Secondly, as I said above, the dev VM is now publicly available. With this new development, anyone welcome to come by #dev, and join the dev team. Right now, very little exists as "hard documentation", so that's my next TODO. Until then, drop by chat to get access to knowledgeable gurus. During creation of the VM, I took detailed notes of how to go from nothing to working slashsite, which will form the basis of our INSTALL doc, and allow for those to build VMs from scratch. Due to stupidity, this initial VM requires a 64-bit capable processor; future VMs will be i386 compatible. The VM itself is running Ubuntu 12.04.4, and is a setup similar to the current production machines (sans varnish). If you want to dive in, fire up your BitTorrent app, and grab the torrent. Thanks to stderr for setting up the tracker and hosting the 980 MiB file. For those downloading the image, the SHA1 of the OVA file is bbafa7316bd28f23d0a5b386fca85429a2575db8. These files can be used with VirtualBox (use File -> Import Appliance to install it).
Finally, I wanted to close off with our stats from midnight last night to give you an idea of how much we've grown.
SoylentNews Stats for 2014-02-22
UIDs IPIDs Pages
total: - - 415733 (12139.6 MB)
static total: - - 29520
gstatic total: - - 40622
grand total: 2645 14672 427099 (12228.2 MB)
secure total: - - 0
posts: 160 194
comments: 1722 5791 125373 (3027.2 MB)
index: 2514 7861 69335
articles: 2168 9722 68243 (3762.6 MB)
search: 668 1823 5798 (109.2 MB)
journals: 969 1804 6442 (124.0 MB)
users: 1982 2975 24588 (423.7 MB)
rss: 167 562 11366 (88.6 MB)
other: 43 52 2086 (37.0 MB)
formkeys: 837 rows total
comments: 397 posted yesterday
submissions: 14 submissions
sub/comments: 57.1% of the submissions came from comment posters from this day
errors: 377 pages logged 5xx errors
not found: 49265 pages sent with status 404 (not found)
total hits: 1486073
------------------------
Yesterday | 2 days ago | 3 days ago
Avg Hits Per Article: 4874.5| 4316.4| 2908.0
Avg Comments Per Article: 21.9| 36.3| 52.9
Pages From RSS By Section
------------------------------------------------
Section Pages UIDS IPIDS
Main Page 5866 161 858
For Main Page
Pages IPs Bandwidth Users
total: 415733 14572 12139.6 MB 2645
index: 69335 7861 3182.0 MB 2514
comments: 125373 5791 3027.2 MB 1722
articles: 68243 9722 3762.6 MB 2168
search: 5798 1823 109.2 MB 668
rss: 11366 562 88.6 MB 167
other: 2086 52 37.0 MB 2645
-----------------------
Top stories viewed by article.pl:
2615 14/02/17/0148235 Dopefish Welcome to the World of Tomorr
1944 14/02/17/1745207 mattie_p What "News for Nerds" Sites Sh
1842 14/02/20/1936232 LaminatorX What Have We Created?
1840 14/02/19/1546248 mattie_p Interview: Ask SoylentNews Sta
1804 14/02/18/0724232 NCommander End of Day 1: Systems Update
1394 14/02/19/049242 LaminatorX Windows 8 Designer Explains Wh
1187 14/02/21/0451249 LaminatorX Being hacked while writing The
1184 14/02/20/2132253 mattie_p DuckDuckGo Is Google's Tiniest
1168 14/02/12/0715245 NCommander Welcome to SoylentNews!
1141 14/02/20/031231 Dopefish Linux Security, Red Hat and Sy
1118 14/02/19/0629205 Dopefish Android 4.4 Disables SD Card A
1069 14/02/18/1748232 mattie_p Technology Ruining Olympics
1055 14/02/20/2314225 mattie_p ISPs Throttling NetFlix Traffi
960 14/02/16/1331209 NCommander Massive Site Progress - Status
956 14/02/20/156202 LaminatorX One-Way Trip to Mars Prohibite
935 14/02/20/0335216 Dopefish Facebook to Buy WhatsApp for 1
903 14/02/20/0855246 Dopefish Modder Fixes What Bethesda Cou
889 14/02/19/0552253 mattie_p Where We Go From Here
888 14/02/16/2220240 NCommander Announcing UTF-8 Support on So
883 14/02/17/2244238 mattie_p W3C Considers DRM in HTML Stan
869 14/02/18/0336229 Dopefish Gabe Newell Responds to DNS Sn
855 14/02/18/1357210 LaminatorX India Goes to Mars for Less Th
835 14/02/17/0745210 Dopefish Environmentalists Concerned Ab
826 14/02/17/2321218 NCommander Quick Notes From Behind The Sc
811 14/02/19/0648238 Dopefish White House Responds to Net Ne
-----------------------
Top referers:
16666 http://li694-22.members.linode.com
375 http://feedly.com
306 http://www.netvibes.com
199 http://yro.slashdot.org
121 https://www.google.com
117 http://slashdot.org
90 http://m.slashdot.org
83 http://news.2bits.com
70 http://yro-beta.slashdot.org
62 http://beta.slashdot.org
62 http://inoreader.com
54 http://www.protopage.com
42 http://developers.slashdot.org
42 http://news.slashdot.org
39 http://jetsli.de
39 http://www.newsblur.com
38 http://science.slashdot.org
29 http://books.slashdot.org
29 http://www.google.com
28 http://books-beta.slashdot.org
-----------------------
Error count by Page:
Page Status Count
-----------------------
Hour Hits Hits/sec
00 16953 4.71 #########################
01 16479 4.58 #########################
02 17130 4.76 ##########################
03 15009 4.17 ######################
04 13192 3.66 ####################
05 14016 3.89 #####################
06 15453 4.29 #######################
07 15139 4.21 #######################
08 15126 4.20 ######################
09 14046 3.90 #####################
10 14202 3.94 #####################
11 14486 4.02 ######################
12 16128 4.48 ########################
13 17713 4.92 ##########################
14 19463 5.41 #############################
15 20168 5.60 ##############################
16 20806 5.78 ###############################
17 21094 5.86 ################################
18 26323 7.31 ########################################
19 20509 5.70 ###############################
20 21477 5.97 ################################
21 21782 6.05 #################################
22 20179 5.61 ##############################
23 20226 5.62 ##############################
-----------------------
SF.net group 4421:
Bugs: 790 open; 4607 total
Feature Requests: 160 open; 623 total
Patches: 10 open; 112 total Until the next time, this is NCommander, signing off ...
Related Stories
For purposes of breakage, anything that breaks the site layout/Reply To/Parent/Moderate buttons, or breaks any comments beyond itself is considered bad. We need to stop those. If you can break it (which shouldn't be hard), you earn a cookie, and I'll get you in the CREDITS file as something awesome.
For comments that are just plain unreadable, moderation will take care of them, and that isn't considered a bug. So go forth and BREAK my minions! ()}:o)↺
mattie_p writes that this was originally submitted by cmn32480 via the forums.
"According to Fox News, environmentalists are concerned about the impact of the world's largest solar plant, which is located in the Mojave Desert, on the local bird population. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (a solar thermal plant) covers nearly five square miles, has approximately 350,000 garage door sized computer controlled mirrors, and has temperatures near the boilers reaching 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Plant owners NRG Energy Inc., Google Inc., and BrightSource Energy say they have found dozens of dead birds in the complex in the last several months, some with burned or scorched feathers. The plant cost $2.2 Billion to construct, and had been held up in regulatory and wildlife relocation fighting for several years. It has officially been open since Thursday, February 13, 2014."
stderr writes: "I used to visit a certain website quite often, but if Dice Holdings decide to switch the interface to what is currently known as "Beta", I'll have to find another site for my "stuff that matters" fix. So, SoylentNews, what sites can you recommend for a "maybe-ex" /. user?"
An anonymous coward writes:
"In March, 2013 Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, proposed adopting DRM into the HTML standard, under the name Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). Writing in October 2013, he said that "none of us as users like certain forms of content protection such as DRM at all," but cites the argument that "if content protection of some kind has to be used for videos, it is better for it to be discussed in the open at W3C" as a reason for considering the inclusion of DRM in HTML.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has objected, saying in May of last year that the plan 'defines a new "black box" for the entertainment industry, fenced off from control by the browser and end-user'. Later, they pointed out that if DRM is OK for video content, that same principle would open the door to font, web applications, and other data being locked away from users.
public-restrictedmedia, the mailing list where the issue is being debated, has seen discussion about forking HTML and establishing a new standard outside of the W3C."
Hey, just a heads up on our Day 1 status. I've made some tweaks to the moderation script to handle the surge of users we've gotten, so modpoints should start flowing more easily. I'm making a few more tweaks right now that should get this working as expected (I am going to have to purge out the point in system to reset the script though, so if you have modpoints right now, don't be surprised if they suddenly vanish into the ether.
We know there have been some issues with both registration and submitting stories. On the registration front, some of our emails have been marked as spam, so if you're not getting them, check spam filters. In addition, for the last half an hour, we had a problem with a human confirmation check breaking, which just got cleared. We'll keep you apprised of any updates to this. As for story submissions, this looks like an artifact of a human confirmation script that got re-enabled when we went live. It should be working properly now for logged in users, as well as AC, though I'll be keeping an eye on it. I hope to have a more verbose tech write-up of the site sometime tonight.
Lagg writes:
"We're in a climate where it's easy to accuse a company of spying on you by various means with a distinct possibility that you could be right, but sometimes a reality check is needed. A Reddit user recently posted a thread accusing Valve of writing code for VAC that iterates your DNS cache and sends the hashed entries to their server. The proof provided of this was a prettied disassembly (that was not easily reproducible due to how VAC loads symbols) that showed only that VAC was indeed iterating the DNS cache, which any knowledgeable programmer understands is not exactly an uncommon thing to do, as no socket code was to be seen. Today, Gabe Newell responded to these allegations by confirming that no they do not in fact snoop your cache entries.
There are probably a few things to learn from this, including not trusting a screenshot of code that looks complex without actually understanding what it's doing. A lack of any level-headed investigation is a bad idea and it's important to handle these situations before they snowball into a mob (as Redditors are bound to do)."
So, as I write this, day one has officially come to an end. I'm still somewhat in shock over it. Last night when I was editing the database to change over hostnames and such, I was thinking, man, it would be great if we got 100 regular users by tomorrow. Turns out I was wrong. By a factor of ten. Holy cow, people. I'm still in a state of disbelief, partially due to the epic turnout, but also because our very modest server hardware hasn't soiled itself from the influx (the numbers are, well, "impressive" is a way to put it). Anyway, I wanted to do a bit of a writeup of where we stand now, what works, and what doesn't. Check it out (and some raw numbers) after the break! Warning, it is a bit lengthy.
Popeidol writes:
"In November, India took the next step in their space program by launching their Mangalyaan Mars orbiter. The orbiter won't arrive for a while yet, but they've managed to get some public attention for a different reason: the fact that the entire mission costs only 75 million dollars, substantially less than the budget for the hit movie 'Gravity.'
While the question of wages is bound to come up (it was only 15% of the budget of the project), I think we can all agree that bringing down the cost of interplanetary space travel to a level attainable by the ultra-rich is a good step forward."
CoolHand writes:
"Sci-Tech Today talks about the role of technology in the Olympics from a unique perspective:
Every advance in the ever-accelerating juggernaut of sports technology threatens to widen the divide between Olympic haves and have-nots. Well-sponsored teams and rich governments pay top-end scientists and engineers to shape their skis, perfect their skates, tighten their suits, measure their gravitational pull.
I'm no luddite, but this seems to make these sports more about who can afford the best tech, and less about the true spirit of the games: bringing the best athletes from all countries together to compete. How can it be about the athletes, when some of the best athletes may never win due to lack of funding/tech?"
"BGR reflects on recent comments by a Metro designer. 'Metro is a content consumption space,' Microsoft UX designer Jacob Miller explains, 'It is designed for casual users who only want to check Facebook, view some photos, and maybe post a selfie to Instagram. It's designed for your computer illiterate little sister, for grandpas who don't know how to use that computer dofangle thingy, and for mom who just wants to look up apple pie recipes. It's simple, clear, and does one thing (and only one thing) relatively easily. That is what Metro is. It is the antithesis of a power user.'"
mattie_p paraphrases Barrabas, who uttered these words (mostly):
To everyone who contributed to the initial roll out, thank you! It was an amazing effort, and we couldn't have done it without you.
I've set down some notes, with an overview of where I see the project heading in the next few weeks. As always, we can stop and discuss if the community feels we should be moving in a different direction.
We have had a wildly successful launch, and can now proceed at a slightly more leisurely pace, at least for the team that handles code development. I have always intended to do development the right way; with a strong foundation of tools and with leaders to oversee and coordinate the effort between individuals and other groups. As a result, this upcoming week I've told our system administrator team to take a break. They can certainly do minor bug fixes at a leisurely pace if they feel bored, but I want a team that is relaxed and refreshed.
Speaking of a team, we actually have at least five of them. There is a systems team, which are primarily concerned with systems and server issues. There is a development team, consisting of people who contribute code to the site. There is a content team, consisting of our editors, artists, and administrators of our wiki, forum, and IRC channels. A fourth group is style, representing those who help determine how the site is presented. Finally, we have our business team, which includes marketing, legal, finances, and other such issues.
This has been an exciting time. I understand there has been some concern about decisions made during first roll out. I promised that we would operate by community consensus, and I will abide by that. Look for opportunities to contribute to the future direction of SoylentNews over the upcoming days and weeks.
(To read the full story in his words, simply go to Barrabas's Journal Entry. (internal hyperlink))
"It used to be possible for Android apps to access any kind of storage on an android device through the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. Writing to the SD card is useful for many different kinds of apps, e.g. file managers or cloud storage synchronization. However, the latest version of Android will no longer allow apps to write anywhere on external storage media, instead apps will only be allowed to access app-specific folders on SD cards. Android Police has an excellent writeup of the changes and the implications for users."
[ED Note: This is bound to irritate power users that rely on their SD cards for additional device storage.]
Fluffeh writes:
"When the D.C. U.S. Court of Appeals struck down the FCC's Open Internet Rules, a White House Petition was put up to 'direct the FCC to classify ISPs as "common carriers"'. With over 100k signatures, there is now an official response.
Absent net neutrality, the Internet could turn into a high-priced private toll road that would be inaccessible to the next generation of visionaries. The resulting decline in the development of advanced online apps and services would dampen demand for broadband and ultimately discourage investment in broadband infrastructure. An open Internet removes barriers to investment worldwide.
The petition asked that the President direct the FCC to reclassify Internet service providers as "common carriers" which, if upheld, would give the FCC a distinct set of regulatory tools to promote net neutrality. The FCC is an independent agency. Chairman Wheeler has publicly pledged to use the full authority granted by Congress to maintain a robust, free and open Internet a principle that this White House vigorously supports."
By now, you have had the chance to read the updates of both NCommander and Barrabas. Nonetheless, you may still be wondering quite a few things about the site and its staff. Here is your chance to ask us anything. These questions can be general in nature, in which case the staff will select a spokesperson to answer it, or it may be specific to an individual. If the question is for an individual, please ensure you identify that person specifically enough.
We will select the best questions from the thread and provide answers to the community. These questions may not be the highest rated, although we will probably use those first.
In keeping with tradition, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
An anonymous coward writes "Former cypherpunk shares his conspiratorial view on Linux security:
Since then, more has happened to reveal the true story here, the depth of which surprised even me. The GTK development story and the systemd debate on Debian revealed much corporate pressure being brought to bear in Linux. [...] Some really startling facts about Red Hat came to light. For me the biggest was the fact that the US military is Red Hat's largest customer:
"When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source," General Justice continued. "It may come as a surprise to many of you, but the U.S. Army is 'the' single largest install base for Red Hat Linux. I'm their largest customer." (2008)
This is pretty much what I had figured. I'm not exactly new to this, and I figured that in some way the military-industrial/corporate/intelligence complex was in control of Red Hat and Linux. [...] But I didn't expect it to be stated so plainly. Any fool should realize that "biggest customer" doesn't mean tallest or widest, it means the most money. In other words, most of Red Hat's money comes from the military and, as a result, they have significant pull in its development. In that respect, the connection between the military and spying agencies, etc. should be obvious.
Next, the FOSDEM: NSA Operation ORCHESTRA Annual Status Report is well worth watching in its entirety (including the Q&A at the end). To me, this turned out to be a road-map detailing how Red Hat is operating on Linux!"
lubricus writes "Facebook announced plans to acquire WhatsApp for four billion cash, plus 12 billion in Facebook shares.
Additionally, WhatsApp employees and founders will receive three billion in restricted stock which will vest in four years. Facebook also agreed to a one billion dollar break up fee.
WhatsApp says they have message volume which approaches the global SMS volume, and hope to have one billion users. Even at those figures, Facebook is paying $16 per user.
I'm guessing WhatsApp will send Snapchat developers a cake."
combatserver writes:
"The folks over at Dark Side of Gaming are reporting an interesting development in the game modding community--a recently released modification for the blockbuster game from Bethesda, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PC version). A long-running issue with the game since release has been recurring CTDs (crashes to desktop) and infinite loading screens that often bring the game to a grinding halt after just a few minutes of play, especially when heavily modded. Bethesda has tried to resolve the issue with several patches, to no avail.
Sheson, a member of the Skyrim modding community, fixed Skyrim. According to many user reports--thousands, in fact--Sheson's relatively minor adjustment to memory allocation has solved the vast majority of stability issues. The improvements have increased game performance far beyond what anyone had expected. Players are now merging mods to get around the hard-coded cap of 256 mods that Skyrim can load at any given time, effectively packing more content into the game. The fix also allows for Skyrim to run on lower-end PCs, widening the market for a game that has already sold over 20 million copies.
Since Sheson's patch released, the fix has been repackaged by other community members as a mod for Skyrim to make it even more accessible. Skyrim players who use the script-extender SKSE will be pleased to hear that the patch will be included in the next build."
[ED Note: Bottom line -- Bethesda shouldn't be packaging poorly written and untested code for sale, then requiring gamers to pay to play as beta testers. Kudos to Sheson for his hard work and effort.]
girlwhowaspluggedout writes:
Hoping to be a pioneer on the Red Planet? First seek permission from your local cleric. Dubai's Khaleej Times reports that the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the UAE has ruled that promoting or being involved in a one-way trip to Mars is prohibited by Islam. The fatwa appears to be a response to Mars One's call for volunteers to make the pioneering trip to the red planet.
According to the General Authority, 'Such a one-way journey poses a real risk to life, and that can never be justified in Islam. There is a possibility that an individual who travels to planet Mars may not be able to remain alive there, and is more vulnerable to death.' Because of the inherent dangers of the trip, those who choose to go there are likely to die for no 'righteous reason,' thus incurring 'punishment similar to that of suicide in the Hereafter.'
The Khaleej Times further states that the General Authority fears that some of the volunteers, among whom are 500 Saudis and other Arabs, may be interested in traveling to Mars to escape punishment or to avoid standing before Allah for judgment. The General Authority decreed that 'this is an absolutely baseless and unacceptable belief because not even an atom falls outside the purview of Allah, the Creator of everything.'"
[ED Note: Likening the one-way-ticket to suicide does make some theological sense, but I am saddened that the Authority does not consider space exploration a "righteous reason" to risk one's life. In times past, many great explorers hailed from Muslim societies, and were part of what made them great.]
jcd writes:
"I'm rather excited to get going with Soylent and to watch it grow. Nay, help it grow. I have lurked in /. for more than a decade (note: I'm not the same username over there, I know, how sneaky), and always wished I could have been involved with the beginning. So this is a great opportunity, and I joined as soon as I saw what Soylent was doing. Not to mention the fact that I felt right at home with the old style. It's very comfortable.
So here's a question for everyone. Are we going to be the same as slashdot? A clone that focuses as entirely as possible on tech related news? Or will we branch out to other topics? I'm interested to see either way. I posted a comment to this effect in one of our two existing polls, and it may be a community-wide assumption, but I do think it merits a discussion."
Papas Fritas writes:
"There's an interesting read today by John Paul Titlow at FastCoLabs about DuckDuckGo, a search engine launched in 2008 that is now doing 4 million search queries per day and growing 200-500% annually. DuckDuckGo's secret weapon is hardcore privacy. When you do a search from DuckDuckGo's website or one of its mobile apps, it doesn't know who you are. There are no user accounts. Your IP address isn't logged by default. The site doesn't use search cookies to keep track of what you do over time or where else you go online.
'If you look at the logs of people's search sessions, they're the most personal thing on the Internet,' says founder Gabriel Weinberg. 'Unlike Facebook, where you choose what to post, with search you're typing in medical and financial problems and all sorts of other things. You're not thinking about the privacy implications of your search history.' DuckDuckGo's no-holds-barred approach to privacy gives the search engine a unique selling point as Google gobbles up more private user data. 'It was extreme at the time,' says Weinberg. 'And it still may be considered extreme by some people, but I think it's becoming less extreme nowadays. In the last year, it's become obvious why people don't want to be tracked.'"
dave562 writes: "There was an interesting article posted on Zero Hedge lately on the throttling of Netflix.
'For years, the Netflix streaming business has been growing like a parasite, happy to piggyback on established broadband infrastructures, where the broadband companies themselves have becomes competitors to Netflix for both distribution and content. Until now. Emboldened by the recent Net Neutrality ruling, which has put bandwidth hogs like Netflix which at last check was responsible for over 30% of all downstream US internet traffic, broadband providers are finally making their move, and in a preliminary salvo whose ultimate compromise will be NFLX paying lots of money, have started to throttle Netflix traffic. The WSJ reports (Paywall) that the war between the broadband-ers and the video streaming company has finally emerged from the "cold" phase and is fully hot.'"
fleg writes:
"The Guardian is reporting that while the author of The Snowden Files was writing it, paragraphs started self-deleting."
From the article:
By September the book was going well - 30,000 words done. A Christmas deadline loomed. I was writing a chapter on the NSA's close, and largely hidden, relationship with Silicon Valley. I wrote that Snowden's revelations had damaged US tech companies and their bottom line. Something odd happened. The paragraph I had just written began to self-delete. The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping.
[ED Note: Some of author's claims are of course unverifiable, but his insiders view of the early days of the story are interesting even so.]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by unitron on Monday February 24 2014, @04:12AM
...to every last sleep-deprived SOB involved (and to their families for putting up with them).
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @04:13AM
fix it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mattie_p on Monday February 24 2014, @04:22AM
I normally don't respond to this sort of thing, but I'm interested to hear why you think it is lame, and yet don't have the inclination to spell out what we can do to make it better. I mean, we have plenty [soylentnews.org] of [twitter.com] venues [soylentnews.org] for you to contribute [soylentnews.org] meaningfully [sylnt.us]. What do you think we need to be doing better?
I welcome constructive criticism at any time. Please feel free to do so. Thanks for reading! ~mattie_p
(Score: 5, Funny) by efitton on Monday February 24 2014, @04:48AM
I am sure it is just a dice employee.
(Score: 2, Informative) by tempest on Monday February 24 2014, @03:11PM
Since I can't seem to find a way to post at the top level, I guess I'll drop this here. Can we keep politics off this site? I know everyone just loves arguing in the usual political circle jerk that solves nothing, but I feel that's one of the big things that turned me off Slashdot. There are plenty of other sites for that crap.
(Score: 1) by Landon on Monday February 24 2014, @03:22PM
It's the "Reply" button next to the comment filter (unfortunately, it was like this in old Slashdot too, ugh)
(Score: 1) by tempest on Monday February 24 2014, @03:31PM
Ha, feel kinda dumb now. I swear I recall there being a text box underneath the article.
(Score: 2, Funny) by sglane on Monday February 24 2014, @07:20PM
You must be new here.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Kilo110 on Monday February 24 2014, @04:18AM
I'm very excited about this new site. Please keep up the good work. You will continue to have my support and activity!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by evilviper on Monday February 24 2014, @04:20AM
I know it's scheduled for next week, but I've gotta ask...
What's with this whole "You have 10 mod points (and 5 minutes to use them)" thing? Is it just me (perhaps a time-zone bug or similar) that's seeing the mod points available, and then gone by the next page load/refresh?
I know plenty of comments have been modded up, so *somebody* out there apparently has time enough to spend some of their mod points, but I sure don't.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 1) by yellowantphil on Monday February 24 2014, @04:27AM
The one time I got mod points, they stayed for at least 20 minutes after I saw that I had them, but I wasn't timing it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by stderr on Monday February 24 2014, @04:58AM
Mod points expires after 4 hours. That will most likely change later, when the site has some more users.
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 1) by buswolley on Monday February 24 2014, @05:09AM
Im not sure. I had modpoints, applied several, moved to another article and they disappeared. Sure I could have passed the 4 hour threshold, but..
subicular junctures
(Score: 3, Funny) by ls671 on Monday February 24 2014, @06:41AM
Soylent news is people. People come and go. Thus, modpoints come and go ;-)
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NCommander on Monday February 24 2014, @10:06AM
Modpoints are granted to any eligible user who is logged in and active within 5 minutes (the script runs every five minutes)
Still always moving
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Jerry Smith on Monday February 24 2014, @06:58AM
Yeah, at first I found it a tad annoying as well, but I managed to also deal them away in the first articles, so yes there is a short timespan but there's also a possibility to give them to a lot of articles. For now, that is. I expect that to change in the near future.
Articles will be archived, there will be more recent articles, the moderation process will have stabilised, and it's at least chugging along just fine now. It will be tweaked and tuned.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by inasity_rules on Monday February 24 2014, @08:15AM
They came a little often for me as well - I ended up not using them because I kind felt, initially at least commenting was more valuable to the site than moderating. Also, there was often not much to moderate up that hadn't already been moderated. Not that I comment much, but the frequency on slashdot was much better - it allowed me to contribute and moderate.
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by weeds on Monday February 24 2014, @03:06PM
I seem to be getting mod points and having time to use them. I am logged in all day and post a few times a week. If I was going to evaluate what was going on with mod points (I KNOW it's a short term solution) I would say there are too many. By the time I get to any comments to mod, there have been plenty of mod points already applied.
What's you have done here is fantastic!
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Monday February 24 2014, @04:24AM
I noticed that comments were down over the weekend and wondered if it is just because people aren't "working." Maybe when people go back to the office on Monday, comments will pick up. ;-)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by efitton on Monday February 24 2014, @04:35AM
I was also wondering if there might be a tail. People are still posting comments on stories a day or two old, extending the conversation. The lower comments counts on today's articles might still be headed up.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ls671 on Monday February 24 2014, @06:45AM
"People are still posting comments on stories a day or two old"
Yep definitely an interesting trend. Different than the ephemeral trend on our counterpart where you have to "post early".
I find it refreshing.
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TWiTfan on Monday February 24 2014, @01:45PM
Different than the ephemeral trend on our counterpart where you have to "post early".
If you think it's bad over there now, just wait until they make the beta mandatory, with a system that makes it almost impossible to follow conversations for more than a day.
If real life were like D&D, my Charisma score would be a negative number
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Techwolf on Monday February 24 2014, @03:05PM
I like this. I usually don't have time to sit on the site 24/7 and usually end up reading day old stories. I hope they can find more good aritcials and slow down the posting. I prefer them spread out the day and not all at once. Putting up 30-40 a day is way too much, by the time everyone had a chance to read it, it falls off the page.
(Score: 1) by Abominous Salad on Monday February 24 2014, @03:42PM
I never felt obliged to be in on the cool kid rush. Admittedly it was fairly rare to get a reply.
(Score: 1) by mindriot on Monday February 24 2014, @10:14PM
soylent_uid=$(echo $slash_uid|cut -c1,3,5)
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Monday February 24 2014, @05:09PM
For whatever reason, I wasn't seeing new stories on Sunday. I blame Comcast's local cache. They must not have had their technician in during the weekend to press the 'refresh internet cache' button.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 5, Interesting) by yellowantphil on Monday February 24 2014, @04:31AM
Adding up the top referrers, 40% of the hits are from Slashdot (ignoring linode.com). I guess that Dice hasn't decided to crack down on links to Soylent News, not that I particularly expected them to.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by linsane on Monday February 24 2014, @01:17PM
The acid test will surely be when news sources identify SN as a volume referrer - this would lend weight to ensuring that links in articles are through to original sources and specialist publications rather than the BBCs of this world. Just a thought
(Score: 1) by Reziac on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:32AM
I saw the link in someone's sig, and since Fuck Beta, here I am. Slashdotter since 1998 with over 15,000 comments... would be pleased to see even more longevity here.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by buswolley on Monday February 24 2014, @04:54AM
I just got a google+ notification that a Chris Carpenter ( https://plus.google.com/u/0/107363276778018161098/ posts [google.com] )has followed me. I do not know this individual, but when I checked ChrisCarpenter's public posts, he wrote a comment about soylentnews.org https://plus.google.com/107363276778018161098/post s/LoTfMuHbU6L [google.com]
I checked my settings here and it my email address isnt supposed to be being shared publicly. Therefore, I am wondering whether this individual is on the staff here?
Sincerely,
buswolley
subicular junctures
(Score: 1) by Landon on Monday February 24 2014, @05:09AM
I can't see your email publicly, but with a quick google, I do see a google+ account with the nickname buswolley .... is that you?
(Score: 1) by buswolley on Monday February 24 2014, @05:15AM
ha. I checked, but no that isnt my account. I have used buswolley for some things (yellow sub backwards).
subicular junctures
(Score: 1) by tibman on Monday February 24 2014, @05:31AM
Have you made and g+ posts about SN? If so, he may have found you that way.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by buswolley on Monday February 24 2014, @05:53AM
no. although thats not a bad idea.
I found out that this guy added me to a circle 2011 too, whomever this guy is that seems to be aware of soylent and me.
subicular junctures
(Score: 5, Interesting) by citizenr on Monday February 24 2014, @04:56AM
Where is the nice moderation threshold slider? /., they reload whole page.
There are drop down boxes, but they arent working for me as intended - I set mine to 0 and I still see plenty minimized 1-3 point posts.
Clicking on minimized posts isnt 'ajaxed' like on
(Score: 3, Informative) by buswolley on Monday February 24 2014, @05:11AM
Are you hitting 'change' ?
subicular junctures
(Score: 5, Informative) by drgibbon on Monday February 24 2014, @05:25AM
Yeah we've gone back in time a bit with slashcode. For now I've set my user prefs for viewing [soylentnews.org] to "Nested" and -1 threshold (in your case 0). I find this works pretty well.
Certified Soylent Fresh!
(Score: 5, Informative) by MaxiCat_42 on Monday February 24 2014, @05:28AM
Use the dropdowns and press change. Slide bars are so 2014.
Phil.
Lexicostatistical Glottochronology - you know it makes since.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 24 2014, @07:31AM
Arrrrg! we don't need no stinking sliders.
They would never work on any mobile device no matter how much you bitched to get them fixed on Slashdot.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Informative) by G-forze on Monday February 24 2014, @06:45AM
If I run into the term "SJW", I stop reading.
(Score: 1) by citizenr on Monday February 24 2014, @08:46AM
Bingo! /.
I think this is what the slider was setting on
thanks
(Score: 4, Funny) by regift_of_the_gods on Monday February 24 2014, @04:56AM
It's annoyingly hard to find lame things about your site to giggle about.
(Score: 5, Funny) by drgibbon on Monday February 24 2014, @05:31AM
Really? The interface is so dated, I think the devs should start work on something new, and more modern. They'll never get a big audience by clinging to this old stuff. Perhaps they could just roll it out incrementally as a beta.
Certified Soylent Fresh!
(Score: 3, Funny) by buswolley on Monday February 24 2014, @05:43AM
call it alpha
subicular junctures
(Score: 1) by captain normal on Monday February 24 2014, @06:46AM
Whoosh....
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 1) by drgibbon on Monday February 24 2014, @07:10AM
Beware the meta whoosh [slashdot.org].. ;P
Certified Soylent Fresh!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2014, @09:43AM
I think you misspelled "beta whoosh" :-Þ
(Score: 3, Informative) by ls671 on Monday February 24 2014, @06:49AM
Shut up! That's the way old farts like us like it ;-)
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 1) by Aighearach on Monday February 24 2014, @09:23PM
That is exactly the sort of site I want. Where today's beta is yesterdays production.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Whiteludafan on Monday February 24 2014, @05:01AM
It would be really nice to get a longer preview of the article in a RSS reader, rather than having to click over based on a title. Thanks for considering the feature.
(Score: 2, Informative) by zip on Monday February 24 2014, @05:27AM
This is a known issue, just wait for them to get to it. There are plenty of more important, show-stopping bugs right now.
That said, I really miss this "feature".
(Score: 0) by ls671 on Monday February 24 2014, @06:53AM
Yeah yeah, RSS reader...
Why don't you volunteer to make the changes?
Download the VM, make the changes and submit them.
RSS reader interface is not a priority for me if you asked.
The web interface should definitely have priority.
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @01:06PM
With an arrogant STFU attitude like that, maybe I should stay on Slashdot. Hmmm...
I thought this was a community that listened to its users rather than belittling them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @02:52PM
SN is currently at ~2000 registered users. So that one user is a mere 0.05% of the SN community, not counting the ACs (because there's no reliable counting of them anyway, and, like me, an AC might just be a non-logged in registered user). So don't equate that one user to the whole community.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Tuesday February 25 2014, @12:31PM
I fail to see any arrogance or belittling in that post. It merely stated that what you're asking for is in the pipe, and if you want to see it sooner, you can help make it happen. It's a quite common response in any F/OSS community.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @06:56PM
The arrogance is not in the content, but in the tone.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MaxHeadroom on Monday February 24 2014, @05:13AM
Just in case anyone was wondering the login to to VM is slash slash.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @05:22AM
Who are you guys? I mean, who/how are you funded, who call the shot, etc.?
(Score: 5, Informative) by mattie_p on Monday February 24 2014, @05:28AM
Right now we are funded due to the generosity of our founder, Barrabas. Look for more information in an upcoming interview with the staff. If you want to meet us, feel free to join us in IRC, at least one of the staff members is likely to be there at any given time.
Thanks for reading! ~mattie_p
(Score: 1) by nightsky30 on Monday February 24 2014, @12:49PM
Sign up, get involved, find out, and support!
(Score: 1) by dotdotdot on Monday February 24 2014, @03:01PM
We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting. By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more ....
But it's better than the old /. dictatorship ... a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes ....
(Score: 5, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Monday February 24 2014, @05:51AM
May I ask to give out a little less mod-points? It is having a chilling effect. The overzealous dumping of mod points really doesn't bode well for community building. We don't have that much karma to burn.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by buswolley on Monday February 24 2014, @06:01AM
This is true. Too many mod points. If you have mod points you dont post. Also, in these early stages at soylent, Being dumped on as off-topic when mentioning difficulty getting a post to submit to the main article kinda turned me off. Let's be more encouraging. There aren't many trolls here.
subicular junctures
(Score: 1) by ls671 on Monday February 24 2014, @06:59AM
Bitches, review all my ls671 posts on /. and on SN. Never ever even once I talked about modpoints.
Take this with a grain of salt please. I just had to say it.
Cheers,
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 1) by linsane on Monday February 24 2014, @07:24AM
I concur, feels a bit out of balance, although I'm aware that a review of moderation is in the pipeline.
(Score: 1) by Iskender on Monday February 24 2014, @03:28PM
Speaking of trolls, has anyone seen any good trolling here yet? The earlier site was good for comments, but it also had the most dedicated trolls around.
I'm not talking about someone just being crude, but rather those trolls which someone obviously put a lot of work into for no reason. Anyone seen any of that on this site yet? Links appreciated.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @07:13AM
Can you please fix the RSS feed to display the summary in the header?
I guess I should register while I can still get a 5 digit ID!
(Score: 1) by StarFall on Monday February 24 2014, @07:33AM
I registered on Sunday apparently still plenty of 4 digits to go around.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Jaruzel on Monday February 24 2014, @08:22AM
You guys must be new here. :)
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Covalent on Monday February 24 2014, @02:09PM
Seriously.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 1) by Blackmoore on Monday February 24 2014, @09:53PM
:P
really?
(Score: 2, Funny) by new here on Monday February 24 2014, @10:38PM
No, I am new here.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by donjan on Monday February 24 2014, @07:39AM
As mentioned on IRC several times last week, I'd be happy to see a date for name voting. For which sadly the general motivation seems to have gone, and everybody is getting accustomed to SoylentNews.
Personally I think there have been at least 10 clearly better names proposed on the wiki... but oh well. Perhaps a poll would be in order?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Luke on Monday February 24 2014, @10:16AM
I'll admit to being such a philistine that I needed to look up 'soylent' in order to understand the nicety of the site name.
Perhaps I'm the only person on earth that hasn't seen the movie but I agree - it's worth a poll at least.
(Score: 1) by bryan on Monday February 24 2014, @06:54PM
The movie sucked, read the book:
Make Room! Make Room! [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by e on Monday February 24 2014, @08:00AM
Currently it's not possible to log in on the HTTPS site (it posts to the HTTP version, it seems).
Also, I think you should consider making the site HTTPS-only. Given the state of the internet (and heck, Slashdot being named in the NSA revelations as specifically targeted) I believe making as many sites as possible HTTPS-only/HTTPS-default is great.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Admiral on Monday February 24 2014, @04:07PM
I agree. HTTPS accessibility would be great, and submit the site to HTTPS Everywhere so it can be included in the plugin.
I would not remove the non-HTTPS site, but maybe make it so anyone who logs in must use the HTTPS site to protect the login session information?
(Score: 1) by dargaud on Monday February 24 2014, @09:41AM
- search by title, summary, +5 posts, +4 posts... etc
- search in your own past posts
- search in the parents of the posts you replied to
- search in the replies to your posts
- search in teh tagged posts (see below)
That'd be very useful.
Something else I'd like to see, is simply the possibility to 'tag for later' posts. And have the list of tagged posts easily accessible from the user page. There are plenty of excellent posts I want to keep for later this way.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bolek_b on Monday February 24 2014, @12:01PM
Careful here! I have seen a couple of projects with features introduced as "Please remember what we have now was a temporary hack to make $SOME_ASPECT work". Those features often sooner or later became very popular, frequently used and long-lived parts of the system. After that, even mentioning that they are due to be removed/replaced/improved/redesigned caused uproar among users.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zim on Monday February 24 2014, @01:02PM
And when it was readable soylent went into that space. And slashdot.... Well.
During the week i wasn't there i realized i don't need that site anymore.
All the storys are dupes from somewhere else. Ars, reddit, etc...
And the comments have turned into something where funny gets to the top. And informative doesn't.
So i don't see any need to ever go back. (shrug) It was a good run.
Been reading it since it existed.
And honestly the most i remember about it is a bunch of stupid memes and dice.
It had something unique tho. Any anonymous person could post anything they wanted. AND it could end up the top rated comment spawning a thousand new discussions.
No other site had that. Until soylent.
Keep up the good work guys. We appreciate it.
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @01:23PM
Indeed, the lack of silly restrictions for anonymous postings is great.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @01:31PM
A kind request: Could you please write the dates in international form (YYYY-MM-DD)? That way there will never be a confusion about which is the month and which the day.
I think there was a general agreement that this site should be less America-centric than Slashdot.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Monday February 24 2014, @04:30PM
It's your choice on your user preferences page... oh, gee, no account? Sorry, AC, you won't even see this comment. Sucks to be you!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @05:44PM
As an American geek, I can so that the default should be ISO date. Just like the article about SI Units, ISO date is the "right" date format and should be the default.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2014, @09:53AM
So the preferences page can change the title of the story?
And yes, I do see the comment. I'm not aware that there's a feature to hide comments from ACs (and if there is, you've forgotten to use it :-Þ)
(BTW, I do have an account. But I'm not going to use it from the computer I'm currently sitting at, which is not my own.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2014, @09:59AM
Oh, and I forgot: The dates shown by the software when not logged in use the month name (February), not the month number (2 or 02), therefore there's also never a source of confusion.
(And before you nitpick: Yes, for 02/23 there's no confusion possible, but is 04/03 the fourth of March, or the third of April?)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Covalent on Monday February 24 2014, @02:19PM
...but I think we should be doing more to encourage people to join. To me, that means post about SN on FB, Twitter, G+ (so we can get both users...I kid, I kid...), and even an AC to the old /. from time to time. Tell your friends, neighbors, and fellow nerds. Get the words out. Soylent News is PEOPLE...and the more people, the better.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 1) by duvel on Monday February 24 2014, @02:28PM
In the statistics shown in the summary, the terms UID and IPID are used. What's the difference bewteen these two? I've done a google search, but apparently google doesn't know.
This Sig is under surveilance by the NSA
(Score: 1) by TK on Monday February 24 2014, @03:53PM
I understood the terms to mean user ID and unique IP, respectively. A metric to cover lurkers that don't have accounts/don't sign in, plus ACs, as well as users that log in from multiple computers.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 4, Funny) by JeanCroix on Monday February 24 2014, @02:38PM
Just make sure you shield that thermal exhaust port against proton torpedoes.
(Score: 1) by bryan on Monday February 24 2014, @06:59PM
Why that's no bigger than a womp rat!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @03:02PM
A tech site with no IPv6 address? C'mon, it's not that hard. Even facebook is on IPv6.
I do really like the new site though. Keep up the good work, it's much appreciated. I too have stopped visiting the site that we all used to go to for news.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Monday February 24 2014, @03:41PM
I will continue to visit this site as long as we keep the blog-wanking clickbait useless "articles" from Hugh Pickens and those like him out.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by L.M.T. Spoon on Monday February 24 2014, @03:52PM
I've found something a little odd: I often do not see new stories on the main page for quite a while. Right now, for instance, I don't see the "Computers Theorized to Gain Consciousness", "Stopping Smoking Improves Health", and "Early Universe as Chocolate Syrup" (some paraphrasing on my part). However, when I click on one of the tags (Science, for example) these stories and their associated comments are listed in search. Also, when I try loading the site on my phone I see them. On my computer I'm using Firefox.
Does anyone have an idea of what's going on?
(Score: 1) by sibiday fabis on Monday February 24 2014, @04:32PM
Same problem here.
(Score: 1) by Koen on Monday February 24 2014, @06:27PM
Same problem here, however if I log out I see all posts again. When I log in I see less posts (the most recent are missing).
I think it started after changing my time zone. I used the "Restore defaults" button on the homepage settings page, but that did not solve it.
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 1) by Admiral on Monday February 24 2014, @04:03PM
1. Why do you want to target a x86 CPU instead of x64 for the VM? I haven't run an x86 CPU in over a decade, and can't imagine why anyone targets them anymore, especially for server-side things. Just wondering.
2. I am excited for the new RSS feed mechanism that will provide full stories and hopefully also comments. It would be even better if the RSS mechanism would allow you to be "logged in" so that any randomly-assigned moderation rights you may have would be accessible via RSS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @04:28PM
Given that every x64 CPU also is an x86 CPU, I strongly doubt that. ;-)
Indeed, since those CPUs still start in x86 mode, I also strongly doubt that you've not run a CPU in x86 mode for over a decade. Unless your computers are all over a decade old and have never been rebooted during that time.
SCNR
(Score: 1) by Admiral on Monday February 24 2014, @04:44PM
Okay, get all nit-picky. LOL
Technically, the x86/x64 CPU starts in REAL mode, like an 8086, not even protected mode like x86. :)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by amigasource on Monday February 24 2014, @05:14PM
Tiny suggestion. Unless I'm doing something wrong the only thing missing from this site is seeing the first line of the comment on non-expanded posts. Currently all I see is the parent subject, the nickname, score, date & time. There has been countless number of times that seeing just the start of the comment caused me to expand to see the full posting and led me to even more insight to the topic. Hopefully this makes sense....
Please visit www.AmigaSource.com !!! Since 2001... Your BEST source for Amiga information. Again...
(Score: 1) by ArghBlarg on Monday February 24 2014, @05:57PM
I added Soylentnews.org's RSS feed to my newsreader, but it says no new posts, or has blank story summaries when I choose headlines. Not sure where to report this as a bug with the system but if anyone has better results with the RSS feeds please let me know, thanks.
(Score: 1) by Koen on Monday February 24 2014, @06:32PM
I look at the Soylent RSS feed on Pipedot [pipedot.org], works fine. Pipedot's RSS feed reader is fully customizable, example feed here [pipedot.org].
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 1) by ArghBlarg on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:34AM
OK, I'll try that I guess. But there must be something the site's doing that is not quite right -- netvibes.com and Google Play Newsstand on Android both don't like the feed.
(Score: 1) by e on Monday February 24 2014, @06:20PM
Additional request for the front-page layout: Please link the title of an article to the article page, so you don't have to find the "Read more". Also, right now where it says "8 comments", only the 8 is a link. Make "comments" part of that link as well.
(Score: 1) by t on Monday February 24 2014, @07:08PM
Hats off to the folks behind soylentnews -- really happy this is going on, and is off to such a strong start.
A breath of fresh air.
Here's hoping it really takes wing.
TD
(Score: 1) by Cabd on Monday February 24 2014, @09:25PM
I've been a long time lurker on /. itself. (I have like three shitty posts there totalish) but the smaller, less shill-tastic community here has inspired me to make an account and feel like I can participate. So like everyone else is saying. Thanks, and I'm glad to see you guys up and running smoothly.
(Score: 1) by Trip on Monday February 24 2014, @11:13PM
I know there was some discussion early on about changing the moderation system. Not sure if it's too late to make a suggestion, but one thing that's always bothered me about it is that there was no mod which is like "-1, Wrong". On the other site, I would often find posts about my particular field of expertise that are completely factually wrong, but there is no moderation to indicate this. It's not a troll, or flamebait, and it's not off-topic, which means the only real option for it is "overrated," which doesn't seem right. Usually, there is already a reply correcting the post which I would attempt to mod up while modding down the factually wrong parent (which itself got modded up by people who apparently believed the factually wrong post), but I would post instead if no previous correction existed. Food for thought.
Thanks for all the hard work; I'm loving it here so far.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:05AM
I've got a minor suggestion which I would consider quite useful: If posting to a story or replying to a post would undo a moderation, the mouseover colour of the corresponding reply button should be red with a tooltip "will undo moderation".
Also, the submit button in such a case should be red (unconditionally) with tooltip.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.