Slashdot Code Update 569
You will likely notice a variety of changes in the comments system if you
are logged in.
Most of these changes surround the new 'Zoo' system which implements (among
other things) a sort of killfile function, and much more. Logged in
users have the ability to flag each other as Friends or Foes, and
assign bonuses and penalties appropriately. So if a user annoys you,
you can easily not read their comments any more. If you notice any
bugs, feel free to submit them or let krow or me know.
Woohoo. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Woohoo. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Woohoo. (Score:5, Insightful)
But an ability to annotate your -own- posts (i.e. an ability to add timestamped, limited length comments to the text of the post so they are visible to everyone viewing the post) would be very cool. Allowing for apologies/corrections/additional info to be placed in the comment by it's author, without despoiling the original comment..
Re:Woohoo. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think as is - being able to reply to yourself works about the same
Maybe loose all mod points on the post when edited. Id like to be able to delete some posts too if no replys have been posted...
Re:Woohoo. (Score:3, Interesting)
How about moderation 'inheritance' for a author replying to their own posts..
So: You post a great comment, and it gets moderated up to (Score:5, Genius). Then you notice a mistake, or want to clarify something, so you post a reply which automatically gets a (Score:5 Inherited) since it is related to a post where you have already had good moderation. But after that it is on it's own, i.e. it can be modded down if it is a troll, or just plain stupid..
You would need some back-end logic, such as only inheriting on direct reply's (one level below the original post), and not allowing double-inheritance (i.e. moderation can only be inherited by -one- same author reply, this will prevent a troll/lamer hijacking an entire thread). And probably an automatic loss of this feature for people who's -inherited moderation- posts regularly get modded down to zero (they loose the privilige since they are probably abusing it).
Re:Woohoo. (Score:3, Offtopic)
Re:Woohoo. (Score:5, Funny)
There's so many features in /. that need check boxes.
or maybe not...
-Russ
(I'm just joking... jeez.)
Great! We're catching up! (Score:4, Funny)
Look out Usenet, here we come!
Go ahead, make my list! (Score:2, Funny)
Thanks.
Re:Go ahead, make my list! (Score:2)
Re:Go ahead, make my list! (Score:2, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm [slashdot.org]
There are lots of other custom goodies there too.
Hmmmm (Score:4, Funny)
-AC.
"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" (Score:5, Informative)
See that grey pearl besides your comment's details ?
click on it
Slashdot Friend/Foe System
So how do you perceive Cmdr Taco ?
So how do you perceive cyborg_monkey ?
So how do you perceive Klerck ?
So how do you perceive Jon Katz ?
...
Friend
Neutral
Foe
Note: Who you like and dislike is not private; it can and will be used against you.
Do you mean I may get sacked if I happen to feel some sympathy for some of the trolls ?
I believe this is a little dangerous unless we have the guarantee that you are trustworthy enough to use this.
Until then, well... Everybody is my friend.
I see "Blacklists" and "Forced Logins"....... (Score:3, Informative)
It occurs to me that this new feature could potential lead to the desire for two others.
First, if we can individually mark someone as
a foe then the next trend might be to create a
list of individuals that the community regards
as foes. The individuals could then choose to
subscribe to this list if they feel they have
common ground with the list maintainers. Thus
community blacklisting would arrive on the
internet (anyone intersted in copyrighting this?).
Of course today anyone who has a desire to attack
and defame the thoughts of others is going to post
as an Anonymous Coward. Thus the second desire could be to make everyone accountable for their
posts. This would, of course, require a "Forced
Login" feature.
I personally doubt that there are many members of
this online community that would sanction features
like these. Trends, however, start out as seemingly innocuous and small changes that over
time turn into something that is bigger and larger
than their meager beginnnings.
The question then would be: Are we heading down a path that diverges from the original intent of
a collaborative forum where there can be a free
exchange of ideas unencumbered by that hideous
beast called "censorship"?
Re:"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" (Score:3, Insightful)
See that grey pearl besides your comment's details ?
I'd love to be able to see this pearl in Light Mode
small potatoes [sic]h (Score:4, Funny)
>Note: Who you like and dislike is not private; it
>can and will be used against you.
That's nuttin'. Used against you by a snivelling 14 year old? Big deal.
Slashdot Friend/Foe system is insignifcant compared to an F-14's Interrogate Friend/Foe system. Now *that's* one you don't want used against you.
hawk
Re:Formatting of IMG suggestion... (Score:3, Informative)
For user agents that cannot display images, forms, or applets, this attribute specifies alternate text.
Where as the TITLE attribute is for:
This attribute offers advisory information about the element for which it is set.
Not that I can blame you for thinking otherwise, as most of the web is filled with horrible examples of HTML being abused.
The above was from http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#h-1 3.2
Nice... (Score:5, Funny)
+2 comment bonus. Karma: 25
Capping out the system. Karma: 50
Jon Katz, Foe, -5. Priceless
killfile timothy! (Score:4, Troll)
Re:killfile timothy! (Score:5, Informative)
What are you talking about? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:killfile timothy! (Score:3, Troll)
Re:killfile timothy! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:killfile timothy! (Score:3, Informative)
>against posting.
It's generally necessary to correctly spell *both* a name and a password to log in before posting. THus, about every six months, Taco succeeds
[*duck*]
hawk
Re:killfile timothy! (Score:2)
Friend or Foe, not so private (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Make them your friend
2) Click on the words 'friends' across from them
One can easily browse who's friend is whose.
Re:Friend or Foe, not so private (Score:4, Redundant)
Re:Friend or Foe, not so private (Score:5, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/~cmdrtaco/friends [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/~cmdrtaco/foes [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/~cmdrtaco/fans [slashdot.org]
Re:Friend or Foe, not so private (Score:3, Funny)
TacoTacoTaco (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:TacoTacoTaco (Score:2, Funny)
Lets see how many OSS zealots mark me as foe now...
the relationship pustule (Score:3, Flamebait)
Re:the relationship pustule (Score:2)
Ability to tag friend or foe (Score:5, Insightful)
To me this sort of environment is supposed to be a sea of conflicting viewpoints and brash arguments. Trolls tend to already be taken care of to an extent by the current moderation abilities, and to an extent flamewars tend to fall below filter level.
But with the ability to assign "Friend or Foe" you essentially gain the ability to make the No-Mans-Land of the comments into an area that only reflects your own views and opinions. Granted it might take a while, and will very likely never completely kill dissenting opinion, but a pretty self-supporting environment can still be made.
The closest analogy I can think of would be a hardcore conservative listening to 24 hours of Rush Limbaugh (Not sure who would be a good example for a Liberal stance, so I won't list them. ). Sure they can do it, but in doing so they cut themselves off from the other viewpoints and opinions that might provoke some thought in what they believe in.
Re:Ability to tag friend or foe (Score:2)
I think the system is a great idea. I don't care if some moron abuses it such that he can't see any of
I just want to have the option to stop reading some of the more egregious trolls.
Re:Ability to tag friend or foe (Score:2)
Now, facilitating friend-or-foe moderation abuse, however, is another matter. Those green and red indicators make dandy "targets".
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]
Re:Ability to tag friend or foe (Score:4, Interesting)
I discovered long ago that the friend or foe concept works well in separating the shite from the non. I think the terminology is too confrontational, but the concept works.
On Amazon.com, for example, if reviewer X gives a film that I loathe 5 stars, I'll generally dislike all of the films that he might recommend. The converse is also true. The same concept also seems to apply to books, music, and ideas.
No, this isn't limiting. I see too much overlap in tastes and opinion for that to be a problem, and I know of many films I've enjoyed that I would never have watched had they not been recommended to me by a trusted critic/friend. Ditto books, music, interesting philosophies.
Re:Ability to tag friend or foe (Score:3, Insightful)
I think a timeout for foe could be a good feature for some cases.
Re:Ability to tag friend or foe (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ability to tag friend or foe (Score:4, Insightful)
Allow me to offer a few counter-examples:
A poster insists on including his/her sig in every post as actual post content rather than via the post mechanism. There are some people, myself included, who choose to browse with signatures turned off. However, since the sig's being included as part of the post, it circumvents the signature filter. Marking someone who does this as a foe wouldn't have anything to do with me reinforcing my own opinions on a Slashdot issue. Instead, it would be a purely stylistic concern.
Another good example was a troll who was pimping his humor site (ridiculopathy.com -- delibrately left unlinked to reduce traffic). At times, he would pass off the site's postings as legitimate articles related to the current Slashdot article. It got old fast, but your average mod was occasionally suckered in. I would've loved to have been able to killfile the guy and be done with it.
My final example is one of my biggest pet peeves -- anti-DMCA jokes. Now I dislike the DMCA, so on a raw opinion level, I agree with the posters. The problem, however, is the raging stupidity inherent in the jokes. 99% of them are the exact same premise, something similar to "Oh no! I'm violating the DMCA by opening a can of Coke." Besides being painfully repititious, these jokes generally have nothing to do with circumvention of a copy control device. Given the number of legitimate grievances people have against the DMCA, I'm unable to figure out why people insist on diluting their credibility by protesting fictional ones.
People who disagree with me on an issue, on the other hand, are usually quite interesting. If they're capable of substantiating their point with actual reasoning, it's a valuable post. For example, even though I'm disagreeing with the post that this is in response to, I have no reason to tag the poster as a foe. The poster raises a very interesting question, and the moderation of that post up to a 5 is, in my mind, legitimate.
Re:Ability to tag friend or foe (Score:2)
Personally I find it a neat feature. I don't forsee using it much however it is nice to have the option.
Re:Ability to tag friend or foe (Score:2)
Except that it is public [slashdot.org], whereas your killfile is only a matter between you and your Usenet or IRC software.
Re:Ability to tag friend or foe (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact I defy you to name *one* left wing commentator who does within the USA.
And the right wing still bleats about "liberal bias....".
Jeremy.
New Slashdot Games! (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot editors announced today the addition of new, ground-breaking features to their SlashCode system, which is the heart of their article and comment system.
Among the changes are new features such as:
Finally... (Score:4, Funny)
...and along comes zoos and fan clubs to play with! Woot! My productivity at work has officially flatlined as of now!
Conflict with Anonymous Posting? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see the point of this new feature --- too many loopholes exist.
Re:Conflict with Anonymous Posting? (Score:2, Informative)
And only if mwmseeksbillgates anonymously posts a really good comment then eventually someone will mod him up.
In all versions? (Score:2, Informative)
/. no longer warm and comforting... (Score:5, Funny)
You are alone in the world.
I thought I was amoungst my own here!
I thought I was accepted!
Loved even!
Will no one be my friend?
Actual Intention (Score:2, Interesting)
I like the idea, but I don't really understand how this is not kept private. Because me making all the "FP'ers" foe's will come back to haunt me? My opinion is made public when I make a comment, not when I read another's. I don't understand why that is so just yet, but I'm sure there is some reason for it.
AC, Foe, -5 -- why not? (Score:2)
-Jayde
Re:AC, Foe, -5 -- why not? (Score:2, Insightful)
Questions (Score:2, Offtopic)
When/how do you get moderator points? I've been on slashdot for months, my karma is currently 48, but I've never been able to moderate. The "willing to moderate" button is checked in my preferences.
Can someone please enlighten me as to how this works? I feel kinda dumb for asking this - if someone can point me to the docs I missed, I'd appreciate it.
Re:Questions (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Questions (Score:2, Interesting)
Check out K5 [kuro5hin.org] if you haven't already. Their moderation system is much more democratic than Slashdot's, and (at least IMHO) much more effective. Unlike Slashdot's moderation system, theirs doesn't seem to have been designed to provoke confusion and deliberate abuse at every turn.
The quality of discussion at K5 is generally a little higher, since it's not such a playground for trolls. It's a different site with different purposes, but I've found myself spending a lot more time there than on
Re:Questions (Score:2, Informative)
hmm, I moderated this story so I can't post logged in - I haven't added any positive or negitave karma for months, but I get to moderate quite often - I guess it's because my
Same Code as Slash? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this the same code that runs Slashdot?
Yes. Slashdot and Slashcode are usually running the latest development code from CVS, within a week or so.
If this is business as usual then we can expect to see a new release file announced at slashcode [slashcode.org] within a week or so. So the obvious question is, "Is this business as usual?"
Re:Same Code as Slash? (Score:4, Informative)
All i have to say is... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:All i have to say is... (Score:2)
How would you guys describe the character alignments of our esteemed editors?
Usenet Gateway (Score:5, Interesting)
The scary thing is that this could probably be done in a reasonable way. Articles could map to newsgroups on the server (with new ones appearing daily and old ones disappearing). Since comments are threaded anyways, this should transfer across directly. And as long as the slashdot username and password are required for accessing the NNTP server, there shouldn't be any real problems with unauthorized usage by spammers and such.
Oh well. Too bad most of the crowd here is too young to remember what usenet even is...
Re:Usenet Gateway (Score:2, Insightful)
For paying customers only (Score:2)
Gnus has a slashdot backend (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, one has to run the CVS version of Gnus for this to work, since it does it by parsing the html, and need to be updated each time
all this code... (Score:5, Insightful)
YEssirree, kids, we're still DECADES behind Usenet.
Re:all this code... (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, think about it. There are about 3 million registered users on slashdot (shocking to think that you and I have user id's below 2000!). There are probably 20 new stories a day. Each story gets on average about 150 posts. So for each post you need to store one entry in a database per user.
That's 9 billion new rows a day.
Of course you could do some compression or bit-twiddling to reduce that, but not by a significant enough amount.
The best you can do is what LinuxToday does - mark stories as "new" since you last refreshed the page.
Usenet doesn't have this problem because all the "What I've read" stuff is stored client-side, and there's not enough room in cookies to do that.
Re:all this code... (Score:3, Insightful)
ie. You load the page and see 50 comments, when you've finished you hit refresh and see only the 5 posted while you were reading.
To do this you'd only for each person need to keep track of the last message id they've seen for each story. Still a fair bit of data, but a lot less.
You could maybe only keep track for stories that are on the front page and purge from the db after that?
Re:all this code... (Score:3, Troll)
Perhaps not a good idea.. (Score:3, Interesting)
People without a login will come here and see his MSFUD comments at '0', with no opposing comments, and assume that they might therefore have some validity? god help us..!
Re:Perhaps not a good idea.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Second is there are people like reading trolls, I for one read at -1 often enough. If I ever make someone my foe, that would be users pretending to know everything but don't know shit, or just can't discuss without flames; not delibrate trolls. Trolling is an art.
Slashdot has been invaded by gum drops! (Score:2)
Why a gum drop? Or is it a robot nipple? Whatever it is, it looks lickable. Its not blue, like Apple's Aqua interface, but it does look like the platinum "theme" in Mac OS X.
Perhaps we can find a more meaningful button? Maybe a text link would work well.
AC? (Score:2)
Re:AC? (Score:3, Informative)
Changes we need on Slashdot RIGHT NOW (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of us here on
I find it downright ludicrous that to date, Slashdot has NO SECURE LOGIN.
[if you have one, then it's too well-hidden].
Make no mistake - I do not want my login password sent as cleartext.
It makes life too miserable.
For those with no HTTPS support, an unsecured login option should be provided,
but the secure one should be the default [or prominently displayed].
Much of Slashdot's pages teems with TABLE tags and other assorted formatting crap.
This drastically increases download and rendering times, and our ISP is only too happy
to charge us for it [money saved == more pr0n!].
Most users' browsers do not need this backward-compatibility kludge anymore,
as they use IE [what fools these mortals be!], Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera or NS6.x.
Use browser sniffing, then send pure, strict XHTML + CSS for formatting,
thus encouraging the luddites to switch to Mozilla!
[Good part is, the pages will still render well on text browsers like Lynx, Links etc.
Or they could be served the TABLE'd pages that NS 4.x & < should be served.]
That's all for now, folks. Any more suggestions? Feel free to tack them on.
set thread_growable TRUE
wishlist. (Score:3, Interesting)
-Seperate setting for doing moderations. I'd like my treshold lower when moderating to scan for AC gems. (or to search for trolls that are not trolls, but are meant funny)
-Some (don't know how) system to mod up late good posters. The problem with the current system is early on topic posters get modded up, but a 4 hour late gem has a very slim change to be modded up.
-Some filters for capitals in subject "RIGHT NOW" 8-)
Re:Changes we need on Slashdot RIGHT NOW (Score:3, Informative)
Browser sniffing - not likely.
<BELLYACHE> Suggestions for improvements... (Score:5, Interesting)
That way, after I've picked a certain number of people (100/X, actually) as friends, and they all like another poster I've never noticed before, he'll automagically have the same status with me that they all do.
Foe rankings would work the same way, but is the foe of my friend necessarily my foe, and is the foe of my foe necessarily my friend? Automatically assigning points based on those assumptions would probably not be useful.
This would be cool: (Score:5, Interesting)
It probably would look cooler than those internet map posters I see Thinkgeek advertise from time to time - plus there would be the added fun of trying to find your node in the graph!
This is neat, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe an option somewhere in my Comments Preferences should let me turn off the friend / foe system, just like that OSDN Navbar.
But I don't want to score down my foes (Score:5, Interesting)
The people I want to score down are the Fools and the Trolls, whom I don't want to honor with the label "Foe".
Re:But I don't want to score down my foes (Score:3, Interesting)
I suggest replacing the simple Friend and Foe with:
Buddy: People who may or may not speak bollocks but you want to read it all anyway because your buddies with them within and/or outwith
Twat: People who only talk bollocks that you just wish would go away (currently foe)
LOTP: Leader of the Opposition. Someone that tends towards an opposite view from your own, but whom doesn't talk bollocks. You can see their points - you just disagree with them.
OMS: On my side. Someone who tends to agree with your views - doesn't talk bollocks... is worth reading.
Help! (Score:2)
Note: Who you like and dislike is not private; it can and will be used against you.
Sheesh! It's amazing what too much of IANAL stuff can do to you
Yet Another Bug? Story Submission History Gone! (Score:2)
Ideas (Score:2, Interesting)
I came up with these a while back...
- Possible meta-moderation of rejected stories. Let a certain amount of users (controlled in the same fashion as moderators) decide if a certain story is worthy of a second look. If it gets accepted and rejected for a second time, it will not get meta-moderated again.
- Let those who end up getting their story rejected moved to their journal if they're a registered user. Make that an option in their preferences or in the submit story submission page.
- Allow users to ignore posts made by Anonymous Cowards. In some cases, these people are just idiotic trolls who just waste time posting their crap here, but there are the odd times that the Anon. Coward is actually posting something useful or something not moronic. If that coward gets moderated up, then that ignore feature can be defeated.
That is all I got to say.Jon Katz (Score:3, Offtopic)
I don't read
As of the moment he has 6 fans (people how list him as a friend) and 10 PAGES (at 1024x768) of freaks [slashdot.org] (people who list him as a foe).
-
Breaking News (Score:3, Funny)
WASHINGTON, DC -- Today, President George W. Bush, taking a cue from the New and Improved (C)(TM)(R) Slashcode at slashdot.org, promptly identified Osama bin Laden as a personal "Foe" (despite warnings that his decision to do so "can and will be used against him"), a rating that carries with it an invincible -6 moderation. Osama bin Laden then proceeded to immediately disappear off the face of the Earth, never to be heard from again.
New option (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Five minutes ago I responded to an AC at score zero. I felt it required a rebuttal, but I didn't feel my response should waste the time of anyone who never saw the post I was responding to. I really didn't want to post anonymously, but it was the only way to get my score to zero. There is no way to post at -1 (if you want to respond to a -1 scored comment).
Choosing to post at a lower score is a form of courtesy to other readers.
Oh yeah, and how bad would the server load be for a spellcheck option in the comment preview?
-
how does this affect moderation? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm just wondering... does the system disable itself when we get moderation points, so we can do our jobs looking at the entire available pool of posts, or does it continue to block out people we don't like?
My first thought, when seeing this new ability, was of course to add Anonymous Coward as a foe. But that's silly - just because some people troll is no reason to deny myself the ability to read some possibly insightful comments by others who can't or won't log in. If any named user is consistently trolling, he ought to simply be banned.
Now I'm thinking - okay, so marking people down is pointless, but marking them up can be quite useful, especially if we can start sorting article comments so high-rated friends go first... in essence, this is pretty much the exact same approach that I take when I moderate. I don't waste points downvoting, I use my votes to call attention to the good stuff. And so I shall do, with the friend system - if I like comments by people consistently, I want to be told when they have new stuff they've written.
An Intermediate Step toward CF: a manifesto (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine the following:
Slashdot 'notices' that a bunch of other users who share a lot of 'friends' with you have modded up a posting by someone who is not on your 'friends' list. Slashdot notifies you of the posting, you read it, submit a comment, and add the user to your 'friends' list. You have thus discovered a worthwhile posting that you may have missed had you been filtering out low-scoring comments.
If Slashdot created a true collaborative filtering-based moderation system, then moderation as we know it would cease to exist, and in its place hundreds of closely intertwined 'communities' of like-minded readers would emerge, and the quality of discussion on slashdot (as perceived by its readers) would grow enormously.
To satisfy new readers or those who had not taken the time to express their preferences, comments could be 'scored' according to aggregate moderation across communities. The key of CF would be that everyone would be a moderator all of the time, and everyone's moderations would effect whose comments they themselves saw in the future.
Friend/Foe and Moderation: Suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, in that vein: there should be one-button view preferences (-1, Nested, Newest First) for moderation. Too often the +3s get modded to +5 while the interesting, new AC comments are ignored.
Re:make CT a foe! (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's the first bug with this system, I think. People will be able to make links to Slashdot that appear visually to be links to other stories or something innocent, but instead these links might actually mass-blacklist a victim if a lot of Slashdotters are fooled into clicking the links. I think these links should be flagged or not allowed in the body of messages.
Re:make CT a foe! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:make CT a foe! (Score:2)
Re:make CT a foe! (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
After all, there are enough users here that a dozen or two will end up making enemies after ignoring the slashcode warnings. I don't know about you, but having a single enemy could hurt my reputation and karma.
Re:Details please? (Score:2)
Doesn't seem to be much more to it.
Re:reason modifier (Score:2, Funny)
my bug report (Score:5, Interesting)
I altered the "reason modifier" in my user preferences such that Funny comments got rated -1. The modifer is being applied correctly to "Funny" comments, but the comments are not being sorted correctly. That is, a +4 Funny shows up above a +5 Interesting. It seems to me the comments are being sorted and *then* the modifier is being applied, but I would think it should be done the other way around.
My comment viewing settings are:
Threshold = 2, nested, and highest score first.
You can't cast AC as friend/foe (Score:2)
Re:A Few Obvious Things (Score:2)
In any case, probably the most useful moderation adjustment I've made is to attach a -6 rating to redundant. If it is redundant, then chances are that I don't want to read the repeats.