Achievements and Optimizations 294
Ok, Optimizations. These really only affect the Index2 beta users and Firefox users. You should really be in one of these 2 groups.
- CSS Sprites: Vlad combined a number of our chrome images. Vroom used the same technique to combine our top 25 topic icons into a single image. The top 25 icons appear on 60% of our stories, and the chrome images appear on every page load. These 2 changes dropped perhaps 20 requests from a typical fresh page load. That should be a measurable performance increase for a lot of people.
- Library Purge: Scott removed the last remnants of the YUI library. This was THE library to use for AJAX a few years ago, but as of now, we have totally ported to jQuery. The last 2 bits that used YUI were some animation bits, and the discussion2 threshold changing floating widget thing. Porting those 2 things to jQuery let us pull several hundred k of JS from our includes. This let us trim another 85k from our compressed JS transfers. We've cut the JS included on Slashdot in half in the last month.
- Varnish: Jamie installed varnish as a reverse proxy behind the F5 but before our apache. Really this won't be a significant performance improvement for now. We use a complex system of static pages to cache the most read content on the site, but varnish will at last let us deprecate that ancient system for something much simpler. We'll be experimenting with this more over the week, but the only real change for most cases is that most of our static content can be served w/o the latency of NFS. Not a big deal really, but it's something. But when we purge out the old caching system, a lot of things will be a lot easier to maintain and debug.
- CDN: We're probably going to test a CDN this week. The performance gains will be minor, but it will let us move 50 megabits of traffic off our main router and distribute that globally. It sure won't hurt.
A note on Achievements. We launched this as an april fools day joke. We're glad many of you got it. We had great fun with it. But achievements are actually a real, working system. And they serve a purpose. Most of the major bits of functionality on Slashdot have a corresponding achievement. Posting a Journal? Getting a Story Accepted? Being Moderated Up? Using all of your Mod Points up? While many achievements are silly jokes: getting the first block of achievements is essentially a tutorial. And getting some of the more complicated achievements would be a useful indicator for a quality contributor to the site. The heavy lifting on this was done by Chris Brown.
We're also experimenting with a thing we call 'Auto-More'. When you get to the end of the page, a second block of articles will be added to your index. The cool thing is that this means we can serve a smaller selection of stories on the main page request. Since 2/3rds of you never read past story #6, that means that you will get your page a little faster. But 10% or so of you get to the bottom of the page. And you will transparently be given more content. We're doing a bunch of logs to see if this works out. It's just an experiment tho, we may kill it if there is a problem. I think it will eventually be connected to the pause/play function available to logged in Index2 users.
This week we intend to start rolling out the Index2 beta to a very small number of firefox users. A good number of you won't notice. Some of you will tho. You won't hurt our feelings by disabling the thing immediately but I hope you give it a shot. It's great on Firefox. It has a few bugs on Safari. It will work on Chrome as soon as Google gets a Mac port out (Hint hint!). As for IE... well, you'll keep the old system for a few more weeks, but you're only like 14% of our users, and you keep shrinking.
Ok, back to work. You too.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not clear on all achievements (Score:5, Insightful)
Sleeker is better (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we would all benefit much more from a streamlined site, rather than the feature creep we're seeing at the moment. Slashdot isn't much broken, so don't much fix it.
Re:The Maker Achievement (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sleeker is better (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd argue it is broken, but because they're changing things.
I don't know about you, but I get really high CPU utilization with the fancy new system. By contrast, the old system's only real flaw was that the page system was broken (you'd have to click on page 5 to get page 2), but straight HTML spit out by a server-side CGI script was about the fastest way you could possibly display the insane amount of information on a slashdot comments page quickly.
Erm...excuse me! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's great on Firefox. It has a few bugs on Safari. It will work on Chrome as soon as Google gets a Mac port out (Hint hint!). As for IE... well, you'll keep the old system for a few more weeks, but you're only like 14% of our users, and you keep shrinking.
Er...havn't you forgotten something. A lot of us are Sooo nerdy we use Opera [opera.com]
Bring back the old user page! (Score:5, Insightful)
The new user page is ugly and less useful than the old one. It takes information that used to be on the main user page and makes me click on a second link in order to see it.
I respect that website maintainers like to add new shiny things to the website every once in a while, but for God's sake, don't take away functionality in the process.
correlation something something causation (Score:4, Insightful)
As for IE... well, you'll keep the old system for a few more weeks, but you're only like 14% of our users, and you keep shrinking.
Ah, yes. The old "if it hurts, then just stop doing it" treatment. Of course the number of IE users keeps shrinking, as they find that this site doesn't work with their browser of choice!
As an Opera user I'm still using the old-school no-beta, no-beta2 version of Slashdot, and I sincerely hope the day will never come that I have to choose between Opera and Slashdot.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
create some way for readers to weigh in
Like the Firehose [slashdot.org]?
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sleeker is better (Score:5, Insightful)
Achievements strike me as yet another penis-measuring tool, rather than as something that brings more value to the site.
Well, at bare minimum they should thus bring penis to the site. Er, wait, slashdot is quite the sausage party already. Actually, I have a theory that there are actually quite a few females lurking, but they don't talk because they know we wouldn't appreciate it anyway. There are of course a few regular female contributors, but if I were them I wouldn't bother - you could be deluged with sexist bullshit anywhere. The difference is that most people are even dumber than the average slashdotter and have less excuse for thinking that crap is funny.
Achievements are harmless. They don't even do anything! As long as there are no achievements based on things like first posts or negative moderation, the achievement system is unlikely to actually harm anyone. It's only when it rewards bad behavior (e.g. by allowing a negative score - thus users could compete for maximum absolute value) that it becomes dangerous.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect we are in need of at least two "Whoooosh!"'s here.
Humor is so hard to detect in text...
Re:10% of 1% (Score:4, Insightful)
Those of us with a functioning brain switched off the Javascript Web 2.0 crap the day you foisted it on us, and we'll continue to read Slashdot the way we always have.
Those of you with functioning brains prefer larger downloads, and waiting for full page loads before replying and after moderating? Ah, right, and having to refresh the page every time you change your threshold?
Phew. Sure am glad my brain is broken then. Among other advantages, those of us with non-functional brains realize that just because a technology happens to have a buzzword attached to it doesn't mean that the technology itself is a bad thing.
Re:Sleeker is better (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes. Please, please, please, STOP with the pointless and annoying AJAXing of Slashdot. It is not a "web application" like Google maps where you want to be able to zoom and drag. It is an information source, so send me the information -- not a program to view the information in the way you think is cool.
Classic mode works fine (except, as the parent notes, the broken pagination), whereas attempting to use the "new and improved" system makes me want to put my fist through the screen. If they ever remove the option to use classic mode, for the safety of my hardware I'll have to stop using the site.
I just hope (Score:4, Insightful)
You guys don't break IE functionality before my work upgrades from IE6... I absolutely despise IE (and IE6 most of all) but can't break free of it yet :(
Re:Bring back the old user page! (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose, until they decide to retire that page. Also, I would like to get a useful page when I click on my name at the top of the page rather than having to type in the address bar or navigate my bookmarks. Also, I prefer the role of the grumpy curmudgeon, and using an alternative user page rather than bitching about the current one is not in keeping with that role.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think currency symbols and other Unicode often thrown about in geeky discussions like ^2 would be nice
â euro
£ pound
 squared
 cubed
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Firehose lets us all know just how bad the Slashdot story submission poll really is. There is a lot of tripe in there; ads, dupes, polemicals, rotten formatting, dupes, enormous submissions, just plain boring stories and more dupes.
The issue of story selection is a deep and chronic one at Slashdot. Essentially, the root of the problem is that there is no real incentive to post a good submission, and more incentive to simply post a swathe of low quality submissions instead. I and many other submitters have spent considerable time an effort on compiling and editing submissions, only to have them rejected within minutes, while dupes were chosen instead.
Now, when you submit you have to accept that your story may not be posted. But when quality submissions are getting lost amid the deluge, it's easy to see how good potential submitters can become disheartened and will simply stop submitting good stories. By contrast, the shotgun submitter who spends less time on each submission, but submits more submissions in total, will be more likely to have a story posted and will continue submitting. The end result is the current, appalling state of the firehose. Admittedly the front page has improved in recent times, but the firehose is as bad as ever.
The best way to solve this problem is to give submitters a karma system. This would allow the system to distinguish between submitters who write good stories that didn't make it, and submitters who just wrote tripe. A meta moderation system for submissions would go a long way to improving the submission box and hence the front page.
Bug Fix Request - Comment Mismoderation (Score:5, Insightful)
I really like the new system(s), especially the async page loading and 'fetch on demand' aspects of comments. But...
Please oh please, add a "submit" button next to the moderation dropdown? It should do the same asynchronous post that selection change of that dropdown does today. It's very easy (especially using a sensitive touchpad) to mis-click on a moderation option - which you can then only undo by replying in the conversation, and losing any point(s) awarded.*
A submit button would remove the accidental moderation issue, and still allow the all the ajaxified web2.0 paradigms to remain intact ;)
* then - to add insult to injury - usually get that corrective post modded down as offtopic because of some moderator a power trip
Re:Sleeker is better (Score:3, Insightful)
Add a mobile page which autodetects. I don't want to have to set something in my settings to get it to come up like that when I only read from my mobile page once or twice a day. It's a real fucking pain in the ass to wait 45 to 60 seconds for the page to come up because there is so much shit being loaded.
Tons of other sites have auto-mobile support. Why not a tech site like Slashdot?
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:1, Insightful)
They already have this. Notice how many submitters NEVER get rejected... This has been the way of Slashdot forever. If you are a "pal" your stories get posted all the time. If you are not, and you posted the story hours earlier, the pal's dupe of yours get's posted instead.
Re:IE at 14%? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is only down to 14% on this website because this website doesn't function on any version of IE. If you try to do anything using IE, you'll quickly realize they don't test using it and you have to switch browsers. In otherwords, no it is not a major story beyond "Slashdot is a Firefox-only website"
Funny that. They should put an animated "Best viewed with Netscape" at the bottom of the page. I thought that attitude went out with Firefox.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Classical Style (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand: Please don't ignore us users who still use the good old classic style. I simply like my /. without fancy effects and strange navigation bars. Threshold of 3, nested, oldest comments first, re-parenting comments and a link i can open in a new tab to read the stuff below my threshold is all I want and need.
Long story short: While developing all the exciting new stuff, please don't completely ignore or remove (*shock* *horror*) ye goode olde Slashdot layout. It works currently, has served many people well for quite a while now and hopefully doesn't cause too much work for you guys. Just please fix it every now and then in case you break it.
Re:Significant portions, anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
But if Taco and friends think raising the barrier to entry on their site is a good idea....
Last time I checked, they were not your bitch, ya know? ;)
I learned in five painful years, what obeying every wish of your users results in.
Commercial companies often try to make their products simpler, so the stupidest user can use them.
Which results in them getting more stupid people on average.
Which results in there being an even lower end in that Gaussian curve.
Which results in some users still complaining and having problems.
Which results in the companies dumbing products even more down.
Until they become unusable for intelligent people.
Clippy and all the assistance in Windows are well-known results of this process.
Gnome fell into that trap too.
And I fear KDE does right now, with the new KDE 4.x desktop. (Hopefully not.)
On the other end are things like VI, that went up until it became unusable for beginners.
This made me define my philosophy of doing things as:
I do what I like and what I think is right, and then the users that use it, will automatically be those who agree with me.
And I do not run after people, or let them define my reality.
So maybe raising the barrier, is the point for Taco. Dunno, but I just want to say that is it far from being a bad idea by definition.
Moderation Bug? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can anyone verify?
Of course, I discovered the issue when I wanted to moderate a post but couldn't because the select was missing; however the select was present for all of the post's siblings.
Re:Sleeker is better (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, I really do still use NS3 as my primary browser, for any site that degrades gracefully and isn't afflicted with JS menus. (I also have image loading turned off, an old habit from the mid-1990s and very slow dialup, but even on broadband I've discovered that I really prefer NOT to be bothered with images most of the time. NS3 handles this well; Mozilla does not.)
NS3 renders CSS sites pretty much as plain text. This makes many sites FAR easier to read, as all the "busy" shit goes away (and probably because it's easier for the developer than tables, CSS sites *do* tend to have a LOT more "busy" clutter than other sites). When CSS is done right, so it degrades gracefully, there IS no "layout", but the text, menus, and links remain in catalog order, so it's just as usable, sometimes moreso.
So the fact is -- if you're doing your CSS right, I'll see a perfectly functional plaintext page, and everything will work exactly as I expect it to. No need to worry about browser quirks. :) And I already know it's going to look like plain text, so I'm not offended by it being "ugly" :)
When CSS is fucked up, the content can wind up scrambled, but that seems to come from trying to combine tables with CSS (or from combining CSS with JS to restrict browser behaviour, or for menus). When a site uses just one or the other, everything is copasetic.
As to your beautiful layouts -- they may be lovely as an art form, but if I just want to read stuff I don't CARE what it looks like, so long as it's readable for aging eyes. I have stuff set to black text on grey background because that's restful to my eyes. Glare white with black text is painful after a while, even with my monitor dialed way down. So your *gracefully-degrading* CSS is appreciated, because it DOES render as my desired black-on-grey.
Re:IE at 14%? (Score:3, Insightful)
Last time you heard, the site probably worked correctly on IE. Now it doesn't at all, unless you turn on the "old" commenting system. (And even then the User page is all screwy.)
There's not a lot of significance in reporting that a site that doesn't work in IE isn't used by IE.
But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Test (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't the blocking of bi-di characters (or other wacky Unicode that breaks stuff). The problem is the blocking of ALL non-ASCII, even perfectly valid things like currency symbols, accented letters, and similar helpful little characters.
Re:Sleeker is better (Score:3, Insightful)
"made Slashdot a non-destination for me for a while now."
How about fixing the code so I can turn it OFF? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about fixing the code so that the {FOO}.slashdot.org servers honor my login and selection of "classic" mode, so I can read and comment on stories that are hosted on the subsidiary servers?
I have a number of machines from which I read and post. Unfortunately, some of them (unavoidably) have ancient browsers that are REALLY unhappy with the new features.
While I may chose to play with or switch to the new functionality on machines where it works, I don't appreciate being cut off from participation in slashdot when the only machines I can use are those where it's broken.
Confused... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a firefox user AND I've been using index2 for a while (Don't know how it got activated, just showed up one day). Should I assume the behaviours is about the same as now, but faster? If so, good job!
It takes some time to get used to the new timer thing, but one used to it everything is all good. The only recommendation I could makes is that when you pop-up the resume due to inactivity dialogue, that the resume is an image, larger, centre justified, and maybe a brief description of why you're 'pausing the web page'
PS: I'm so NOT used to the whole streaming of new data thing that I still refresh excessively.
Re:Test (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot whitelists characters so that posters can't use the bidirectional characters to destroy the layout.
The perlunicode page is not that hard to figure out, seriously.
Re:10% of 1% (Score:4, Insightful)
Haven't had those issues. Takes me a second to load the page, period. I've had no noticeable delays in processing script. I have had no other tabs get blocked while loading slashdot pages.
Your response is consistent with the theme of replies to my post: "I personally (don't use|don't like|have bad experience) with the new interface, therefore there is no advantage to it and you are wrong."