Slashdot Mirror
Assorted Slashdot Changes
I've attached a summary of the major changes and bug
fixes below. These are regarding Nested Mode, Anonymous Posting,
Highlight Thresholds, and Login Problems. Also some
comments about moderation. If any of these
things are on your mind, read on.
- I enabled the time zone selection stuff (you probably noticed some craziness with the times this morning while I was ironing some kinks out). You can choose your time zone in the User Preferences (default:EDT).
- I think I've fixed nested mode- it was almost as borked as Anonymous Posting which also should be fixed now. (god the conspiracy theorists love it when I break code- the story refreshing daemon hiccuped last night, and I get accused of censoring and removing stories because the static page isn't updating. Broken code == Evil Rob. I know how it works. God I need a beer).
- I also added an interesting feature that I call the "Highlight Threshold". Basically, once a discussion has "Comment Spill" (Default:100) messages in it, it switches to indexed mode (it just displaying subject, byline, score and time). Comments the excede the Highlight Threshold (default:4) are displayed in full. This allows you to quickly spot and read high rated comments without bothering with extra clicks, or losing the flow of the discussion. I like this a lot. Much of the benefit of Order by Score but without the tradeoff of losing the original discussion order.
- I'm still working on the various login problems people are having. Usually its a firewall or a proxy server thats filtering cookies, but there is some stranger stuff too. I'll figure it out, but it'll take longer if people keep emailing to complain and/or suggest features that I'm planning on, but just haven't had time yet. Hang in there- I'm working as fast as I can over here.
- Moderation Guys have patience here. I've picked 400 people to test out a lot of stuff with in a fairly controlled way. In the next few weeks I'll start rolling out features that will allow more scoring at the hands of the masses. Stop flaming and let me debug what we have before I start implementing the rest. I'm working on a system that will have a limited pool of points that will be dispensed to participants in a fair way. Hopefully. I'm simply not going to rush it. We're learning a lot with 400 moderators. This is a great intermediate step.
- As a whole, I think the system is stabilizing again. There are still some posting problems and login problems that need fixing, but so far most of the feedback has been pretty positive. At least, the good mail outweighs the hatemail so I'm breakin' even. I appreciate the feedback- most of the suggestions that are coming in are things that I'm planning, or I've already decided not to do. I apologize for not replying to everyone, but I'm behind enough as is. Once the dust settles a bit from this round I'll go in for more.
As a moderator (boy I hope I'm logged out correctly :-), I actively look for well written contrary posts. I have always liked to play devil's advocate, and I think it is important to hear all sides of the story.
The problem is that it is real hard to do. All the posts that you don't agree with have "obvious problems with them", otherwise you would agree with them. So, you look for ones with "the fewest flaws", but you still aren't going to find many.
I am really not sure how to fix this problem. I am really worried that the moderators are going to be come a very self-selecting group. Opening up moderation to everyone doesn't fix this problem at all, you just have the tyranny of the majority.
I agree with this assessment, enough to bump a couple of your posts up a point, but with a caveat: Human beings, by nature, have opinions, and are therefore biased. Here's my own moderation policy:
* I have never down-scored a post and specifically plan not to. I agree with the preceeding poster that moderators should only increase scores, not decrease them.
* I try to up-score posts that make a good point that I agree with. Posts I don't agree with I generally leave alone; someone else can promote it if they think it's worthwhile. In a distributed scoring system, it is not necessary for every moderator to read and score every message. With 400+ moderators with 10 pts each, there are plenty of points to go around.
* I usually don't bother to read or score responses to comments, concentrating on head of the thread.
* I also tend to promote deserving posts that are low scoring. Anything already rated 3 or better I probably won't touch unless it's really fantastic. Fours should be rare, and fives nearly unheard of.
Don't mind me.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Don't mind me 2
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Don't mind me 3
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Don't mind me 4
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
God this must be annoying :)
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
God this must still be annoying :)
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Before you flame Rob, remember freshmeat.
I'm not sure when you added the reply counter to the list of postings in the user info, but I like it. Makes keeping an eye people's responses to my postings much easier.
I also like being able to set the number of comments it'll display on a page to something ludicrously high, too, so I don't have to laboriously page through comments one at a time as soon as the number of responses hits 100. Being able to just page past garbage posts without waiting for the page to reload is great.
I'm still not sure about the moderation... I'd be happier about it if the default setting was to display all postings. Also, I notice that on this page, there's at least one comment with a score of 6... is that a bug or a feature? And if it's possible to raise a score above 5, is it also possible to lower one below -1? Is that why I haven't seen any "First post!" idiots today, despite running with my threshold at -1? Or is someone just flat-out deleting those? Or have they just stopped posting (unlikely, methinks, but possible)? Wish I could set my threshold back down to -2000 to look, but it doesn't seem to want to let me go lower than -1 anymore...
Anyway, thanks for the cool features. Just wish I could figure out how to use them properly without cookies...
Posted by Mike@ABC:
The site's looking better every day, and those who use it every day really appreciate it. Don't let the hate mail get you down. Go get yourself that beer.
I agree, but there is a way around this: I run Junkbuster to filter out ads. By default, it also filters out cookies. So, to let slashdot save its cookie, I had to add slashdot.org to /etc/junkbuster/cookiefile . After you do that, exit your browser, and change ``slashdot.org'' to ``>slashdot.org'' to make it be willing to send cookies to slashdot, but not to receive them. That way, you'll log in by default, but slashdot won't be able to change your settings.
Of course if you want to change the global defaults in the future, you need to muck around with cookiefile again.
Since you show a list of articles posted by a user, why not stick a button next to it that will let you view and/or delete it? Then move the first child up in the thread and make it the parent if you delete a message that is a parent. That's the only feature I find lacking.
Why do you do your development on a live web server? Shouldn't you try ironing out the bugs, move the development to another server and then fsck around with that until it's stable? I love slashdot, but I don't see other sites on the net having the incredible amount of problems that plague slashdot each and every week simply because you choose to do active development on the server. That's just crazy. If you can't get it to run on any other server then perhaps you should stop adding new features and bloat until you CAN get it to stabily run on another box no?
Daylight savings time doesn't start until April. It should say EST. (Or am I way off?)
Slashdot doesn't need moderators; it needs
an editor.
This isn't a flame against Rob. He's clearly
a techie with a high threshold for bullshit.
When it comes to putting a site up and dealing
with the hassle, this is a good thing; and
when it comes to making decisions or meta-
decisions about content, it's a bad thing.
Felix
Please take note moderators!
It's no use you just moderating the original post in a thread - you have to mark up replies as well. Reading in +2 mode is a blessing, but dull unless you moderate the replies too.
Otherwise, keep up the good work.
Matt.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Way to go Rob, the new discussion features seem to be really coming together nicely! At the very least, they are already a big improvement over the old, albeit simpler system.
As promised, I have an Idea for Slashdot comments. How about allowing moderators to only *add* to a messages score? Here's why I think this would work better:
* Less people moaning about censorship, because no one has the power to have fewer people read your post. If it's offtopic/inane/flamebait, etc, it simply will not be moderated up to a higher score.
* People with unpopular, yet reasonable views cannot have their views squelched by the majority. If even one or two moderators think he/she has a legit point, they will show up on high threshholds, even if the majority of moderators want to censor it.
* Under this system, the more you try to get people to agree with you, the more people will see your post. If you want to be heard, it will pay not to be TOO antisocial.
* Moderators will have less opportunity to abuse their power. Currently, a "loose cannon" moderator could go through and moderate down all of a person's posts, giving them a negative overall score and removing any chance that person had of being a moderator in the future.
One thing Slashdot has plenty of is negative feedback. My system would promote more positive feedback, in a wholly non-censoring manner.
Aaron
I've mentioned this before, but this seems to be the proper forum to bring this up. It seems to me that moderators are upgrading the ranking for posts they _agree_ with and downgrading the ranking for posts they _disagree_, rather than rating the posts based on their cogency and how ralated they are to the topic. Look on the Utah/censorship discussion, and you'll see that the a bunch of anti-censorship posts got 4's and 5's, while the highest rating someone arguing in favor of the Utah school board could hope for was a 2.
Does anyone disagree with this assessment? I will read any (non-flame) rebuttal with an open mind.
-Eric
Basically, I could to pick a particular thread with everything as threaded comments. If the thread looked interesting I would swap just that thread to flat mode and read the lot. Now, if I'm in a thread and then tell it to view in flat mode it moves the entire article + all replies to flat mode - dumping me out of the thread I was in and back to the original page. I can't just optionally see a thread flat (or nested for that matter either). Rob, I'd really like to see this put back in again please!
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
He already set an absolute minimum score of -1, which takes care of the negative infinity problem (I personally want to see the discussions with nothing filtered, and I was pretty pissed a while back when I first realized that there were negative scores, because I realized that without a minimum possible score, there was no way I could be sure I wasn't missing anything). I still think killfiles (let each user have a list of authors whose posts are to be filtered) would make a better filtering mechanism because that would allow people to make their own decisions. I'm surprised, given the political climate around here, that more people aren't advocating this.
I also still don't quite agree with automatically assigning lower value to anonymous posts, but I can sort of accept it, especially since it's just one point and good comments are now more likely to be promoted. Now, a score of 0 means "anonymous or downgraded", -1 means "defninitely downgraded", 1 means "signed or upgraded", and 2+ means "definitely ugraded". Unless you want to set a higher threshold, there is no further discrimination involved.
However: I really think the default should be -1 instead of 0, i.e., show everything unless a user opts to have it filtered. This is especially important since (I assume) people who don't log in are not able to set preferences, meaning there's no way for them to get around the filtering. As I see it, this is worse than them not being able to benefit from it. Remember, ever since logins were created, there has been ongoing debate between those who like logins and filtering and those who object to both for reasons of principle. If the default were -1, everyone could be happy; with 0, those who don't log in are still discriminated against. It's sort of weird that you have to log in to see all the anonymous posts. Yes, I know you only miss the downgraded ones. Still.
One other small problem: The view-setting menus on each page are cool, but they should not change the user's preferences. It would be better to be able to change the view settings for each window independently, without the changes becoming permanent (e.g., pass the settings around as a hidden cgi parameter instead) -- I always want to start with the same view, but depending on the nature of each discussion, I'd like to be able to adjust it without having to go back and restore my original setting.
Also, the previous post said: Currently, a "loose cannon" moderator could go through and moderate down all of a person's posts... I don't think that's a problem. I don't know the rules exactly, but I think moderators only have so many "moderator points", so to do what you suggest, someone would have to waste a whole lot of his points and give up the chance to do other "real" moderation. Who's that vindictive? Besides, he still couldn't raise a completely insurmountable barrier.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Release early and release often....
StickBoy
--- "The problem is not that the world is full of fools, it's that lightning isn't being distributed correctly." -- Mar
Way to go! Slashdot's really shaping up! I actually am wading back into the comments areas again full steam. Nested mode rocks my world.
--
Program Intellivision!
Take all the time you need; after all, it is YOUR site. There are no perfect sites on the web, but Slashdot is already good and can only get better with all the effort you put in it. I'm curious though as to how this moderation experiment will work out. Anyway, keep up the good work and don't forget your asbestos suit.
De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum
The site was great to begin with thanks for taking time to make it even better. Really a first class job.
MBrod
When reading articles in the nested mode, and filtering by score, I'm getting only the threads where the toplevel post passes the filter. Let's say my score threshold is 2. A toplevel post has a score of 1 and one of the followups to it has a score of 4. I will never see the followup.
:))
Is this a bug, a feature or a misfeature? I, for my own part, would like to see highly scored posts even if they reply to some junk and are thus down a level or two.
The new highlight feature (all posts = 1 line except for those which pass the threshold and are full-text) sounds *very* useful. Could we get it as one of the standard display choices? (I understand I can set my spillover to 1, but that would be a kludge
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
It doesn't make sense to select Daylight or Standard time zones --- do I have to go change it twice a year? I never remember which one's standard and which one's daylight anyhow.
Minor nits aside, Slashdot is great and I want to really thank you for running it!
Congratulations on a job well done! You deserve a break. I can wait a while longer for my other requests...tap...tap...tap...okay, that's long enough :).
The "Highlight Threshold" is a great idea. It provides most of the benefits I was seeking through some of my earlier (different, maybe not as good) suggestions.
I agree with the poster who wants to be able to trigger "Highlight Threshold" on request (rather than setting his spillover to a low number). Just add a "Headers" option to the "Flat, Nested...".
I agree with the poster(s) about the "Order by Score" problem, whereby it only works for first level comments. I also have a concern that if moderators use this option, they will tend to bump up messages that already have a high score, while ignoring new messages that should get a higher score. Personally, I think that "Highlight Threshold" makes "Order by Score" unnecessary.
Nested mode is nice, but I will support capital punishment for anyone who repeats the maximum-depth experiment that some turkey carried out under Moderation 1.1.1.
I think that Rob has been successful enough at implementing changes, that we don't need to berate him for the temporrary bugs that do get through. I would, however, like to see a status page (or a section on the home page) to tell us what is currently happening. That way I won't be bugging him by telling him about things he already knows (like I apparently did earlier today).
I disagree with the idea that moderators should only be able to moderate upward. In that case, how would you get rid of MEEPT? Would you kick out any Moderators who were weird enough to bump up his score? Where would it end? That really would lead to censorship. (Of course, a vote-averaging system would solve the whole problem--nudge, nudge--broken record).
Contrary to some posters, I think that Moderators should increase the scores of (good) posts that are in agreement with their own ideas. Since not all moderators will think the same, this sort of mini-survey would allow us to see the best arguments on both (all) sides of a debate. To me, the moderators should be bumping up posts that make a good point (with which they probably agree), that make an interesting point (agree or not), that provide useful information, or that are entertaining (especially humour).
Lastly, lest it be forgotten, let me repeat an earlier request for a filter-by-date-time option to allow me to view the posts that are newer than my last visit, even if they are nested.
Once again, great work!