New Dynamic Updating Discussions 100
Slashdot users of the Discussion2 system now have a new 'Update' button visible on their floating control slider, as well at the end of the discussion. This button will update your page to include comments posted since the page was loaded, so now you can keep discussion pages up to date without doing a full reload. It's nowhere near complete yet, but it's a nice step that goes a long ways towards making it easier to use larger discussions while they are actively updating. If you aren't using Discussion2, you need to log in, and toggle the checkbox visible on every page. You probably need bother only if you are using Firefox 1.5 or 2.x or Safari. You can send bug reports to me if you want.
how is this better than irc? (Score:2, Interesting)
My initial mental image is that this would simply turn Slashdot a threaded IRC chat vehicle. We all know the quality of discussion online: as it gets faster, it gets worse. Instead of "+1 Insightful", we will need "+1 Merely On Topic." Will moderation changes also be instantly reflected, bringing items in and out of view in real time? How long before you do "fwoop" animations and live character-by-character ajax updates? Imagine the new games the trolls can play.
Implement this on the main page? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is my connection slow? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Even better (Score:3, Interesting)
Michigan Testers Rejoice! (Score:3, Interesting)
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: A random group of Slashdot users were asked to participate in a study conducted by the University of Michigan on a new comment/discussion interface. This study presumably ended at some point (and possibly the data from it helped create Discussion2). However those users who were subjects in this study had a modified preferences panel, which prevented the Slashdot "Discussion2" mode from being available to us (bug report here [sourceforge.net]). Now they have apparently fixed the issue, though no official message was sent to anyone. So, if anyone else was affected by that bug, you can now test the Discussion2 system along with everyone else.
Thanks to whoever coded the workaround.