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Dev.SN ♥ developers

posted by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @08:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the still-under-construction dept.
So, since this site went up three days ago, we've made tremendous progress in getting this site up and functional, and many of you gone above and beyond to try and give us content and provide meaningful comments. I'm completely blown away to say the least. I've got some big news to share, and a list of site improvements made over the last few days. Read on for more details ...Moderation: IT WORKS! I finished implementing the algorithm last night, and purging slash of the old one so they won't conflict. The new algorithm is somewhat of a radical departure from the old one. I won't go into full details in this post, but there's a good write-up in my comments here.

Comment Counts: Got these working (again). ACs will only see a static HTML page which is updated every once in awhile. Logged-in users get the dynamic index which should have up-to-date counts. The fix is a bit wonky, so it might snap again. Let me know ASAP as the moderation scripts depend on this number being present (and correct!)

Theme: As you may have noticed, the site looks less ass. Due to the heroic efforts of audioguy, Paul, and others, we've gotten a steady stream of CSS fixes to make the site look and feel more consistent. Its not perfect (Firefox still has width issues), but its a fair improvement. This is one of the last major launch blockers

Topics: Finally got them implemented after we snapped the site in two last night. For the moment, they're all sharing the same icon, so it seems kinda unimpressive, but hopefully we'll have the art assets sometime soon to get them in place. Editors will notice I updated the labels to make them a bit clearer; two important notes on this: For an article to show up you MUST have "The Main Page" in the topic list (slash will complain if you don't have it).

Signoff Requirements: A new feature of SoylentNews requires that editors must have a peer sign-off an article before it can be displayed to the world. Slash has some limited support for this, and I got it working last night. For editors, stories are now marked in red and state "unsigned" on the index if only one person has edited it. Right now, this check is not enforced, but I plan to hopefully address that soon. For the moment, editors can future date and use the buddy system to get things checked off properly so we can have consistent formatting and quality.

Other Changes: I stripped out some of the dead features that I probably won't have time to fix before launch like OpenID login, and fixed the admin spellchecker. I also have a couple of ideas to get varnish going I need to bounce off Robin.
 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:41AM

    by NCommander (2) <mcasadevall@dev.soylentnews.org> on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:41AM (#253) Homepage Journal
    From a users perspective, the biggest change is you're going to get mod points. Possibly a lot more. At any given time, 30% of all active users are going to be moderators, and the number of modpoints handed out is dynamically calculated from the posts per day (minimum of 10). This might require adjustment, but having too many points in the system is far better than having too few.

    Fun bit of trivia: neither admins nor editors have unlimited mod points. We get them just the same way as you (and the same rules of restrictions apply). SuperAdmins can access the Security page and use to mass-mod (or use the "bitchslap" script) if we need to fight spam on a massive scale. I *might* make it so editors can post at a higher moderation level (i.e., /. admin appear to be able to post at +5) to balance out this change.

    Also, since I fixed moderation, you guys are going to mod this up to +5, right? :-)
    --
    Still always moving ...
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Informative=3, Funny=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:47AM

    by Vanderhoth (61) on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:47AM (#254)
    Excellent Job NCommander. I'm sure I can speak for the community that we all appreciate your dedication to this project. I'm looking forward to replacing my regular morning /. routeing with SN.
    --
    "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @07:57AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @07:57AM (#592)

      I am seeing an issue with moderation. Whenever I mod a post, the page refreshes and takes me back to the top of the page. This will be a big problem with posts containing a large number of comments.

      Posting Anonymously to save my mods.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by martyb on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:48AM

    by martyb (76) on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:48AM (#255) Journal

    Amazing work! Hats off to all involved!!!!!!!

    Also, since I fixed moderation, you guys are going to mod this up to +5, right? :-)

    Will do, as soon as I can GET some mod points! :-)

    • (Score: 1) by xlefay on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:49AM

      by xlefay (65) on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:49AM (#256) Journal
      Exactly, good work guys!
    • (Score: 1) by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:54AM

      by NCommander (2) <mcasadevall@dev.soylentnews.org> on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:54AM (#257) Homepage Journal
      You posted on this thread, so you can't moderate me :-P
      --
      Still always moving ...
      • (Score: 1) by martyb on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:02AM

        by martyb (76) on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:02AM (#259) Journal

        NCommander wrote:

        You posted on this thread, so you can't moderate me :-P

        Oh, I *KNOW* that! I was just hoping someone would take the hint to mod ME up! THEN I could moderate you up, later!!

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:03AM

          by NCommander (2) <mcasadevall@dev.soylentnews.org> on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:03AM (#260) Homepage Journal
          At the moment, anyone is eligible if their karma is 0 or higher. We'll change that, but we need it to bootstrap the system so to speak.
          --
          Still always moving ...
          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:11AM

            by martyb (76) on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:11AM (#262) Journal

            That makes sense... thanks for the tip!

            Would love to stay and play, but I need to head off to my day job... will be back this evening.

            BTW, how do I set things up so that I see all comments expanded on Classic? I just see "headlines" for all the comments here. I set the thresholds to be be very generous, or so I thought.

            And, while I've got your attention, one of the things I wished for on /. was the ability to export a summary of all my settings, so that if I play around with something and don't like it, I can find my way back to how I had things before. I dunno, XML, JSON, or even just a plain text summary page with all my settings displayed would be a huge win for me.

            Might also make it easier for people to submit bug reports. Just an idea. Keep up the great work - absolutely amazing progress!!!!!

            • (Score: 2, Informative) by martyb on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:17AM

              by martyb (76) on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:17AM (#263) Journal

              I know it's bad form to reply to myself, but to save others the need to reply, I wrote:

              BTW, how do I set things up so that I see all comments expanded on Classic? I just see "headlines" for all the comments here. I set the thresholds to be be very generous, or so I thought.

              Never mind... found in my preferences that I had the index mode threshold set to +3; just set it to 0 (zero) and now it's all clear!

              • (Score: 2, Informative) by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:23AM

                by NCommander (2) <mcasadevall@dev.soylentnews.org> on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:23AM (#264) Homepage Journal
                You can also change your index type to "Nested". Works wonders.
                --
                Still always moving ...
                • (Score: 1) by martyb on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:26AM

                  by martyb (76) on Sunday February 16 2014, @10:26AM (#266) Journal

                  Nested? Oh yeah. I had that already! That's one of things I loved about the old site. Glad to see it made it over unscathed!

                  • (Score: 1) by ticho on Sunday February 16 2014, @04:25PM

                    by ticho (89) on Sunday February 16 2014, @04:25PM (#298) Homepage

                    Nested is what I use as well. I never understood how Threaded mode was supposed to be useful, it is pretty awkward. But maybe it's just me missing something about it.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @07:48AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @07:48AM (#589)

                  Yes, yes it does! Thank you kindly for the suggestion, in addition to everything else.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by NCommander on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:56AM

    by NCommander (2) <mcasadevall@dev.soylentnews.org> on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:56AM (#258) Homepage Journal
    Oh, as a slight follow up: Funny moderations give karma again. So laugh, be funny, but just remember, one man's funny is another ones flamebait.
    --
    Still always moving ...
    • (Score: 1) by Nerdfest on Sunday February 16 2014, @01:33PM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Sunday February 16 2014, @01:33PM (#279)

      This is a great idea. I think the humour of the SlashDot crowd is some of the best available, frequently jaw-droppingly funny. It'll be nice to have it rewarded a little more.

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by dilbert on Monday February 17 2014, @08:34AM

        by dilbert (444) on Monday February 17 2014, @08:34AM (#622)

        What is this 'SlashDot' you refer to?

  • (Score: 1) by omoc on Sunday February 16 2014, @01:46PM

    by omoc (39) on Sunday February 16 2014, @01:46PM (#281)

    I'm curious how modpoints are handed out now, is it a cronjob that runs at fixed hours or does it happen on the fly?

  • (Score: 1) by crutchy on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:02AM

    by crutchy (179) on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:02AM (#1525) Homepage Journal

    in div id "commentwrap", TFA title, preferences, top and search discussion links are blue on a maroon background... can barely read