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Today we stand proud, fellow Soylentils. Two stories have been received to explain why:
Slashdot.org switches accounts to Classic-like interface
It now appears that Slashdot has now completely changed its interface to the new "beta" interface - which looks almost the same as the "old" interface. Users can no longer view the non-beta classic site, which is being reported by users all around the site.
The only official news on the matter is in the form of a journal entry.
Does this mean it's time to go after our original mission and let them know we're here?
"Beta" Delenda est!
Remember Slashdot? Remember Beta? This blog post might be tagged "sudden outbreak of common sense," if it wasn't well over a year too late:
...effective today, we've jettisoned the Slashdot Beta platform out the side portal. [...] After heavily experimenting on the Beta platform and splitting traffic between Classic and Beta, we've made some decisions about which platform changes ultimately make sense: starting today, we're unifying users back on our Classic platform.
A raft of minor changes came along with this announcement. Still no comment, though, on whether those users are a "community" or an "audience."
And frankly, that's why soylentnews is better.
(Score: 5, Funny) by LaminatorX on Friday February 27 2015, @01:24PM
I love how they saved screen space by having the "Reply Parent Share" links cover up the last line of a comment half the time. Also, still no Unicode. *head-desk*
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 27 2015, @01:38PM
We're opensource. You'd think they'd just steal the code to make it doable and safe and use it. They're not redistributing binaries, just running the code, so there'd be no licensing issues. Oh well, their bucket of stupid is our gain.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Friday February 27 2015, @01:47PM
So why on earth would they want to copy your code and provide a more convoluted UI, when they can use their own and provide a better experience?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Funny) by q.kontinuum on Friday February 27 2015, @01:50PM
+1 Dislike ;-)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 27 2015, @02:18PM
Having working unicode has nothing to do with the UI, which is what I was talking about.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TWX on Friday February 27 2015, @02:25PM
Soylent also doesn't require the use of javascript as far as I can tell.
I'm a new refugee from Slashdot. I tried to change my Slashdot sig to point people to here but I can't find the setting to change it anymore.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS...
and everywhere the language went, it was a total loss.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stormreaver on Friday February 27 2015, @02:39PM
I'm a new refugee from Slashdot.
So am I. I have been on Slashdot for about 18 years, and I just can't take the stupid Slashdot managerial decisions anymore. The last straw for me was wanting to post comments to two different stories, but Slashdot said I had to wait for an indeterminately long amount of time before I could post to the second story. My previous posting was three minutes prior to my second. That is just too stupid for words.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday February 27 2015, @03:26PM
First off, welcome to both of you! It was definitely a little bit quiet in the early days, but since then I've never looked back from making the move.
Secondly, although I'm not a dev, you'll notice that for most major decisions, we the users are the management. Check out this discussion [soylentnews.org] from just this last week for an example of that in use.
Thirdly, aren't you glad to have a nice low UID? In another 5-10 years, you'll be able to make the "You must be new here" jokes!
Fourthly, consider chipping in some cold hard cash, which is one of the bigger problems facing Soylent right now.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 27 2015, @04:14PM
The users are the management
It's a lofty and tricky goal, but we try.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @04:40PM
Speaking as a user, I know I'm very trying.
(English, she isn't my language's mother.)
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday February 27 2015, @06:11PM
Mods -- this AC needs s +5 funny.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @06:13PM
(Score: 5, Funny) by Leebert on Friday February 27 2015, @04:57PM
Sadly, in my case my /. UID [slashdot.org] is lower than my Soylent UID. :(
(Score: 1) by stormreaver on Friday February 27 2015, @06:23PM
Sadly, in my case my /. UID is lower than my Soylent UID. :(
I lurked on Slashdot for a long time before registering an account, and had to settle for a UID just under 60000. I didn't want to make the same mistake again.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Friday February 27 2015, @08:42PM
Yeah, the only reason I signed up for /. relatively early is because I wanted configurable slashboxes. Oddly enough, by my memory I waited quite a while to do it...
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:57AM
I got into ./ very late and thus had a high UID of about 1M. So when SN started, I jumped all over it and created my account quickly, and hit the jackpot! With the possible exception of 42, there is no geekier number then the hull number of the USS Enterprise.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 1) by Zanothis on Monday March 02 2015, @08:35PM
I regret to inform you that the USS Enterprise was NCC-1701. You may hand your geek card to the attendant on your way out.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Monday March 02 2015, @09:10PM
Clearly, Zanothis' post is the real tragedy in this chain.
How'd you like to be user number 667? or 31416? Major suckage. I must be a sucker for forums because I've spent the past year on Pipedot and Soylent, contributed financially to both, while mostly preferring the comp.misc group on Usenet and even occasionally dabbling on Slashdot (mostly for the purpose of posting things where my signature provides some visibility to soy, pipe, and comp.misc). Got to say, they've each got their advantages.
Soy's got the best community at this point, though it could still use better comments, and this whole "we are losing money while employing multiple devs and dozens of servers" thing worries me. But I'm currently rocking the VT100 interface, which is pure gloriousness, truly - I love it. Pipe's got a great interface done in PHP that renders well on tablets and smartphones in a way neither Slashdot nor, frankly, Soylent does. But it's a pretty thin community and it's often the last to get the news. That's really a shame. Comp.misc makes sense if you already knew and loved Usenet, and I'm not alone in noticing the world has moved on. But Usenet is awesome in a way that's hard to evoke - it predates HTTP and the WWW and a lot of other stuff, and being able to connect your RSS reader to a script that forwards the post to comp.misc is hella-convenient.
Point is just: I'm on all these sites because I benefit from each of them, and hopefully contribute to each of them, in different ways. It's all good, and I'm not praying for /. to burn to the ground any more than I'm hoping for the destruction of any other site. Just glad to be in places where nerds congregate. Let's keep this party rocking!
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 1) by Zanothis on Tuesday March 03 2015, @07:24PM
I guess I got hit by Poe's law. Should've used the sarcasm tags in suggesting the handing in of the geek card. I did realize after the fact that my post was going to come off as dickish, as a result I was expecting to take a hit to my karma. If el_oscuro feels particularly offended by my comment, I'm more than willing to provide an apology.
My point was one of fact checking. Without someone pointing out mistakes I'd still think that "a few" meant two because they rhyme like when I was 8. I'm wrong --frequently-- and I expect to be called on it. I made a correction and tried (and failed, apparently) to inject some humor into the lesson. We're posting on the internet; I had hoped we were grown up enough to be able to take some criticism.
(Score: 5, Funny) by new here on Friday February 27 2015, @05:34PM
No need to wait, I was new here all along.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @03:49PM
> That is just too stupid for words.
It is if the words are posted within three minutes of each other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @04:08PM
Three minutes? When I don't login, sometimes I'm forced to wait over an hour after posting after posting just a few comments.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @04:18PM
Three minutes? When I don't login, sometimes I'm forced to wait over an hour after posting after posting just a few comments.
As an anonymous poaster, I can tell you the wait time is THREE HOURS if you post something every day. So I don't even bother opening slashdot anymore. Soylent has much better content anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @10:47PM
Thanks!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by n1 on Friday February 27 2015, @02:59PM
Welcome to SoylentNews! I am not a dev so I may be wrong on this but...
The core reason we don't currently have the UI features as described in the comment you replied to: The dev team is doing everything possible to avoid requiring javascript to make the site function. As I understanding, they are working on other methods to enable the functionality the previous comment notes we are lacking.
I have no disagreements about the UI improvements we need to make, but implementation is perhaps taking a little longer than we'd all like for the above, ideological reason.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by githaron on Friday February 27 2015, @03:57PM
How would they enable those features without Javascript or reloading the page? The best they could hope to do is make some features optional for those that are willing to run Javascript.
(Score: 1) by n1 on Friday February 27 2015, @06:00PM
Paulej72, as lead dev for the site provided some more information on this matter here [soylentnews.org], also can be found a few comments below this one.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday February 28 2015, @03:49AM
*blink* I've never had JS active on slashdot, and it all works. Am I doing something wrong??
I mean, besides still reading slashdot...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:56AM
It *mostly* worked with classic, but under beta, if JS was disabled, you couldn't filtered by score, couldn't reply, and a lot of other crud just plain old broke. For the most part, with the exception of the admin screens, SN works fine if JS is disabled.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday February 28 2015, @02:35PM
Under beta and with JS off, I had to turn CSS off entirely (Prefbar has a setting for that) to be able to read the durn thing, and all I could say about it is... well, at least that degraded into something like Mosaic 0.99 would display. I wasn't real impressed with JS active, either.
[checks SN without CSS]
Hey! SN degrades super-gracefully. About all that really changes are fonts and centering. Good job!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday March 14 2015, @12:24AM
Bit late to the party, but it is possible to browse and post with Mosiac (esp if you have a version that understands PNG files). Can't log in since most versions of Mosiac don't understand cookies though ...
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday March 14 2015, @01:15AM
http://sillydog.org/narchive/full123.php [sillydog.org]
http://sillydog.org/narchive/fulldata.html#retro [sillydog.org]
Tho I can't for the life of me see a download link for it.
I've used Mosaic 0.9 myself, used to use it as my acid test for website readability. Another good one for testing is Netscape 3.04 -- if the page looks okay and doesn't trigger the old old (and still with us) "too many elements causes a runaway resource leak" bug, then you're golden.
And..... [goes off, tests SN in NS3.04 which I happen to have handy... was only about 3 years ago I stopped using it!] ... looks fine, lets me log in, but when I tried to bring up this page (cuz I thought I'd try replying in NS), I persistently got "Connection Refused", and after that SN wouldn't speak to NS at all. Maybe they don't like sharing initials. ;)
But I don't remember anything that old that grokked PNG files? NS3.04 certainly doesn't.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday March 14 2015, @06:34AM
VMS Mosiac and Mosiac-CK both can handle PNG files.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday March 14 2015, @02:01PM
Ah. They must be much newer models.
[goes off, looks 'em up]
MUCH newer! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_%28web_browser%29#End_of_Mosaic [wikipedia.org]
Found a copy here:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/openvms/freeware/mosaic/ [hp.com]
Thanks! I'd had no idea there was a more or less modern version.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Sunday March 15 2015, @09:00AM
Despite the name, VMS Mosiac should build on Linux. CK-MOsiac required hitting the makefile with a wrench to get it to build under Ubuntu, but otherwise was easy enough. PNGs load fine, though our site layout sans CSS is a bit awkward.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday March 15 2015, @01:46PM
Ah, no fun for me then... have yet to find a linux I can love for everyday use. :(
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Sunday March 15 2015, @10:49PM
My guess it would build on BSDs or under Cygwin. What OS do you use?
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday March 16 2015, @01:13AM
WinXP. I live in a cave. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday March 16 2015, @04:12AM
An unsupported cave :). It might still be possible to get it to build, Mosiac did build for Windows at one point. I remember using it.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday March 16 2015, @04:37AM
Support is overrated ;) Yeah, antique Mosaic was a Win3.1 app. I can't seem to find a copy online right now, but here's an emulator!
http://www.dejavu.org/1994win.htm [dejavu.org]
Heh, SN doesn't look bad at all. Pretty much like an average modern Mobile page, in fact.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @06:09PM
Which is a lot more work because now they must maintain two versions of the site, one with javascript and one without. Unless you're willing to pay and/or spend time writing and maintaining code ...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NCommander on Friday February 27 2015, @06:48PM
Graceful fallback. If you load SN without JS today, you'll notice the expand topic icons vanish. Is it extra work? Sure.
Do a significant portion of our users care about the site working without JS? Yup.
We may not be perfect, but we do try and listen to what people tell us.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday February 27 2015, @07:21PM
As long as each button has an ahref as well as an onclick (with return false) then there will always be a graceful fallback. "Reply to this" could open an inline reply without breaking non-JS users. Ditto for Moderate.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday February 27 2015, @10:52PM
Do a significant portion of our users care about the site working without JS? Yup.
I block all JS by default. Rare a site gets it enabled - usually for good reasons, like real-time product selection tables. I wouldn't mind permitting JS at SN, but there is no reason to do so. I wouldn't even ask you and other SN coders to implement those widgets because that's the function of the browser already.
Removal of the gray bar on the left would be handy, but that's just some HTML template. The space is reserved for some boxes... but they are rarely needed, and they are always on top of the page, invisible.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday February 28 2015, @03:53AM
Didn't realise the +/- stuff was there, which is testament to it working well enough without JS. I hadn't even checked SN with JS!! (Thanks for this!)
(Tho I have threshold set to 0 and it's never so wordy here that I care if it's all expanded.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @06:48PM
I don't have a link to the comment thread, but they mentioned some pretty good ideas to handle it without JS.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday February 27 2015, @06:50PM
Actually, I'm pretty sure you could accomplish all of that with CSS alone these days. As long as the user has a fairly modern browser.
It'd probably be some *horrifying* CSS, but it's possible...
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday February 28 2015, @04:09AM
Yeah, we could use a good CSS expert, know any?
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1) by Aichon on Friday February 27 2015, @04:18PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 27 2015, @04:25PM
Yup, that's the idea, we are actually working on it. We just have to prioritize due to our limited dev resources. This is (finally?) in our current dev plan though so stay tuned.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by Aichon on Friday February 27 2015, @04:32PM
(Score: 5, Informative) by paulej72 on Friday February 27 2015, @05:39PM
I would also like to point out than no one on our dev team seems to be enthusiastic about coding JS and the AJAX backend. The code we started with we missing a lot of the JS features that would have made doing in line commenting easy. As such we had to kill them off. The AJAX engine we inherited would probably need a major overhaul to even work properly with the site as we have changed many things on the back end.
We have this on the todo, but given that there are just three of us doing the coding in our spare time, it will not be soon. What we will probably be able to code faster is getting mods and comments to return you to the same place you were at when done. This will benefit non JS users so it seems like a good intermediate step in our progression.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday February 28 2015, @03:57AM
SN works well enough right now that I don't feel a huge loss. Take your time and get it right, I say.
But when you get there, can we please have sane page titles when I save a page, without having to copy/paste from the headline? That feature, I miss. Right now they all want to be "article.pl.htm", which shows an utter lack of imagination. :P~
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:59AM
This feature is incredibly irritating to code. It should enter the realm of *possible* once we finish migration to MP2 (scheduled for the next site update), but /code hooks directly into Apache to inject rewrite logic so you can't do it with just mod_rewrite rules, and we would still have to fix the underlying code to spit out the new link style. I might try to squeeze it into the next site update though.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday February 28 2015, @02:41PM
Oh. It's been a feature on /. for so long, I had no idea it was such a PITA to achieve. I'm assuming whatever /. did won't just work here, right?
But I will sure appreciate it when it happens! I realise this is just a "nuisance to user" deficiency, but it sure does cause a lot of "where'd I put that damn file?" and "shit! which one did I just overwrite??"
Thanks again for making SN a great place to hang out.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:22PM
It was coded after slashcode was closed up, else we would already have had it :(
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:59PM
Oh. I hadn't realised it got closed up. :( That must have been a long time ago!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Friday February 27 2015, @07:03PM
Is there something fundamentally wrong about a small amount of javascript in order to make the viewing experience better?
The ability to roll up comments or reply inline to a comment is a reasonably good use of javascript. Also to moderate while reading and not have to leave the page.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @07:15PM
> Is there something fundamentally wrong about a small amount of javascript in order to make the viewing experience better?
The problem with javascript is that it is all or nothing. If I tell noscript to allow javascript on a website I have to take all of the javascript, including anything malicious that might have made its way in there. Sure 99.999% of the time it is going to be A-OK, but that 0.001% can be catastrophic.
> The ability to roll up comments or reply inline to a comment is a reasonably good use of javascript
That is possible to do with CSS alone. It isn't even very hard, hiding/displaying div elements on mouse-click is pretty simple actually.
> Also to moderate while reading and not have to leave the page.
That one's harder since it requires server interaction to post the moderations. But having the moderate button return you to the same place in the page as when you submitted it is probably about 80% as good and that does not need javascript.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by TWX on Friday February 27 2015, @07:15PM
I've been using the Web almost since it debuted, back when NCSA Mosaic was first starting to feel pressure from this upstart called Netscape. Back then there was no vector to exploit the client web browser as the client web browser rendered static pages only. Since the debut of client-side scripting there has never been a secure web. It gets worked on and it gets improved on, but it's still not perfect, going on 20 years later.
I don't hate Javascript, but like all design methodology, when the most absolute simple method can provide good results then that may well be the best solution. I have a lot of respect for those that can get the job done with as few tools as possible and arguably only the right tools, compared to those that use everything under the Sun and end up with problems that reflect it. This is where loads of sites, including Slashdot, are now.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS...
and everywhere the language went, it was a total loss.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday February 28 2015, @03:31AM
Neither does Slashdot -- I've never had javascript active there (or here).
Tho I had to enable it on Pipedot.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:57AM
Assuming they haven't bastardized /code too much, you *should* be able to edit your sig and other stuff here: http://slashdot.org/my/info [slashdot.org]
Haven't tested it though.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by TWX on Monday March 02 2015, @03:33PM
Thanks! I've changed the sig, let's see how long it's left that way.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS...
and everywhere the language went, it was a total loss.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Friday February 27 2015, @02:41PM
I noticed the overlap as well since today (Firefox 35 on linux).
(Score: 1) by skater on Friday February 27 2015, @02:50PM
Oh, now you've done it. I like AJAX, too, when it works correctly, but lots of people don't for whatever reason.
The /. comment on the far left side of the page, though - give me a SMALL border at least; right now it looks (on Chrome) like I'm missing a level of comments that's to the left of my screen. I stopped reading because it was too distracting.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 27 2015, @02:58PM
And after Slashdot crammed Beta up your asses despite widespread protest and Timothy just told you all to suck it, you're still dribbling all over his Jew dick.
Perhaps Slashdot would have never come to that realization had people not become pissed off enough to start (inferior, in your opinion) alternatives and put their money where their mouths are?
I just browsed Slashdot and was met with this, [google.com] even with no script blocking. Not very technically superior, even Soylent News doesn't have bugs that look that shitty.
And that's not even reminding anybody of their extensive censorship mechanism and shit comment and story quality. Flagging comments? Permabans for people who don't toe the groupthink line?
Yeah, no. Fuck Slashdot.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by buswolley on Friday February 27 2015, @04:01PM
Dude
Layoff the racism
subicular junctures
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 27 2015, @04:09PM
The word "Jew" is not racism. The phrase, "You are a cracka-ass Wonderbread honkie" just might be, though.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @09:57PM
When you feel the need to include a person's race outside of a context in which it is required or helpful information, it is racist, you cock-munching son of a donkey.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 27 2015, @04:01PM
Placeholder for glorious gloat reply, the first (and likely the last) since I left Slashdot for Soylent News:
Link. [slashdot.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday February 27 2015, @07:20PM
I can't understand it - you were modded down to -1.
I thought it was quite restrained for you.... ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @05:26PM
You do realize that Einstein was Jewish, don't you?
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 27 2015, @05:29PM
So are Ron Jeremy and The Minion. Your point?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @03:12PM
The stuff you mentioned are all totally good ideas and are exactly the sort of thing that the devs should be focused on instead of tail-chasing changes to karma and moderation.
I think slashdot does use javascript for many of them, but I think a smart CSS developer could do much of it without javascript.
> The now use the entire width of my browser window for comments. Soylent has a grey bar down the left side under the navigation bars
> (which don't extend into the comments section, so it's pure wasted space).
FWIW, I killed that on both slash and soy long ago using the Stylish add-on [mozilla.org] with the following:
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("soylentnews.org") {
#links{display:none}
#contents{margin-left: 0}
}
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Common Joe on Friday February 27 2015, @03:46PM
Disagree.
Should the devs be looking at some of those improvements you're talking about? Sure. In a year, this site has come a very long way, but there are still improvements to be made. I'm not sure if you were here at the very beginning, but this place is heads and tails better than when we first launched. Quite frankly, I'm amazed by how far it's come in such a short amount of time.
As for the karma and moderation, I think they're on the right track with wanting to experiment and see how things go. And there's no reason why they can't work on both karma / moderation and the other stuff at the same time. Yes, a lot of effort has gone into karma and moderation, but I'm happy that they are working on it so that we don't our comments into slop like Slashdot encourages.
I don't know how others feel, but as a user, I kind of like the changes they recently made with the point system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @03:52PM
> but this place is heads and tails better than when we first launched
Right because that work was about site functionality, just like Raven was talking about. You are argureeing with me.
> As for the karma and moderation, I think they're on the right track with wanting to experiment and see how things go.
I don't. There has never been even a remotely substantiated case that there is a problem that needs fixing. Just a couple of loud-mouths and some agreeable responses because some people will always complain especially when complaining is zero-cost.
> And there's no reason why they can't work on both karma / moderation and the other stuff at the same time.
Dev resources are finite.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 27 2015, @04:09PM
I'm not a dev either, but I'll throw my opinion in the ring. I am pushing my devs to work on the new subscription options and reducing our server costs right now. Once that's taken care of, I would really like to see them spend some time on some of the basic nice-to-have commenting functionality that is being discussed above.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Saturday February 28 2015, @04:14PM
Glad to hear this. It smells suspiciously like long term thinking. You are working on reducing costs, keep things functional, and find ways to help our community raise more money to cover costs all at once? Excellent.
The way I read the last discussion on karma and moderation seemed to be mostly "leave it alone, it ain't really broken". Perhaps I am incorrect.
It behooves us to be thinking more along the lines of what you are saying above rather than tinkering.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday February 28 2015, @04:24PM
Although, I stay informed of their work as much as possible, I'm not on the dev team so I can't speak for them. Further, as I understand it, having (a) talented CSS and/or JS (and CSS?) person(s) familiar with perl that was willing to dive into SoylentCode would make this a much more attainable goal in the near future.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @03:16PM
I use a plugin to zoom the fonts, so I can see them. Soylent, and most other sites work find. Slashdot used to. Now the poll and other stuff on the right cover up the text of the summaries unless I reduce font size to something I cannot read. Completely unusable for me.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:04AM
Doesn't Ctrl-[Numeric]+ do that in your browser? Or is that something peculiar to Linux or whatever?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @03:46PM
To me, the top criteria for judging one of these sites are:
1. The quality and variety of forum discussion, including informative and funny posts
2. Regular turnover of stories
3. Having enough comments for most of the stories to make things interesting
4. Good choices of stories, mostly focused on tech/science (although occasional mainstream news items are OK), good summaries
The quality of UX is way down on the list, although if it's sufficiently annoying it could deter people from submitting and commenting.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday February 27 2015, @06:58PM
Slashdot has a huge margin on the right hand side for me, SN on the left hand side. I don't really care. I would not want the text to traverse the entire screen because side-scrolling, even if only with your eyes, is annoying. With a narrow enough column, there is some side to side eye movement, but not a ridiculous left to right scan like you'd see in an Adams Family portrait with living eyes.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday February 28 2015, @03:29AM
Whereas I preferred NOT having the comment be the full width of the browser window, because long lines are harder to read. That would be a nice style option, actually.
You make some good points about other stuff, tho. I'd add:
--Slashdot doesn't make me hunt for where I was on the page after I click Moderate
--When I save a Slashdot page, I don't have to rename it; it comes with a unique name from the headline. But SeaMonkey thinks SN's pages are all named "article.pl.htm".
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday February 28 2015, @12:56PM
Whereas I preferred NOT having the comment be the full width of the browser window, because long lines are harder to read. That would be a nice style option, actually.
I never understand this argument. Long lines are difficult to read, but that's an argument for not making your browser window the width of your screen if you have a large screen. If you have a browser window that is full of large borders around the text, then that's wasted screen real-estate that could have another window in it. When I'm on a mobile device, I don't have spare screen space and I want the text to cover the entire screen. When I'm on a machine with a bigger screen, I want to have multiple windows open and don't want a site claiming space and then not using it.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday February 28 2015, @02:52PM
The problem is, what's wide enough for one site is not wide enough for the next, and too wide for the next, so like a lot of people I keep my browser window width set at a compromise where all sites will display properly (since anymore a lot of 'em assume width and don't squeeze gracefully -- this is getting worse as screens get wider and sites try to use all of that), and where not too many sites are a PITA to read.
For long lines, I'd have to make my browser window half its current width, and that's fine IF that's the only tab open in that window. But I usually have a bunch of tabs open (sometimes in a couple windows if I need to sort 'em out, but it's so much nicer to just pick the visible tab I want rather than have to switch windows first) and SN is not the only site that's currently up in that window. I'd have to resize the window every time I changed tabs, and that's a serious PITA (especially as one who does RTFAs and links in comments). I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking this.
Okay, so having tabs in the browser rather than having to alt-tab among windows has kinda spoiled us... :)
'Course, ability to set individual tab display widths (or even for two tabs to share the screen) might not be a bad browser feature, either. Especially if remembered per site.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arashi no garou on Friday February 27 2015, @02:42PM
I still can't figure out why their page automatically sends me to the bottom as soon as I load it, or click any internal link. It started doing that about a year ago, and it's one of the many reasons I rarely go there. Yes, I can just hit the "Home" key and shoot back to the top, but I shouldn't have to. And it's not my browser; it does it to me on all OSes and Chrome/Chromium/Firefox/Iceweasel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @03:55PM
It does this to me as well, sometimes when loading the comments.
(Score: 1) by Cenan on Friday February 27 2015, @05:17PM
I think there is a bug in the /. view settings that reads an outdated cookie or something. I see the same behavior as you do, but it varies how far, or if it even, sends me down the comment list. Ctrl+Home goes to the top of the page by the way, at least on Windows.
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Friday February 27 2015, @06:39PM
Just the "Home" key does it for me, always has. I figured it's a leftover cookie but even if I open a clean browsing session it does it, on any version of Firefox or Chrome. IE doesn't have the bug (for me), and text browsers on *nix are fine.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Cenan on Friday February 27 2015, @06:42PM
Jesus F Christ. I've been using Ctrl+Home for years without knowing that it was just the home key doing the magic...
I guess the bug has to be some sort of server side user setting then.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Friday February 27 2015, @06:13PM
The Slash Classic they use still has really forked-up CSS.
Replay, Preview and Submit links, etc all crowd the preceding text with no interline spacing on Firefox for OSX and Linux.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by wonkey_monkey on Friday February 27 2015, @01:33PM
As always, Slashdot's preferred method of beta testing is to roll it all out and look (or not) at the complaints that come in.
They can't even get a consistent page background colour between browsers (white on Firefox, grey on IE).
The top level "Post" button, along with several others, are (rather comically) rendered without a visible button until hovering, in green text on a slightly different green background. Seems they've been reading from the Hitchhiker's Guide To UI Design.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 5, Funny) by pkrasimirov on Friday February 27 2015, @01:39PM
But why?! I loved Beta!
/ducks
(Score: 5, Interesting) by SrLnclt on Friday February 27 2015, @03:10PM
Can we get a beta theme ready in time for April 1?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 27 2015, @04:40PM
Thought about it but there's really just too much work to do to get one css'd up. Welcome to it if you like. Only takes one file worth of css, we'll get mrcoolbp to do up the logo/favicon even. See here for an example [github.com] if anyone wants to get started on one.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday February 28 2015, @03:59AM
Oh yeah, I'm on it.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday February 27 2015, @05:04PM
lol, something like this captures some of the horror of it:
.generaltitle h3,
.commentTop .title h4
{
font-size: 54px;
}
.commentBody p
{
line-height: 52px;
}
.commentBody
{
padding-top: 170px;
padding-bottom: 170px;
}
.commentTop .title
{
background-color: gray;
}
Don't forget to sprinkle liberally with HUGE images and videos wherever possible as well.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Friday February 27 2015, @09:32PM
54, 170... You mixed up imperial and metric units, didn't you?
(Score: 5, Funny) by datapharmer on Friday February 27 2015, @05:31PM
...and can we call it "systemd"?
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday February 27 2015, @06:51PM
I'll buy a year subscription if we get either a Slashdot theme or an "OMG!!! Ponies!!!" [desiringmachine.org] theme on April 1st. Who else is in?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Friday February 27 2015, @06:57PM
We already have a ponies theme. Set it here: http://soylentnews.org/my/homepage [soylentnews.org]
For obvious reasons, not the default.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by bequalsa on Saturday February 28 2015, @03:39AM
Sometimes I feel like I was the only person in the world who liked Microsoft Bob.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday February 27 2015, @01:47PM
Luckily I phrased the phrased headline as a question [wikipedia.org], so the answer is already clear :-) I like the cosy community flair here and hardly looked at slashdot anymore. I just hope we get our funding problem solved.
Talking about that:
I sent an email today to suggestions@soylentNews.org. How would you feel to monetize the Soylentnews logo? Point is, since Soylentnews cannot accept donations, and buying swag [zazzle.com] presumably will not be very efficient because of shipping expenses (especially overseas), production, presumably a share for zazzle etc., licensing the logo to users to create their own swag-items for personal use looks like a great way to me. Everyone could purchase as many licenses as he wants, thus paying money directly to Soylentnews without any deductions.
I'm not sure about the current copyright of the logo. If it is already free, maybe we could create a derivative with a small yellow star like the subscribers item (or any other tiny modification). If the plain logo is not free, we could have an additional, slightly modified one, maybe with a small
"Freeloader""Community Edition" text written in one corner. Next step would be to start a competition for the most creative self-made swag item :-)Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday February 27 2015, @02:00PM
Looks like my Headline was cut short...It was supposed to read "So by today, Soylentnews officially outlived it's purpose?"
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 27 2015, @04:12PM
I responded to your email (thank you for taking the time to write it). If people just want to contribute more money, buying more subscriptions (be the first to subscribe until 2048!), or buying gifts for others is already easy and an in-place option. Some new subscription options will offer even more flexibility to this end (coming soon).
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @04:27PM
(be the first to subscribe until 2048!)
Or at least 2038, and our devs are getting that limitation removed...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Friday February 27 2015, @05:52PM
Thanks, but I'm not sure I want to pay $20 on top of my current subscription. Now, $5 I might have to spare. It's not even that the $20 would actually hurt me, it's a pure psychological thing. $5 is about a regular lunch or a magazine for me, which comes under "small change". $20 is a purchase. I was just thinking, maybe we have others who feel the same way. How many subscribers do we currently have? ~300-400? How many Users do we have? ~7000?
If each user could spend $1, soylentnews would be funded for a year. If one out of three gives $1 on top of current subscribers, that would also be enough.
Note: I am willing to spend a little bit more; I already did. But giving some small money would be something for soylentnews without any expectation in return. Extending the subscription for another year would mean that soylentnews uses the money now they got to pay the infrastructure next year.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 27 2015, @09:44PM
That's part of what paulej72 is working on right now; monthly, semiannual, and annual price points that act as a minimum price what you're free to haggle upwards from if you feel the desire to contribute more. Also recurring billing vs our current one shot billing, you'll have the choice. It would probably be done already but paypal's test server has been giving him fits by sending back wrongly formed data.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 27 2015, @10:57PM
Oh, I understand. The changes I mentioned will open up monthly 5$, and other options. I'm not sure how much work would go into the licensing idea but we could look into it if others agree.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday February 27 2015, @05:09PM
I"m glad they edited the "it's" typo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @02:06PM
Hello new master, same as old master. Oh how the o mighty dollar controls. Guess if I'm gonna have to deal with this I might as well go back to slashdot.
It's been a wild ride, we fought a good fight, mayhaps they will respect the "users" a little more.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Friday February 27 2015, @02:19PM
You think Slashdot will change its ways? Well, have fun there. Here it's a community.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 27 2015, @06:23PM
I've been an activist in various ways my entire adult life. One of the biggest mistakes you can make when you're starting something is to ask for no money. I tried again and again to do just that, and I kept slamming into the same brick wall, a very sad, very discouraging, brick wall in human nature: people in today's world just don't take you seriously unless you ask for money. A lack of money also materially hampers you in the execution of your goal. You can of course do a great deal with a little bit of money, but it is hard to do anything with nothing.
I've also learned the value of expressing appreciation for the hard work of another who has done so voluntarily, because even more precious than money is someone's time. Volunteering your time to help other people, especially people you don't know and may never meet, is a sacrifice of your time and an opportunity cost to you, and getting flamed for it, particularly by people who have not helped in any respect or done any work themselves, cuts you to the quick. Constructive criticism is always useful, but if you have some to give you really ought to deliver it as gently as you can, and think three times about how the person receiving it will feel before you hit "Send."
That latter point, appreciation of volunteer effort, is rather difficult to impart because the crony capitalist system we are suffering under has quite warped our sense of morality and proportion and expectations in the opening years of the 21st century. The sense of gratitude for the efforts of others has vanished. You should embrace it and practice it nevertheless. Even if it cannot be restored and bring comity back before the Collapse, you can help preserve its memory and rekindle it afterward.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday February 28 2015, @04:43AM
Thanks for this, though now we do accept money in return for a service, and though we are all unpaid volunteers (sometimes working late into the night), we do feel a sense of exaggerated responsibility to the community we serve. Though I sometimes see comments that resemble: "why haven't you done x and y yet? It would be so easy..."
We do work hard, and we do what we can though, and many of you are quite supportive. S'what makes it all worth it.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday February 28 2015, @04:48AM
We won't get fooled again.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtHshBWFRyg [youtube.com]
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @02:07PM
WHO PUT YOU HERE, MICRO$HAFT???
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday February 27 2015, @02:22PM
Any other ideas how to pay the bills [soylentnews.org]? Its quite nice to have some contempt for money, but it only works as long as you have enough money...
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 27 2015, @03:48PM
Perhaps this is beyond your scope. Ultimately, lessen funding problems by improving public services and patronage. Crowdsourcing is a very good start, but it is only a start. The Net Neutrality victory helps, but that too is just one tiny step out of thousands. We need a lot of other services.
1) The public should handle DNS, and provide limited amounts to everyone for free. An analogy is the postal system. Every residence and place of business has a postal address. The occupants do not have to pay any private company to name new streets or number the buildings or suites. Anyone who wants something more or different can pay for a P. O. Box. So why can't we have the same in DNS? A top level domain, maybe called "who". Then each person would have something like 0001.john.smith.who. For business, there is of course .com. This would even include the homeless, who are currently denied the basic dignity of a postal address under our current system. Being asked to pay to "maintain" a domain name is like being asked to pay to keep a street address. How'd that help the bottom line, if you didn't have to pay the likes of GoDaddy, Verisign, and ICANN for their "services"?
2) We need automated digital public notaries. This isn't about copyrights and patents, which I think should be abolished. This one is about plagiarism. I think the first step towards preventing disputes about authorship is to set up a decent digital public notary. Most importantly, the service must be free. Anyone can timestamp any document they want by hashing it and getting the digest notarized. How'd it be if a news forum had an option to use this service?
3) More! More crowdfunding options. Don't want Kickstarter to gain a monopoly in this.
I certainly hope you guys are saving every comment ever made. May be of considerable historic interest in the future. May have more immediate practical applications too.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 27 2015, @04:36PM
Recruit Cowboy Dick to take care of the money?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMxpoUeSeZ8 [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by Pax on Friday February 27 2015, @02:22PM
I hate to Godwin this(even though it dates back to Medieval times).. however.... I don't think putting a little yellow star on is the brightest idea..... special yellow stars... been done before [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday February 27 2015, @02:29PM
Yes, I know (was being mentioned here [soylentnews.org] already), but since we have the yellow star already as a subscribers-symbol it would at least be consistent. And yellow stars are used nowadays in many famous paces.
However, maybe the images don't have to be obviously different. The main point was to establish a way to let people transfer money to soylentnews, without making it a clear donation. But I'm pretty sure none of the soylentils would even dream of enforcing any restrictive license conditions anyway, so in the end anyone could probably use the picture (s)he wants.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @02:33PM
That's a bit overly sensitive.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday February 27 2015, @06:30PM
It's way oversensitive, and I say this a jewish person. The star here isn't a Star of David -- it's a 5 pointed "Gold Star" -- like the sticker you get in the first grade when you do well on an assignment (at least back in the 70s -- not sure what goes on today). It's the same kind of 5 pointed star that used to feature in the icon of a linux distro with some wizard iconography (KDE based, French company maybe -- help me remember the name, obviously I'm getting old). It's the same kind of 5 pointed star that famous actors want to have embedded in a sidewalk with their name on it. The same 5 pointed star that cartoon characters see when they get punched.
So yeah -- the five pointed gold star is just fine. It means we did a good job, just like in the first grade. Or maybe we are magicians. Or movie stars. I sure don't want to get punched though.
Now I remember: Mandrake: http://www.muylinux.com/2010/03/11/de-mandrake-a-mandriva-un-paseo-por-la-historia [muylinux.com]
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday February 27 2015, @07:42PM
I believe you're recalling Mandrake Linux. Throwing that name into google gives you a star and a little blub that explains Mandrake suffered from an identity crisis and is now called Mandriva.
Mandriva Linux (formerly Mandrake Linux) is a Red Hat-based operating system created by the French software company Mandriva (formerly Mandrakesoft). It is the result of the technical merging of the former Mandrake Linux and Conectiva distributions.
Okay, it was a merger that caused Mandrake to drop off the face of the earth. The identity crisis happened when the PHBs could figure out how to make the two distributions blend.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 27 2015, @02:27PM
Useful? Who ever said we were useful? We account for thousands of hours a week of lost production from you lot reading and ranting at work. We are anti-production and proud of it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by q.kontinuum on Friday February 27 2015, @02:34PM
This doesn't sound like community ;-) By submitting some crappy stories and starting some wild discussions I think I could claim to be part of "We" as well, as could most of the soylentils here.
(Seriously, I do acknowledge&&appreciate your work on the backend, and that you are part of a team doing a bit more here, but that part does not necessarily impair our productivity, unless you intentionally start to introduce some bugs.)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 27 2015, @02:42PM
C'mon, guy, I love the site as much as anyone but if you're surfing it at work, it's cutting into productivity. I know the dev hours I've put in and the reading/aruging time as well have both certainly cut into mine. If you're going to waste time at work do it proudly is all I'm saying.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday February 27 2015, @03:06PM
You won't hear an argument from my side there ;-) I was just referring to your distinction between "us" and "you", while when it comes to the time-wasting aspect, there should only be an "us" in a community project. And, of course, I wasn't serious.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 27 2015, @05:10PM
Ah, meant "we" as in the site, which is everybody. "You lot" was essentially everyone but me.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Friday February 27 2015, @06:29PM
This is starting to sound like the profound map-screen wisdom Splinter gave me in the Ninja Turtles game on the C64.
"We must save April! We as in the plural. Meaning all of us except for me."
Good to know you aren't using the royal "we" there, master. Anything in that rodent noggin of yours about clearing really dickishly-designed low ceiling jumps or not getting trapped when screen transitions spawn me in the wrong place? No? OK, then.
(And with the addition of a comment on a childhood cartoon property this is officially a complete, proper, and irredeemable productivity-wasting thread.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ticho on Friday February 27 2015, @03:24PM
You can look at it as providing a wholesome way to unwind during brief periods of downtime between bursts of work. This site is therefore increasing productivity - at least mine. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @04:08PM
Lost production? When my boss catches me surfing SN and asks me what I'm doing I reply, in my driest robot voice, "recalibrating".
(Score: 5, Informative) by paulej72 on Friday February 27 2015, @05:49PM
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Friday February 27 2015, @05:46PM
Not by a long shot, have a look at Ethanol-fueled's highly informative screenshot that he posted in this comment [soylentnews.org].
By the look of it the “New Classic” /. is even worse than Beta. Slashdot looks like nothing more than an excuse to run scripts on your computer, more polite than a botnet but essentially the same.
There is no going back.
Also: [fuck a, shit on a, piss on a] [black, yellow, pink] [fat, dirty, disease-ridden, skanky] [gay, pedo, ""] [jew, moslem, christian] [whore, callboy, ladyboy, politican, lawyer] in solidarity against moderator abuse :D
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Friday February 27 2015, @05:48PM
Sorry, I responded to the completely wrong parent comment.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Friday February 27 2015, @08:02PM
Ethanol-fueled's gloat has a direct link. [soylentnews.org]
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @11:23PM
Yog-Yogguth could also have done it this way (the subthread, indexed). [soylentnews.org]
Your method could benefit from the same meme. (Just the 1 comment) [soylentnews.org]
/didactic
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @02:00PM
I just wish Barrabas was still around to witness it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @02:37PM
Pouring out a forty for my homie who aint with us anymo'
(Score: 1) by arulatas on Friday February 27 2015, @05:00PM
Did he actually pass away?
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 27 2015, @05:26PM
Nah, he just wanted most every decision to be handled democratically, which just don't work if you need a quick decision on anything and also leads to a lot of butthurt for those on the side whose idea didn't win. NCommander is a more "democracy when practical, staff/board/executive action when it's the better fit" kind of guy. I mean we don't really need a vote on when to start our fiscal year; you send someone to a CPA, listen to what he tells you, and do that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by arulatas on Friday February 27 2015, @06:10PM
THats what I thought. But the way you were talking he had passed.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday February 27 2015, @02:28PM
I mean, I registered an account on soylent as a protest for beta, but that's not what prompted me to leave.
I got into a modding shitstorm for posting against someone who had literally decried black people as genetically inferior to white people. Modded into oblivion for being hostile to overt racism, and even for just posting the contrary scientific evidence to the claim.
I realized that slashdot's community was no longer the educated, informed place it had been when I'd started, but it had backslid into a very insular place. The community here, though not that different, doesn't have the same problems.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rev_irreverence on Friday February 27 2015, @02:48PM
----"I realized that slashdot's community was no longer the educated, informed place it had been when I'd started, but it had backslid into a very insular place."
Nothing like rose-colored glasses to cloud your perception of the early days of Slashdot. I remember it slightly different than the educated, informed place you describe. I seem to recall it was flooded with First Posters, Goatse trolls, *BSD is dying threads, and talk of Natalie Portman w/hot grits.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday February 27 2015, @02:49PM
Dumb memey shit is not to be confused with genuine ignorance.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday February 27 2015, @03:08PM
Or you know what? Maybe it is. It's not my place to tell you how to interpret human behavior.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @03:19PM
What no mention of GNAA?
(Score: 2) by ticho on Friday February 27 2015, @03:27PM
You know, one of these days, I really would like to know howthe hot grits meme was born. Any /. oldtimers who would care to enlighten?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Friday February 27 2015, @03:35PM
I will give you a clue to aid your quest, young padawan.
The full phrase is "Natalie Portman, naked and petrified, covered in hot grits."
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Funny) by infodragon on Friday February 27 2015, @06:39PM
Got a beowulf cluster of those?
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 2) by infodragon on Friday February 27 2015, @06:56PM
I found this I had posted log ago...
All your beowulf cluster of hot grits poured down Natalie Portman's pants are belong to us!
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 3, Funny) by hemocyanin on Friday February 27 2015, @07:09PM
Yeah, but it's in Soviet Russia and when the grits froze, they damaged the system.
(Score: 2) by infodragon on Friday February 27 2015, @07:13PM
In Soviet Russia the grits freeze you!
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 27 2015, @05:49PM
I was a Slashdot old-timer who was there from almost the very beginning of the site, but in the transition from graduate school to work life I dropped out of the conversation for a few months at exactly the moment the hot grits meme started. Everybody cackled over it and cited it so heavily for the longest time that I tried a couple times to find out the origin, too, but unsuccessfully. In the end it's probably one of those "you had to be there" things. Unless another Slashdot old-timer was there and can explain?
Other Slashdot events and memes are etched in my memory, like the Jon Katz days, the RMS hordes, the "In the Soviet Union..." jokes, "I, for one, welcome our new * overlords" quips, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us," etc. I wonder if anyone has ever assembled an anthology of those Before Times?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Leebert on Friday February 27 2015, @08:31PM
I was around but I don't really remember it either. Given Everything2's association with Slashdot, I'd take their explanation as most likely to be accurate (http://everything2.com/title/A+Brief+History+of+Trolls):
More interesting claims from the person who allegedly started the "Naked & Petrified" meme: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20000801&tid=9821 [userfriendly.org]
The Everything2 explanation rings some (very faint) bells in my memory.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday February 28 2015, @04:54AM
Parent has a low 4 digit SD UID (lower than his on SN!!) if that helps.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1) by mvdwege on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:13PM
I soldiered on because I had my settings set to 'Light' mode, which made it possible for me to avoid Beta for the longest time.
The latest breakdown in user interface, coupled with the way Gator trolls and faux-libertarians are overrunning the site with their hate speech makes me want to leave permanently as well.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday February 27 2015, @02:46PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @03:16PM
The comments section was still as I remembered though
It is well ... interesting. That is because the group there is huge. So you get tons of information that is true/false/somewhere in between. With tons of opinion going straight to 5s.
That is my one complaint of the SD rating system. The ability for everything to either be +5 or -1. There does not seem to be a lot in between. Except for when a story is spinning up. You also see lots of 0s/1s where no rating happens. Yet there are good comments in there (as well as bad).
It is starting to happen here as the audience gets bigger. Not sure how to fix it other than to 'slow down' the rating on particular stories. Or maybe random 'what do you think of this in this context' rating.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JeanCroix on Friday February 27 2015, @03:48PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @05:15PM
Great idea! If and when there are too many +5's then this would help fix a dilution of quality of the top comments.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 27 2015, @05:32PM
That's worth an upmod. Spitballing: Binary you think? 1/2/4/8=+2/+3/+4/+5 or just add two and have 1/3/5/7?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday February 27 2015, @05:38PM
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Saturday February 28 2015, @01:15AM
Why tweak the weighting? Make it a slider so the user can tune down the noise to their preferred level. Make +5 the max visible score, but allow higher scores to be saved in the database to assist with the weighting.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Saturday February 28 2015, @02:11AM
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Saturday February 28 2015, @02:37AM
I agree with you about the scaling differences between 5,000 users and 100,000 users. What I propose is instead of a scaling dictated by the developers, have a set of sliders in the user's preferences that can tune the scaling curve. Thus the users can regulate themselves how many mod points are required to achieve a +5. Perhaps one slider isn't enough if you want something other than a linear scale. Might be pretty neat to set your scaling algorithm as various types of series.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:33PM
Interesting ideas.
Still leaves later posters languishing at 0/1s though :(
The only way for you to get 'invited' into the conversation at a high rating is to post early (which on a high volume site would mean camping out). What you guys are saying nails my first problem the +5/-1 issue. However it does not get my second complaint. Later posts that are still interesting staying at 0/1 as people have moved onto the next front page story usually. I see these 2 issues on a lot of sites that have a vote/rank system. Newer posts get little attention, earlier posts get tons of 'me too' vote.
What is even more of an issue is 'first post' can actually set the whole tone of the conversation afterwards. I have done it by accident a few times myself on this site and the other one. As +5 dominates the conversation and is near the top of the list.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:42AM
So, older threads should have a staleness score independent of the comment score. Users can vote on freshness, putting that entire thread towards the top. Might be interesting.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @03:18PM
I no longer care what they do. It's quite clear that Slashdot is no longer what it was. I've not been back to it for months and don't miss it anymore.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Appalbarry on Friday February 27 2015, @03:27PM
Seriously. When I read "First, we've smoothed the way videos show up on the site. .... So we've made our videos fit better into the page and the Slashdot comment system, rather than feeling like they're on a separate site. Please check out the new video page," I stay away.
Especially since they're apparently autoplay
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday February 27 2015, @05:14PM
Especially since they're apparently autoplay
I didn't even think it was possible, but they also managed to make autoplay even more annoying by a) only having the videos start playing about 7 seconds after the page has loaded, which is enough time for you to assume it won't autoplay, and to have scrolled down into the comments and b) on my system, at least, playing audio and no video.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday February 27 2015, @04:40PM
Slashdot looks terrible. The comments go off the right of the screen now and force you to scroll to the right to read them. (Unless you shrink the zoom so much that they fit but are too small to read.) The Reply To This line covers the comments. The text is microscopic, but the graphics are gigantic. Doesn't look like they tested it at all before rolling it out. Is it supposed to look like this?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @12:04AM
For someone who still gives page hits to the other site:
Feed the URL of a story that just hit their front page (no comments yet) into the W3C's HTML Validator.
http://validator.w3.org/ [w3.org]
Repeat for the CSS Validator.
https://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator [w3.org]
If their stuff is appearing different in different browsers, it's extremely unlikely they're coding to the standard.
...and, to be fair, do the same for a S/N story.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by mvdwege on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:15PM
Huh. I have the opposite problem: the first page of comments loads full-width, and if I follow the next-page link or post a comment, it reflows using only half my browser window width.
If they can break the same page in two different ways, they have reached new levels of incompetence.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by number6 on Friday February 27 2015, @05:17PM
I notice two overt things at Slashdot which were directly influenced by SoylentNews...
(1) The delegation of the beta design to the garbage bin, and (2) one-click expanding/collapsing comment trees.
I tip my hat off to everyone who fought under the SoylentNews flag +++++++++++++++
Hey 'Cmdr Taco', if by some chance you are reading this, do you lurk here?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 27 2015, @05:56PM
Malda's probably barred from SN and sites like it by his severance agreement with Dice, or possibly his current non-compete with the Washington Post or wherever he is now. Maybe he does lurk here, and it would be good to have him around again, but I wouldn't be surprised if he never did. His departure from Slashdot felt to me like losing a brother, so I can only imagine how hard it was for him. And once you've closed a chapter of your life like that, it's not uncommon to want to leave it closed.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday February 28 2015, @05:02AM
Not sure about CmdrTaco, he's on twitter so someone who actually uses that could pester him there.
I did (finally) get a response from CoyboyNeal after a few unsuccessful tries from our staff. He wished us the best of luck and apologized for the code = )
He even said he might do an interview with us eventually, I should send him another email...
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @06:11PM
No I don't
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 27 2015, @06:36PM
Dice has shown no interest in anything in userspace in the past. Everyone screamed and yelled at their destruction of Slashdot, but they bulled on ahead anyway. So I doubt they have consciously mimicked SN or any other place. More likely is their internals are showing them something a lot more worrisome. Maybe they're seeing activity from their oldest and most active members falling off a cliff. Maybe they're seeing more and more of their traffic coming from the same IP blocks and that's mostly spambots and sockpuppets. Slashdot did build a strong community reputation over a long period of years, and would have been more likely to attract PR/social media hacks trying to game the "social graph."
Remember that "Slashdot for IT Managers/Business" dreck they came out with, oh, 2-3 years ago pre-Beta? I'd warrant that was Dice's ham-fisted attempt to "monetize" that very same feature of the community. Same thing with the Slashvertisements and the videos and that sort of garbage. They knew the Slashdot comprised a lot of IT movers & shakers & do'ers and they wanted to cash in more directly on it. So, yeah, my theory is they've seen those people abandon Slashdot in droves and with them, the core value of the site, and being the rectally-cranially inverted MBAs they are, they think they can solve all of it with gimmicks and UI tricks.
They can't.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Friday February 27 2015, @06:43PM
Actually, the expanded comments is based off a Greasemonkey script originally written for /. which broke a few years ago after a site redesign. An AC dug it up, and fixed it to work on SN right around golive, then I went and modified it to work as a server-side JS script, then paul (I think?) modified it to use the current CSS version it is now.
Or in other words, open source at work.
Still always moving
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @05:36PM
The guys/gals here do not *brazenly* troll with clickbait like Slashdot. That in turn attract better readers. So I like it better here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @11:59PM
I don't think that's necessarily true. Maybe it isn't done intentionally, but a lot of the submissions from gewg_ and frojack that make it to the front page tend to be overtly leftist or otherwise political in nature, with little to no merit. At least Hugh Pickens keeps his multitude of submissions somewhat relevant.
Then there were the submissions about that robber in Missouri who got shot to death after grabbing for a cop's gun. That quickly devolved into false accusations of racism against anyone who dared to look at the incident objectively.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @04:54AM
Too bad that doesn't align with your prejudices.
...and I see that you're still pounding on your racist-lies drum trying to convince folks that your false narrative of what happened that day in Missouri is true.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday February 28 2015, @05:05AM
Guys, there will always be disagreement and argument, that's a good thing.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday February 28 2015, @05:06AM
Feel free to submit other stories if you'd like to see them included. gewg_ submits a great deal of stories for us, and we appreciate that. Also try to remember: it's nearly impossible to have absolutely no bias on anything, but our editors do aim for that.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by drussell on Friday February 27 2015, @09:01PM
The Beta fiasco was just the final straw with Slashdot with me.
I had been finding it increasingly annoying for years and longed for something reminiscent of the better, simpler times of the early Slashdot.
I haven't gone back there even once since SoylentNews started and I don't miss it one bit!
This is my new home and I like it much better here. :)
Keep up the good work, folks!
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday February 28 2015, @05:03AM
Will do. Thanks Russel.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1) by pk on Friday February 27 2015, @10:03PM
I read both Slashdot and Soylent in a newsreader. Occasionally I'll go digging through the comments, but the UI for either site doesn't bother me that much, especially since I don't see it that much.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pnkwarhall on Friday February 27 2015, @10:44PM
Today we stand proud, fellow Soylentils.
I didn't leave slashdot because of **interface** changes. I left slashdot because of website direction changes that fundamentally corrupted what made slashdot successful and useful.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @02:33AM
two reasons why I won't love /. ever again. Even if the article is clearly about *nix, the first poster usually references MS, usually in a popular fashion. I'd rather be probed.
I especially love the sockpuppets who attack people for typing M$. The precious little things, they're trying so hard to reshape M$'s image worldwide.
(Score: 2) by halcyon1234 on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:57AM
Whatever the interface is, it won't matter. Let me put it to you this way:
Slashdot: Tries to make requests to 14 different trackers and 3rd party content. 8 of them require javascript to run. 3 of them are on my "untrusted" list.
Soylent: Tries to make 0 requests for trackers or 3rd party content. The base site doesn't require javascript, period.
Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]