Assorted Changes to Slashdot

Ah yes the fun of debugging.. you might have noticed strange behavior today, but hopefully its all fixed now. Most of the changes were fixes of longstanding bugs, but I added one new feature that might matter to some of you: "Max Comment Size" is a limit for (surprise!) the size of comments. If a comment exceeds that size, it is truncated and you can click a link to read the rest. Sidesteps several of the more childish system abuses quite nicely. SQL optimizations and a new version of mysql will hopefully speed stuff up. I've also been slowly but surely fixing the bug where you get logged out when you visit 'Ask Slashdot' or the Book Reviews pages. Lots of other backend changes that won't matter much to anyone. Oh, and the Geeks in Space section demonstrates some of the new custom section code. I can redefine colors on a section-by-section basis. No big deal right now, but as we bring new sections online, it'll add some variety. CowboyNeal also reports that we now have Slashboxes for PDA Buzz, and Jack Stowage's Useful Links. Now methinks its time to microwave a pizza and have a nice glass of whiskey.

Comments

Re:Grrr

[Eccles]

My own wish would be to have a few permanent slashdot discussion areas. To name two of them, news, and Slashdot ideas/bugs. Maybe have the comments deleted after 3 days or something.

Slashdot could run a newserver, but Rob seems to be phobic about learning how to do it... sigh. Much faster loading of new messages, kill filters, decent conversations, etc. Maybe some day...

Slashboxes are Wacked

[BadlandZ]

I tried to change my slashboxes, and they wacked out and did doubles of a lot of them. So, I unselected all of them, and I am still getting doubles.

I think it's not removing the old ones when it updates the user preferances with the new ones... :-/

Here's an Idea

[Accipiter]

Your comment about microwave pizza made me think....

Consider the wonderful diversity of available slashboxes here on slashdot. I think it's time we get a Vending Machine slashbox. Have it made similar to the polls, but with pictures. Think about it, we'd never have to leave slashdot -- even to eat! With the click of a mouse, we can get....Pizza, for instance! (Of course, we'd obviously have to drag it to the Microwave slashbox, but that shouldn't be too hard.)

With the Snack-Slashbox, all we'd need is a Toilet slashbox, and a Girlfriend slashbox. Then we can live on slashdot! (We don't already?)

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Suggest NEW BOXES section

[SEWilco]

I'd like to suggest that the last couple of batches of Slashboxes be listed in a "New Boxes" or "New Options" section of the user configuration page. It's getting hard to find what has been added sot he configuration can be properly tuned.

25 comments in flat mode?!

[legoboy]

I know that this isn't one of the most recent changes, but as I saw it, the whole point of the flat mode for comments was so that you could read them offline. It started at 100 comments per page, which was great. It then moved down to 50. That was.. fine, but annoying.

Next up was 37, then 25. I don't know about other people, but my computer starts to freak out when I have more 15 Netscape windows open. (With 64 megs of ram, even).

Twenty five comments per page in flat mode is insane. It's hardly useful. When I browse something with 600 comments, I don't have the time to read all of them, and don't hit the server for a request at -1. I set threshold to 2, or even 3. And I still need 4 windows open? That's just silly.

Comment limits aside, all the changes are great. Someone asked about what abuse gives reason for the comment length thing. In some articles, people have posted full documents from people like ESR, footnotes intact. Takes about 10 pagedowns to get to the next comment.