SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Martyb here once again with an update on our progress with the site upgrade.
Our development team (paulej72, TheMightyBuzzard, and NCommander) have been hard at it trying to isolate and quash the bugs that have been reported. Having looked at some of the site source code (Perl) I can attest there are places where the comparison of Perl code to line noise is an apt description. Also, some of the code we inherited was written by, um, creative people who did not write the most readable code. Further the code documents what it does, but is just a wee bit short on the why. Translation: we have an amazing dev team here who have slogged many many hours trying to isolate and correct the issues that have arisen. If you've ever been bleary-eyed after a several-day coding sprint, you have an idea of things. I hereby express my personal thanks to the brain-numbing hard work these guys have put in for this site. And now on to where things stand.
We had an issue with getting a single comment to display correctly in "Flat" mode which appears to have been caused by issues with specifying the correct page it appeared in. Also, there was a rewrite of this code so things should be better, but watch out for regressions.
There are known issues with accessing the site via TOR most likely because we added a very restrictive Content Security Policy.
The new comment viewing modes "Threaded-TOS" and "Threaded-TNG" have been tweaked.
There is a strong voice to replicate the old "Threaded" behavior and it appears that may be feasible, now that we better understand how the community used it in the past. No promises, but it is being looked into.
We are close to making some changes for the defaults for Anonymous Cowards (non logged-in users), so if you have a preference, please speak up and make your voice known.
Oh, we have had reports of seemingly random 503 (Site Unavailable) errors. If you should experience one, please reply to this story with a description of what you were doing and a copy/paste of the entire error message. That will greatly help in our identifying, isolating, and hopefully fixing whatever gremlin is in the gears.
We have not forgotten about replacing chevrons with single/double plus/minus, but had some fires to put out that postponed action on these.
I expect I've left out a thing (or three) — please reply with a comment to (gently) remind us if you see a problem persisting, or if you find something new. it is most helpful to provide your user nickname, the date/time (and timezone), steps taken to cause the problem, and (ideally) suggestions on how you expected it to behave. Reports so far have for the most part been amazingly detailed and helpful — thanks!
Penultimately (I like that word!), I must express my sincere appreciation to the community who has been amazingly supportive and helpful in this transition. One benefit of the upgrade is you should see quicker page-load times on highly-commented stories. Our servers are experiencing a much lighter load to serve up those pages, too. Speaking of servers, I noticed that several of you have renewed your subscription to the site which is the primary way we can afford to keeps the lights on. Please accept my sincere and heart-felt thanks! The "Site News" slashbox has been updated to reflect our current situation.
Lastly, I must express my sincere gratitude to the community. I continue to be amazed at the breadth of knowledge that is freely shared here. Nary a day goes by that I don't learn something new. And many days when I am just blown away. Some long-held ideas have been challenged, and in some cases changed, thanks to what I've read here. Thank you!
Dev Note: Deployed a fix tonight for broken comment links that was due to yesterday's deploy. Alos deployed a partial fix for Flat comments and single comments. TMB will be working on getting it fixed up fully but I thought we needed what we had out now. -- paulej72
Continuation of:
Site Update 17_2
Comments Redux
Site Update: The Next Episode
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @04:58PM (3 children)
In normal viewing, don't put the AC fact in everyones face.
Down votes for trolls, sure. Other sins, sure.
But just wanting to say something without another permanent trail from the words to your job/address/bank account/online existence? No discrimination please.
Anonymous posters have a steeper hill to climb to be widely heard, for several reasons.
* some people look down on them, even to the point of discrimination. Fair enough, if someone does not want to see AC, good for them, let them have a way to avoid those they see as lesser. Personally, I like seeing the little sig that says someone dislikes AC's - helps to know.
* some people see others looking down on AC's, and due to human nature "pile on"/"go along with"/"silently do not object" and otherwise become themselves less of a good person. This change seeks to address these folks slide into evil.
* starting at 0 instead of 1 or whatever. Sure, reasons.
I suggest that AC's show up with fake, made-up, non-persistent and semi rarely used pseudonyms.
So if a post receives the pseudonym "bakedPotatoeWithCheese", that pseudonym goes back into the reusable pool but towards the end of the list.
So if someone looks at all posts from "bakedPotatoeWithCheese" over the years, they are spread out in time, not tied to any one (or set of) real identifications, and do in fact have a semi-hidden "this post was AC".
Yes, this is work. You have to eliminate user names that non-AC's choose. And prevent future user names from dipping into the poison AC pile.
And the poison AC pile needs to have (at first, human glance at least, but to a statistical analysis, too as it improves) a plausible use as a normal user name.
(I hope "bakedPotatoeWithCheese" is not taken).
Official slogan needed, here's a bad one (for Godwin) "I will not wear a pink triangle nor any star of david unless I put it on willing and not under duress".
PS - thanks for all the good work on the site.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @05:07PM
Personally, I enjoy and prefer posting as anonymous because of the disadvantages you pointed out. If my comment still ends up visible despite being anonymous, then it feels it really was worth saying (or writing) in that it got noticed and stood out as such. Plus, you know, laziness stops me registering too if I don't have to do it.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 01 2017, @06:45PM (1 child)
So if a post receives the pseudonym "bakedPotatoeWithCheese", that pseudonym goes back into the reusable pool but towards the end of the list.
Ahah! At least one AC unmasked!
Good to see you, Mr. Quayle, how is post-politics life treating you?
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday March 02 2017, @05:11PM
For that reason I figure somebody is going to figure out who I am at some point.
(I have idiosyncrasies in my typing as well.)