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Slashdot: Podcasts, IM, Improved Discussions 248

Posted by CmdrTaco from the how-i-spent-my-summer-vacation dept.
We have a number of Slashdot features that we've added in recent months that I've neglected to mention so I wanted to take a moment to share them with everyone today. I'd like to start by reminding all logged in users to try playing with our new experimental Discussion2 system. It's very nearly complete at this point. You can activate it with a checkbox on any article page (provided you actually have logged in). Read on to learn about Podcasts, IM, improved quoting in discussions, new subscriber options and more.

Recently we added the ability to receive AIM instant messages to notify you when stories are posted, when someone posts a comment to your journal, or when one of your friends post a journal. You can turn it on from the messaging preference page. You might need to set up slashdotomatic as a friend or buddy or whatever in your IM client to make it work, but this is a good way to get fast notification of Slashdot stuffs. We hopefully will add other popular instant messaging clients in the future but for now AIM is the top dog so we started there. The code is of course all in CVS if you want to add new platforms... there's room to easily add Jabber, MSN, Yahoo or anything else really. We've talked about SMS as well, so if there's a demand for it we'll work on it.

Everyone who knows me knows what I think about the vast majority of podcasts on the internet. The Slashdot podcast currently isn't at all like that. We call it the the Slashdot Robot Overlord. All it does is use Cepstral Voices to read you Slashdot stories aloud. So if you want to listen to Slashdot stories in your car or on your phone or something, here's an easy way to do it.

Subscribers have a new option in their journals: they can restrict the discussions to logged in users. This is a nice way to minimize trolling and general crappy behavior in your journal. Of course, there's nothing to stop the ambitious jerk from creating a user account, but this will at least slow them down for a few seconds. It's worth noting that when you post a journal, you are given the option to submit your journal to Slashdot... if your journal is selected, you sacrifice that option.

Speaking of comment posting, we've added a new <quote> tag useful in comments. If you choose to encapsulate a quote in said tag, that quote is expandable and contractible via user preferences. Properly quoting comments will allow your fellow readers to have better control over their display than simply blocking a huge chunk of words in italics.

A little bit more information about the Discussion2 system before we wrap up: It's currently tested mostly under Firefox (as is all of our javascript). It also works fine under Safari (2 and 3). We have some UI improvements coming soon as well, but it already is a vast improvement over the old system. One of the next steps is to make D2 degrade cleanly to a non-javascript browser so we can maintain one code base for development. When we get to that point, we can switch over the default/anonymous view to the new system.

We have a bunch of other stuff coming after the holiday. But in the mean time, please test this stuff out and let me know if you see any glaring bugs. The address is the same as always.
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Slashdot: Podcasts, IM, Improved Discussions More

Slashdot: Podcasts, IM, Improved Discussions

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  • Buggy IE (7) (Score:5, Informative)

    by duerra ( 684053 ) * on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:16AM (#19663451) Homepage
    I realize that this doesn't matter to a lot of the Slashdot crowd, but Discussion2 is still buggy in IE (IE7, specifically). There are JS errors on the page, the weird gray and white floating box that sits on the page which is apparently there to tell you how many posts there are in the discussion overruns the left-side navigation bar (and overall who's purpose seems a bit pointless to me in general), and its rendering is completely messed up in IE. Also, I have to use FF just to disable Discussion2 on my account, because it doesn't work in IE7.

    You may want to get those issues cleared up before you consider Discussion2 complete.
    • The floating box has sliders on it which you can pull to adjust the number of comments that are hidden, closed, and fully displayed. If I pull the top slider/tab up, I will move my fully displayed comments threshold up by +1. The bottom controls the closed comments threshold.

    • Re:Buggy IE (7) (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:57AM (#19664093) Homepage Journal

      I realize that this doesn't matter to a lot of the Slashdot crowd, but the Internet is still buggy in IE (IE7, specifically).
      Fixed that for you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by garcia ( 6573 )
      I realize that this doesn't matter to a lot of the Slashdot crowd, but Discussion2 is still buggy in IE (IE7, specifically).

      I ignore it because it doesn't display the messages as I have them set in my preferences. I assumed that they should take my preferences and then display the same way as the old system but apparently they don't.

    • Re:Buggy IE (7) (Score:4, Insightful)

      by clang_jangle ( 975789 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @12:12PM (#19664273) Journal
      You might want to switch to a more standards-compliant browser then...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) *

      I realize that this doesn't matter to a lot of the Slashdot crowd, but Discussion2 is still buggy in IE (IE7, specifically). ..//..
      You may want to get those issues cleared up before you consider Discussion2 complete.

      If you had access to Slashdot's web stats, you would fall from chair no less.

      Hint: Top browser could not be Firefox. There is no such guarantee.

      It happens because of people checking Slashdot at work or plainly choosing IE 7 (which is not a crime).

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Control Group ( 105494 ) *
      Don't worry, it's a problem in IE6, too. The page is completely unreadable. Pieces of interface pop in and out as I scroll up and down the page, I only know about the controls on the left-hand side by rumor; I can't actually see anything helpful over there, comments overlap each other (by which I mean text is actually laid atop other text such that neither block is readable), and it takes comparatively longer to load.

      I'm hoping there's an option similar to the old "light" mode for those of us often stuck us

  • Clogs up in Opera 9 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Constantine XVI ( 880691 ) <trash,eighty+slashdot&gmail,com> on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:19AM (#19663493)
    Ive' noticed that Discussion2 tends to make Opera 9 chug on large comment pages (usally past 200
    • Firefox 2.0 dose the same thing, but it only happens to me above the 350 point.
      • I have no problems in FF2 (currently 2.04 with TMP and ABP installed). I've been using Discussion 2.0 for a while and Opera 9 is the only browser I've seen slowness with (IE6,7 and FF1.5, 2.0 all fine for me).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) *

        Firefox 2.0 dose the same thing, but it only happens to me above the 350 point.
        Slashdot accidentally invented World's most evil Javascript benchmark/bug check? Sorry couldn't stand :)

        Which browser works fine with that feature on? I really started to wonder.
    • Yea, we don't *all* use Firefox... In my personal experience, every time I enable Discussion2 Opera gets very, very unhappy. Hopefully, /. will allow us to switch to the old Discussion system, even after Discussion2 is finished.

      • Hopefully, /. will allow us to switch to the old Discussion system, even after Discussion2 is finished.

        Provided they make it degrade properly with no javascript, as the taco says, you should be able to just disable javascript on slashdot.org in order to get a plain system.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by john83 ( 923470 )

      Ive' noticed that Discussion2 tends to make Opera 9 chug on large comment pages (usally past 200
      I'm running Firefox 2.0.0.4 and get the same problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Alioth ( 221270 )
        If discussion 2 is related in any way to their University of (I forget where it was) experimental Slashdot discussion interface, I ended up turning it off because it was molasses slow. They then made an improvement to it, but after another week of testing it, I turned it off again because any large discussion was unusably slow.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by theantipop ( 803016 )

      Ive' noticed that Discussion2 tends to make Opera 9 chug on large comment pages (usally past 200
      I have this problem as well. It is horridly slow on any popular story to the point where it takes 4-5 seconds for the browser to respond to a PageDwn. Often times expanding a minimized comment will seem to time out. I switched back to FF2 and it's silky smooth.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      Okay I have to as where is this check box to turn this new feature?
      I have never seen it.
      • Look just above the comment prefs box at the top of every article. (Just below the summary, above the comments themselves.) There should be a small checkbox on the right side of the dark gray area that says, "I am willing to help test Slashdot's New Discussion System." Checking it activates the discussion system of DOOM. Unchecking it brings you the DOOM and GLOOM that we're all familiar with.

        • Look just above the comment prefs box at the top of every article. (Just below the summary, above the comments themselves.)

          When I look there, I have only one checkbox, for saving my threshold and such. I looked in prefs, all I have is a radio button (on the 'Comments' page) where I can switch between "Normal" and "University of Michigan Testing", is that the same thing?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
            I get the exact same thing. I thought I was going nuts.

          • When I look there, I have only one checkbox, for saving my threshold and such.

            It should be right above that, in the dark gray area. Though it sounds like people with the Michigan Testing gizmo don't have it.

    • Re:Clogs up in Opera 9 (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) * on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @12:15PM (#19664295) Homepage

      Ive' noticed that Discussion2 tends to make Opera 9 chug on large comment pages (usally past 200
      It _is_ Opera bug which people like me spent very huge time to report to Opera ASA.

      I even included OS X "sample of application", my logs, my system profile just to make them interested a bit. While guys start the day by checking Slashdot there, they don't fix the freaking bug.

      Unbelievable, no less.

      I hate to give ammo to Opera haters but this is it, I am saying this public. That is a Opera bug which exists since first 9.x versions and lives up to date despite numerous kind of bug reports even posted to their forums.

      Original Slasdot bug report (not mine)
      http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=deta il&aid=1541019&group_id=4421&atid=104421 [sourceforge.net]

      By risking CmdrTaco getting mad at me :) I added comment to closed bug even to help Opera people if they ever check one of World's popular Tech sites bug database.
  • You might want to give Slashdotomatic a more relevant buddy icon as well.
  • This seems like the perfect chance to ask a question I've had for a while, that would have been off-topic anywhere else. If I have questions about Slashdot, such as "What does that No Karma Bonus checkbox do?", where should I ask them? Are there forums somewhere for Slashdot readers?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by trip11 ( 160832 ) *
      If you have accumulated a large amount of karma (your posts are regularly moderated up, no down), then your posts will start with a rating of 2, not 1. You can choose to not apply that bonus if you don't think you want it (for instance if you think your comment will just get moderated down). It's all in the FAQ too. Spelled out much clearer. http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm800 [slashdot.org]

    • If I have questions about Slashdot, such as "What does that No Karma Bonus checkbox do?", where should I ask them?

      I just ask in an addendum to my post. Always worked for me.

      BTW, "No Karma Bonus" turns off your extra "bonus" point for having good karma. Thus checking that box would make your post show up as +1 rather than +2. It used to be more useful when only a handful of posters had it, but now all it takes is to hang around long enough and you'll get the +1 bonus. Sooo, you can mostly ignore it if you wi

  • IM re-queued or fallback to email? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tf23 ( 27474 ) * <tf23@lottad[ ]com ['ot.' in gap]> on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:24AM (#19663589) Homepage Journal
    I asked this in IRC, but lately it doesn't seem anyone from the Slashdot SF.Inc's team is on there - if a user sets their msg prefs to IM, but they are not online at the time of the action, so the instant message cannot be sent at that time, what happens to it? Is it re-queued? For how long? Is there a fallback method such as email or web message if the IM can't be sent after X period of time? The last time I looked at the im_messages task code, I didn't see anything like that. But that was weeks ago, and I quickly skimmed it. So I might've missed quite a bit.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      What IM system is so backwards that it doesn't support offline delivery? ICQ could do this back in 1998, and it's been transparent in Jabber from the start.

      Also, is AIM really the 'top dog' for IM? I guess this must be a US thing; most of the geeks in my roster use Jabber, and the non-geeks use MSN, with a few non-geeks using Jabber now Google use it. I only have a couple of people using AIM or ICQ (which are the same network now).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tf23 ( 27474 ) *

        What IM system is so backwards that it doesn't support offline delivery?
        I don't know. That's why I'm asking the question.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flakier ( 177415 )
      I think most people who use AIM know better than to trust it. IMO, they should have started with GTalk or Yahoo where offline messages are supported.

      So the hooks are in CVS...maybe someone will hop on it...

  • AIM is Top Dog? (Score:4, Funny)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman@gmaYEATSil.com minus poet> on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:27AM (#19663623) Homepage Journal

    We hopefully will add other popular instant messaging clients in the future but for now AIM is the top dog so we started there.

    For teenage girls, maybe. GTalk is "top dog" for professionals as it's built right into GMail. That, IMHO, is a much better solution than having to install 500+ IM products. And if I really need to contact a teenage girl^W^W^W someone on AIM, there's always Meebo [meebo.com]!

    Disclaimer: The above is a humorous post and should not be consumed by old people, pregnant women, or those with a weak heart. AKAImBatman disclaims all responsibility for the reader's lack of a sense of humor.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by GiMP ( 10923 )
      Or how about XMPP in general? Thats IM for nerds, IM that matters.
    • Gmail for Proffessionals?! Professionals run their own damn servers with their own damn XMPP-implementation.

      • Professionals run their own damn servers with their own damn XMPP-implementation.

        If you don't have anything better to do than run your own email server, then you're not much of a professional. I think every professional has been there and done that, but the maintenance and time requirements are too demanding in the long-term. It's much easier to farm out your email and IM to a service like GMail, where you have a dedicated set of professionals ensuring that you have the latest upgrades, maximum performance,

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          It's much easier to farm out your email and IM to a service like GMail, where you have a dedicated set of professionals ensuring that you have the latest upgrades, maximum performance, and best spam protection that our eggheads at large have managed to develop.

          If you're not worried about privacy, by all means, use google. If you are, don't. It's that simple.

          For most of my correspondence, I am not concerned about privacy, and I in fact use gmail, gtalk, etc. But for anything I am, I feel the need to have m

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by spun ( 1352 )
          What? What maintenance and time requirements? Setting up in house email and IM took me all of a day. I look at the servers all of five minutes a day. We're talking a simple in-house-only jabber IM server, and a postfix based store and forward only mail server for when the state screws up our statewide servers, but it is neither hard nor time consuming, and for some of us it's fun.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      I have to give a thumbs up to gtalk. It is the only IM I use daily. SMS would be nice as well.

    • Re:AIM is Top Dog? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:52AM (#19664019) Homepage Journal

      For teenage girls, maybe.
      I hate to break it to you, but those weren't really teenage girls.

      • I hate to break it to you, but those weren't really teenage girls.
        Let us know how that defense holds up for you in court.

      • Re:AIM is Top Dog? (Score:4, Funny)

        by pla ( 258480 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @02:37PM (#19666373) Journal
        I hate to break it to you, but those weren't really teenage girls.

        ...
        Sweet16Thing: Hey, weird, I work there too!
        Gary91 has joined the room
        Bunny15: Waitasec, guys - Do we have any non-cops in the PedoLovers chat room?
        GeezrLovr: Uh... Not me
        RoophieMe: Nope
        Nymph1993: Sorry
        Gary91 has logged off
        Bunny15: Oh, damn.
    • Maybe if you've only been using IM in recent times. All of my contacts are in AIM, since that's what we've all been using since 1998 or so. I haven't used the official AIM client in probably 5 years or so. Gaim/Pidgin for me. Why would I want switch networks, let alone a web-based one that requires my browser to be open (speaking to Gmail based Gtalk...there's a standalone GTalk client, too, right?)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )
      Indeed, it's pretty lame for an open source site to promote closed source solutions like that. Any decent client can talk to all decent protocols, so there's really no excuse for not using Jabber.

  • IM/SMS (Score:2)

    by garcia ( 6573 )
    I noticed the IM option in my profile the other day as I updated it and was glad you chose to not show that publicly. Thanks for that.

    Please also note that you can get Slashdot feeds via Slashdot on Twitter [twitter.com] if you are in the need of SMS updates for the time being.
  • Slashdot's comment features, while not perfect, set an example that thousands of other sites have followed. Do people think the new Discussion2 system will set a new example to be copied? Or is it turning into bloat?
    • I do have to admit that the system has improved greatly since I last tore it to shreds [slashdot.org]. Unfortunately, I still can't stomach it. The moment I turn it on, all the posts I want to read disappear. In order to get some semblance of a reasonable display, I have to drag all the comment preferences to the bottom of the slider-box, thus showing me a nested view of all posts. Which raises the question: why didn't I use the nested view in the first place?

      My feeling on the system is that the Slashdot editors are excit
      • I agree. It's unfamiliar and, to be blunt, not done well enough or polished enough or even good looking enough for me to use it. I'm still on the old discussion system and I love it. The new one just doesn't cut it for me.

      • The only improvement I can see is to allow comments and their sub-threads to be collapsed. That would provide an easy way to mark a thread as having been read.

        You also don't have to load comments until they are displayed, which can reduce page loads. And you don't have to reload a whole grip of comments from the db to display just one of them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by yog ( 19073 ) *

      Slashdot's comment features, while not perfect, set an example that thousands of other sites have followed. Do people think the new Discussion2 system will set a new example to be copied? Or is it turning into bloat?

      I like the new discussion system. It allows for faster skimming of the most highly moderated comments without the multiple page spillover stuff you have to go through with the old system. It's quite good for a nerdy site like /. I don't know if the broader online community is ready for it however; it's a bit sophisticated.

    • I tried it for awhile, didn't like it, and turned it back. It was too....different. I felt like I was missing comments. For the time being, the Slashdotter Firefox plugin [efinke.com] seems to work well for me. AJAX-fied collapsible comments, and some nice other features, too. It chokes sometimes on deeper level comments and the expanding, but for the most part it works very well.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jeffasselin ( 566598 )
      For the way I like to read Slashdot, it's perfect. I tend to read the 3-5 posts, but will often read the parents and replies of such posts even if they're 1-2 because they often progress the conversation starter that got modded up. It's also nice not to have to go back constantly in my browser, everything opens up in the single window, and the moderation is easy to do with the new system, you know exactly how many points you have left as you read on.

  • "restrict the discussions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:34AM (#19663749) Journal
    to logged in users. This is a nice way to minimize trolling and general crappy behavior in your journal."

    Because that's worked so well over at Kuro5hin.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by deniable ( 76198 )
      It might be better to filter on age of account or total number of posts. Sort of like a cooling off period for sock puppets. Make the trolls work to be heard.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Ash Vince ( 602485 )
        Since you have a very low ID, you get this question:

        What constitutes a troll?

        I regularly post expressing my disagreement with american foreign policy and get modded as a troll. I know I hold alot of views that many US citizens disagree with, but does that make me a troll? What was the origin of the expression?
        • Here [catb.org].

        • Re:"restrict the discussions (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @01:42PM (#19665589) Journal
          Well, a previous responder took care of the deifnition for you... but just a thought on you getting moderated as a troll:

          Did you know that your sig states that you're here to offend people?

          I dont read /. to RTFA, I read /. to offend people in ignorance.
          Reading that, I'm not sure if you mean to offend the ignorant, or if you offend people through your own ignorance. Either way, it seems like you purposely try to offend people, which is likely a very good reason to mod a potentially troll-ish post as a troll.

  • "Improved Discussions"? (Score:4, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:35AM (#19663755) Homepage Journal

    Taco,

    "Improved Discussions" would require you delete all your current user accounts and start over.

    • Don't worry, he's posting from the future:

      from the how-i-spent-my-summer-vacation dept.
      At the end of August, all user accounts will be deleted; just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it's not in the works.

      Unless, of course, it was last summer's vacation spent on discussion2 and these other changes, in which case the deletion of user accounts may also take nine months to roll out.

  • How about ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:41AM (#19663841)
    Some better classification and filters on Slashdot, so we can reduce the noise levels. Give the articles:

    a "credibility rating" (from "improbable rumor" to "we guarantee it's correct with our life".. ok pick better named)

    an "importance" rating (from "something to read if you're bored with life" to "breaking effin news!!!")

    and "time effect" rating (from "it was announced to happen in somewhere the next 100 years" to "it just happened now!")

    Because, damn. I'm sick of all the noise on Slashdot. And that's gold I'm giving you here. If you don't use it, I'll be so pissed off, I'll start my own news site just to see it happen :P

    • Re:How about ... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by orclevegam ( 940336 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:54AM (#19664053) Journal
      These are all excellent ideas. I'd also like to suggest maybe some sort of karma system for stories in general. It seems there are a few regular posters that people always complain about for either blatantly plugging their blogs, or for posting psuedo-science with a terrible summary that makes it sound like an actual scientific breakthrough but after RTFA is just garbage. As it is now, the tagging system has been partially corrupted for this purpose which is unfortunate and shows that there are needs that the current system is not addressing.
    • You forgot one for "time effect":

      It happened 5 years ago

    • Re:How about ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @12:24PM (#19664451) Homepage

      an "importance" rating (from "something to read if you're bored with life" to "breaking effin news!!!")

      Who decides what is important? I generally avoid hardware stories like the plague but some electrical engineer might consider them gangbusters.

      and "time effect" rating (from "it was announced to happen in somewhere the next 100 years" to "it just happened now!")

      Most of the time, I think that type of information is irrelevant or only interesting to a minute portion of the users.

      Honestly, most of what you want seems to take the place of actually reading TFA and forming opinions on it yourself

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
        Who decides what is important? I generally avoid hardware stories like the plague but some electrical engineer might consider them gangbusters.

        Who decides what's important? Who decided what's beautiful? Yes: there's no perfect way to do it.

        But if you don't do it, it's even worse. Who'd argue that Apple's products are more elegant that your generic beige box? Do you know why? Because someone (Steve Jobs) stepped up and said "I'll tell you what's important and what's beautiful".

        And with the beige box, they ju

  • Geeks in Space.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <nokrog>> on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:50AM (#19663977)
    Aww man get my hopes up! Cepstral voice reading me a Slashdot story?? MEH! I would actually ENJOY listening to a new Geeks in Space. Yeah, that's so last century, but I don't care. Geeks in Space was a podcast but with out the RSS! :D

    • Aww man get my hopes up! Cepstral voice reading me a Slashdot story?? MEH!
      I may be a geek, but I'm apparently not geeky enough to appreciate the monotonous reading style of current TTS-Systems. It's certainly a great service for the visually impaired or anyone else who doesn't have time or opportunity to read /., but I just can't stand listening to the voice for more than a couple of seconds.
  • I like the new discussion system, but it's a hassle that it still doesn't seem to allow top-level replies. (I.e. to reply directly to the article, I need to switch it off.)
  • The comment slider on the left is actually kinda nice. It dynamically adjusts what comments are fully visible, "abbreviated", and hidden, replacing the old "threshold" setting quite nicely. It really doesn't take much explanation. Just navigate to an article with lots of articles, and play around with it to see how it works--no manual required.

    In FireFox, I am getting some occasional JavaScript errors reported by FireBug, but overall, the new system seems to work well. Give it a chance, and give 'em feedbac
  • Honestly I'd like to see the Slashdot Overlords spend less time on gewgaws like these, and more time on establishing some minimal editorial standards.

    I'm assuming that the vast majority of readers are here for content, and the weaknesses in that content are a great frustration.

    I'm not talking about hiring New York Times journalists, only asking for basic standards like:
    • Have someone, anyone check for dupes. Is it really possible that none of the "Editors" at Slashdot read their own site?
    • Have some
  • That would be great, no? Here's a previous /. discussion on GeoRSS [slashdot.org]. The GeoRSS plugin for Slash is almost complete, it already works [slashgeo.org], but some efforts are required to finalize it, and I bet the Slashdot team has way more resources than my small team! :-)

    And hey, we even have OpenLayers with Google Maps maps within stories. Same story as GeoRSS for Slash, this Slash plugin works (example here (temporarily disabled) [slashgeo.org]), and not much is required to make it fully complete!

  • Podcasting before it was cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Triv ( 181010 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @12:10PM (#19664235) Journal

    You guys were podcasting back in the day with Geeks in Space. Those recordings viewed from now, almost a decade later, would be an awesome peek back into a different kind of internet, but I can't find the mp3's archived anywhere - I used to have 'em on a ZiP disk (heh) but even if I knew where it was, I'd have no way to read it.

    Anyone have a copy of 'em lying around that they'd like to make available for research's/nostalgia's sake?


    -Triv

  • Podcasts (Score:2, Insightful)

    by hansonc ( 127888 )
    Hey if you're going to do a podcast (as such) why not bring back Geeks in Space?
  • On a similar note, I haven't noticed a duplicate article in forever. I don't know if you guys just use the tagging system to pick 'em out quicker, or if you're being more diligent about checking for dupes, but great job, guys.

  • Robot Overlord (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Viking Coder ( 102287 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @12:42PM (#19664687)
    I for one would like to welcome our new Slashdot Robot Overlord, but I can't find it, since the link is biffed in the article.

    Anyone know where it really is?
  • Recently we added the ability to receive AIM instant messages to notify you when stories are posted,

    OK, so I thought "great, I can stop monitoring the RSS feed and get more timely notifications" when I read this. But I can't see any option to actually enable this in my Message Preferences page :-(

  • I think discussion 2 is great, but there is one thing about it that I either don't understand or doesn't seem to work correctly. Instead of trying to explain exactly what it is, I'll give an example of what I mean. In the old system, if I browsed at +3, I would see every post that was +3 or higher, no matter where it was in the thread. Now it seems that if I browse at +3, all of those are displayed if they're the top level in the discussion thread. Any +3 posts underneath a top level post gets abbreviated
  • also add a "edit" button :) It is quite embarassing to right not gud englis & nt b abltoco rrect it later

  • Parent below threshold - confusion! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 6Yankee ( 597075 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @03:15PM (#19666869)
    Still, as far as I can see, no indication that the parent post is below my threshold - meaning much confusion when trying to follow threads.

    Anything but a direct reply to the article is indented and has a light grey "L" shape to the left (a tree link) indicating a link to the parent - but if the parent is below my threshold, it looks as if the child is linked to the comment above the parent. This leads to silliness like

    Insightful post here
    |
    +- Re: Goatse

    How about it, guys?

    A simple icon change would make it clear that there's no relation between these two posts - perhaps a cross to show that there's no link:

    Insightful post here
    X
    +- Re: Goatse

  • D2 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by krelian ( 525362 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:11PM (#19670693)
    A feature that I really want: being able to see which comments were added since the last time I loaded the page.

    Currently, there is not way to follow discussions you haven't participated. D2 doesn't even have the possibility to temporarily sort comments or threads from newest to oldest without doing it through the preferences page (which you need to access again if you want to change it back when you load a new story). For stories with a large number of comments this means that new comments will barely be read by anyone.

    This is not a complaint by someone who is pissed of that no one will read his comments (see diggers and their new discussion system) but by someone who appreciates the overall quality of discussion on slashdot. Let's face it, these days there are better places to get the news, slashdot's quality is in the comments. This is where new features should go to.

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