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 Administrative / General / 5049
5048  |  5050
Subject: 
Re: Cleaning up the main homepage
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.admin.general
Date: 
Thu, 9 Mar 2000 16:31:00 GMT
Viewed: 
540 times
  
<snip>

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.)

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 the .auction and .jambalaya stuff though.  I
know you said in a previous post that a lot of .jambalaya stuff is just noise
like "Please add me to this box" and that is true so I guess I can live with
that.  As for .auction stuff I don't know.  I agree we have to crack down on
miss placed .auction posts but they are LEGO related and even though I don't
participate in a ton of auctions I am usually interested in what people have to
offer and often times I get that information from the home page.

I know I can still get it buy clicking into the group but I don't know if that
is necessary to block them from view.  My view is that the Home page should
just filter out "Non-LEGO" stuff (as much as that is possible).  To me the
auction stuff is LEGO related so I am interested.

I don't know like I said I have mixed feelings about it.  I personally love the
fact that .off-topic. is hidden and the administravia definitly does not need
to be there and could scare people away.  For the rest I think if it is LEGO
related then I am OK with it, even .auction stuff provided it is properly
placed.

<snip>

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)

I don't know if it's just me but I find this a bit messy.  I don't know how to
fix it but maybe there is a way on the homepage to list "blocked groups"
without the "Not Shown" message.  That would be tough though because not all
groups are blocked at the root level ( lugnet.market for example ).

I guess if you are going to block them I would say go all the way and not even
post a link each time a blocked message is posted.


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.

Definitly a good thing overall although it might need some tweaking.


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.

It was definitly a bummer to me too when all I saw were .admin.council and
.off-topic debates about religion etc.



Eric Kingsley

The New England LEGO Users Group
http://www.nelug.org/

View My Creations at:
http://www.nelug.org/members/kingsley/



Message is in Reply To:
  Cleaning up the main homepage
 
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 (URL), which gives a top-level overview of current activity in the system. Recent off-topic (...) (24 years ago, 9-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.general, lugnet.announce)  

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