I guess what I'm expecting is creativity. Personally I think that a few boundaries forces me to be more creative. But clearly you are far more cynical, and therefore I'm guessing I won't be seeing an entry from you:)
I think that looks visually awkward- the grey box seems to simply "Stop". It looks aborted and wrong to me.
A better solution would be to put a curve on both the top and bottom, but then I have to ditch the green line. I like the green line. The design thoughts here was that the green line was a 'top' and the grey curve was a 'bottom' thus creating a unified visual element blah blah blah.
Submit modified CSS my way. We're open to all ideas.
We talked about that, but decided against it since it would have a fairly substantial increase in page size to include what could on some days be twice the story content.
maybe someday tho...
we have plans to use something similiar to this in articles to show other related articles... in that space, where we would probably be talking about only 3-4 maximum articles, this concept works really well.
That is a really fantastic idea. Here's the problem:
Say a story gets posted, and then it gets 100 comments, say that is the threshold for making it appear in full text mode. At this point it might be the 5th story down. Do I push the article to the top of the page (hearing 50 readers post DUPE as they cry in their soup!) or expand it and let it continue to slide down off the page... knowing that some users will miss it because they only read until they get to where they left off?
Really good idea. I'd like to figure out a way to use it somehow.
I think exactly the same thing- I wanted the curve on the right hand side, but it was decided that doing so would require an extra DIV in the CSS to make it work. So we went with this because it looks nice.
The case can be made that the 2 pixel green border at the top of the abbreviated article seperates it at least somewhat from the content above it.
Of course all of this is irrelevant since we hope to redesign the whole schebang soon too...
Re:Very nice - but has some rough edges currently
on
Slashdot Index Code Update
·
· Score: 5, Informative
We plan to fix up RSS to make it corrospond to your settings soon.
The design stuffs on the mysterious future stuff needs a little work yet too... we'll get there...
But there's a catch-22 here: Change the site to deal with a growing population and risk wrecking what it was that made it successful in the first place?
These days, many days, we have good ideas, and we have to decide "But is it right for Slashdot". Thats a complicated question. It's easy for an outsider to make snap yes/no decisions, but there is far more here than most of you realize. It's a tricky balancing act.
For me, maintaining the style and substance of Slashdot is the top concern. Things that change that are "Bad" and I avoid them. Thats not to say that we won't change things that need to be changed- surely hte moderation system is a great example of that. We need our mod system, but it needs to change with us. Other things- the green background? Joe Writes "...". Score:-1 to 5... what elements are what defines Slashdot?
Just because a hundred people post in the forums demanding spelling to be different in 2006 than it was in 1997 when there was only a hundred people READING, should I? My job is ultimately balancing these things. And I think on this matter anyway I've made my opinion quite clear.
It's not that I disrespect the readers who consider grammar to equal quality. It's not that I want to confuse readers who have english as a second language. It's because Slashdot as a style that I think it needs to maintain. This is just one of dozens of details that I think make the site what it is.
Well what they are paying for is the ability to see the stories before everyone else. They are also given a window of opportunity to report errors- this system actually works quite well I think.
We have plans to solicit more feedback on accepted articles (good, bad, typo, dupe etc).
It's not a bad idea to give some random percentage of users a view of the future stories too, just to increase the amount of feedback we get before the general population gets it. The problem is that when you give users functionality "Randomly", it gets confusing. Witness the moderation system for numerous examples of problems with this randomness. Users constantly don't know that they have points or don't know what to do when they get them. And once they don't have them, they get ANGRY if they don't get them again. It creates a whole new class of problems!
I think that in an article about Company Z Releasing FooBazz, the vast majority of readers is only interested in reading comments about Company Z and Foobaz. I think that there is a percentage of Slashdot Readers that are instead interested in why I chose to post about Company Z and not Company X, and to complaing about a missing apostrophe.
I, wearing my worker bee hat, am interested in reading about this meta discussion. But I think that most users would find it boring. A sidetrack. Worthless. And today, the system forces the meta discussion to be read in-line with the "Real" discussion. And I think to them, that is boring. And most days to me it is pretty boring too. I think Slashdot is about the joy of technology and how it impacts our lives. I don't think Slashdot is about Slashdot.
I don't think I said it's not valuable. At the very least, the simple fact that I'm writing this sentance right now should at least throw some credence behind that.
But in the grand scheme of things, I think differentiating between "Meta" and "Ontopic" discussion in every discussion would be of tremendous benefit to everyone.
I don't know what to tell you except that I don't expect poetry to be written with the same rules of grammar as a dictionary. Nor the wall street journal and the BBC. Nor the grafitti on a bathroom wall and the King James Bible. Nor a mailing list and my high school history text book.
I don't think it's anti-intellectual at all. I think it's about context, environment, voice, style blah bla. I'm balancing all of these things and making a call on what I think matters most.
Many people disagree. They think it makes us look childish and immature. Many others think it makes us look lazy or sloppy. I think it makes us simply look "Real". We are all entitled to our opinions. But ultimately I make the call on what I think is right for Slashdot.
And yes, we read every daddy pants email. I reply to some of them, but not all since mostly they are simple little grammar errors or flamebait. But I try. Of course we don't make every change/correction suggested.
Again to say such a thing is a total lie, as I read and react to email on a probably daily basis. Just because I chose to igore YOUR mail does not mean I ignore all of it. For that matter, I may simply not have got it. I have incredibly harsh junkmail settings. Or maybe you were just a dick in your email. I have a very short tolerance for rudeness in my inbox these days.
But statements like yours really infuriate me because I go to great lengths to reply to as much of my email as possible. As long as its not rude, I almost always write something in reply.
Truthfully I think spelling/grammar are part of the larger problem of 'meta' discussion on Slashdot. Every Slashdot Story will have some percentage of Meta discussion. Comments claiming that this particular post was a "Slashvertisement". Another saying that the submittor is a troll. Another saying that the article is a troll has a typo or the source site is unreliable.
Today the only option we have to deal with this is to moderate offtopic. A harsh punishment indeed.
Yes, we could fix grammar and that would cause a few people to stop posting a few comments about specific problem. But it doesn't solve the REAL problem, which is meta discussion. Giving users a place to discuss the meta, without distracting the bulk of readers who couldn't being to care about the typo/grammar/conspiracy theory about submittor.
Likewise, I need to be aware of meta discussion, especially during the early moments of a story where a glaring error might arise, even tho I would guess that the vast majority of readers consider them offtopic.
We plan to address this in the moderation system soon enough. But it's a non-trivial problem. In fact, it's sort of at the very core of our redesign plans. So please be patient.
Again, we do this. Almost every story is posted to Slashdot 30 minutes early to subscribers, during this time they can message us glaring flaws, and we can (And do!) fix them.
In most cases a thousand+ eyeballs vet a story before it hits the main page,
and in many cases the story that DOES finally hit the main page has had corrections made.
It's such a good idea, we've been doing it a loooong time now;) But it doesn't correct every typo or grammar error. It sands off blatant stuff. Catches a few dupes. But not all of them. And it never will.
We have a feedback mechanism in place that actually works quite well. It is currently visible only to subscribers. They correct a good number of things every day. And it works quite well.
Our plan is to expand this functionality in the future. You guys are going to be really pleased when we finally have time to complete all the crazy stuff we have planned. There will be a lot stronger feedback mechanism in place in the not so distant future.
I apologize if my meaning here is coming off that I think grammar doesn't matter. That isn't quite true- I think that it doesn't really matter that much ON SLASHDOT. Because we are an informal place. A glorified melting of a mailing list, a blog, some emails, a bulletin board etc. All stirred up together.
I expect grammar and spelling from the mainstream. I don't expect it from Joe Random in some mailing list. Slashdot exists somewhere between these places. I just choose to think it exists closer to that mailing list than some users do.
Everyone knows what CVS is... a pharmacy or a coder tool. Duh;)
Seriously this sort of discussion just strikes me as to meta to be interesting. Slashdot has always been a place to discuss things we think are interesting/fun/important. I don't find it interesting to discuss "Do people know what this particular acronym is". It's just boring. Now we could create places to have that discussion, but it would be uninteresting and people wouldn't use it. I know I would dread reading it!
I should try to resummarize this and include this at the top just to end this since I'm tired of repeating myself.
I think that slashdot is stylistically more akin to a mailing list or blog than to the NYT or WSJ. We are informal. Which is what I want Slashdot to be. Casual. To hire a copy editor and purge all these things from Slashdot changes the tone of the site. It shifts us to another place. Some people think that change is good. I think that change is bad. This is a place where a dozen voices are heard on one page. Some will make a typo. Others a grammar error.
To be sure, one of the jobs of a traditional editor is to give a publication a unified voice. My decision with Slashdot is that our "Voice" is a little more schizo than the mainstream media.
You are welcome to disagree, and your points are all valid: some people can't see meaning through grammar error. But me, I'm used to mailing lists, bulletin boards, quickly jotted emails, badly written comments in source code etc etc. This is a stylistic decision.
Yes I could hire a copy editor. Yes every typo and grammar error could be removed. And I think that the tone of the site would be different. I personally don't believe that particular change to be an improvement.
I definitely agree with you- our FAQ is seriously dated and needs a spitshine on many questions, as well as a purging of dated and irrelevant material. IT also needs to be updated to get many questions up to 2006.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess what I'm expecting is creativity. Personally I think that a few boundaries forces me to be more creative. But clearly you are far more cynical, and therefore I'm guessing I won't be seeing an entry from you :)
I'm not really planning on opening the box ;)
You could skin it now.
A better solution would be to put a curve on both the top and bottom, but then I have to ditch the green line. I like the green line. The design thoughts here was that the green line was a 'top' and the grey curve was a 'bottom' thus creating a unified visual element blah blah blah.
Submit modified CSS my way. We're open to all ideas.
If you choose to disable a section entirely from the index, we remove it from the menu, figuring you really just don't want that section at all.
maybe someday tho...
we have plans to use something similiar to this in articles to show other related articles... in that space, where we would probably be talking about only 3-4 maximum articles, this concept works really well.
Say a story gets posted, and then it gets 100 comments, say that is the threshold for making it appear in full text mode. At this point it might be the 5th story down. Do I push the article to the top of the page (hearing 50 readers post DUPE as they cry in their soup!) or expand it and let it continue to slide down off the page... knowing that some users will miss it because they only read until they get to where they left off?
Really good idea. I'd like to figure out a way to use it somehow.
The case can be made that the 2 pixel green border at the top of the abbreviated article seperates it at least somewhat from the content above it.
Of course all of this is irrelevant since we hope to redesign the whole schebang soon too...
We plan to fix up RSS to make it corrospond to your settings soon. The design stuffs on the mysterious future stuff needs a little work yet too... we'll get there...
Flagging meta discussion is a core part of our plan for the new moderation system.
These days, many days, we have good ideas, and we have to decide "But is it right for Slashdot". Thats a complicated question. It's easy for an outsider to make snap yes/no decisions, but there is far more here than most of you realize. It's a tricky balancing act.
For me, maintaining the style and substance of Slashdot is the top concern. Things that change that are "Bad" and I avoid them. Thats not to say that we won't change things that need to be changed- surely hte moderation system is a great example of that. We need our mod system, but it needs to change with us. Other things- the green background? Joe Writes "...". Score:-1 to 5... what elements are what defines Slashdot?
Just because a hundred people post in the forums demanding spelling to be different in 2006 than it was in 1997 when there was only a hundred people READING, should I? My job is ultimately balancing these things. And I think on this matter anyway I've made my opinion quite clear.
It's not that I disrespect the readers who consider grammar to equal quality. It's not that I want to confuse readers who have english as a second language. It's because Slashdot as a style that I think it needs to maintain. This is just one of dozens of details that I think make the site what it is.
We have plans to solicit more feedback on accepted articles (good, bad, typo, dupe etc).
It's not a bad idea to give some random percentage of users a view of the future stories too, just to increase the amount of feedback we get before the general population gets it. The problem is that when you give users functionality "Randomly", it gets confusing. Witness the moderation system for numerous examples of problems with this randomness. Users constantly don't know that they have points or don't know what to do when they get them. And once they don't have them, they get ANGRY if they don't get them again. It creates a whole new class of problems!
I, wearing my worker bee hat, am interested in reading about this meta discussion. But I think that most users would find it boring. A sidetrack. Worthless. And today, the system forces the meta discussion to be read in-line with the "Real" discussion. And I think to them, that is boring. And most days to me it is pretty boring too. I think Slashdot is about the joy of technology and how it impacts our lives. I don't think Slashdot is about Slashdot.
I don't think I said it's not valuable. At the very least, the simple fact that I'm writing this sentance right now should at least throw some credence behind that.
But in the grand scheme of things, I think differentiating between "Meta" and "Ontopic" discussion in every discussion would be of tremendous benefit to everyone.
I don't think it's anti-intellectual at all. I think it's about context, environment, voice, style blah bla. I'm balancing all of these things and making a call on what I think matters most.
Many people disagree. They think it makes us look childish and immature. Many others think it makes us look lazy or sloppy. I think it makes us simply look "Real". We are all entitled to our opinions. But ultimately I make the call on what I think is right for Slashdot.
And yes, we read every daddy pants email. I reply to some of them, but not all since mostly they are simple little grammar errors or flamebait. But I try. Of course we don't make every change/correction suggested.
But statements like yours really infuriate me because I go to great lengths to reply to as much of my email as possible. As long as its not rude, I almost always write something in reply.
Today the only option we have to deal with this is to moderate offtopic. A harsh punishment indeed.
Yes, we could fix grammar and that would cause a few people to stop posting a few comments about specific problem. But it doesn't solve the REAL problem, which is meta discussion. Giving users a place to discuss the meta, without distracting the bulk of readers who couldn't being to care about the typo/grammar/conspiracy theory about submittor.
Likewise, I need to be aware of meta discussion, especially during the early moments of a story where a glaring error might arise, even tho I would guess that the vast majority of readers consider them offtopic.
We plan to address this in the moderation system soon enough. But it's a non-trivial problem. In fact, it's sort of at the very core of our redesign plans. So please be patient.
We're hoping to get some new mojo soon tho.
In most cases a thousand+ eyeballs vet a story before it hits the main page, and in many cases the story that DOES finally hit the main page has had corrections made.
It's such a good idea, we've been doing it a loooong time now ;) But it doesn't correct every typo or grammar error. It sands off blatant stuff. Catches a few dupes. But not all of them. And it never will.
Our plan is to expand this functionality in the future. You guys are going to be really pleased when we finally have time to complete all the crazy stuff we have planned. There will be a lot stronger feedback mechanism in place in the not so distant future.
I expect grammar and spelling from the mainstream. I don't expect it from Joe Random in some mailing list. Slashdot exists somewhere between these places. I just choose to think it exists closer to that mailing list than some users do.
You just caught me on a good day I guess.
Seriously this sort of discussion just strikes me as to meta to be interesting. Slashdot has always been a place to discuss things we think are interesting/fun/important. I don't find it interesting to discuss "Do people know what this particular acronym is". It's just boring. Now we could create places to have that discussion, but it would be uninteresting and people wouldn't use it. I know I would dread reading it!
I think that slashdot is stylistically more akin to a mailing list or blog than to the NYT or WSJ. We are informal. Which is what I want Slashdot to be. Casual. To hire a copy editor and purge all these things from Slashdot changes the tone of the site. It shifts us to another place. Some people think that change is good. I think that change is bad. This is a place where a dozen voices are heard on one page. Some will make a typo. Others a grammar error.
To be sure, one of the jobs of a traditional editor is to give a publication a unified voice. My decision with Slashdot is that our "Voice" is a little more schizo than the mainstream media.
You are welcome to disagree, and your points are all valid: some people can't see meaning through grammar error. But me, I'm used to mailing lists, bulletin boards, quickly jotted emails, badly written comments in source code etc etc. This is a stylistic decision.
Yes I could hire a copy editor. Yes every typo and grammar error could be removed. And I think that the tone of the site would be different. I personally don't believe that particular change to be an improvement.
Still working on the time machine.
aren't i rocking more epics than you right now? you start paying MY bill- sure it's cloth but that adds up!