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So, since this site went up three days ago, we've made tremendous progress in getting this site up and functional, and many of you gone above and beyond to try and give us content and provide meaningful comments. I'm completely blown away to say the least. I've got some big news to share, and a list of site improvements made over the last few days. Read on for more details ...Moderation: IT WORKS! I finished implementing the algorithm last night, and purging slash of the old one so they won't conflict. The new algorithm is somewhat of a radical departure from the old one. I won't go into full details in this post, but there's a good write-up in my comments here.
Comment Counts: Got these working (again). ACs will only see a static HTML page which is updated every once in awhile. Logged-in users get the dynamic index which should have up-to-date counts. The fix is a bit wonky, so it might snap again. Let me know ASAP as the moderation scripts depend on this number being present (and correct!)
Theme: As you may have noticed, the site looks less ass. Due to the heroic efforts of audioguy, Paul, and others, we've gotten a steady stream of CSS fixes to make the site look and feel more consistent. Its not perfect (Firefox still has width issues), but its a fair improvement. This is one of the last major launch blockers
Topics: Finally got them implemented after we snapped the site in two last night. For the moment, they're all sharing the same icon, so it seems kinda unimpressive, but hopefully we'll have the art assets sometime soon to get them in place. Editors will notice I updated the labels to make them a bit clearer; two important notes on this: For an article to show up you MUST have "The Main Page" in the topic list (slash will complain if you don't have it).
Signoff Requirements: A new feature of SoylentNews requires that editors must have a peer sign-off an article before it can be displayed to the world. Slash has some limited support for this, and I got it working last night. For editors, stories are now marked in red and state "unsigned" on the index if only one person has edited it. Right now, this check is not enforced, but I plan to hopefully address that soon. For the moment, editors can future date and use the buddy system to get things checked off properly so we can have consistent formatting and quality.
Other Changes: I stripped out some of the dead features that I probably won't have time to fix before launch like OpenID login, and fixed the admin spellchecker. I also have a couple of ideas to get varnish going I need to bounce off Robin.
Comment Counts: Got these working (again). ACs will only see a static HTML page which is updated every once in awhile. Logged-in users get the dynamic index which should have up-to-date counts. The fix is a bit wonky, so it might snap again. Let me know ASAP as the moderation scripts depend on this number being present (and correct!)
Theme: As you may have noticed, the site looks less ass. Due to the heroic efforts of audioguy, Paul, and others, we've gotten a steady stream of CSS fixes to make the site look and feel more consistent. Its not perfect (Firefox still has width issues), but its a fair improvement. This is one of the last major launch blockers
Topics: Finally got them implemented after we snapped the site in two last night. For the moment, they're all sharing the same icon, so it seems kinda unimpressive, but hopefully we'll have the art assets sometime soon to get them in place. Editors will notice I updated the labels to make them a bit clearer; two important notes on this: For an article to show up you MUST have "The Main Page" in the topic list (slash will complain if you don't have it).
Signoff Requirements: A new feature of SoylentNews requires that editors must have a peer sign-off an article before it can be displayed to the world. Slash has some limited support for this, and I got it working last night. For editors, stories are now marked in red and state "unsigned" on the index if only one person has edited it. Right now, this check is not enforced, but I plan to hopefully address that soon. For the moment, editors can future date and use the buddy system to get things checked off properly so we can have consistent formatting and quality.
Other Changes: I stripped out some of the dead features that I probably won't have time to fix before launch like OpenID login, and fixed the admin spellchecker. I also have a couple of ideas to get varnish going I need to bounce off Robin.
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Massive Site Progress - Status for 02/16
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything,
should conceal it as well as she can.
-- Jane Austen
(Score: 5, Informative) by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @01:41PM
Fun bit of trivia: neither admins nor editors have unlimited mod points. We get them just the same way as you (and the same rules of restrictions apply). SuperAdmins can access the Security page and use to mass-mod (or use the "bitchslap" script) if we need to fight spam on a massive scale. I *might* make it so editors can post at a higher moderation level (i.e.,
Also, since I fixed moderation, you guys are going to mod this up to +5, right?
Still always moving
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Sunday February 16 2014, @01:47PM
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @11:57AM
I am seeing an issue with moderation. Whenever I mod a post, the page refreshes and takes me back to the top of the page. This will be a big problem with posts containing a large number of comments.
Posting Anonymously to save my mods.
(Score: 2, Funny) by martyb on Sunday February 16 2014, @01:48PM
Amazing work! Hats off to all involved!!!!!!!
Will do, as soon as I can GET some mod points! :-)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1) by xlefay on Sunday February 16 2014, @01:49PM
(Score: 1) by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @01:54PM
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by martyb on Sunday February 16 2014, @02:02PM
NCommander wrote:
Oh, I *KNOW* that! I was just hoping someone would take the hint to mod ME up! THEN I could moderate you up, later!!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2, Informative) by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @02:03PM
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Sunday February 16 2014, @02:11PM
That makes sense... thanks for the tip!
Would love to stay and play, but I need to head off to my day job... will be back this evening.
BTW, how do I set things up so that I see all comments expanded on Classic? I just see "headlines" for all the comments here. I set the thresholds to be be very generous, or so I thought.
And, while I've got your attention, one of the things I wished for on /. was the ability to export a summary of all my settings, so that if I play around with something and don't like it, I can find my way back to how I had things before. I dunno, XML, JSON, or even just a plain text summary page with all my settings displayed would be a huge win for me.
Might also make it easier for people to submit bug reports. Just an idea. Keep up the great work - absolutely amazing progress!!!!!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2, Informative) by martyb on Sunday February 16 2014, @02:17PM
I know it's bad form to reply to myself, but to save others the need to reply, I wrote:
Never mind... found in my preferences that I had the index mode threshold set to +3; just set it to 0 (zero) and now it's all clear!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2, Informative) by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @02:23PM
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by martyb on Sunday February 16 2014, @02:26PM
Nested? Oh yeah. I had that already! That's one of things I loved about the old site. Glad to see it made it over unscathed!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1) by ticho on Sunday February 16 2014, @08:25PM
Nested is what I use as well. I never understood how Threaded mode was supposed to be useful, it is pretty awkward. But maybe it's just me missing something about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @11:48AM
Yes, yes it does! Thank you kindly for the suggestion, in addition to everything else.
(Score: 4, Funny) by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @01:56PM
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by Nerdfest on Sunday February 16 2014, @05:33PM
This is a great idea. I think the humour of the SlashDot crowd is some of the best available, frequently jaw-droppingly funny. It'll be nice to have it rewarded a little more.
(Score: 4, Funny) by dilbert on Monday February 17 2014, @12:34PM
What is this 'SlashDot' you refer to?
(Score: 1) by omoc on Sunday February 16 2014, @05:46PM
I'm curious how modpoints are handed out now, is it a cronjob that runs at fixed hours or does it happen on the fly?
(Score: 1) by crutchy on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:02AM
in div id "commentwrap", TFA title, preferences, top and search discussion links are blue on a maroon background... can barely read