So if you are reading this we probably have finished with this month's slashcode update. This update is a bit on the small side as I was busy moving to a new apartment. The big thing to announce is that we now accept Bitcoin through BitPay for subscriptions.
Some updates to story submissions should help our submitters. We now show the accepted story queue below the submission queue for subscribers. The list is title only so no one has early access to the stories, but submitters will know if a story they want to submit might be in the queue. This feature may be set for all users in the future, but this is one of those early access features that is a subscriber perk. We have also fixed a issue where subscribers were still hitting a submission rate limit when submitting more than 5 stories in a 4 hour time frame. This limit has been eliminated for subscribers and has been increased to 12 for normal users. The titles in the submissions queue lists have also been changed to use the full title instead of the truncated one.
We have also increased the moderation point life to 24 hours from 8 hours. To keep the amount of moderators somewhat constant, the number of points handed out is now 5 instead of the previous 10.
To combat spammers, older articles will now have their comments locked. Currently the lock will be applied after 30 days from the original posting of the article.
Plus a bunch of other small bug fixes. Our next major update 14.12 will be focusing on getting some of the bigger issues and feature requests worked on. If you have an issue with this update, or have other issues feel free to post them here.
A big thanks to The Mighty Buzzard who did the big work of getting BitPay working.
(Score: 1) by Bob The Cowboy on Sunday October 05 2014, @04:33AM
A small update, maybe, but certainly some very visible user-friendly enhancements. Thanks for your work.
(Score: 3, Informative) by paulej72 on Sunday October 05 2014, @05:05AM
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 3, Informative) by paulej72 on Monday October 06 2014, @01:17AM
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by Lemming on Monday October 06 2014, @08:33PM
I can confirm it works now, thanks! I've been waiting for the Bitcoin option to subscribe.
A small suggestion: when I wanted to contribute, the first thing I clicked on the front page was the funding progress bar. It seemed obvious to me. But the page it leads to has no links to the subscription page or the swag store. It would be nice if http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/Finances [soylentnews.org] would link to http://soylentnews.org/subscribe.pl [soylentnews.org] and http://www.zazzle.com/soylentnews [zazzle.com].
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday October 06 2014, @11:00PM
Yup, I can see it coming in on our end. Thanks!
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday October 05 2014, @05:50AM
Good idea. I never have them when I need them, and I use them too sparingly when I do.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday October 05 2014, @02:58PM
I always seem to have them when there are stories I'm more interested in commenting on. The 24 hour expiration is a great thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:43AM
You can moderate and post in the same story if you do so in that order. Posting won't undo your moderation. Only after you've posted, you no longer can moderate on that story.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday October 05 2014, @06:55AM
I don't know if I will be able to handle this. I was dropping donuts like there was no tomorrow, well, because there was no tomorrow with an eight hour window. But now a whole day? And only Five Mod Points? I will cherish them like they were my own children, or at least like they were children even if someone else's. But won't this make the entire Mod system crash? How are we supposed to keep Ethanol and the Pedo-bear guy in check?
I guess we can always go back, next month. But a moderation system is the heart of a site like this, and is not to be messed with lightly. Best wishes all, and may all your posts be +5 insightful.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday October 05 2014, @01:49PM
There are few stories on the site that have enough comments to need moderation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AnonTechie on Sunday October 05 2014, @07:36AM
What I would like to see, if its not too much trouble, is that when I moderate a comment, the cursor should revert back to the next comment and not to the top of the submitted story.
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 3, Informative) by lhsi on Sunday October 05 2014, @08:05AM
You can moderate multiple comments and click any moderate button and all mods will be applied
(Score: 1) by DaTrueDave on Sunday October 05 2014, @03:59PM
I noticed this, but it doesn't solve the problem. I moderate one comment at a time because I don't have the type of memory that can remember whether I have 3 mod points left or 1 mod point left.
Is there a good reason why moderating a comment takes you back to the summary with no comments expanded?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:59AM
Probably Slashcode doesn't have the necessary code to do that (you'd need an anchor at every single comment, and additionally a way to determine and communicate to the next load just where you have been, and which comments you had expanded). Maybe a simple solution would be that for those who have JavaScript enabled, the destination page has an onload which just invokes "back()" and then let the browser do the rest (but then, the browser would likely not reload the page, and thus not update the number of moderation points you still have). Anyway, just pressing "back" and then "reload" (or using the corresponding key presses/mouse gestures for your browser) should effectively give you the desired behaviour.
Another, more involved solution would be to enable inline-moderation for those having JavaScript enabled (where the moderate button doesn't lead to a different page, but just updates the moderation status on the post; basically like the moderation with D2 on /. worked after installing the Moderatrix script in Greasemonkey).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @06:20PM
I can set the URL to index the page to your post [soylentnews.org]
...instead of to the summary. [soylentnews.org]
What's being requested doesn't seem to me like it would be that difficult a thing to implement.
...then again, what do I know?
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Monday October 06 2014, @01:24AM
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 06 2014, @02:52AM
I dunno, I think it might could be done with a for-this-request-only, dynamically generated anchor. I'd have to look at the templates and the logic more to say for sure though. And I'd rather have the ajax system working or barring that write one with less bugs using json, which is just easier to work with than xml.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 05 2014, @07:53AM
Between the mainpage column and the date/time column there is considerable blank space.
Between the date/time column and the titles column there's even more.
Between the submitter column and the right edge the wasted space is even more pronounced.
With my narrow screen and large-ish font, that doesn't work well.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Sunday October 05 2014, @12:34PM
I'm all for eliminating white space on small screens, measured by the ratio between screen size and type size. My eyes aren't as good as they were fifty years ago. It's not as bad on a tablet, which I can place seven centimetres from my nose.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Monday October 06 2014, @01:27AM
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @05:21AM
some of the available time formats are longer than others
Is that a setting in an individual's browser?
What I am seeing is e.g. 10/03 04:20.
I could almost double the length of that string before I'd fill the blank space.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 06 2014, @10:37AM
Actually, I think I fixed it so they were the same.
The fixed-width spacing is set in units of em and was necessary to keep smaller resolutions from stuffing them so close together they were illegible. They could probably be a bit closer but it would begin to look quite cramped on even a 4x3 monitor. Feel free to take whatever Web Developer extension and tweak table params until they suit you and drop them in an email to me though. I've no objection to giving them a whirl on dev and, if they look good at most resolutions, including the changes in the 14.12 update.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @06:33PM
How about the blank space between the submitter's name and the right edge?
That seems like a wasteful choice and is greater than the other 2 combined.
In addition, having the submitter's email address|homepage included in that column (in addition to his nym) seems unnecessary.
That is almost always truncated anyway.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 06 2014, @09:38PM
I thought so too but I try to make as few design change decisions as possible when I'm just working the code, so I made it look as much like it did as I could from 4:3 up to 16:9.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Sunday October 05 2014, @12:30PM
On other sites (it hasn't happened here yet for obvious reasons) I often find it useful to reply to a discussion years after the original posting. This usually happens when I encounter the posting in a Google search, and new knowledge sheds important new light on the issue. Such comments can actually help discredit obsolete information that would otherwise be found via Google.
It would be good to find some means could be found to allow these exceptional late replies without exacerbating the spam problem.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Kymation on Sunday October 05 2014, @05:00PM
I logged in this morning to find that I have 10 mod points. It's been more than 8 hours since this article was published, so it shouldn't be a carryover from the old code. Does the code allow more than one block of 5 mod points at a time?
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Sunday October 05 2014, @05:25PM
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday October 05 2014, @05:49PM
How about allowing a user to edit his/her comment after posting, the way Reddit does? If you don't want it abused, you can put a time limit on it, such as 5 minutes, or until someone posts a reply. It's too easy to post a comment in haste without fully proofreading it, and then be stuck because you can't edit it, and the system won't let you quickly post a reply correcting yourself. It's really quite annoying.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 05 2014, @08:25PM
I think that's a bad idea. It's not the way of USENET, mailing lists, or Slashdot, and it shouldn't be the way of this site, either.
You should get one shot, and once you've submitted the comment it's final. There should be no revising of history, like is common at reddit and Hacker News.
Think before you write. Write with care. Preview before you submit. Suck it up if you made a mistake and you didn't catch it.
The best part of this system is that it already exists!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:09AM
On Usenet (why the all-uppercase? It's not an acronym, is it?), you effectively could edit your posts by cancelling them and posting another one. Of course there was no guarantee that news servers would honour your cancel request, but most did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 10 2014, @01:06AM
Its name was inspired by USENIX, which is always in capital letters. Hence it's properly called USENET.
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Sunday October 05 2014, @09:33PM
With the restrictions you proposed - I think I like the idea.
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Friday October 17 2014, @05:27PM
Every time I navigate away from SoylentNews I have to log back in again. Twice. It looks like Cookies have expiry times of now.
It's been like this since day one, and I've been patiently waiting for a fix, assuming this must be a general problem. And indeed I did see someone else mention this to one of the developers once.
OSX Mavericks, Safari 7.1 if it makes a difference.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Sunday October 19 2014, @07:56PM
I spiked at 50 Karma and nothing seams to make it go higher. Is 50 the max? If not, how to increase more?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 22 2014, @07:56AM
Yes.