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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: 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.