the Vatican web site.

Test

[neminem]

But the big question: does it support Ω®âzâing unicode in Â¥Èoeââ¼ing comments yet? ...apparently not. Maybe you could look into that next? >.>

Re:Test

[whipslash]

We are

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Aighearach]

Right, this isn't an anti-systemd website. Those are just jerks trolling.

More like, having a technical opinion on a technical website. If that requires "courage," that is absurd.

It does help the non-technical users to out themselves, though. ;)

Re:Thanks!

[whipslash]

You're welcome

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Teun]

True, on the smaller screens it's not quite as easy as on the laptop I'm using.
Providing you've got excellent eyesight or a tablet yes the classic menu is preferable.

Thanks for the changes!

[SivDotnet]

I have been around slashdot for a long while and these changes are very welcome.

Re:Autorefreshing is still refreshing

[Macdude]

Yes, it's happening on the home page. I'm using IE (v11). The home page is automatically refreshing. I'm not aware if the other pages are automatically refreshing or not.

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

You seriously need to grow up APK. Your word means shit, maybe try to live up to what you say. How is the campaign to stop you going? Well, you're still posting as third parties hiding your true identity, so apparently you're feeling it. You're not wanted here. And, no, sorry, referencing 8 posts out of 4.5 million+ users and 50 million+ comments is not proof that people here like you. In fact, it's sad that you can only point to a handful of posts, and you still trot that out like a first place trophy when it only shows how little support you have.

You haven't answered my question, still. If the management requests that you stop posting, will you stop?

You already claimed you were leaving but you're still here like herpes, so I know that your personal word doesn't stand for anything. You're a sad man, APK. You're reduced to fighting against a tide of people and rules who don't like you or don't want you, and you think you're doing something clever by sticking around where you're not wanted. It's sad and pathetic. Your immaturity continues to show, you need to spend more effort trying to grow up.

Now I can turn javascript back on

[jimminy_cricket]

I set NoScript to disable javascript on /. when the auto-refresh feature was rolled out. Now I have turned javascript back on with satisfactory results. Thank you!

Re:How about fixing some other issues soon?

[ShaunC]

It prevents public aggregation of user relationships by scrapers.

Each user's Friends / Fans / Foes / Freaks / Friends of Friends / Foes of Friends list is fully visible, so I doubt that's the motivation. I don't agree that moderations should be public, but I don't think foiling screen scrapers is the reason there's no who-modded-what display.

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

APK, you are the pigeon.

Hey new team, you won me back!

[water-and-sewer]

YeaIh, I know: your strategy wasn't "how the hell can we get water-and-sewer to come back to slashdot?" But thought I'd say thanks: your changes to the site, but moreover, your APPROACH to the site, makes Slashdot the kind of place I'm excited to come back to.

Really glad to have a new team behind the steering wheel. This was my most-visited site on the Internet for many years, but over the past two I've probably visited a handful or so, and mostly to post snarky comments inviting people to check out other sites. Now, I'm back. ... and very impressed. Let me help you get the word out.

Re:Hey new team, you won me back!

[whipslash]

Glad to have you back water-and-sewer. Maybe that was our strategy the whole time ;)

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

APK, the only person you're fooling is yourself. You have no anonymous supporters here, it's only you. It's always ever been only you. Everyone knows this.

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

You are still posting to impersonate other people claiming to support yourself. That's not a victory in any game that I'm aware of. And you know I'm right also, you know for a fact that you do impersonate third parties. Like I've said before, that is fundamentally dishonest. You know for a fact that you are a dishonest person. In other words, you lie.

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

Keep strutting, pigeon.

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

I have no technical ability to stop you from posting at all, APK. All I can do is email the management to suggest new filters. ACs are protected here, allowing anonymous posts is a useful thing and you're not going to be the reason it stops, it provides too much value even for you to shut it down. You're going to continue strutting around and shitting all over the place, everyone knows that, even though you said you were going to stop. We know you lie, we know your word has no value, we know you're going to continue to attempt to shit as much as possible here, and we know you're going to keep fucking that chicken.

There most definitely has been a noticeable decrease in your spam though, so in that sense we have been successful. That was my goal all along - to stop the incessant shit flood of your advertisements. That goal has been accomplished, I haven't seen you spreading your shit 30+ times in a single thread any more. If and when you do, it's just more filters that get added to identify your unique posts and block them, and more emails to Steve letting him know that you're now posting spam that links directly to his site against the wishes of the management of this site, and against the wishes of the community. And, again, you trotting out your 8 quotes does not in any way prove anything I've said to be wrong. You continue to show how pitiful your case is every time you link to that post. It's all you have.

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

I never claimed those 8 quotes are you, APK.

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

I do 2 things here: I post comments, and I email the management about ways to filter out your spam. That's it. I hardly ever mod any more, my points usually just expire. I'm not delusional about my role here, I know exactly what it is.

You, on the other hand, you post as a third party assuming that no one can tell that you're doing all of the posting. That's what you do here, that's your role. Your role is to amuse other people who can't believe that a 50+ year old man actually acts like a 12 year old on a regular basis. You accuse me of talking for everyone while saying things like "it makes us all laugh" (literally speaking for a group of people, while at the same time impersonating a third party other than yourself). And I truly believe that you do all of that genuinely without detecting even a hint of irony. It is equally funny and sad. You are a Shakespearean comedy, APK. The only thing that makes you so funny is your complete lack of self-awareness, and it imparts a genuine feeling of pity in people like me who read your posts. I pity you APK, I do. You're sitting there alone making posts, acting like you're someone you're not, trying to pretend like you are someone who supports yourself or thinks well of yourself, and you do that because no one else will and you have an apparently insatiable desire to be liked or respected. Your ego couldn't take it if you really knew that no one liked you or wanted to be with or around you. It is a pathetic comedy. You've made yourself into a parody, some sort of pathetic satire, and you do it all absolutely willingly, with excitement even, and along the way you continue to claim victory. Just like a child. Or, like a pigeon shitting all over a chess board and then strutting around like it's won. That's you, APK. You need to grow up. You need to move on. You need to figure out what truly makes you happy and pursue that instead of writing anonymous posts in support of yourself. Because, at the end of day, you still don't have any supporters. It's still only you writing those posts.

Go ahead, call me a jerk again. Act like it's not you making these posts. Tell me how much I fail. I'm sitting here as a CTO with a 6-figure salary and a girlfriend waiting for me at home, and you're making anonymous comments in support of yourself talking about how great you are. Which one of us is failing, APK?

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

Keep fucking that chicken, APK. It's all you have left. No one likes you, deal with it. Keep posting anonymous messages in support of yourself while claiming everyone else is failing. You're a joke.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[ncc74656]

But they say they support the 2nd Amendment too

...and if you believe the Democrats on that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Aighearach]

Waving you hands and spewing derp isn't going to cause me to trust somebody less, just because you implied something negative.

Make a real point. Use ideas. Support your conclusions with stated reasons that make sense. That is all normal stuff. Democrats can do all that.

Republicans knew how to do it too, under President Reagan, and still under President Clinton. It is only more recently that they've gone insane and become unable to govern on a team of various Americans.

You may have run way to the right, but the center didn't move, and the center still expects compromise .

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

Reread that comment that you like to link to so much, APK. Not a single one of those quotes is saying that someone likes you. There are a few saying you're not entirely incorrect about hosts files, there are a few that say that your program isn't complete shit, and one person saying he likes your spam. No one likes you.

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

You might want to try that insult again, in English this time please.

This is what you're down to APK, anonymous posts with dumb meaningless non-insults. Your declaration of victory has fallen so much that you are now claiming victory just by your continued ability to post. The bar with you has dropped very very low. You won't even sign your posts anymore. I genuinely wonder why you even bother posting here if this is all you're doing.

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

Pathetic. You're not even worth responding to now.

Re:Pity you lie & EAT YOUR WORDS (lol)

[amicusNYCL]

No, what's pathetic is that you are posting anonymously to support yourself, because you have no support from anyone else. You're crowing about still being able to post, and then you hide like a little bitch and act like no one knows it's you posting. You have never won an argument against me, you have never made me "eat my words" on any point of fact. Your little stream of quotes is pathetic, and so are you. Grow up kid.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[ncc74656]

Make a real point.

OK, here's a real point on Democrats and the Second Amendment: Ignore what they say. Pay attention to what they do. They've been most successful at pushing their intolerable acts in Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado, and Washington.

Re:Greater moderation transparency?

[Aighearach]

Derp, derp, derp, derp, derp.

You can't even read, how would you know?

Democrats support the 2nd Amendment, don't be a AM-radio idiot.

Re:Amicusnycl slashdotters support apk

[amicusNYCL]

That's your favorite tactic, APK, taking an insult and just pushing it right back. That's the "I know you are but what am I" style of argument that you haven't grown out of yet. There are a lot of things that you still retain from elementary school, that's one of them.

This is what you're down to. It's sad, you used to be a troll on an epic level and now you hide behind anonymous posts only speaking about yourself in the third person. I miss the old APK. I guess he's gone though, due to the changes at Slashdot. Now you're relegated to anonymous shit posting. The end of an era...

Responding to this crap actually depresses me at this point, it's sad what you've come to. Take care, formerly-epic troll. Better luck with a new site, I guess.