Slashdot Notes 165
Several notes attached below regarding the system in general,
but also regarding minor changes to moderation.
If you have ever had moderator access, or ever expect to
get it, please read the link below to read a few comments
on minor changes to the system, plus answers to faqs that
keep flooding my inbox. Never fear, I'll be rewriting the
moderator guidelines just as soon as I have a few hours of
peace and quiet.
- System has been unstable lately. Its a cranky 2.2.x kernel that likes to crash every few days (a known bug relating to the ether controller). 2.2.8 was having troubles with my SCSI adapter, so I gotta try 2.2.9. The problem is that with the machine 3 time zones away, so if I make a mistake, it is a pain to get it back up. Fortunately the coloc is installing a remote power toggle for us, so hopefully we can at least get it back up. We've been having troubles at home too with our local ISP dying (and this morning the power was out for like 2 hours). This makes it a real pain-in-the-butt for Hemos or I to post stories. Sorry about all this folks, but we're sorting each of those problems out as fast as we can.
- Moderator access is temporary. You get 5 points, and when you use them up, you're done until such time as you get more. Eligible moderators essentially take turns. On one hand, this restricts a good moderator from really doing a complete job, but it also restricts abusers from going hog wild.
- I replaced the + and - moderator control buttons with a drop down list containing reasons for moderation. These include Flamebait, Informative, Offtopic etc. The end result of these items is still the same, I'm simply trying to make moderators explain themselves just a tiny bit more- hopefully it will also make the system more self explanatory to new moderators.
- I have several things left on my "Shoulda been done weeks ago" list, most important of which is rewriting the moderator guidelines. They are hopelessly out of date. A few odds and ends after that and I hope to have a new Slash tarball out for those of you who keep asking and asking and forcing me to waste time replying instead of working on it (grin).
- Its good to be home. I had a great vacation (it was great to get away from all you guys for a bit *grin*), and LinuxExpo wasn't to bad either (as far as conferences go anyway). But thank god I'm home- I hopefully can be responsive to email again, and get cracking on the ever expanding TODO list. It feels good to be back.
- Redundant was supposed to be a -1 score but I messed up. It's fixed now.
- I thought about a humor indicator, but I'm wondering if it might be open to more abuse since humor is much more subjective than things like "Informative" or "Offtopic" (each of which are also subjective, but less so)
- Highly rated replies to low rated comments do get lost. I intend reparent them, I just haven't written that code yet.
- The moderator guidelines are comically out of date. Please read them when you get access, but don't worry about the letter as much as the spirit- they are months old, and the system has changed significantly since the days of 22 moderators hand picked by me... and parts of the guidelines haven't been rewritten to reflect that!
point #5 (Score:2)
Vacation??? You mean you weren't getting paid to go to the expo... boy do I feel lucky :) (guess it helps that my company provides the fiber for the internet connection to the convention center.)
And.. you didn't get away from all of us, that's for sure.. remember the baby? *grin* Remember the camera? *even bigger grin*
I know I'm gonna hate myself for this shortly... but... everyone wanna see CmdrTaco blushing? Then here [shadoweb.net] you go ;).
Now onto the moderator topic...
I personally have my settings to read all the way down to (-1) sometimes these comments are good to read, most of the time they aren't. My idea, since some people like to miss out on parts of the conversation by only picking the higher numbers, is to perhaps, in addition to the usual way of distributing moderator points is to have a select few, that you trust of course, to have a sort of permenant moderator status, it could be limited to 5 per day/week what have you, but still give the people who really want to moderate, and do so well, a chance to rate these postings.
The "PermMods" would of course have to base their moderation points on the guidlines, and not let their distaste for a subject, extreme liking of a certain subject, etc. get in the way of the journalism.
On to the crashing kernel. Good luck getting it fixed quickly, what would us geeks do without our slashdot? I for one detest the newspaper, and most journalism, but, with slashdot I get to see both sides of the story (usually), and most of the false "facts" are disclosed a few posts later (if not the next post)
Well... in closing... keep up the great work man!
Regarding Humor Pts (Score:1)
don't sweat it (Score:3)
starr
--
Re:well, yes and no (Score:2)
That said, I'm still in favor of Free Software. I just think all these claims that Free Software development leads to bug-free software (or even less buggy software) are unfounded.
Re:Linux (Score:2)
Release working software that *you* can't find any bugs in, and then fix the bugs people tell you about.
The Linux software model is special because if you find a bug, you are also able to fix it yourself!
-AS
Re:Kernel (Score:3)
Its fun to watch a slashdotting newsite being hacked as much exciting technology is being tested. That is what life on the bleeding edge is all about.
Re:I dislike the new moderator 'words' (Score:1)
I'd like to see something like a moderation history attached to each message via a link -- click on it to view the moderation history. Each time a message is moderated either up or down the moderator has to assign a reason for it, but with the full history you can see where and why a message with 5 points (for example) got to be a 5.
eBay: Moderation points for auction (Score:3)
Re:SLASHDOT (GPL, LGPL, BSD, or TM?) Project? (#2) (Score:1)
Putting the slash engine into a CVS repository would kick ass, and save Rob some e-mail from people asking for it. If you look in Slash Code [slashdot.org] you will see the last update was Jan 15, 1999. We all know there has been quite a few changes since then.
The code is GPL see FAQ Question 27(What about the source code to this site?) [slashdot.org]. Rob has put it under the GPL and is a supporter of Open Source/Free Software, why not set up a CVS? Even if Rob is the only one with write access we could send patchs in.
I'm sure Rob thinks of Slash as his baby (I know I would), but this is the Open Source Community. Why isn't our (probably) biggest forum's source open to us all? I'm sure Rob is busy, but putting it in CVS and letting a few good perl hackers fix some of the minor things, would probably free up some time for him.
42 and labels suck (Score:2)
But seriously, moderators rate up or down because of feelings that cannot be catogorized or quantified (sometimes anyway), having labels discourages good moderation, because people can't decide what catergory it goes under or rationalize a choice that would have been good.
Moderation suggestions (Score:2)
On the subject of replies with higher scores than parents:
If a parent's score is higher than the reader's threshold, treat it as normal. If a parent's score is lower than the reader's threshold, display it and all its children if the average score of all messages in the thread is above the threshold.
For instance, say the user's threshold was 2. There's a thread whose parent has a score of 1 but whose replies have scores of 0, 0, 1, 3, 4, 4, and 5, making the average score of that thread 2, therefore at least the parent and all replies above the threshold should be displayed.
An option would be to include an Average Thread Score Threshold as a user configurable option.
On the subject of moderation reasons:
I think the value you modify the post by and the reason should be in two separate boxes. Some people may think a post deserves +1 cause it's funny and made them laugh. Others may think a post deserves -1 cause it was funny while being inappropriate.
Statically linking a value to each reason is very subjective, and should be avoided. Possibly an "Other" input field should also be included.
On varied subjects:
If the decision is ever made to un-anonymize moderator status, it would be nice to see each moderation history entry include the value it was modified from and to, the reason given, the person who modified it, their moderator rating at the time of moderation, and their current moderator rating if it has changed since then. Maybe this is too much information, but I think it's neat.
That way if you know your comment's going to be worse than your normal ones, you can demote it yourself without making a moderator waste their posts on a comment you know is bad to begin with.
Anyway, I think that's enough suggestions for one post. I'll shut up now.
"Life is really fucked up. But the food's good."
How 'bout a way to create a new word? (Score:2)
I can see lots of potential problems, though - for example, if I added an option "Humerous", and consider it a +1, what if someone else considers humerous a -1?
View the Source, Luke (Score:1)
I thought this site was about open source?
CVS?
something newer than 0.3?
Purty plz?!
NB? (Score:1)
(n.b. I'm being sarcastic here)
You know, there was one guy in the ancient history of the humongous application I work on (4+million lines of code) who used that notation (NB) all the time. He wrote crap for code, but that's neither here nor there.
I know it indicates an informative or descriptive block of commentary, but WHAT does it stand for? I've asked all the people I work with, they don't know either, and some of them have been working on the bloomin' system for 15 years.
Posted anonymously to protect me from embarrassment.
Hooray! (Score:1)
Re:the option is called OFF TOPIC! (Score:1)
Cheers,
Perrin.
Kernel (Score:2)
JB
Replies... (Score:5)
I see a lot of moderated replies with this setup, and sometimes the parent thread isn't to my threshold, which means I only see the informative replies without seeing the (perhaps) uninformative original post.
I do wish there was a way to 'up the thread to the parent' so that a thread with many worthy replies would get brought up higher than other posts.
Imagine two threads...
The first has this scoring:
parent: 3, child 1
The second had this scoring:
parent: 2, child 3, child 5, child 3
I'd want the second thread to be higher than the first when sorting by score.
What is insight? (Score:1)
Unfortunately, however, the first thing I've learned from this new feature is that surprisingly few people know what the word "insightful" means. I see this tag being applied to many comments which are best described as "interesting".
Insight is the ability to understand the inner nature of a thing, or to gain an intuitive understanding of a situation. An insightful comment is one which reveals this understanding, and conveys it to others.
For example, if an editorial were posted which complained about the rise of bloated, slow applications, an insightful comment might explain why applications are larger and slower than they were several years ago. A comment which says, "I agree -- applications need to be smaller", would not be insightful.
The comment titled "'Redundant' selection on new moderator thingy" certainly raised an important point which deserved prominence, but there was certainly nothing insightful about it.
Thanks for the information... (Score:4)
I read slashdot along with several other news sites, and I sorely miss it when it is down.
Moderator status (Score:2)
thanks...
Re:Moderation suggestions (Score:1)
> Disagree" is a good idea. The more "I Agree"
> votes a particular moderation gets, the more
> points that moderator should get.
I don't think moderators should get point on whether people agree or not. A very good post could address an issue on which there is much conflict. People not agreeing with the post doesn't make it a bad post. It could very well be informational and thought-provoking without people necessarily agreeing to it. Take, for instance, the stance of Michael Leventhal on XML.com (that XSL is "dangerous"). It's not necessarily a popular opinion, but it is thought-provoking and the articles are worthwhile. It would be bad to reward posters for simply fostering a "Me Too" attitude in their posts.
Actually, there is (Score:4)
Re:Moderator status (Score:3)
I think it makes sense in some circumstances to do that -- especially in lengthy discussions, where people who typically consistantly make good comments might jump in late in the discussion, and end up far enough down the list where a moderator won't run across it.
Someone who consistantly ends up with their posts moderated up to 2, 3 or higher probably should start at 2. I'd be more interested in reading those comments right away.
Personally, I don't like this new categorization of moderator points though... what happens when one person promotes it for being insightful, and another for something else? Or do these just represent the old -1 to 5 scale? If so, I don't think its intuitive that "Informative" is more significant than "Insightful" -- since in most discussions, I'm more interested in insightful comments than simply informative ones.
If they DO still represent numbers, then I think the numbers should show up with them. If they don't, I think some clarification of what happens when more than one moderator moderates a comment with differing reasons.
Double plus good (Score:2)
Good, Plus good (?) and double plus good.
or how bout good++
There are WAAAY too many 5's in this discussion.
needless to say, these suggestions should probably go in the feedback area flagged as an enhancement.
Re:Suggestion: Free Fire Zone. (Score:1)
Obviously, moderators are more likely to read a thread about moderation, but still, this article is so over-moderated it's a joke!
--
Re:No moderation (RANT_MODE=1) (Score:2)
Tough to do, especially if Rob and Co. "want a life," as expressed in the post. Think about what a community this is:
1. Lets folks post anonymously.
2. Allows us a single point of contact AND a healthy(?) sampling of the funky, the humourous and the genuinely interesting and intellectually stimulating sites that otherwise might not be seen in the "new" commercially dominated world of the Websphere.
3. Archives our thoughts responsibly and maintains them in an intelligent way.
4. Allows the new and the veteran of this space we are beginning to explore a place to experiment with new methods and processes of communication.
5. Advances the "New Media," while giving us a tailor-made and fully personally customizable interface that looks like PBS to some (All things nerdish considered...?) (television/radio metaphor, even has a "Cartoon Channel and MTV!) and a newspaper or magazine to others (Look, ma! The Funnies!)...
6. Succeeds where Netscape/AOL, DejaNews, Yahoo, and others of the "portal" ilk fail miserably...by creating individual and group spaces in which we can explore this new way of thinking and communicating without a constant barrage of ads, offers and spam-bait...in fact they go out of their way to defend us from the SpamLords.
7. Acts as a Fair Witness to the Revolution we are experiencing and helps those commercial interests who don't "get it" to join with us...in the process enriching all of us (even some of us monetarily)
8. Contributes to the demise of the PHB.
...and they do all this for 60K+ of us (and rising) with a system so well automated that it SEEMS PERSONAL!
This is not a flame, but I believe that the apparent "personal touch" of the system Rob and Co. have devised often masks their hard work and the human touch that makes Slashdot
"Editorial" policy takes people, not machines, I think the
Finally, I did not mean this to be such a long post, but I feel that so obvious a labor of love quite often today goes unappreciated until it is no more...as the song said:
"...Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone..."
So, as is not too frequently said here, thanks Rob, and the rest of the "behind the scenes" Krewe...THANKS! We really do appreciate your work, your intellectual skills, your caring and the human touch that you strive to give us in the
THANKS!
(RANT_MODE=0)
Re:what about humor? (Score:2)
THANKS !!!! (Score:1)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Re:"Redundant" selection on new moderator thingy (Score:1)
That´s not flamebait! (Score:1)
(Score:4, Off-topic) -- (Score:1, Insightful)?!? (Score:4)
If we're going to attach reasons for the moderation, I'd like to know more than what the last person who touched the message thought of it.
Re:Where is your sense of Yuma? (Score:1)
Re:images on /. (Score:1)
Humour Moderation (Score:1)
this before, but after scanning about 75% of the way down the page,
my eyes hurt.
I noticed that someone suggested that points for humour should be
added, but not taken away. Seems like a good idea to me, and if the
humour score is kept separate from the normal moderation score
perhaps in future we'd all be able to search for humourous posts
regardless of their score?
Then again, I'm stuck at home sick today and my mind isn't firing on
all cylinders, so I've probably missed something important in all of
this. Ah well
Moderator or not? (Score:1)
Scores should be inherited up the comment tree (Score:5)
Either that or replace below-the-threshold comments with blanked out stubs.
o/~ Keep Feeling Moderation... o/~ (Score:2)
Is there any way to unmoderate? Like if you realize you accidentally marked a post down when you meant to mark it up? It's happened to me before, and the post in question then had no moderate thingie on it for me to reverse my mistake.
What about people who, like myself, keep their threshhold set to +1 or +2 or higher? They'll only see the posts that are higher-rated already, and not the lower ones that might be worth a promotion.
Love those words!! More More!! (Score:4)
If you really wanted to enrich the slashdot experience you could have the general reader rate the moderators decision, such as "agree" or "disagree". Thus the moderators could collect their own score. Because of the large volume of readers it would tend to be accurate. This also would provide for a more involved readership.
Because they have their own score, better moderators would float to the surface. You could award the moderator with more vote points. Or maybe if moderators agree on the same rating a comment should be given or descriptive moderator words, that would give more vote weight (i.g. two moderators agree, giving a score of three. Also, If the readership vote swings alot one way or another, they could undo a moderator vote.
Just some ideas.
I dislike the new moderator 'words' (Score:5)
like:
Redundant -1
Funny + 1
Offtopic -1
Amazing +2
etc
AutoModeration (Score:1)
Using this sort of auto-moderation, moderators could just sift out duplicates, or really heinous posts. Of course, I do not know if the Slashdot engine can really handle maintaining ALL posts until they sink to a "auto-delete-me" level.
I would suggest
Quality of post: -5..5
and *perhaps* an
Extent to which I agree: -2..2
The second option would be there for people who don't realize that a post can be high quality yet they can still disagree. The quality of the post is more important than the extent to which people agree...in fact, the posts which more people disagree with generate the most discussion.
Re:NB? (Score:2)
... heh, I didn't know that either.
Re:pic of Cmdr Taco and Squeaky (Score:1)
Re:Anti-Linux option --- Bzzzzzt! (Score:1)
To err is human.. (Score:2)
Re:Becoming a moderator; lowering initial score (Score:3)
AFAIK, there're more lurkers just reading
I think all of the audience (i.e. people who regularly visit and read
Some people just post to say something, anything, possibly getting moderator access for just an unrated (1) comment. Others who only post if a topic is especially interesting to them will rarely be moderators although they might be more educated than others who do get moderator status.
If it's kept track of date of registration, number and duration of visits, not just score and number of posts, some of the regular lurkers could be given moderator access as well. Maybe picking half of the moderators from the lurker group? At least *some* representation of this quiet but important group of
Re:well, yes and no (Score:2)
Re: Moderation adjustment (Score:4)
Not lurkers, but not elitist either. (Score:1)
SLASHDOT (GPL, LGPL, BSD, or TM?) Project? (#2) (Score:1)
Really, though, with the postings/announcements recently from the commercial side, and this large a community, how about a Project to bring the "SLASH kernel" to fruition?
I would be willing to donate server space and time (say 10 hours a week) if someone(s) would help set up the CVS/RCS/Bugzilla/webtools to track the project...say SLASH 1.0 in 60 days?
Re:Linux (Score:1)
few months till it appears the dust has settled and it appears to work. We do the same with linux, a new kernel appears we wait till its been tested. Just remember not every hardware combination can be tested. The stable label to me on the linux kernel means it runs on Linus's machine and more then likely will run with no problems on my machine
Who should moderate? 3-5 posters, not lurkers. (Score:1)
Well, it occurs to me that perhaps moderation should be limited to people who regularly post high ranking articles. I had always been under the impression that the reason I got moderator points was because I posted 2 or 3 articles that got 5's. Now that I find out that it is completely arbitrary I'm rather disappointed. Of course I might have this wrong, this is based on a previous post.
Please CmdrTaco, Hemos, and the rest of the team, reward people that post intelligent posts, don't reward lurkers. Not only will it encourage people to write more intelligent posts, but it will also encourage people to continue to write intelligent posts later on. Generally speaking, the people who take the time to write a 4 or 5 scoring article are not the types who will demote an article because they disagree with it.
Controlling moderation based on points recieved by the poster seems to make a lot of sense to me in my own mind. Of course one post that scores 5 should be worth more than ten posts that score 1, so it should scale somehow, but I'm sure the home team here will figure out something that works for that. Please give this some thought, I think it might help the moderation system by improving the quality of moderators.
FYI: No, I didn't log out to post this, but I'm also not moderating this particular article either. Having points is reason more to contribute, not a reason to lurk.
-- Cysgod
(I use BSD and Linux, happy?)
Re: headings & replies (Score:1)
Anti-Linux option (Score:1)
(n.b. I'm being sarcastic here)
Re:Linux (Score:1)
Re:What's the difference between Flamebait and Tro (Score:1)
Re:Word.. (Score:1)
I don't know; moderation happens fast . . . (Score:1)
>at higher than one was still happening.
The post to which you were replying, for example, was up to 5 in less than 5 minuts, I believe.
Re:Moderator Points (Score:1)
Although I like the moderation system, it seems to me that the moderators are too focused on the heads of the threads and not enough on the comments underneath
If a reply doesn't quote whatever they're replying too, it's less likely to get moderated up. A moderator browsing comments at Flat and Newest first might not understand the comment out of its context, especially if the subject has changed.
Becoming a moderator; lowering initial score (Score:1)
As far as posts starting with 2 or 3, how about allowing those users the option to 'demote' their post at the start, if they feel they're posting something that's not all that important.
Re:Moderator status (Score:3)
Then, when you least expect it, you read a thread and notice that there is a slashbox to the right saying "You have moderator access." You get five points. At this time, you need to read, or reread the guidelines.
You use the five points then you're a mere mortal again. Then you become a moderator again sooner or later, sort of at random.
Before, each post had three little radio buttons at the bottom of it, with the default being the center 'don't change' position. To one side of this was a + sign, on the other a - sign.
As you read post, you could + or - certain posts, then when you get to the bottom oyu press a 'moderate' button and the changes were made.
Now, each post has a drop down list rather than a radio button, with the default as 'normal'. There are three 'negative' choices, and three 'positive' choices. The effect is the same, in that you are bumping the post up or down one, but now there is a 'reason' attached.
Does that make sense now?
Re:well, yes and no (Score:1)
I just have to say that I love that kernel. I have a system that's currently been up for 347 days (plus another 160 if you count the uptime before the power outage ...) on 2.0.34.
I've found the 2.2 kernels to be good so far though -- the linux pool at work has been up for just over 64 days on 2.2.2-ac3. 2.2.5 on another box was over 45 days before I upgraded it to 2.2.9.
Problems with the new setup (Score:4)
All in all, I think this is a great idea. But, here are some of the problems I've got with it as a moderator:
Anyway, great idea, good execution, just needs to be ironed out a bit.
-- Amy Kresse [mailto]
Re:SLASHDOT (GPL, LGPL, BSD, or TM?) Project? (#2) (Score:1)
> no word from the King o' Slash tho...Hemos? Rob? You guys out there?
Moderation (Score:2)
It is not so much a problem that people use moderation access to promote their personal agendas as you imply. Unlike usenet some posters are given the right to review the material of others and theoretically in the future users can rank the stories by rank or as was previously addressed on slashdot a page could be tabulated of the best comments each week.
Thank you for creating this forum slashdot peoples.
Possible moderation DOS attack? (Score:5)
It doesn't seem very likely if the moderators do a good job, but seeing the number of downgraded postings in this thread made me think. Of course, this moderation system is an order of magnitude better than anything else out there- it's really nice to be able to cruise at +2 or +3 when I'm really busy and don't have time to read everything.
Moderator Guidelines... (Score:5)
decreasing"..
I'm sick of moderators "punishing" posts/posters that they just don't
like - I've seen this already in the Wcarchive story, someone had
thier post moderated down because it's "offtopic" - when the poster
specifically mentioned FreeBSD... (gee, seems like it's on topic to
me..) at worst, this most should have been left alone..
I suggest that "temp" moderators only be given the power to decrease
scores once, and increase four times... it would certainly help to
emphasize the afforementioned rule...
And I wouldn't be surprised if this post gets moderated down soon...
Re:Problems with the new setup (Score:1)
Maybe this comment didn't deserve a -1 after all? It's certainly possible to argue that compulsory registration is a bad thing. We're not talking about a warez site here but about the free availability of information.
Re:images on /. (Score:1)
what about humor? (Score:5)
We need an option for amusing posts. I've seen some that deserved +'s just for making me laugh, surely we don't have to ALWAYS be a smarty-pants to get positive points.
(Am I going to get moderator status taken away for this post? Are all the smarty-pantses going to revoke my privledges?)
Humor points (Score:1)
This kind of reconciles "classical" vs. "romantic" as described in zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance, too. (go quality!)
Re:images on /. (Score:1)
Perhaps... (Score:1)
Just a thought...
Re:Possible moderation DOS attack? (Score:1)
Besides, moderators are supposed to focus on promotion, not demotion. So, moderators who read the guidelines won't get all their points sopped up.
Score topics (Score:4)
I found score description an interesting idea; however, I would be worried that it might incite flames when a post is tagged as "flaimbait." However, if I was a dumbass and posted something pointless and silly, hopefully I would get the hint. Getting flagged with "bandwidth waster" would be a good awakening clue.
Out of countless thousands of readers with pushbutton posting ability, there might be a few tortured souls who had the wrong cup of coffee and this could be the thing that could make an irritating person hold a grudge and set him off in a rampage of first posts or whatever. In the end, I'm thankful many people take the time to moderate. Sometimes there are dozens of one-liner random thought replies to just about everything that loose the humor value.
"Redundant" selection on new moderator thingy (Score:5)
I took redundant to mean "me toos" or "too stupid/lazy/whatever to read the other comments so i didn't realize my point had been made 500 times by other people". Am I wrong?
Re:Moderator status (Score:5)
They expire on their own again in a few days if not used. It won't happen if the net moderation of your your own posings is negative. And if you get moderated down too often, your posts start below 1, as 0 (like an AC), or even -1. It used to be possible to start above 1, but I think that this got dropped a few weeks ago; there was just too much starting at 2 and 3. (it worked on cumalitive moderation of your posts, rather than average moderation. A couple of brilliant insights, and every post about your dog & hamster was suddenly plus a couple
There was talk about "micro-defaults" to replace the defaults, so that (for example) frequent positive moderation might start you at 1.1, being listed before the average poster, but after the moderated posts.
Also, you can't moderate and post in the same thread.
A "counterpoint" category would be nice as wll as the existing list--when something provocative is posted, and is popular, drawing heavy + moderation on itself & its siblings, an oterwise innocuous counterpoint, which wouldn't normally get moderated, can get promoted to stand on the same level. I suppose this is "insightful," but it ought to have its own category.
Re:Problems with the new setup (Score:2)
2) I'm just speculating, but maybe this is to counteract any other moderators trying to promote the post. Kind of like giving someone multiple life sentences to eliminate hope for a parole. (This would, of course, depend on whether the internal score variable can go below -1.)
3) I agree, although "off-topic" is not too bad of a catch-all category. I have the feeling that these moderation descriptions are going to be like options in the slashdot polls -- everyone will always be mad that there aren't more.
While we're nitpicking, I'd like it if there could be a list of the adjectives, instead of just the latest one, or whatever, displayed. A post could, in theory, be insightful, offtopic, informative, and flamebait all at the same time. (IMHO, the Linus Torvalds essay in Open Sources meets all of these descriptions at various points.)
Slashdot uptime. (Score:2)
FYI:what about humor ... humanity has needs ... (Score:4)
I'm a moody person, prone to out-burst of insanity, and always thinking of shapes changing color and forms changing hue as relates to my environment, emotions, thought, and situation.
Sometimes I just want to read the fun and funny stuff, other ziet maybe the (on subject/related) weird/odd perspective/perception (maybe cultural/philosoph/religion bent), in the past I looked for the SCIENCE/MATH/FACT FILLED to read, now I think the Artistic maybe of interest, well in the future wasted and lost
Maybe, I hope, well be able sort and provide points on different catagories. A bunch of Humor on some days could really help my attitude at times.
Re:FYI:what about humor ... humanity has needs ... (Score:2)
Well, what do you think about MEEPT!!
(Whatever happened to that zany character? The sheer nonsense, the humorous insight, the wacked out prose of the glorious meept really had a personality.)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Say moderators had unlimited comments but 5 comment points.
General consensus could raise funny, insightful, poor taste, boring, informational stuff(which is useful IMHO), without tying them too much with moderating; some people think off-topic is bad, and other's think it's good.
My 2 cents
-AS
Re:View the Source, Luke (Score:2)
I thought this site was about open source?
CVS?
something newer than 0.3?
Purty plz?!
I, pesonally, want to wait until he's got it a bit more stable. (Documented, too!)
At the same time -- Rob, maybe set a "feature freeze", finish tweaking the moderation, Slashboxes and stuff? Maybe some of us can help fix some of this stuff for you as well.
Jay (=
Moderator Points (Score:5)
Horribly Green Moderator
Re:images on /. (Score:2)
You just need to turn on or get someone to turn on port 81 as a valid proxy port. My assumption is you're running through a firewall, and there's a proxy that handles getting the data through it. That proxy probably has the common ones (80, 443, 8080) as acceptable ports. Using 81 is sort of wierd, but thats how to fix it.
Right click on the image, and say View Image (figuring you're in Netscape) -- you'll be able to see what the error message is. If you get an error page, you're probably hitting a proxy that needs to be fixed. If you don't connect -- ie, eventually you get a can't connect error -- then its probably a firewall.
Re:images on /. (Score:2)
The requests go out over port 81, they come back to an unpriveleged port (ports greater than 1023) just like everything else. If you're going directly through the firewall, ask the admin to open 81 outgoing, to the pix server fqdn only, if need be. If you're using a proxy, they can tweak that to allow the pix as well.
Since I'm a bit of a newbie, I wonder, why not just have the pix server listen to 8080, since it seems like more firewalls would allow that port outgoing?
Re:1 (Score:2)
Linux (Score:2)
I don't like the moderation descriptions... (Score:2)
All in all, the old moderation system seemed pretty functional to me. If I'm away from my computer for a while, I like that I can pull up a day old story and browse a condensed version of the comments. The few posts that made it to 4 or 5 points do a good job of clearly presenting the important points made in that discussion. An excellent system.
I don't see what is gained by the moderation description. I like the simple "relevancy meter".
--Lenny
Why? (Score:3)
Why should one waste time by explaining why he/she moderated a comment? I think it's pretty obvious: if a moderator likes a comment, he/she will moderate it up, really crappy comments go down. I just don't see any need for further explaining. Adding too many "bells and whistles" will ultimately make things too complicated
I especially dislike the offtopic-option. There is a great risk that some very good comments get moderated down just because they are just a tad offtopic.
Re:Anti-Linux option --- Bzzzzzt! (Score:2)
They may not have been very good posts, but they would have been left alone had they not had been so-called 'anti-Linux' i.e. if you replaced every occurence of Linux with Windows in the message, those posts would have been left alone. This isn't Rob's fault of course, but the fault of a few mindless Linux loving moderators.
I've had this happen to me before, and I've had to write to Rob complaining about this, after which he moderated the post back up.
Re:Word.. (Score:2)
Is keeping moderator status secret still necessry? (Score:5)
Re:Scores should be inherited up the comment tree (Score:2)
well, yes and no (Score:4)
> those people who were saying that it's
> slashdot's setup, not the Linux kernel, that was > causing the problem. Apparently it was a bug in
> the kernel itself. A known bug, but a bug
> nonetheless, and a serious one that caused the
> site to lose uptime at that.
If you're talking about the latest batch of downtimes, yes.
However, I should point out that most of the problems in the past (and Rob has announced the causes in a similar fashion to this in the past) have been due to mySQL crapping out, or more occasionally bugs in the particular patchlevel of mod_perl that Rob was running. Keep in mind, kernel 2.2.8 hasn't even existed for most of
The bug was stomped pretty quickly in 2.2.9 as I understand, too; the only reason it's not fixed for
It is dissapointing to have a stable kernel that's this flaky (although it is just the specific driver). I'm sure we'll have our share of 2.0.34s in the future, too.
I still think that _on the balance_ (and I think history bears out my point here), Linux does very well in terms of low bug rates and fast bug fixes.
Re:Scores should be inherited up the comment tree (Score:2)
replace below-the-threshold comments with blanked out stubs
I think this sounds like
Ooo!! I hadn't seen that "Extrans" option for formatting before. I'm guessing it lets us put HTML tags in comments more easily, but since I'm using HTML here I won't try it. Nice one Rob.
Re:Linux (Score:3)
Basically, a kernel leaves linus's hands well (for some definition there of) tested and debugged. However, linus does not have the capability of beating up the kernel at the level at which the users do, nor does he have the QA necessary to make sure a new kernel is fit for all purposes.
I think there is an unspoken convention that if you can't afford any downtime, you wait a little while before jumping on the cutting edge. This is why many people still run a 2.0 kernel.
That being said, the fact that Slashdot runs a 2.2 kernel is doing more for getting the really nasty bugs out of the 2.2 series than any three hundred normal people, because of the extremes slashdot must go through (specifically, being under heavy load, high end hardware, etc)
Re:Moderator status (Score:2)
Basically, you get moderator points for "good behavior" among other things. This includes posting followups that get moderated up and not followups that get moderated down. You also get points for reading Slashdot x number of times a week where x is neither too small nor too large. Finally, there is a random factor and some stuff Cmdrtaco threw in the code to determine who gets the points.
As for using the points, it will be obvious once you get them (there used to be radio buttons under the article, now there will be pulldown lists). Just select the score you want to assign an article and hit the "Moderate" button on the bottom of the page.
I hope this clears the whole moderation thing up for you.
Parallel voting for names/scores (Score:2)
1. Moderators receive moderation points as in the old system and use them in the score _only_.
2. Moderators (might be the same ones, or not) receive special pseudo-moderation points that are spent on the categories. Each category would have its "score". For example: moderator A votes +1 to 'Offtopic' and +1 to 'Troll' in one comment; moderator B votes -1 to 'Troll' and +1 to 'Insightful' in the same comment. Then they are combined and the result is (Score: whatever, Insightful) if the score is high and (Score: whatever, Offtopic) if the score is very low. Those categories would always be between -1 and +5, just like the normal moderation.
Also, another cool misfeature that would be worth adding to
Anyway, it's getting late here. Tomorrow I'll read the comments.
Re:Deliciously recursive (Score:2)