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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: 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