Slash 2.2.0 Released 397
If you meander over to Slashcode, you will notice that Slash 2.2.0 has been released. This is of course the website engine that runs Slashdot. The release has the message system, improved journal functions, new comment filters, and countless bug fixes. And of course a variety of optimizations that continue to make it possible to serve a quantity of pages that no other open source package like this can even touch :) Plus it's way easier to install. Now that we've got the Fry tree out of the way, its off to work on Zoidberg (which will include subscriptions, killfiles, and a few surprises)
Changelog lacks any real value. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A nice surprice wuold be: (Score:5, Insightful)
Another nice suprise would be to have posting at +1 cost a point a karma.
How about an NNTP gateway? I'll gladly subscribe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it, cause there isn't anything else you could offer me that I would pay for.
Improvement suggestions: (Score:5, Insightful)
a) doesn't deter trolls but
b) does annoy legitimate posters.
* Separate karma moderation from comment moderation, eg. a plagiarizing post could be moderated interesting, yet the poster's karma could be modded down.
* Kill the CowboyNeal cop-out poll option. It hasn't been funny for, oh I dunno, about a year or so.
* Add year to (at least some of) the dates. Currently the only way to determine the year in which a given story or a post was made is to look at the URL, which is just plain dumb.
* Improve the search. Finer details of this left as an excersise.
* Add a link to stories that leads to the "daily issue" of Slashdot when the story appeared. Currently the only way to see the full Slashdot for a given day is, if I'm not mistaken, to keep clicking on the "yesterday's issue" link or hack the URL.
* Expand the hall of fame to cover more top stories, say 30 or so, ten is too little.
Other than that I'm pretty happy with Slashdot.
(I like the fact how users who aren't logged in don't see sigs anymore, the ability of the Slashdot crowd to generate good sigs AND UPDATE THEM has always been a bit, um, shitty.)
nntp (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. In just a few short years they'll have implemented....usenet!
Just kidding, I know there are differences. Still, an nntp gateway would allow people to use their own clients, and those killfiles.
Security? (Score:2, Insightful)
I remember that these were pending problems from a while ago.
Spell Checker? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spell Checker? (Score:2, Insightful)
I can read past misspellings anyways, 99% of the time. I am not like the grammer trolls who feel it is their duty to give everyone a language lesson, I just say give it a break... no one is perfect and not everyone has a degree in literature.
My wish for meta-moderation (Score:5, Insightful)
A slightly interesting post at +3 shouldn't be awarded yet another point, so in that case an 'interesting' moderation would be unfair.
Currently you only see the comment and think 'hey, interesting' and you'd M2 it as fair.
And please dump the over/underrated moderations. They're only used to dodge M2.
Re:Improvement suggestions: (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is that most of the filters do not stop trolls, who are willing to attempt to post an obnoxious piece of ascii art multiple times, but do not stop legitimate posters who just want to share a contribution with the community. After all, who here has a job and a life, and time to refine their messages to make the slashdot retardo-filters pass their content along successfully.
I'm so glad to see that somebody else has realized that the slashdot auto-filters are useless, annoying, poorly written pieces of software that merely detract from the slashdot community.
Re:My biggest wish (Score:5, Insightful)
-sam
That whole option should go (Score:2, Insightful)
I believe that allowing posters to "opt out" of their +1 is moronic. The premise behind the bonus is that said poster generally posts good comments, so this one is probably good too. Now this either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't, remove the +1. If it does, grant the +1 and get over it.
Allowing an option to "opt out" of the +1 is like an option that would allow you to "opt out" of being moderated up. The feature is down-right silly. Judging the quality of a post is not the job of the poster. It is the job of the community system and the moderators.
Just remove that option. It makes no sense.
More useless suggestions (Score:4, Insightful)
Enable me to have separate comment viewing prefs for when I'm a moderator. Changing them back and forth is annoying. Plus then they could be set automatically to more socially responsible defaults.
If a comment below my threshold has a child which is above my threshold, I think that should be clearer; ideally, in between the visible grandparent and the visible child should be a link to the invisible parent.
Re:Four suggestions.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My biggest wish (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Improvement suggestions: (Score:1, Insightful)
The editors all seem to be against it, but when they run it on their own site, it's just a way to stop trolls and ascii art.
The hypocrisy is stenching, from michael and his handling of censorware.org, to this "filter".
At least you guys should own up to it, and censorware is ok from some cases.
Plus the fact that editors mod comments is a travesty of this stupid moderation system.
As long as we're on the subject of wishlists... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Improvement suggestions: (Score:1, Insightful)
Open to contributions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashcode seems to fall into the second camp. There doesn't seem to be a wide variety of people who have contributed, rather the credit is purely to CmdrTaco and friends.
Instead of doing all the work yourselves, why not have a todo list and let others make contributions to the project, rather than just implementing suggestions?
Re:Kill funny messages (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it hilariously ironic that I and many others would have never seen this message if it hadn't been modded +5. By getting people going directly against the author's proposal he get more people to see it.
Slashcode may not be the most scalable open source (Score:2, Insightful)
I am not an expert on improving the scalability of web applications (especially those written in Perl, as is Slashcode), but, from what I read, I understand that Java generally scales much better, especially when it has been tweaked for that purpose. Recently, an open source discussion board (written in Java) appeared that its creators say is one of the most scalable on the planet: Jive [jivesoftware.com]. Even in Jive's old, version 1.24 form, it was so scalable that Sun Microsystems decided to use it as its main web discussion software, replacing discussion software that they had written themselves (in Java). Sun employee Eric Larson [sun.com] wrote (in article's [sun.com] last paragraph) that
Jive's developers swear that it can serve a million page views per day without a problem. On the other hand, Jive doesn't support the posting of news items in a manner similar to Slashcode. Maybe that's what Taco meant when he wrote "like this" (above). Of course, the open source developers at Meinds [sourceforge.net] may decide to alter the Jive source to permit the posting of news items. Then Slashcode might have been bested in terms of features as well as scalability.