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All,
I've been up most of the night tonight recoding and retesting the code on
the server which displays lists of messages, in particular the root home
page <http://www.lugnet.com/>, which gives a top-level overview of current
activity in the system.
Recent off-topic (non-LEGO) debates in .off-topic.debate and one of the
.admin groups have really begun to wear on a number of people. (In fact,
one person left in utter despair this week.) This needs fixing fast, or
we'll lose more people.
It was always the intention of the homepage to show a quick summary of recent
activity in the system, but it was never the intention for "icky" stuff to
choke out the "fun" stuff. In the past, the "icky" stuff was easier to
ignore, but as we grow, the "icky" stuff tends to stand out more, because
there are more people around fanning the flames.
Off-topic debates and administravia of certain types also tend to generate a
lot of rapid replies -- often blizzards of posts. Naturally, these can
really overwhelm or scare away people who come here to get a break from the
real world and who just want to enjoy some good old-fashioned LEGO discussions.
Thus, to lessen the noise levels on the root homepage, the server now "hides"
messages appearing in the following parts of the newsgroup tree:
lugnet.admin.*
lugnet.market.auction
lugnet.market.jambalaya
lugnet.off-topic.*
(This isn't perfect, and the list may need a bit of adjustment up or down,
but I think it's a good starting point And actually, I wish this had been
in place since day one. I hope many people haven't been scared away because
of this flaw.)
The main homepage and subsequent pages via the "more" links are the only
places where these groups are hidden from the display. You can still see
the groups in all their glory by clicking into them using the links in the
light blue band at the top, or by using the Traffic Report page:
http://www.lugnet.com/news/traffic/
Additionally, when an article in a list is hidden, it tells you how many
articles in hid and in which groups (with links). Just in case you want to
check it out. For example,
(Not shown are 3 messages from lugnet.off-topic.test, lugnet.admin.general,
lugnet.market.jambalaya)
While this change probably comes as a "good thing" to most web-interface
users, I realize that it may also come as a "bummer" to some people (power
users, or those who want to read everything as soon as it appears) in that
it makes them work a bit harder to uncover every single last message. I'm
sorry for that, and I hope at some future point to have a completely different
and more customizable solution in place, but for now, this seems like the
right thing to do. It's the lesser of two evils.
Someone said it pretty well the other day...I can't remember the exact quote
but it went something like this:
"It really bummed me out when I went to the lugnet homepage and _all four_
of the latest messages were the subject line about this stupid religious
debate. I don't care if my god can whoop your god. Can we get back to
talking about LEGO?"
The religious debate messages _were_ properly all placed in the .off-topic.
debate group, but they also showed up on the main homepage. Although the
main homepage wasn't designed as a newsreader, that's how people use it.
This change is for those people.
Additional background:
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=4812
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=4814
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=5012
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=5019
http://www.lugnet.com/off-topic/debate/?n=4449
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=4817
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=5014
--Todd
[flames/comments/opinions/huzzahs to .admin.general]
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Message has 8 Replies:
 | | Re: Cleaning up the main homepage
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| (...) discussions. (...) I’d argue that the problem with the admin groups is that there is too little participation on the discussions there by the general LUGNet masses. Debates tend to be dominated, normally, by the “usual suspects”. Anything (...) (25 years ago, 9-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: Cleaning up the main homepage
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| (...) [snip] Hello Todd, I have a similar problem: It is rather difficult to find the messages from Brad Justus between the very many reactions. Would it be feasable to copy his VIM's (Very Importand Messages) to a special area ? Greetings, Manfred (...) (25 years ago, 9-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: Cleaning up the main homepage
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| I think moving off-topic and admin was the right thing to do (can you have an alternate version of the main page, not the default, that has them as well, or is that too much code) However I question moving market.auction if market.bst wasn't moved, (...) (25 years ago, 9-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: Cleaning up the main homepage
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| In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes: I like this alot. Especially filtering off-topic and test. Suggestion: How about having an alternate "complete/old style" page linked from the homepage and nuke the annoying "Not Shown" messages? KL (25 years ago, 9-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: Cleaning up the main homepage
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| <snip> (...) Like you said it isn't perfect. I definitly like the off-topic stuff hidden and I guess the admin stuff too even though I do like to read those sometimes it will just require an extra click on my part. I think I have mixed feelings on (...) (25 years ago, 9-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: Cleaning up the main homepage
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| (An update on an earlier announcement 2 days ago...) (...) The original list above was adjusted downwards to simply the lugnet.admin and lugnet.off-topic subtrees. (In other words, lugnet.market.auction and lugnet.market.jambalaya are included again (...) (25 years ago, 12-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general, lugnet.announce)
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