Hey, just a heads up on our Day 1 status. I've made some tweaks to the moderation script to handle the surge of users we've gotten, so modpoints should start flowing more easily. I'm making a few more tweaks right now that should get this working as expected (I am going to have to purge out the point in system to reset the script though, so if you have modpoints right now, don't be surprised if they suddenly vanish into the ether.
We know there have been some issues with both registration and submitting stories. On the registration front, some of our emails have been marked as spam, so if you're not getting them, check spam filters. In addition, for the last half an hour, we had a problem with a human confirmation check breaking, which just got cleared. We'll keep you apprised of any updates to this. As for story submissions, this looks like an artifact of a human confirmation script that got re-enabled when we went live. It should be working properly now for logged in users, as well as AC, though I'll be keeping an eye on it. I hope to have a more verbose tech write-up of the site sometime tonight.
Related Stories
So, as I write this, day one has officially come to an end. I'm still somewhat in shock over it. Last night when I was editing the database to change over hostnames and such, I was thinking, man, it would be great if we got 100 regular users by tomorrow. Turns out I was wrong. By a factor of ten. Holy cow, people. I'm still in a state of disbelief, partially due to the epic turnout, but also because our very modest server hardware hasn't soiled itself from the influx (the numbers are, well, "impressive" is a way to put it). Anyway, I wanted to do a bit of a writeup of where we stand now, what works, and what doesn't. Check it out (and some raw numbers) after the break! Warning, it is a bit lengthy.
(Score: 5, Funny) by KibiByte on Monday February 17 2014, @08:09PM
*coughs* Which 1k are you talking about, sir?
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 2, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday February 17 2014, @08:12PM
If you're discerning enough to distinguish kibi from kilo, surely you must know that 1K and 1k are different?
Making a public pledge to no longer contribute to slashdot
(Score: 2, Insightful) by KibiByte on Monday February 17 2014, @08:29PM
You mean k K and Ki, yes?
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 1) by FatPhil on Monday February 17 2014, @08:41PM
Indeed - good catch.
That will teach me to post from the +long-past-your-bedtime timezone.
Making a public pledge to no longer contribute to slashdot
(Score: 1) by KibiByte on Monday February 17 2014, @08:57PM
We're all nitpicky, it's no biggie to me!
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 2, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday February 17 2014, @09:20PM
The nice thing is that those of us who are early adopters are the ones with the positive attitude, who want to see this new community succeed. So we don't even want to get into arguments with each other.
Hence my inability to get modded down despite directly asking for it!
Making a public pledge to no longer contribute to slashdot
(Score: 5, Funny) by Appalbarry on Monday February 17 2014, @10:13PM
Who you calling an "Early Adopter" you three-digit ID slow poke....
(Score: 2, Funny) by demonlapin on Monday February 17 2014, @11:06PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by KibiByte on Monday February 17 2014, @11:10PM
Just watched a count in the IRC channel, had the screen set and ready, saw 1023 and slammed create account!
But a site contributor was behind the scenes putting out that information publicly, so I guess it was a gift!
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 1) by Random2 on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:07AM
I really need to find the guy who beat me to mine and get it from him....
If only I registered 3 users earlier....
(Score: 2, Funny) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 18 2014, @04:55AM
Is that the society for racist nerds?
Aside: In the other place, <quote> works as an alias for <blockquote>, but here it seems to be stripped out.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by KibiByte on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:42PM
Why type the extra 4 letters if the function is the same?
This is where some languages have advantages while others have more robust features at the expense of verbosity.
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 1) by paulej72 on Monday February 17 2014, @08:13PM
Nice first post. If I had mod points I would have used them.
Team Leader for SN Development Dev Server [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by dry on Monday February 17 2014, @11:01PM
Funny thing is earlier I logged in and had 10 points, even with zero karma. Now a few hours later they're gone.
Oh first post here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitari
(Score: 1) by linsane on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:54PM
There is, I'm informed, a 4hr rule while the crew work some of the mystical code out.
Suffered the same fate here, use em or lose em I guess for the time being!
(Score: 1) by dry on Tuesday February 18 2014, @09:24PM
Yes, I read that today as well. Hopefully they'll be lots of comments worth modding up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitari
(Score: 1) by everdred on Monday February 17 2014, @08:19PM
Congratulations... you've won SoylentNews!
I guess we can all go home now.
We don't take no shit from a machine.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Non Sequor on Monday February 17 2014, @08:37PM
How many accounts did you register to get the uid that goes with your nick?
(Score: 1) by KibiByte on Monday February 17 2014, @08:53PM
My original account (54) and then I just watched the UID count rise in IRC.
Nothing else registered!
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 2, Funny) by Lagg on Monday February 17 2014, @09:38PM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me]
9467 6082 8A35 2E1E 2D6B 76C4 5E9A ED56 076F 9E89
(Score: 1) by KibiByte on Monday February 17 2014, @09:46PM
Nothing makes me happier than raw unbridled chaos!
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:51AM
You must love the "Beta" protest. Strangely, I find the recent uproar far more interesting than any of the actual articles at the Old Site.
(Score: 5, Funny) by andrew on Monday February 17 2014, @11:23PM
After completing registration I immediately regretted not taking the username "chmod".
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by FatPhil on Monday February 17 2014, @08:10PM
Fire away!
Which is a risky thing to say given that there's a critical bug titled "[#5] Karma -1 forever"
Making a public pledge to no longer contribute to slashdot
(Score: 1) by NCommander on Monday February 17 2014, @08:14PM
I wasn't able to reproduce that one, and it was during the period of when we *first* got Slash up and running, but no one has complained in IRC as of yet about it. Drop me a line if you hear about it happening again, and I'll re-investigate.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by vbraga on Monday February 17 2014, @08:31PM
Is there an "official" IRC channel for SoylentNews? Which server/channel?
(Score: 5, Informative) by NCommander on Monday February 17 2014, @08:37PM
Most of us are on Freenode in ##altslashdot. I think there was some talk of relocating, but for now, join us there.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by FatPhil on Monday February 17 2014, @08:37PM
Yeah - but how many times have people been modded down below zero since then?
Another test does no harm.
Making a public pledge to no longer contribute to slashdot
(Score: 1) by NCommander on Monday February 17 2014, @08:41PM
I've got my alt which I will retest this on tonight
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Funny) by mattie_p on Monday February 17 2014, @09:19PM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DarkMorph on Monday February 17 2014, @08:10PM
Congrats on the first 1,000 users within a day or so.
The turnaround has been really good, though. Ironically the duration of the slashcott was more or less how long it took to get this site up and running. Even with all the outstanding reported bugs this page is slick and quick, just as it should be. Even the JavaScript-hating crowd is appeased.
Hopefully the odd bug has been fixed where articles would not show up based on your timezone settings. UTF-8 is still quirky; I tried to type a message in Japanese and the preview was completely blank.
There was a rumour in the chat about posts being removed/censored on /. if there were references to SoylentNews...
(Score: 1) by KibiByte on Monday February 17 2014, @08:15PM
I haven't found myself victim of that rumor. I've had a couple of comments posted since then, not an issue.
Of course, if they removed anything with Soylentnews in it, they'd be removing a huge chunk of their database, with as often as I posted there.
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 5, Informative) by NCommander on Monday February 17 2014, @08:16PM
Yeah, it seems to actually be dependent partially on what's going in. The validator having some sanity issues which weren't QUITE so bad during internal testing. The trick is to just hit submit without previewing which seems to work every time. Its known, but not super high priority.
Still always moving
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:03AM
But not the JavaScript-liking crowd. I miss being able to reply, fetch hidden messages in a thread, and see previews without having to open a load of tabs.
1K users is a good milestone, but some of those are duplicate accounts. It will take a while to build the momentum - you need to be getting around 100 comments per story to avoid suffering the same fate as Technorati (anyone remember that? Bruce Perens' attempt at a Slashdot replacement some years ago), which suffered from having more interesting stories but no comments - and no one read Slashdot for the stories. At the moment, every registered user needs to comment on at least one or two stories a day to get that volume of comments, which is probably feasible for now given that the most motivated people came here, but needs a lot more growth to be sustainable. The other place has around 2-3 million registered users, but rarely manages more than 200 comments per story (unless it's about Obama, and then you get 400 blue trolls and 400 red trolls).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by mtrycz on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:14AM
I feel you. I personally would like to implement this, but this whole thing happened at the wrong moment, and all I can do for now is report bug.
If it isn't done for march, I'll happily volunteer, tho. Of course you are welcome to do so too ;)
(Score: 1) by Darth Turbogeek on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:50AM
Post about Obama liking or hiting Slashdot Beta, that seems like a good troll to get volume discussion going.
Good work new Overlords, great to see this place emerge.
(Score: 2, Informative) by buswolley on Monday February 17 2014, @08:15PM
http://dev.soylentnews.org/users.pl [dev.soylentnews.org]
has a rendering error
subicular junctures
(Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Monday February 17 2014, @08:18PM
http://dev.dev.soylentnews.org/projects/soylentnews [dev.soylentnews.org]
That's a blasted annoying bug. Everytime we think we fixed it, it reappears for someone else (I've been told it renders correctly on Opera for instance). It was perfectly fine (for me) before golaunch, and then BLAMO. If someone wants to pull the cssraws out of git and hand me a fixed version, I'll have it pushed in 10 minutes :-)
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AudioGuy on Monday February 17 2014, @08:32PM
Might be a side effect of the other fix.
Three column stuff is a real, royal, pain in the ass with pure css. Look on the web and you will see many many people who claim to have 'solved the problem' with varying degrees of success.
There is actually a very simple solution for all of these, which purists will not want to hear.
Put the three columns into a table. Just that, don't have to do any other table layout.
Tables were specifically designed for this and you will not get rendering errors with boxes floating around where they should not be. Slashcode css is old.
1 table, one row, three cells. That's it.
I used to be a purist. Now, I am a practical man. Make it reliable, understandable, and simple. Simple doesn't break.
For what it's worth, it is broken on Opera 10.10 too.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Monday February 17 2014, @09:05PM
That's not an optimal solution for people with assitive technologies (screen reader). Tables can be a real pain in the ass to navigate, espically when you have to navigate the same table on every page load/refresh. That said, I don't disagree with you.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by NCommander on Monday February 17 2014, @10:26PM
What's it currently doing on the main index which is actually working?
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Informative) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday February 18 2014, @10:31AM
First of all this is going to be a long post. Second please don't take it as criticism, you guys are doing a great job, especially considering you're starting form code built in the late 90's.
Unfortunately I can't really sum up 5 years of training, courses and on the job, and assistance from a huge teams of people from different organizations in one posting, but I hope I can give you an idea of what it takes to develop something accessible. If you're interested the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 [w3.org] is a good place to start reading.
I'd also like to point out that AudioGuy is right, there's no one easy solution for laying out a page using CSS. Tables, or div's, would be the easiest way for a web dev to get things up and running easily. For the non-blind that works fine. If however you wanted to be inclusive, that method sucks for the blind, especially tables because of how they're parsed by screen readers. Tables are for spreadsheet data only where column and row headings are important.
A good rule of thumb is if you turn CSS off the page should be readable (like a word document), if you're doing a lot of scrolling (past menus at the top of the page perhaps) your page is going to be annoying for a blind person to sit through. Ideally the "star" or "meat" of the page should be the first thing you see at the top with CSS turned off. It's not always possible, but when is anything ever ideal.
If anyone's interested Firefox has an add-on called "Fangs". It's trivial to install and lets you right click on a page and select "view with fangs". It gives a pretty reasonable text representation of how content is read by a screen reader and includes the Headings List and Links List, which are two common ways I've seen blind people navigate through a page.
Jaws is the screen reader the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) recommends to the visually impaired on a budget. I'm not using "visually impaired" as politically correct term, it includes people who are blind and people have low level vision. Jaws has a demo version that's good for something like 30 minutes after which it stops working, every restart give you another 30 minutes. It's not bad for development purposes, but it's windows only and the first time I installed it, it really Fucked up my display settings.
I'm not visually impaired, but I have friends at the CNIB and have heard them speak at events demoing assertive technologies. Smartphones as an example have made significant improvements in their lives, GPS really helps them get around, accessible bus schedules, wireless lights, on-line bills (it's apparently quite the pain to get a bill in braille, buy you can get your phone to read it to you out of the box).
The lights is kind of a funny story, The CNIB guy that spoke at an event said it really got on his nerves when people would come visit him and run around his apartment turning on the lights, because they couldn't see, then they'd leave and leave all the lights on. Apparently he had the lights on for over a month once before he got his power bill. Now he has some wireless LEDs that are on a timer to turn off, so if for some reason the lights are on, his phone will turn them off. He said before that most blind people would just take the light bulbs out of the sockets to keep their friends form mindlessly turning on the lights, they'd have to ask or note the light wasn't working.
Navigating a page for the blind is different than it is for the non-blind.
No way they'd sit through just a reading of the Soylent page, which might be read kind of like:
"Page has twenty-one headings and one hundred forty-seven links SoylentNews colon SoylentNews is people dash Internet Explorer Heading level one Link SoylentNews List of five items bullet Link Graphic Security bullet Link Graphic Science bullet Link Graphic Code bullet Link Graphic Software bullet Link Graphic slash dev slash random List end Heading level two SoylentNews is people Heading level four Navigation List of ten items bullet Link About bullet Link FAQ bullet Link Journals bullet Link Messages bullet Link Topics bullet Link Authors bullet Link Older Stuff bullet Link Past Polls bullet Link Submit Story bullet Link Create Account slash Log In List end Heading level four SoylentNews You should update your organisation template and put some links here linking back to your site. Heading level four Link Launch News Welcome to Soylent News. As we're stil in alpha dash test, these articles cover much of what's going around in the site Necessary Reading colon List of four items bullet Link Welcome to SoylentNews! bullet Link Reworking Moderation Access bullet Link Massive Site Progress dash Status for two slash sixteen bullet Link Welcome to the World of Tomorrow... "
I'm already annoyed and we haven't even gotten to the content for the page yet.
"Link Graphic Security bullet Link Graphic Science" would be especially annoying. We read it as Link Graphic Security, but if a screen reader was sorting and reading by links "Link graphic Security Link graphic Science..." would be read as Link, Link, Link, Link, Link with no description about what the link is. I'd use CSS to hide link text and replace it with an image so it'd look like
HTML
CSS
Then it'd be read as "Link Science" and would also be read if the page was sorted by links, but to non-blind it'd be the image.
The blind might try to skip around by headings, but most untrained web devs use headings as decoration rather than an index/table of contents.
As an example with the Soylent site. We have
H 1 SoylentNews
H 2 SoylentNews is people
H 4 Navigation
H 4 SoylentNews
.
.
.
H 3 South Korean Banks Punished for ID Theft
H4:Navigation and H4:SoylentNews are actually helpful, they're probably the two options I'm most likely to choose, but they sit at the H4 level, BELOW the actual content at the H3 level. Actually you don't even need H4:SoylentNews, because you have H2:SoylentNews right above H4:Naviation.
So there's 10 items I have to sit through before I can get to the content, and if it was read as a table of contents it wouldn't make any sense. Imagine that being read as one of those annoying phone menus.
"Welcome to SoylentNews, SoylentNews is people! Please chose one of the following options.
press 1 for Navigation
press 2 for SoylentNews
press 3 for Launch News
press 4 for Poll
press 5 for Most Recent Journal Entries;
press 6 for Login
press 7 for Older Stuff
press 8 for Quick Links
press 9 for South Korean Banks Punished for ID Theft... You've selected South Korean Banks Punished for ID Theft.
Welcome to SoylentNews, SoylentNews is people! Please chose one of the following options.
press 1 for Navigation
press 2 for SoylentNews
press 3 for Log In
press 4 for Related Links
press 3 for South Korean Banks punished for ID Theft... You've selected South Korean Banks punished for ID Theft
South Korean Banks Punished for ID Theft posted by Link Dopefish on Tuesday February eighteen at five colon...."
It is a little different for the visually impaired. My friends at CNIB often have the reading speed on their screen readers turned up so fast I can't understand what it's saying, they can also tab through the headings. When the headings are arranged in a meaningful index they can have only H1's read to them or only H2's (where most relevant content should be)
Soylent news is kind of all over the map in terms of Headings and the headings really don't have much relation to the content. Except for the story headings, which sit at the H3 level, which really isn't so bad. If I had the page read by heading level it'd be H1:SoylentNews H2:SoylentNews is people H3:Story heading, but at the speed my CNIB friends browse, they'd probably hear Heading level 1 SoylentNews Heading level 2 Soylen... I've already heard SoylentNews, skip to the next level two heading.
It's very general and there's a lot missing here, but a nicer way to layout the page might be something like:
<body>
<div id="skip">
<ul>
<li id="skip1"><a href="#cont">Skip to main content</a></li>
<li id="skip2"><a href="#nav">Skip to secondary menu</a></li>
<li id="skip3"><a href="#poll">Skip to poll</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<h1 id="cont">Daily News (or some other title that describes the following content is the meat of the page)</h1>
<h2>South Korean Banks Punished for ID Theft</h2> /* And here we have it the navigation menu, which I think is what this whole comment is about. The reason the menu comes after the content is because to a blind person they don't want to read the damn thing at the top of every page. They know where they are, they want to read the content. don't make them sit through a phone menu every time a page loads or is refreshed. Also notice the use of the "nav" tag, assistive technologies and modern browsers take advantage of this so it's good practice to use it. */
<h2>Nanomotors Inside Living Cells For The First Time </h2>
.
.
.
<nav role="navigation"><h2 id="wb-nav">Navigation menu</h2>
<h3 class="top-section"><a href="/index-eng.php" title="Bedford Institute of Oceanography">SoylentNews</a></h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="...">About</a></li>
<li><a href="...">FAQ</a></li>
<li><a href="...">Journals</a></li>
.
.
.
</ul>
.
.
.
</body>
(Score: 1) by bspar on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:12AM
That was great of you to take your time to go over all of that! I hope the admins can get around to reading your comment - I sure learned something this morning :)
(Score: 1) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:41AM
Thanks, I've been in on SoylentNews from the beginning. Mostly offering advice for if we decided, or decide, to turf SlashCode. I couldn't get it running because it uses an outdated version of perl and mod_perl for Apache. I'm not a perl guy.
A site like this could be quite a nightmare, a lot of different people using a lot of different technologies with a lot of different browsers. Mobile, desktop, tablet, CSS on/off, JavaScript (glad they're staying away from JS for the moment), security, databases, backend language there's a lot to consider.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by AudioGuy on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:41AM
Why would a table cell be any different than a div for someone who is blind? I am not blind, but one way I judge this sort of thing is by how Lynx handles it, and I do not remember any signifcant problems with a simple 1 row 3 cell table that would be different than the same structure using divs.
For me the bigger problem is the extreme amount of repeated stuff on most modern sites at the very top of the screen. You have to scroll forever to get to the main text.
(Score: 1) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:43AM
Tables are read by screen readers as "Table Col 1, row 1 [content], Col 1, row 2 [content], Col 2, row 1 [content], Col 2, row 2 [content], Col 3, row 1 [content], Col 3, row 2, [content]" it headers are set they're read as well. The advantage being you can have the Col row read back to you if you're lost in the table. Div tags aren't read by the screen reader. Short on time, gotta go.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2, Informative) by buswolley on Monday February 17 2014, @08:18PM
Actually I just found the link.
However following the link gives me a SSL warning.
subicular junctures
(Score: 1) by danomac on Monday February 17 2014, @08:21PM
Most of the bugs I've found are already on the tracker, like the firefox layout problems. Some windows overlap others which makes some things hard to see. The one I noticed was in the user section, I don't remember seeing that happen in the articles/comments sections.
(Score: 1) by ls671 on Monday February 17 2014, @08:23PM
Thanks!
Is there something similar to firehose.pl?
metamod?
firehose.pl presents a 404 page while metamod.pl shows an "internal error" page.
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Blackmoore on Monday February 17 2014, @08:27PM
There is no firehose in the current implementation. (yes there is a bug tracker for this)
The story review process has changed, to a two editor approval process, and then it goes live.
(Score: 2, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Monday February 17 2014, @08:29PM
try http://dev.soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=list [dev.soylentnews.org]
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Monday February 17 2014, @08:25PM
I'm really impressed at how well you guys pulled this off, and I'm really pleased. I'm checking here before anything else -- used to be that's how I treated Slashdot.
(Score: 1) by TheGratefulNet on Monday February 17 2014, @11:59PM
yes, well done. going to give this new site a try and hopefully it will be around for the long run.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by umafuckitt on Monday February 17 2014, @08:27PM
Thanks for your hard work, NCommander!
(Score: 1) by siliconwafer on Monday February 17 2014, @08:29PM
Aye, my registration e-mail was marked as spam by gmail, but I found it in the spam folder.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by hatta on Monday February 17 2014, @08:42PM
Early on there was some talk about preserving UIDs. Is that still something you are doing?
(Score: 4, Funny) by vbraga on Monday February 17 2014, @08:53PM
Nonsense, I've went from 5 to 3! Keep it that way!
(Score: 1) by demonlapin on Monday February 17 2014, @11:11PM
(Score: 1) by mmontour on Monday February 17 2014, @11:48PM
No change for me in base 10, but I did drop one binary digit (2208 to 1104).
(Score: 1) by cesarb on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:24AM
I started reading before there were UIDs, back when you didn't need to register. I thought the registration was a fad, so I only registered much later (5-digit UID starting with 1).
Either that, or my memory is faulty; this all happened last century.
(Score: 1) by monster on Tuesday February 18 2014, @10:57AM
Old time lurker/AC on Slashdot here, too. When I bothered to register, the user count already had 7 digits, later I lost the password and the authentication system didn't recognize the user nor email address (go figure).
Where is the bug-tracker? The button to check if a username is available doesn't seem to work (nothing happens). Tested with Firefox, IE and Iceweasel.
(Score: 1) by cesarb on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:00PM
http://dev.dev.soylentnews.org/tracker/?group_id=6 [dev.soylentnews.org] I believe. And I think I already saw that bug reported there.
(Score: 1) by monster on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:51PM
Thanks. And you are right, it's already reported as bug #12.
(Score: 1) by dilbert on Monday February 17 2014, @09:05PM
I do not believe they will be preserving UID's. I've been wrong before though.
IMO, New site, new management, new nicks/uids.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Khyber on Monday February 17 2014, @11:13PM
The option AFAIK is on the table but it doesn't really seem like the option is much desired. I know I certainly DGAF, though my UID was inside the last remnants of the golden age.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008
(Score: 1) by mechanicjay on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:18AM
Yeah, there was a discussion on how we could make it work. I personally, kind of don't see the point. Like was said above, it's a new site -- let's embrace that and make it our own, let's not worry about some silly thing like a UID from a legacy system.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 1) by TrumpetPower! on Monday February 17 2014, @08:44PM
Glitches notwithstanding, I'm impressed with this first day. It bodes well for the future.
Well done!
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Non Sequor on Monday February 17 2014, @08:50PM
What's crawling on the newspaper in the story icon? I can't tell since it's low res, but my best guess is that it's a crawfish.
(Score: 1) by lcklspckl on Monday February 17 2014, @09:05PM
A red mantis?
It's peeps!
(Score: 1) by Non Sequor on Monday February 17 2014, @09:30PM
Maybe it's two scorpions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Monday February 17 2014, @09:32PM
They're eyeglasses. It's a classic icon from the old Slashdot, and was in higher resolution back then, or was it more obvious back then because my screen in 1997 was only 800x600 at best, not 1920x1080 like it is today? I don't think I've seen that icon used on the original site in years; seems it went out of use long before the Dice acquisition.
I wonder if they'll revive the old Bill Gates Borg icon for Microsoft stories; can't quite remember when that disappeared, probably around the time Gates announced his retirement.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
(Score: 1) by glyph on Monday February 17 2014, @10:05PM
IIRC they only changed the borg icon fairly recently. It was an anachronism to be sure... but that's the way we liked it.
(Score: 1) by LowID on Tuesday February 18 2014, @04:16AM
The replacement icon should be Sergey Brin wearing Google glasses. New website, we should keep up with the times.
Oh, and first post on SN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @11:00PM
I at first thought the icon was an elastic bandage with a metal clip. I had to look more intently to figure out that it's supposed to be a newspaper with a pair of eyeglasses.
(Score: 1) by rmdingler on Monday February 17 2014, @09:10PM
Great luck to you.
(Score: 1) by No Respect on Monday February 17 2014, @09:11PM
I only registered a couple of hours ago and the whole process was pretty smooth. The check-existing username provided no feedback, another screen showed an error (no details, sorry, forgot to jot it down exactly) and some of the user preferences have user-unfriendly prompts and/or descriptions (e.g. timezone setting). Getting the email confirmation and initial pw was very fast and error-free.
(Score: 1) by Optimus Prime on Monday February 17 2014, @09:17PM
Yeah yesterday was a little rough signing up for the site. I couldn't validate in Firefox 27 that my username was available and hitting the submit button wouldn't refresh the page saying registration was successful. However I still got the email with my temp password and was able to finish setting the account up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @10:46PM
Does this site have one?
(Score: 1) by demonlapin on Monday February 17 2014, @11:14PM
(Score: 2, Interesting) by snailboat on Monday February 17 2014, @11:45PM
Maybe they're waiting to sign up until they get an answer. (Or not. I have no idea.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:01PM
That is it, exactly. I am interested in registering, but want to know if I'll get spammed.
(Score: 1) by demonlapin on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:05PM
(Score: 1) by snailboat on Wednesday February 19 2014, @11:29PM
FWIW, right now I'm getting emails containing each day's stories. I didn't opt in, and I see no way to opt out.
Luckily, the preferences do have a way to include my ICQ UIN! Yippee!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @09:54AM
Glad to see we get non-sequiturs also on this new site...
(Score: 1) by Kawumpa on Tuesday February 18 2014, @04:10AM
Great work so far, keep it up! :-)
(Score: 1) by anonymouse on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:08AM
Noticed the following issues with moderation:
1. Each time I mod a comment, The page reloads and goes to the top. I have to search where I was
2. After the last mod point was spent, the following was displayed on the top:
+1 (Funny) Re:I hope people will test modding down as well as (110-1251, 0 points left)
user can't moderate comment user can't moderate (repeats a few dozen times)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by chown on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:42AM
Good job with this site!
This is not directly related to the article, but I want to mention this somewhere: does anyone know if there is a copy of the content on slashdot somewhere for archival? Don't know if www.archive.org contains every single post from slashdot. I'm asking because like a lot of you, I've immensely enjoyed slashdot over the years, and it would suck to find out that the content got destroyed accidentally (or deliberately) a month after Dice pulled the plug on slashdot.
(Score: 1) by chown on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:45AM
Oh Heavens Be Praised! It's great to see a "plain old text" option (that too the default) right next to the submit button! As opposed to the click-and-wait on slashdot's current incarnation.
(Score: 1) by sbgen on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:32AM
Thanks for the site and congratulations on launching it successfully. Wanted to point out a couple of things I noticed while registering:
--The form kept saying I am behind a proxy and some security measure is breaking when I tried to register. It did prompt me to go back and retry which did not work either.
--Some how registered (with a new password via e-mail) but havent been able to change password so far. Will try later.
sbgen
Warning: Not a computer expert, but got to use it. Yes, my kind does exist.