Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Tweaks
Its a little confusing at 0 or 1 because you'll get chunks of conversation that seem out of place... well, they are because their parent is missing. But at the higher thresholds its very useful.
Sort Modes I added a few new sort modes (primarily so that jwz would stop pestering me :) that some of you might like. The existing Oldest First/Newest First sort modes still maintained thread structure. I've added new options that blow the threading away for those of you who want to strictly read comments in order.
New Topic Icons if anyone has nice icons that we could use to represent Graphics (A paintbrush?), Education (pencil? those dumb hats?), Media (vomit? a newspaper?), Opinions (a soapbox?) Don't send me crap, but if you have a nice image, I'll make it fit Slashdot. I'm mainly looking for clean photos or illustrations that I can play with.
Moderation I had a few glitches that were causing an unhealthy number of moderation points getting reinsterted into the system. I've tweaked around some numbers and fixed some bugs that should help. A lot of the problems we were having was simply that there were several times the number of points available than I intended. It appears that it is very important to keep the number of points scarce so people take them seriously and don't simply abuse the hell out of their power.
I added an over/underrated option to the drop down list of flags- these options don't change the textual description of the comment, but they do change its value, although they are slightly more limited than the other ratings (You can't "Overrated" a comment down to -1). Hasn't been tested much yet. Trial by fire methinks :)
Misc I've pretty well finished rewriting the Moderator Guidelines at this point so I guess we can consider them out of beta. There are a few minor points that they don't make yet, as well as a few other points they ought to make, but they're pretty solid. Suggestions are welcome.
I put my plan file up on a web link. Since I took finger down (a loooong time ago) nobody really new what I was up to. I don't do a very good job of keeping it up to date.
Ah well, thats all for now. I still need to clean out the quickies bin and then I'm largely caught up... a few Slashboxes need work, a few minor features, a couple major features, and then I can let the dust settle again for a bit. I just got 3 DVDs of South Park and I think I've earned some R&R time. Plus, now that the wireless lan is up and running in the Geek Compound, I can keep an eye on things from my couch. Yum.
Translation for the numerologically and capitally impaired ;-)
/\/\\/(|-| 2 |3 |-|4(|
Headline: Fear the elite hacking of Southern Hackers!
We love to hear about web site updates because you losers want to add new features but will always forget to close secutrity holes. Thats ok, we'll find them for you. Heh.
Bit Thrasher, Southern Hackers.
Translation of word "elite", using the "new" Oxford mini-dictionary:
Elite: #1. Group regarded as superior and favoured. #2. Size of letters in typewriting.
(Must be number two, this guy writes with a lot of capitals...).
1 \/\/()/\/7 \/\/()rRY, 5145|-||)()7 r()> 7()()
(I won't worry, slashdot rocks to much to be hacked. More than once.)
It seems that moderators have become under active in raising good AC posts to 1... Perhaps they dont want to waste their votes to raise normal posts? Any ideas why?
On a somewhat related note, I'd like to suggest that logged in users inital score be set zero if their average score over the last week (or whatever time is easy for slashdot) is =.5, 1 if their avg score = [.5-2], or 2 if their avg score is above 2.
This way, logging is as use wont be adventagious unless you have a okay history. Habitually good posters will be rewarded with an extra high startup.
People less then N (say 5 per week) posts in the last averaging period should bs assumed to have an avg score of 0.
To tell ya the truth, I was happy before moderators' personal feelings/opinions about comments were added to the page. Feels a bit like the Sun to me (a local, tabliod, newspaper, where the editor replies to letters with caustic comments). Keeping it to a -1 to 5 numeric scale should be enough.
If a comment isn't obviously enough of a troll/flamebait/etc... that it needs an explanation of why it was demoted to -1, then perhaps it should stick with a 0 anyways...
jm2c.
Ok, just logged out.
The problem started (IMHO) when Rob added those words (you know, Informative, Interesting and so on).
Now the moderators just read a bit of the post and think "yes, kind of interesting", So it get's +1. Not even cheked what score it already had and if it even deserved a higher one. It was interesting so it got +1.
Same problem on the other site. Posts that are around 0 and 1 get moderated down to -1 for beeing a bit Offtopic or Redundant (Me Too!). -1 is certainly not the place where those posts should be but it happend a lot in the last few days.
moderator's guide: Average Comments might be slightly offtopic, but still might be worth reading. They might be redundant. They might be a 'Me Too' article. They might say something painfully obvious. They don't detract from the discussion, but they don't necessarily significantly add to it. They are the comments that require the most attention from the moderators, and they also represent the bulk of the comments. (Score: 0-1)
So my suggestion is:
Do away those "names" and give us back the good old -1;0;+1 method. It was a nice idea but it did not work.
Note: I did generalize a lot. If you are better as a moderator, we are happy to have you, but this is my view from the current state.
Your anonymous moderator
separate them from the points. I mean, there will always
be some posts that are good but unclassifyable.
--Anonymous Moderator
PS: Rob!! here are some features that would really help this site's
usability.
refactor Slashdot's source code.
Oh, you don't know the real guidelines?
Linux hype: 5, Interesting
*BSD bashing: 4, Interesting
Something positve about Linux: 3, Informative
Something negative about *BSD: 2, Informative
Something negative about Linux: -1, Troll
Something positive about *BSD: -1, Flamebait
Slashdot pages seem to load quickly and then freezes just before being displayed while adfu.blockstackers.com gets around to tossing an ad banner out. I see also that blockstackers.com is registered to Hemos (real name Jeffery Bates). Since /. and adfu are so closely tied, I see no reason for one server to be so much speedier than the other. A quick fix is to edit your local /etc/hosts file and make requests to adfu.blockstackers.com go to the firewall machine which refuses connections on nearly all ports. The banner load attempt quickly fails and /. works much faster.
Virid, come on, dude! .3 will be skipped, and Rob will release .4 w/ moderation as soon as he has a chance. Why don't you join the effort and not just complain that you can't 'tar -zxvf' it and have it work.
Rob has released upto pre-.3 plus patches on the slash-help list. the Slash code is in active development, with a news server interface in production, and many other interfaces being developed. I run a Slash based site, and many others do also. Don't be so negative until you know all the facts. Slash
The only thing I could recommend for Rob to do would be to add the slash-help link to the code page.
# Hack the planet, it's important.
Perhaps he was suggesting the possibility of slashdot contacting tigert about doing icons for them.
That's the network. During the morning I can easily get 13Mbps from ftp.cdrom.com (yes, 13Mbps, amost 1/3rd of a T3).
Actually, it's two FreeBSD boxes and two Linux servers. Back as you said, it's a gradual, one step at a time adjustment to see for ourselves how they each perform for our needs.
What I find ironic is that out of four machines (all VAResearch), two came with Linux metal plates on them and two didn't. The two with the Linux plates run FreeBSD, yet the two without metal plates run Linux. =) We'll have to pry em off and put them on the right boxes.
lol! Definitely a different Jesse.
The images are now coming off yoda, a nice rackmount box with dual 450mhz PIIIs, 512MB of RAM and 18GB of UW SCSI HD. It's running FreeBSD 3.2 (-STABLE)
Adfu was slow... yoda seems pretty fast. The add popped right up as if it was local.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Posted by Wookie Trainer:
The images were formally being retrived off the adfu server, flotsam.slashdot.org. They are now hosted off slashdot.org now, i guess.
This would allow a more complex filtering system (okay, maybe that's not a good thing in your opinion. I happen to like it.) where a more serious user would want to see only on-topic posts while some others (e.g. the people who read everything on /.) would be more interested in entertaining posts.
I generally don't bother blocking ads, but I set junkbuster to hit anything that blinks at me; it drives me nuts, and I've seen it bring this k6/200 to it's knees, doing nothing but blinking.
I'd edit the binary of netscape, but there's the ocasional animation I want to see.
On version 4, sort of. Previous versions made it an window-by-window option; 4 and later make it a global option, so all window must act the same. It's one of the reasons I stuck with 3.0 (but i can't on this new freebsd install, becasue archive.netscape.com is no longer open to anonymous access), while the other was the alt- to go back by that number of pages.
It was briefly (many years ago) a Sparcstation 1, but it's been a FreeBSD box for years. The machine itself is never "slow"; it saturates its 100Mbps link on a 24x7 basis.
I believe the FreeBSD box he was talking about is the one that's now dedicated to serving up images. Any Slashdot "speed increase" or stability improvements you see (aside from those dealing with the images themselves) can't possibly be attributed to this OS switch.
...or are you just being an AC troll?
..just fiddling, ignore me
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I am on Netscape v 4.51 and this function is still included. What version are you talking about?
Don't forget to stick those lovely "Powered by FreeBSD" stickers on the boxes after you get the penguins pried off. It's lovely to see the little smiling daemon keeping an eye on things... ;^)
No, you got it backwards! BSD is the *Lite* side of the Source! It says right there in the CVS logs...
The main free variants of BSD are FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. They have different focuses.
NetBSD aims to be a stable, portable research platform. It runs on more hardware than any of the others, but has the ugliest installation (at least on sparc, 1.4 requires you to computer the block offsets of the cylinders to partition a disk). However, it runs on virtually anything, and is quite stable.
OpenBSD forked from NetBSD some time ago. Their primary focus is security. It runs on a good portion of the hardware that NetBSD runs on, is probably a bit less stable, and has massive amounts of crypto included in the distribution by default.
FreeBSD is primarily on Intel, though there is also a port to the Alpha. It has the nicest (by far) userland and installation, and the largest collection of ports. Its primary goals are stability and performance, with a strong security element (though not nearly as paranoid as OpenBSD). I'd say its largest strengths are overall performance and especially network and general I/O performance, and its biggest weakness is that it only runs on x86 and Alpha hardware.
Right now my personal stuff runs FreeBSD, and a couple of the sparcs at work run NetBSD (mostly a Linux shop).
ERROR: Null
actually, I vote for Roxen Challenger.
---
---
we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.
It was said above: This happens to me too. Interestingly, a similar freeze effect happened to X Windows (NOT the whole OS) when I was using an early version of Daryll Strauss' X Server for Voodoo Banshee - he later fixed the bug, but windows (YES the whole OS) still crashes. And only on slashdot. I can't tell whether it's the windows banshee drivers suffering from the same bug, or whether it's something nastier (see below). Either way, improper HTML and/or buggy userland gfx should NEVER be able to bring the whole OS to a halt. Windows really is a crap system.
Interesting, because I have a Banshee too, using their reference drivers. Anyone else see this? I'm using the reference drivers from 3dfx with mine.
There's a little link that says code on the page somewhere. It leads to Slash 0.2 and 0.3-pre. Please report to the eyedoctor. Oh yeah. Please report to the Slash-help mailing list too for information.
I've brought this up on the slash-help mailing list, and I really hate to put more pressure on, but I can't possibly be the only one with this bug, can I?
With Slashdot in its normal (with all the tables and colors) display, both IE 4.01SP2 and Netscape 4.6 LOCK SOLID on me under Win98 when I scroll the pages. It doesn't happen under Netscape 4.6 on Linux, and it doesn't happen with "Slashdot Light" (great taste or less filling?). Basically, there's three constants here: my box (Gateway G6-400), Windows 98 (which I've reloaded 6 times and it still does it) and Slashdot (which is the only site this happens on). I'm seriously thinking the HTML making up Slashdot is seriously b0rked (run it through validator.w3.org and you'll see). I think a lot of the rendering problems people complain about would be solved if Slashdot put out correct or near-correct HTML 4. That way if there's problems, it's the fault of the browser and not Slashdot. Does anyone else agree with me?
I speak with some experience here, as I took Slash 0.2 and made the front page HTML 4.0 with exception to ampersands in URLs (then again, that's mostly out of my control.)
That would be interesting, sort of, but since we really can't guarantee that a moderator has more of a clue than anybody else (because anybody else can be a moderator, too), it will fail horribly.
BTW: which version is this? Shoudl I still download pre0.3 or wait until this is released?
Thanks,
With all those bugfixe, it should be time for a new release of Slash my dear Rob. I have a lot of idea for wich I could pilfer some of your code !
Thanx for your good work !
:wq
Sorry for the sillyness, playing to see if there is a bug in the system
It's not playing if you can call it "testing" without your nose growing.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Why not a moderator choice of "Wrong!"
I don't think it's a moderator's job to decide that sort of thing, no matter how well-informed the moderator may be. The idea is that you can't moderate and post in the same discussion; being able to 'disagree' with posts would go against the spirit of this.
Rebuttals to wrong posts should be in other posts, that explain why something is wrong. You can't just rubber-stamp something 'Wrong' without giving justification and being accountable (moderators are anonymous to ordinary Slashdot readers).
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Opera on the 16 meg machine will draw the dropdowns. But I left it open and tried to open AIM (hey, I got a friend I wanna talk to, ok?) and it complained of not enough memory again.
WTF?
Oh come on, that answer's too easy. It's not RAM, I've moderated on one of the two Windows boxes a few days ago.
I'm scanning the systems for viruses here son (gonna take lunch first, I think). The 24 megger on the LAN is going to reboot, not load anything, and try again.
I'm thinking the change in the code is doing something sloppy to IE specifically, since Opera does draw the box. Interestingly, the machine complained about memory there too.
Okay, started out by having IE on the 24 meg LAN machine draw up the article at top that had 22ish comments (TCO/NT/2000/yay Linux, etc).
It drew the pulldowns and I was able to open another session of IE fine. Now I'm trying yesterday's DSL article with 200+ comments...
Bingo, that's the problem. So it's not necessarily a problem with Slashdot as a whole, just heavy pages on Slashdot. I'm sure this won't prompt any sort of response (though tightening code is always a good thing and should always be done).
Yeehaw. Tech support is fun, you learn things like troubleshooting. Glad I narrowed it down. So, who knows, maybe it is memory, I'm sure it'll draw on the 350 at home without trying, but it won't load on the 166 here at work.
Like I always say, accessibility is the goal. Rob should want Slashdot to work on as many machines as possible. And no, it's not my job to convert my workplace's machine over to Linux.
How is my posting off-topic? The subject is Slashdot and tweaks made to it, my post is about Slashdot and (IMO) tweaks that should be made to it.
This sounds more like a feature than a bug. :)
If noticed that the moderation scheme didn't seem to work in the last few threads: Many excellent comments got stuck with score 1 and switching threshold form 1 to 2 cut me down from 80% to as low as 10% of the total no. of messages while formerly this got me the top 20 to 40% which was exactly what I would have prefered.
./ moderation to have worked better than ever before!
No I've learned that this in not a misfuction but actually a feature. Sorry, Rob, but I totally disagree with you on that one: Moderation should be about choice and the more mod-points are around, the finer grained the possible choices will be for the readers.
Why is it, that you got the impression that moderators haven't taken their job seriously during the last weeks? From a reader's perspective, I found
newer version of netscape force you to load images? starting when?
The main problem is not the machine, but the connection to CRL.
But I don't see any option marked 'leet :)
If it helps, I wanted to moderate that down, but I'm out of moderation points. :-( ;-)
Ethan (who deserves more points!
add adjectives to moderation is that this causes a lot
of confusion when an article is moderated more than once.
For example, suppose I moderate an article (+1, interesting )
then another moderator applies (+1, insightful ) , then another moderater
applies ( -1 , flamebait ) . The end result is an article that
has ( -1 , flamebait ). If these comments are
to be applied to moderation, they all should be shown.
eg +2 : +1 insightful,+1 interesting, -1 flamebait
FYI RE: OpenBSD
I've been an OpenBSD user for several years, and have not had any problem with stability (at all). The real issue with OpenBSD is that it is a fairly small and highly technical community, meaning it can (at times) be difficult to get support for new users. This is improving however.
The comments about OpenBSD being less stable than the others is not deserved. (I will, however, note that FreeBSD is the best performing, mainly due to it's x86 specificity).
Yes, I'm a bit curious as to the state of SMP on FreeBSD boxe(n/s). I'm somewhat aware/experienced with OpenBSD's non-SMP kernel and wondered to what level FreeBSD supports SMP.
--pygster
Oh no, not again! This is right up there with the `What's the difference between Red Hat, Debian and SUSI?' question.
I seem to recall the answer to this being in the BSD FAQ, which used to be at http://cynjut.neonramp.com/index.html, but that site seems to be down at the moment. I'm sure a web search on this topic would turn up something, though.
Here's my quick summary:
And if that's not enough, you can check out this link for another view of the differences.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
Funny... I did a good-old ftp ftp13.netscape.com MANY a time (as I had to re-install win98 many a time), and it never, ever failed. This was an early Win95 release, too...
I don't mean to be insulting, but getting paranoid in criticizing Microsoft can cause the other criticisms to lose credibility.
If you use FreeBSD, use it with softupdates (look in /sys/ufs/ffs) - it makes things a LOT faster !!!!
How about adding just a few more choices (like "idiotic moron" on the minus side or "hilarious" on the plus side") A sidesplitting comment isn't necessarily insightful or informative. Interesting, perhaps.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
That's what the moderation system is for. Comments from users with accounts come in at 1. ACs come in at 0. If you don't like ACs, browse above 0. Then the only ACs you read will be comments that were considered good enough by somebody to bump up. And stupid remarks by signed in users are moderated down so you won't have to read those either. If you read the moderation section rob wrote, he lists goals for the moderation system. Basically, for people like you have support for a high s/n ratio at the expense of volume. For others, have the possibility to read everything. The system now, I have to say, does this better than anything I have ever seen before, and I think it is awesome. It's probably the main reason I keep coming back here.
My remark was a nitpick. By putting up the short list of words moderators choose from, it's like he's saying, "if the comment doesn't exactly fit one of these descriptions, don't moderate it up or down." I submit that, for instance, if an article is side splittingly funny, and/or incredibly witty, that is an excellent reason to promote it. Somethimes it just needs to be kept a little lighter. Set your control to 4 or 5 and you'll probably get a bunch of long-winded essays (like this one if I don't shut up soon) because people seem to think that a good comment is a long comment, and if it is short or humorous it is bad. IT ISN'T BAD! The short and funny ones mixed in (not to be confused with the "me too!"'s and other valid comments that shouldn't be moderated up (and attempts at humor that fall short)) offer the reader a more varied view, keep it lively, and can promote just as much thought as the long ones.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Why not a moderator choice of "Wrong!" I've moderated a couple times and often see postings that are simply factually incorrect or uninformed. Sometimes, these even SEEM "informative" to moderators who may not know about the topic being discussed.
On a lighter note, why not a "Poster needs another beer" option for whiny posts.
Or a "moderator needs another beer"...
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
When I read Katz's articles, I often want to see the comments sorted by lowest score first, so I can read what all the Katz-flamers thought right out, and then get to a moderately well-thought-out discussion later (instead of watching a barely coherent discussion digress into "JonKatz sux && he's a luser && I'm l33t!!!!!"
Funny how that's the only sort of article I can conceive of needing this option for.
O well. Necessity is a mother.
There a whole bunch of icons at http://themes.org/resources/icons/. Maybe one of the artists would be willing to let you use one they created.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Talking to myself here =)
So a moderator is floating around, and nudging this comment around already...
Thanks, whoever you are!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
So it does work...
I set my threshold to hide comments below 2...
And the original post, along with it's +3 comment, appears.
However, the +3 comment appears *twice*, once under the reparented comment, and later below, as a free floating +3 comment...
I wonder what happens if someone(I guess me) replies to both? I guess they still count as one comment, even if it shows up twice...
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
It is a bug...
*All* +2 comments appear when threshold is set to +2... Reparenting just makes it appear twice, I guess.
Unless Slashdot wants this to happen?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Again, thanks to the moderators who made this happen.
*sob*
I love you!
Sorry for the sillyness, playing to see if there is a bug in the system =)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
So there is a reparent checkbox under preferences; with it enabled, I get to see two of every highly rated comment, as well as the reparented original post, despite it being below threshold.
With the checkbox disabled, the repeats disappeared, but the original comment/post remains visible...
I guess reparenting causes comments to 'belong' to the main thread if it is higher than the threshold, and if it's parent is below threshold.
What effect is causing lower than threshold posts to stay visible, when it owns a higher than threshold comment? Is this an intentional feature then?
I guess I got the term re-parenting mixed up.
High comments with low parents get 'reparented'
Low parents with high comments get bumped up to *always* be minimally the same level of visibility as the comments, I guess.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Sorry, this post appears twice... forgot to log in =)
I'm a bad test, as I can *always* see my own comments, no matter the threshold...
Though I do know reparenting works great, anyone want to change their threshold levels and respond?
Specifically, when I saw the page as an AC, slashdot didn't seem to know how to order/rank the messages, and I got a list of 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2... everything else was below threshold =)
I guess it's unimportant, really.
It seems as if, for the AC, that the original post doesn't stay visible, no matter how high the comment attached to it... Though the comments do become visible...
For me, when I'm logged on, my original posts are visible, but I suspect that's because my posts will *always* be visible to me...
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
If you turn off, under your preferences, re-parenting, then you won't get those dangly floating replies...
You still get the 'feature' that crappy posts are as visible as their highest reply.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
So I made a comment with the intention of getting it moved down, and a reply with the intention of it getting moved up, to see reparenting in action...
Hopefully this comment doesn't get moved down as well =)
Anyway, the reparenting works, but the reply appears twice now, as the child of the reparented comment, and as it's own free floating comment, though still below the reparented comment.
Is this intentional? A bug? Anyone else see it?
Set threshold to 2, and you should see it =)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
So this is a default +2 comment, if a moderator is willing to demonstrate this reparenting... make it a +3 comment, while making the parent 0 or -1, I guess?
I guess it's a waste of points though. =)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Depending on your version of IE5, turning off friendly error messages doesn't work. I grabbed it first from ZDNet because none of Microsoft's servers worked from Australia. The ZDNet version of IE5 always gives you the 'friendly' error messages that take the whole page, no matter what your setting.
Since then I've installed the one that came on the APCMag cover disk and no worries.
Win 95B on a P166 with 24 megs RAM
Win 95A on a P166 with 16 megs RAM
Well, first guess is your memory. Running Win95 with anything less than 32 megs of memory just isn't a good idea. That's old news. Beyond that, there could be misconfigurations all over the place, with Windows, with your connection, with the individual programs...
Why don't people CHECK before going hyper? Communicator 4.6, the most recent I know of, has the same "Automatically load images" option, as always, that _still_ can be disabled, in both the Linux and Winblows versions. Edit/Preferences/Advanced. Sheesh.
Hmm, I'm guessing that his main proof is the "sloooow" crappy ass, no good, bad performing ftp.cdrom.com ;)
Title says it all-- the new batch of changes are great, the page loads MUCH faster, even without "light" mode, but with "light" mode it's a real breeze (I use a graphical browser BTW). Only problem is that it's tough to see the seperation between comments/stories this way. Any chance of adding an (HR) tag between each comment and story?
Keep up the good work!
This picture illustrates most of the BSD family tree (except OpenBSD, which forked from NetBSD): Link.
Oh, there goes somone's anger for M$, venting off into the evening air. I would respect your answer, but the who reason that I put the question here was so that i could get other people's opinions. I do compare them myself, but I am only one person, and one person alone should not be so quick to draw conclusions.
I have used FreeBSD for a while now, and its stable. I like it. I have toyed with Linux. Its stable, I like it. However, I have yet to see a decent comparison of the two, and how they rack up, not just in networking, but an even comparison on all topics. Anyone have one? Or Rob, you wanna let us know how yoda is holding up? Opinions, anyone?
I am not sure, but I think Lucent technologies's proxy server may work with https and ftp when used through a browser . The for the main page is www.lpwa.com or http://lpwa.com:8000
--Tiburon
If a comment has been reparented, it would be really nice to have a button that would jump you to the original parent (even if it is beneath your threshold). It would make it much easier to figure out what's going on in high-volume threads at a 2+ threshold.
What might be fun is allowing the *poster* to select a category for a message. For example :
Clarification
Disagreement
Flame
Humour
etc
That would be a good way of preventing people from misreading the intent of a message, and could be used to provide filters for (say) humourless gits who don't want to see any facetious replies to their serious minded pontifications.
Given the number of flame wars that turn out to be misunderstandings I think this could really improve the S/N ratio.
Yes!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I too am behind a very strangely configured and strict firewall, and can now see the icons and other images! I just thought it was because our IM guys don't know what they're doing. They really don't know what they are doing, but at least I can now enjoy /. to it's full extent.
I think one thing to keep in mind is having a limited selection of catagories for replies. Having to many will make them impotent.
http://www.somethingpositive.net Funny + bitter = comedy gold
hmm, haven't tried viewing as AC, will try that next.
Yep, I'm seeing the reparented post twice. And if I reply to the reparented post, my below-threshold replay also shows.
there really should be a skr1pt k1ddy translation engine...didnt someone write a script back when rootshell got hax0red?
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
(sarcasm)
A really big improvement. I can see the uptime has now reached several years in just a few hours.
(/sarcasm)
He must be talking about 4.6. But it does have the option to turn off loading images.
Um, reparenting really stinks right now.
With user defaults, the sorting is out of order as mentioned. Also, if I want threaded comments, I want them threaded, period. I hate reading replies that are not below their parents. I would rather have to read a crappy post before a good reply than just a reply.
Maybe it's l33t?
BTW -- Does this stuff give anyone else a headache?
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Absolutely correct. I always use gender-unspecific
"it" when talking about their kind. With no significant brain activity, they do not deserve
"he" or "she" anyway.
Reading the comments can get quite confusing while using the reparenting mode. While in the higher thresholds, suddenly you get replies to posts you've never seen. Shouldn't it be possible to have a choice of viewing the comments below the reply (in flat mode), or at least indenting the replies, indicating that they are replies and not comments on their own?
I made the version number from memory and wasn't sure of it hence the (?). I stand corrected merely on the version number which is purely factual. I was merely stating that I'd like to see Rob put a newer version up. I stand by my previous comment. P.S. How would I know what SLASH was if I had no idea where slashdot.org/code.html was you need your logic corrected.
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F Scott Fitzgerald
David, I didn't mean it to sound as harsh as its aparently being inturpreted. I was just saying its been a long while since we've seen an official release and that I (and I'm sure many others) have been eagerly awaiting one. I apologize if it sounded negative when I more meant it as constructive critizism. I honestly have a great appreciation for Rob's work and I suppose it just seemed that it was something Rob was either avoiding or being a little to anal about.
Although, I still think Rob needs to update the SlashNET link ;).
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F Scott Fitzgerald
Rob, come on, dude! When are you gonna release a new version? I understand you not wanting to make tarballs of your code all the time but its been practically forever since you release SLASH v0.1(?). Can you please release more code?
Oh yeah, one more thing can you also please update the SlashNET link? For drdink's sake? Everyone come irc on irc.slashnet.org, and visit slashnet.org =).
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F Scott Fitzgerald
In a fit of agreement (with adamsc agreeing with me already;) ), I want to say thanks to adam for the criteria he suggests here - on-topic vs. useful as independent / separable rankings.
I think that would cover the most important bases well. Often, the threads get more and more interesting as they grow and iterate, I know -- sometimes it's wild what leaps the conversation can take as ideas are thrown together. But as they wander farther and farther from the original topic, the harder the original thread is to find.
And depending on your reading style / interest level, that could be annoying or it could be fun. Point is, choosing to read only ones that are relevant and worth reading (or at least not rated down on either of those counts) might cut 100 comments down to 50 or 60, which would mean more minutes to spend elsehow.
Just a thought,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Elflord points out that the comments that ordinary readers see do not reflect all of the moderation that's gone on.
I agree that this is misleading.
Maybe if each posting simply (sorry, may be the wrong word, I know) tallied the total it would be a more accurate picture.
e.g. "5 x insightful, 7 x interesting, 1 x flamebait" that would let me know that most moderators expressing a preference had strongly positive views of it.
This would work I think also with the adjective matrix idea that I suggested (the grandparent of this posting, I think) in that the adjectives could be tallied so preponderances and tendencies are evident.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I think the moderation scheme worked pretty well already, but these new tweaks are welcome.
...
..."
...)
...
... etc. Especially since a matrix of adjectives would let people sort based on how each of those adjectives matters to *them* instead of assigning a single digit + or - to broad categories. There's even some flamebait, or possibly off-topic material that I'd like to see, if it is Intriguing or Laugh-Till-Snot Funny.
Since I've only had moderator power once (and I'm trying to not let the sense of absolute power corrupt me absolutely), I am not an expert at the system really, but one thing I'd like to see in future updates to moderation would be a greater range of optional adjectival choices coupled with the filering scheme.
In other words, moderators could have the ability to choose not just "normal," "flamebait," "informative" and the handful of others, but instead could choose more descriptive ones (maybe on a sort of emotional / descriptive matrix with informative / uninformative as one axis and (what else) on the other. There are a lot of great adjective which fit certain types of posts very well
If there were choices like
- "vitriolic / negative / bilious" (just random mean-spitired spew)
- "contankerous" (good question or point, but with a bitter-old-man tone)
- indignant ("how can you say that's confusing, you cretin?! It's buried right there in plain sight 90 percent of the down the 10-page FAQ! Can't you even read?!)
- "intriguing" (someone suggests a wholly new way of looking at something that makes you realize "Hey, it's a face and a couple of cups!" or maybe just "Hey, that's a neat idea, we could do it X-way
- "honest question" (I have lots of dumb questions, and they're not trolls
A reader could go through a list of adjectives and select the type he'd like to read, and when logged in would remain blissfully ignorant of some hot flame wars or off-topic nonsense until he unchecked the boxes again
This is not terribly different from the way it is now, and I know the current system is already sort of complex, so please don't take this as criticism so much as suggestion. I just think a richer adjective selection would trim the fat from people's reading, let them get the posts they'd like in a much shorter time and avoid the frustration of reading yet another harshly-worded diatribe in response to yet-another
And it might improve the avg. Slashdotters vocabulary (already good! already good!) by forcing them to understand some obscure adjectives.
Thanks for the work, Rob and pals! Enjoy the Southpark shows!
timothy
p.s. Moderator ability is like jury duty, but less onerous.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
In Tools|Internet Options, go to the Advanced tab. From there, unclick 'Show friendly HTTP error messages' in the Browsing branch.
Funny how they call those new error messages 'friendly' when they're basically a huge pain in the ass.
Hands in my pocket
Like the_ed, I would be interested in some basic stats from the Yoda machine (and the rest of the machines on the slashdot network. Something that included the loadavg, uptime, MB sent/requested, etc...
Nothing particularly detailed, just the basics. I think it would be interesting/informative for everyone.
Just a thought, but has anyone considered getting rid of the AC posting privs?
I imagine it might cut down on the number of post which get the score of -1, or the label Troll, Flamebait, etc... Holding people responsible for their actions/words might actually go a long way to improve the level of discussion in the slashdot fourms.
Again, just a thought...
He didn't dump Linux, there's only one FreeBSD server. Dumping a mostly proven existing solution for something new because Jesse kept insisting it isn't a good idea anyway. I'm extremely pleased to see they're taking this one step at a time. If it works, they might switch. FreeBSD also might not be for them. Perhaps there will be feedback to the FreeBSD community from those who run Slashdot so that we can fix the code.
Where does this guy's proof come from, anyway?
Interesting, undoubtedly if I posted these exact words but switched FreeBSD and Linux around, I would undoubtedly recieve a (-1, Troll) rating, and deservedly so. Perhaps the moderation problems have nothing to do with points...
http://www.freebsd.org
I haven't been a moderator, so I don't know how it looks now, so this idea may already be in play, but....
Maybe the moderation input should be -1/0/+1, and then the moderator chooses a descriptor (Insightful etc) after a -1/+1 change.
-- $SIGNATURE
How about tigert making icons? He's made some beautiful ones for Gnome and I believe he made the freshmeat icons as well.
well done...i am beind a firewall at work and didnt see any icons...now i do..slashdot loads alot faster too...well done.
Sensei
Sensei
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