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Tidings through 2014-11-10

by Co-Rion (Monk)
on Oct 20, 2015 at 21:24 UTC ( [id://1145485]=wiki: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

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Newer posts in Tidings

Community Ads nodelet removed
Nov 10, 2014 at 18:00 UTC

Gabor Szabo's Community Ads server is being shut down for lack of use. The PerlMonks sidebar nodelet that showed these ads has been removed. Thanks to Gabor for having provided this service.

Anonymous posting enabled again
Oct 20, 2014 at 10:10 UTC

We have reinstated the ability of Anonymous Monk to post (since last Thursday, 2014-10-16). The spam filters have been improved.

Anonymous posting temporarily blocked
Oct 14, 2014 at 04:00 UTC

We have temporarily blocked all posting by Anonymous Monk due to a bought of rampant posting abuse.

No more "monk pics" for anonymous visitors
May 04, 2014 at 21:00 UTC

Now anonymous visitors no longer see at the top of each page a random selection from the old photographs of monks. Non-anonymous visitors can control whether or not they see these via "Monk Pictures off" at Display Settings.

Homenodes now show a link to Super Search
Oct 29, 2013 at 20:20 UTC

If you view the home node of a user (monk), you will now see a new link displayed that leads to Super Search with the user field pre-filled such that it searches among posts created by that user. For example, you would see this on merlyn's home node:

For this user: Send private /msg, Your votes, Search nodes

If you follow the “Search nodes” link, you can then fill other fields of Super Search to search for something among merlyn's writeups.

Code font big for anonymous visitors
Aug 24, 2013 at 21:50 UTC

The "Large Code Font" option has been enabled for anonymous visitors. This prevents <code> sections from being wrapped in tags that slightly decrease the font size. This was the default for a very long time because fixed-width fonts can appear noticeably larger than proportional fonts of the same height. However, on some configurations, this would result in a problematically small font for code.

Note that this only impacts anonymous visitors. New users still default to having "Large Code Font" disabled. Non-anonymous users can change this setting at the Display Settings page. Anonymous visitors who dislike the particular (likely) increase in font size for code that resulted in their environment can either register to make all manner of customizations or can use a web browser that allows them to apply their own CSS customizations.

Monkday Messages Get Class
Jul 08, 2013 at 16:00 UTC

The special message you sometimes see in your XP nodelet on your "monkday" (the anniversary of when you joined the Monastery) is now stylable via CSS. It is now enclosed in a span with class="monkday".
Currently there is no styling provided for this in any of the canned themes, so you won't see a difference unless you add something to your CSS.

Thanks to MidLifeXis for the idea.

Voting in the Perl News section enabled
Jul 13, 2012 at 18:00 UTC

You can now vote on Perl News postings while viewing the section page.

Previously, you had to click on a post and view it directly (along with its thread, if any) in order to get at the voting buttons.

Tick tock style
Jul 05, 2012 at 15:30 UTC

Those of you who use the Tick tock nodelet will notice that it is now styled a little differently. Especially useful is the fact that each of the three time strings now has a separate css ID. For example, you can hide the first of the three by adding the following to your CSS:

div#Tick_tock li#posix { display: none; }

10-character passwords now allowed
Jun 10, 2012 at 04:30 UTC

PerlMonks forms used to specify a maximum password length of 8 characters while it was possible to give yourself a 10-character password by bypassing these forms. Now the forms specify a maximum password length of 10 characters.

Google+ Page for Perlmonks
Nov 10, 2011 at 22:00 UTC

PerlMonks now has a Google+ Page. Add it to your circles, and it will add you back.

Inline code gets class
Oct 31, 2011 at 23:45 UTC

Inline code (like in chatter) now gets the class inlinecode applied to it.

"Permission Denied" now knows what it denied
Jul 31, 2011 at 18:30 UTC

Now, when you receive a "Permission Denied" error, you may get additional information on the node to which access was not granted.

"Offer your reply" is history
Jul 21, 2011 at 19:00 UTC

There have been some changes to the way posts are shown on "aggregate" pages, i.e. The Monastery Gates and the various sections. The header block above each post has been reorganized, so that the title and "replies" are on the left, and the author and date are on the right. The "replies" text has been changed so that the link to the post is in separate text ("Read more"). If — and only if — there are no replies yet, an additional link is given, directly to the "Comment on" form. The "Offer your reply" link, which used to be in a separate right-hand column in the table, has been eliminated.

These changes were proposed and acclaimed in the discussion RFC: Eliminate the "Offer Your Reply" links.

New IP address in DNS pool
Jan 09, 2011 at 02:19 UTC

A new machine with a new IP address has joined the perlmonks.org, perlmonks.com and perlmonks.net IP pool:

perlmonks.org. 6622 IN A 66.39.54.27 perlmonks.org. 6622 IN A 209.197.123.153 perlmonks.org. 6622 IN A 216.92.34.251 ;; Thi +s one is new

As the changeover was not entirely smooth, you may have experienced pair.com placeholders getting served while the DNS updated. The DNS should propagate within the next 48 hours.

Lists of links receive new markup
Dec 15, 2010 at 21:00 UTC

Some lists of links appearing commonly on the site have been formatted with new markup.
The so-called "nav menu", which appears (by default) in the upper right corner of each page, is now coded as
<ul class="inline-list">
Many of the lists appearing in nodelets are now coded as
<ul class="spacey-list">

If you would like to customize the appearance of these lists, see what's done in common.css (look for spacey-list), copy the css code into your on-site css, and modify to suit.

One known issue with the new markup is that MS Internet Explorer does not honor the li:before{content:"|"} styling, so these lists appear without any bullet/separator in IE.

index.pl is not the canonical URL anymore
Nov 30, 2010 at 21:00 UTC

All URLs of the style /index.pl?... now redirect permanently (301) to /?..., as do all URLs of the style /index.pl/foo/bar/baz?.... This should reduce the double-crawling by bots. While that redirecting will sometime later still happen, the chosen tool, mod_rewrite, created more problems than it solved. This change was backed out again.

Can customize refresh rate for chat frames
Sep 28, 2010 at 20:30 UTC

Fullpage chat is an example of a frameset that makes a convenient interface for chatting via PerlMonks. You can also copy that and make your own custom frame set.

One of the frames contains a link to /?node_id=50772&displaytype=raw, which shows (some of) your private messages. This used to unconditionally refresh every 30 seconds. It now defaults to refreshing only every 60 seconds and you can append ";refresh=180" to the URL to change the refresh rate (but not to less than 30 seconds).

"Location" field is HTML-escaped for anonymous users
Apr 10, 2010 at 19:00 UTC

The "Location" field is now HTML escaped for anonymous visitors. This is unfortunate, but as that field has been used to linkspam via the website, only registered users can now choose to have this field output HTML.

Signatures now delineated by a thin line in CSS
Apr 02, 2010 at 04:38 UTC

Signatures are now delineated from the main post by a thin, CSS generated line. The other themes may change that. If a <HR> element is the first element in a signature, that HR gets hidden. That way, old signatures look mostly the same as new signatures.

Scratchpads are only visible to logged-in users
Mar 21, 2010 at 06:00 UTC

Scratchpad contents are not visible to Anonymous Monk and bots anymore. If you want to view scratchpad contents, you need to be logged in.

New link shortcut type: wolframalpha
Feb 18, 2010 at 04:00 UTC

A new shortcut has been added to link to Wolfram|Alpha: [wolframalpha://], with the shorthand alias [wa://].

[wa://10 choose 3] in posts or chatter becomes the link 10 choose 3. See the Wolfram|Alpha site for ideas of what is possible. It's very powerful, and very cool.

Thanks to monk repellent, who suggested the idea in PMD Shortcut to Wolfram|Alpha [wolfram://].

Reply text size no longer hardcoded
Nov 29, 2009 at 23:30 UTC

As foretold in Size of text in replies when showing threads, replies in threads are no longer being rendered with hard-coded <font size="-1"> HTML. Replies will now appear in the same size font as the "root" node being viewed. You are free to style replies however you wish, using your Display Settings: Stylesheet Settings. Adding "td.reply-body { font-size: smaller; }" there will likely come close to the previous formating.

Snippets Section and Code Catacombs deprecated for new posting
Nov 01, 2009 at 15:20 UTC

The Snippets Section and Code Catacombs have been closed for posting. These sections are now archival only. All new posting of "substantial" code should be done in the Cool Uses For Perl section.

They are no longer listed in the Sections nodelet, but have been moved to the Leftovers nodelet, alongside the link to Craft. Also, the "nav menu" at the top of each PerlMonks page no longer contains links to these sections.

See the original announcement and discussion.

RAT Settings Persisted
Aug 13, 2009 at 04:00 UTC

A security-related patch made in February 2007 inadvertently caused Recently Active Threads not to persist some of your configuration settings. This has been fixed. Now all of your RAT settings, such as "View Mode", will be remembered for the next time you load RAT.

Extra info in Other Users
Jul 24, 2009 at 18:30 UTC

The user links listed in "Other Users" (both the nodelet and lower right pane of the fullpage chat have extra info (added via the 'title' attribute) which you can see in most browsers by hovering over the link.

Until recently, this tooltip-like info simply indicated that the link was to the user's homenode. This info is now augmented with the user's group memberships, if any. This makes it a little easier to determine if any of the users current active on-site (such as in the chatterbox) are members of janitors, for example.

Newest Nodes RSS feed now has dc:creator tag and validates
Jul 26, 2009 at 18:30 UTC

The Newest Nodes RSS feed now has the dc:creator tag to generate attributions to the author name. It also validates against http://feedvalidator.org/. The dc:creator contents don't seem to have any effect on the FireFox 3.0 built-in RSS reader though.

perldoc:// shortcut now uses Google
Jul 19, 2009 at 12:00 UTC

The perldoc:// shortcut type, which provides a general-purpose search of the Perl documentation, has been changed to use Google to do the search, rather than perldoc.perl.com's native search.

See discussion under Major update to perldoc.perl.org for background.

(Note that [doc://] is unaffected.)

Migratory changes in how threads are rendered
Jun 29, 2009 at 16:57 UTC

The code for rendering a thread was split up into some more subroutines and a new data structure that allows data fetching in larger bulk sizes. Potentially, some off-by-one errors or other glitches have crept in.

Recently Updated Home Nodes fixed
Jun 21, 2009 at 19:20 UTC

Recently Updated Home Nodes is a listing (linked from Newest Nodes) which, as its name indicates, shows the users who have recently committed "significant" updates to their homenodes. For quite some time now, this list was defective in that all of the newly created users showed up on it, even if they hadn't touched their homenodes. Since there are usually far more newly created users than users (new or old) who have actually updated their homenodes, this list was practically unusable.

This list will now only show what it was intended to show: those homenodes which have actually had (significant) updates recently. New users will no longer be automatically added.

Note: The fix is not retroactive; new users who were created before 2009-06-17 will remain on this list until they are, eventually, displaced (i.e. "scroll off the bottom").

New shortcut type for Message Outbox: [msg://]
May 18, 2009 at 22:00 UTC

The Message Outbox (see preceding entry) was designed to make it easy to link to a "send private message" function. Now you can make those links easily, with the new [msg://] shortcut type. Read the documentation!

Message Outbox created
May 08, 2009 at 17:00 UTC

We now have a Message Outbox which is just for sending private messages to another user. Similar functionality is embedded within the Message Inbox, and accessible via the /msg command in the cb. By having this function by itself on its own page, you can link to it, and send other people links to it.

All of the places on PerlMonks where a "send /msg to user" kind of link appears have been converted to utilize this new feature. For example, when you are looking someone's writeup, the Send private /msg to user link right below it (next to the "Comment on" link) now takes you to the Message Outbox.

Meditations All Sections now have an RSS feed link
Apr 26, 2009 at 13:00 UTC

The Meditations page All of the Section pages now contain an embedded link to an RSS feed for that section's nodes so that the feed is automatically discoverable (e.g. by browsers such as Firefox).

Issue was raised in Re^2: The Enlightened Perl Iron Man Competition.

New link shortcut type: man
Mar 16, 2009 at 13:00 UTC

A new shortcut has been added to link to UNIX-oid man pages: [man://]. The target is normally just the name of a man page. There are two options you can add as well: one to specify the "section", and one to specify the particular UNIX-oid system. Examples:

  1. passwd
  2. passwd(5)
  3. passwd/linux
  4. passwd(5)/linux
Both "options" are suffixes, and if both are given, must be in the order shown in #4 above. By default, the section is unconstrained. The default system appears to be FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE (currently). To see what options are available, go here (which is also where [man://] (no target keyword) links to).

This was suggested (most recently) in Shortcut for man page like [man://uniq].

Simple Search now falls through to Super Search
Jan 05, 2009 at 23:45 UTC

The site's simple search function now re-submits the query to Super Search if no exact title matches are found. Previously, in this case, a rather crude and computationally expensive title search was done. Using Super Search produces better results and places less load on the server.

The behavior of simple search when one or more exact title matches are found is unchanged: If there is exactly one title match, you are taken directly to that node; If there is more than one, you are presented a list of duplicates from which to choose.

Vote buttons have no more font information
Dec 24, 2008 at 23:13 UTC

The <tt> tags around the vote buttons have been removed.

If you would like these radio buttons or their labels to have specific styling, note that they are enclosed in a <div> which has class="vote". The magic incantation to put into the Custom CSS is:

div.vote center label { font-family: Monospace; }

Tutorials Needed
Dec 15, 2008 at 07:30 UTC

Tutorials are still needed. Please check out Tutorials Quest and see if you might be able to serve your PerlMonks community by writing a tutorial. Some ideas may have been added since the last time you checked.

Also, we are always soliciting ideas for new tutorials.

History of your votes available, Homenode layout updated
Nov 29, 2008 at 05:30 UTC

We have updated the layout of homenodes to make it more obvious how you edit your user profile and to make boilerplate items easier to distinguish from user-entered content.

This also added a link that allows you to see what nodes you have previously voted upon. If you go to your own homenode, then the "Your votes" link will show you your most recent 20 votes (and then you can request to see a different range of your votes). If you go to some other user's homenode, then the "Your votes" link will only show you votes you have previously cast upon nodes authored by that user.

See also Re^2: Voting history (updated homenodes) and the nodes that it was in reply to.

Poster now sees own post immediately
Nov 21, 2008 at 23:45 UTC

In a move which should dramatically reduce the number of re-posts, registered users now see their own posts immediately after posting in a section, even before they've been approved. All of the other rules controlling when a user sees unapproved posts remain unchanged.

A tip o' the biretta to ccn for the idea.

Categorized Question format change
Nov 06, 2008 at 17:00 UTC

When viewing a Categorized Question, the Answers (if any) are shown below it in a table. The specific formatting of this table has changed somewhat; in particular, it now has the CSS class "paneled". Previously, it was a complicated arrangement of nested tables. This change affects those who may have had some custom styling in their display settings for this table.

New option for Nodelet display
Nov 02, 2008 at 00:00 UTC

As part of our ongoing effort to give you, the monk, more control over the look and feel of your PerlMonks experience, we have added an option for rendering the nodelets as <div> elements rather than as the traditional <table>. If you go to your Display Settings, you'll see a new checkbox at the bottom:
Render nodelets as <div> instead of <table>?
If this is unchecked, nodelets will be rendered in a table like so:

<table class="nodelet_container" id="nodelet_container"> <tbody class="nodelet" id="XP_Nodelet"> <tr><th class="nodelet_head"> XP Nodelet </th></tr> <tr><td class="nodelet_body"> (nodelet content) </td></tr> </tbody> (and so on... Each nodelet is a <tbody> with two <tr>s) </table>
If checked, nodelets will be rendered in divs like so:
<div class="nodelet_container" id="nodelet_container"> <div class="nodelet" id="XP_Nodelet"> <div class="nodelet_head"> XP Nodelet </div> <div class="nodelet_body"> (nodelet content) </div> </div> (and so on... Each nodelet is a <div> with two <div>s inside) </div>
We encourage you all to experiment with your on-site css to do interesting things with the Nodelet divs, and to post your findings in Perl Monks Discussion.

Changes to Nodelet Style metadata
Nov 01, 2008 at 16:00 UTC

If you are interested in using CSS to style individual nodelets, or the header and/or body of individual nodelets, or if you're already doing so, please note that the id attributes of the <tbody>, <th>, and <td> have recently changed — that is, simplified. The pattern is now as shown here: (XP nodelet example)

<tbody class="nodelet" id="XP_Nodelet"> <tr><th class="nodelet_head"> XP Nodelet </th></tr> <tr><td class="nodelet_body"> (nodelet content) </td></tr> </tbody>
View your page source to see the exact IDs of the nodelets you use.

Number of Replies clarification
Oct 10, 2008 at 16:00 UTC

In The Monastery Gates and the posting sections (Seekers of Perl Wisdom, etc.), the metadata shown for each node includes the count of replies. This can be either the total number of replies (all "descendents") or just the number of direct replies (immediate "children"). You select which in your User Settings — a checkbox labeled "Show count of all replies".

When you have selected showing only the count of direct replies (the option is unchecked), then The Monastery Gates, etc. will show counts labeled as "N direct replies". Previously it said "N replies", just as in the other case.

Migration to new database machine completed
Sep 27, 2008 at 20:28 UTC

The database backing the website was switched to a new machine. The site at least feels faster. Previous discussion of the changeover.

Font color styling issue in No Theme fixed
Sep 09, 2008 at 16:00 UTC

Some users of the "No Theme" theme may have noticed that the "Comment On" link, shown just below the top node on a thread display page, was invisible due to a white-on-white font color styling bug. This has been fixed, and few other minor CSS-related improvements have been made as well. If you find that these links now look strange, or are illegible, you may need to refresh your cached CSS files.

Author's level title hidden by default
Sep 08, 2008 at 04:00 UTC

The site's default CSS has been updated to cause the recently included name of the author's level title to no longer be visible above each node. If you would like to (again) see each author's level title listed in their node by-lines, then go to Display Settings and add the below line to your "On-Site CSS Markup:"

.attribution-title { display: inline; }

as noted in slightly more detail at Re^8: A request from level 21 (patched), part of the thread where you can read more about the history behind this.

New link shortcut type: xkcd
Aug 30, 2008 at 09:06 UTC

A new shortcut has been added to link to the popular geeky comic strip xkcd: [xkcd://224] in posts or chatter now becomes the link xkcd://224. This is described in What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information?

Character set now Windows-1252
Jul 31, 2008 at 02:30 UTC

The site character set has been changed from Latin-1 to Windows-1252, a superset of Latin-1. Many browsers already permitted the extra characters usefully defined by Windows-1252 despite the character set being declared (in our HTTP headers) as Latin-1, so for many this change has no direct impact.

The most visible impact should be preventing some browsers from converting super-set characters (such as separate left- and right-tilted single- and double-quote characters) into HTML entities when replying to nodes. The browsers that silently permitted these superset characters would allow posters to include them in node titles with no sign of a problem. When someone with a stricter browser replied, the browser might replace them with HTML entities (strangely half-honoring Windows-1252 by using HTML entities of Windows-1252 characters or replacing the characters with '?' or something else). So a node titled "Perling McDonald’s™" might get a reply titled "Re: Perling McDonald&#8217;s&#8482;".

Now the following characters can all be used (directly) in PerlMonks with full legitimacy [ € ‚ ƒ „ … † ‡ ˆ ‰ Š ‹ Œ Ž ‘ ’ “ ” • – — ˜ ™ š › œ ž Ÿ ] using their 0x80 through 0x9f code points.

New shortcut type for user writeups: by://
Jul 18, 2008 at 16:00 UTC

A new shortcut type, [by://...], has been introduced. This allows to link to any user's writeups. It is conceptually much like [pad://...] but instead of linking to the user's (or your own) scratchpad, it links to the Perl Monks User Search page for that user (or yourself).
For example: [by://vroom]vroom's writeups.
If you omit the username, it defaults to yourself (the author).
Like other shortcut types, it provides a reasonable default for the link text.

Author attribution now usually includes author level
Jul 10, 2008 at 18:24 UTC

Where posts or replies are attributed to an author (e.g. "by paco"), the author's current monk level name may be appended, in parentheses. This attribution is enclosed in a <span> with css class "attribution-title".

Super Search links to thread root
Jun 28, 2008 at 19:34 UTC

When you do a search with Super Search, the last column of the table of nodes found shows the section of the node, or "Re:" followed by the section for notes (replies). This short section name used to be a link to the section. Now it's a link to the section only for root nodes: for notes it links to the root node of the thread the note is in.

New XML Generator: Node Navigator Ticker
Jun 24, 2008 at 16:00 UTC

A new XML Generator is available: the Node Navigator ticker. Its concept of operation is just like that of the Node Navigator nodelet. It is primarily of interest to those who write PerlMonks automation clients.

Newly available Community Ads nodelet
Apr 17, 2008 at 06:49 UTC

Nodelet Settings now allows anyone to enable the Community Ads nodelet, which delivers informational, non-commercial ads from the Perl community adserver.

HTML filtering of homenodes now the default
Apr 17, 2008 at 06:49 UTC

Filtering of HTML on monk's homenodes to a restricted list of elements/attributes is now the default. Note that the ability to disable filtering via a User Setting is likely a short-term option.

CSS change to the Chatterbox
Mar 31, 2008 at 16:00 UTC

Alternate lines in the (on-site) Chatterbox are now given the odd-row and even-row CSS classes, for those who would like to highlight the lines in some way. Previously, every other line was given the highlight class. (Most users would not have noticed this, since it requires custom CSS in Display Settings.)

Lots of Theme/Style Tweaks
Mar 27, 2008 at 16:00 UTC

A large number of very small tweaks have been made to the site's styling, mostly geared toward replacing hard-coded styles (colors, font sizes, etc.) with CSS-based style controls. Hopefully, these changes are all transparent, i.e. resulted in no or insignificant visible differences to the user. However, just to be sure, we ask that you keep an eye out as you visit all your usual nodes, and if you find anything odd/broken/ugly, please report it to pmdev. Thank you.

If you're interested in customizing the appearance of your chosen theme, you can go to your Display Settings and add CSS in the Stylesheet Settings section. Refer to theme and CSS configuration. Also check out shmem's PerlMonks CSS HOWTO.

Voting rules and homenode button alert
Mar 27, 2008 at 00:38 UTC

This is a reminder that the only approved method of voting on nodes is via the form interface provided on the node display pages. Penalties, automatic or otherwise, may apply to voting via other methods. Note that buttons on some homenodes will cast votes in violation of these rules.

Message Inbox now shows folder sizes
Mar 17, 2008 at 16:00 UTC

The "Showing messages" configuration form at the top of Message Inbox now shows the count of messages in each folder next to the folder name, in parentheses.

The FPC Titlebar Now Uses Text+Styles instead of Images
Feb 25, 2008 at 17:00 UTC

Users of the Full-Page Chatterbox client will notice that the image buttons in the titlebar have been replaced with text buttons. Color and font of these text buttons are controlled by CSS. If the titlebar buttons look like actual buttons to you, it means you need to refresh/invalidate your CSS cache.

Code no longer spoiled in Perl-Blue Theme
Feb 15, 2008 at 17:00 UTC

The Perl-Blue Theme had a non-black color for <code> text, which kind of defeated the purpose of <spoiler> tags. (Was only a problem for those who had opted to render <spoiler> tags as 'table'.) This has been fixed; code text is now black.

Many thanks to Argel for noticing!

Some CSS Conversions; Feedback Needed
Jan 11, 2008 at 17:00 UTC

As part of a long-term conversion of the site's theme control to CSS, certain pages have had certain specific elements converted from hard-coded style to CSS style. We are asking all interested monks to look for any anomalies as they use the site, and report them to pmdev. Specific areas affected include any nodes and nodelets which display lists of nodes, such as "best nodes" and "other users" type lists. Also affected is Nodes To Consider.

Added "Send /msg to user" link to home nodes
Jan 05, 2008 at 22:30 UTC

The home nodes of users now have a link to the Message Inbox with the name of the home node owner filled in already. Thanks to bart for suggesting the feature.

Bug fixed with below item
Dec 23, 2007 at 01:50 UTC

A bug in the implementation of the next item prevented the possibility of loss of XP until now.

One can now lose XP for casting mostly down-votes
Dec 17, 2007 at 19:35 UTC

One week left until potential XP loss for casting down-votes has passed. The chance of losing 1 XP or gaining 1 XP (depending on whether one's recent votes have been mostly up-votes or down-votes) each time one casts a down-vote is now in effect.

Many more XP quips added due to demands from runrig
Nov 30, 2007 at 19:30 UTC

Turn on "XP quips" in User Settings and see Voting/Experience System for ways to gain (or lose) XP if you want to occassionally see some of them.

XP Nodelet shows when down-voting may cost you XP
Nov 30, 2007 at 19:30 UTC

The feature described in Why does the XP nodelet say that I have "dog" votes left? has been implemented.

Adjustments made to how XP is awarded due to voting
Nov 18, 2007 at 20:40 UTC

See History now influences voting for more information.

Negative XP hidden in home nodes
Oct 18, 2007 at 14:38 UTC

Negative XP now result in 'requires penance' displayed on home nodes, since negative XP isn't interesting but for trolls to brag about.

New shortcut type for Urban Dictionary: ud://
Oct 10, 2007 at 14:10 UTC

A new shortcut type, [ud://...], has been introduced. This allows to link to entries in the UrbanDictionary.
For example: [ud://troll]troll.
(Users are cautioned that many UrbanDictionary pages are NSFW.)

New mathworld:// link short-cut
Aug 29, 2007 at 20:00 UTC

You can now use [mathworld://] to get a link to Wolfram's MathWorld (MathWorld), [mathworld://convolution] to search that site (convolution), or [mathworld://Convolution.html] to link to a specific page there (Convolution.html; the trailing ".html" is what causes the link to not be generated as a search).

In the Chatterbox, /em is now an alias for /me
Aug 09, 2007 at 16:00 UTC

A new Chatterbox "command", /em, has been added as an alias for /me. This is not to fix what could be a typo; rather, /em (for emote) is the equivalent command on some instant messaging systems.
Relevant PMD: proposal: implement /em to emote in the chatterbox

New shortcut type for CPAN RT: rt://
Jul 31, 2007 at 16:00 UTC

A new shortcut type for linking to a module's page in the CPAN RT system has been introduced: rt://.
CPAN RT nominally wants a distribution name, so the canonical form is rt://Module-Build. However, module names also work, at least for now: rt://Module::Build.
Relevant PMD: Re: How to get Perlmonks to report bugs?

Pedagogues Request Volunteers to Write Tutorials
Jun 27, 2007 at 16:00 UTC

In an effort to improve the breadth and depth of the articles in the Tutorials section, the Pedagogues have created a permanent "bulletin board" where they post requests for new tutorials: Tutorials Quest.
New topic ideas can be submitted via /msg Pedagogues.

Handy Parent and Root Links When Replying
Jun 15, 2007 at 16:34 UTC

When you're replying to a node, you will now see links to both the parent node and the thread's root node at both the initial "Comment on" stage and the Preview stage. When the parent and the root are the same, only the parent is linked. These links are accompanied by links to their corresponding authors.

More Free Nodelet Macros for Thread Info
May 30, 2007 at 16:00 UTC

Several new Free Nodelet macros have been added, which provide information on the thread context of the current node, when the current node is in a user-postable section (Meditations, Seekers of Perl Wisdom, etc.) They are:

`root_type_title` `root_type_id` `root_ss_type`

One of the cool things you can now do with these is make a Mini Super Search form in your Free Nodelet which knows which section you're reading in.

List Nodes By Users with Node Type constraint
May 02, 2007 at 16:58 UTC

It is now possible to constrain the nodes listed on Perl Monks User Search by type, a handy enhancement to list e.g. the obfuscations or meditations of a user, especially when coming from their homenode.

Since a node's reputation is the secret of its author, which you can see only after voting on it, sorting by reputation is (silently) disabled when you list another monk's nodes with this type constraint feature. Instead, the nodes will be ordered chronologically, newest first. (Ordering your own nodes by reputation, with type constraint, works just fine.)

Ordering Notes 'Newest First' Now Works Correctly
May 01, 2007 at 05:41 UTC

In your User Settings, you can indicate to show notes (replies) in a thread ordered 'Newest First' (in addition to a couple of other possibilities). This setting didn't work; instead, notes were ordered oldest first. This has been fixed. If you had this setting set to 'Newest First', you should now expect to see a difference in how notes are ordered in threads.

Replies in a Thread have Link Anchors
May 01, 2007 at 05:41 UTC

It is now possible to link to a reply within a thread. This is handy if you want to link to a reply but within the context of its containing thread. The syntax is:

[href://?node_id=rootID#nodeID]
(Note that the "root" node need not be the actual root of the thread; it can be any ancestor of the selected node.)
Example: [href://?node_id=590141#590154] (try it now)

Show Reaped Nodes User Setting now affects section listings
Apr 26, 2007 at 02:34 UTC

The "Show Reaped Nodes" Newest Nodes Setting now affects other section listings besides Newest Nodes and Recently Active Threads. Also, reaped nodes cannot be viewed anymore by Anonymous Monk (and thus, search engine crawlers).

Anti-Spam Measures in Place
Apr 24, 2007 at 22:41 UTC

Anonymous posting from certain domains is being blocked to prevent spam, which is now on the rise due to PerlMonks' increased visibility, which is due to....

Search engines index PerlMonks
Mar 07, 2007 at 01:00 UTC

We've removed the restrictions against search engine spiders indexing PerlMonks (Re^2: Are monks hibernating? (spiders)) and enough time has passed so using Google (for example) to search PerlMonks is useful. Super Search now includes a link to Google's advanced search with the restriction to only search www.perlmonks.org preloaded. And if you do a simple search (that doesn't match only one node exactly) your results will include a link that does the same search via Google.

How PerlMonks is indexed is better than it was in the past (all spiders now only index www.perlmonks.org instead of 6 different valid PerlMonks host names along with a few less valid URLs). It isn't as good as we would like it to be (we would prefer that chatter was not indexed, for example) but this is a good short-term solution until the spider-specific features are finished.

Preferred WikiMedia language setting added
Jan 28, 2007 at 18:19 UTC

There is now a setting to define your preferred language for WikiMedia shortcuts (wp, wb, wq, and ws). This won't help you with all linked English words, but if you prefer http://hu.wikipedia.org over http://en.wikipedia.org you can now set this.

Newest Nodes can now be sorted by title
Jan 28, 2007 at 18:19 UTC

There is now a setting to define the order in which nodes are listed in each section of Newest Nodes. As an alternative to the default ordering, which is chronological, you can choose to order by title or by author.

Super Search generates Links for sharing/bookmarking searches
Dec 28, 2006 at 23:30 UTC

Now, when you submit a query in Super Search, you not only get back the results but also a link which will execute the same query again. You can copy this link and paste it in nodes, in the Chatterbox, or in your Personal Nodelet. The link will be an [href://...] style shortcut. Note that the link, when clicked, does not execute a Super Search immediately, but simply loads the Super Search form with the given parameters pre-loaded.

New FAQ Goes Live
Dec 17, 2006 at 17:00 UTC

The PerlMonks FAQ has been upgraded to a fully hierarchical structure. This makes it much easier to link to sections within the FAQ and to specific questions. Note that this involved switching the FAQ to a different node: 483072, vice 237040. Please update your bookmarks accordingly.

New shortcut type for JavaJunkies: jj://
Nov 28, 2006 at 17:00 UTC

A new shortcut type has been added, for linking to PerlMonks' Java-related sister site, JavaJunkies: [jj://login]login. It accepts node IDs and node title terms, just like on PerlMonks.

Lost node content restored from backup
Nov 15, 2006 at 02:41 UTC

Some node contents were lost due to MySQL table problems, most notably in the 252000 range. They were all restored except for some NodeReaper messages.

Main CSS now served from relative URL
Nov 14, 2006 at 23:53 UTC

The main PerlMonks CSS was served from the hardcoded absolute URL http://perlmonks.org/, which caused problems whenever DNS resolved differently for any of the other domains used and one of the two servers was unreachable. Now it is served with a relative URL and hence will use the same server and connection as the rest of the page.

Posting Tutorials Limited to Registered Users
Nov 14, 2006 at 16:30 UTC

Due to a recent spate of spam postings in the Tutorials section, Anonymous Monks can no longer post there.

Cabal can view alphafaqlets
Nov 10, 2006 at 19:00 UTC

Let entire Cabal view AlphaFAQlets has been effected. Cabal members, expect that the SiteDocClan may occasionally ask you to review alphafaqlets.

Timezone settings works again
Nov 08, 2006 at 19:30 UTC

On 2005-09-17, the links to change your timezone at Timezone settings stopped having an effect and the support for using the backward-compatability timezones was removed from User settings. The links now work again to set your timezone and at the bottom of Timezone settings you can select a "backward" timezone (though, why would you?).

Font size for node id for replies is now adjustable
Nov 04, 2006 at 03:48 UTC

The node id text added in the spirit of Node ids by node titles is now within a <span class="attribution">...</span> and can be styled by adjusting the CSS accordingly.

The "Nodes requiring editing" list includes the date/time of each consideration
Nov 04, 2006 at 03:48 UTC

Nodes Requiring Editing now has an additional column that shows when a node was considered.

CSS pages now cached for 24 hours
Oct 30, 2006 at 23:41 UTC

The CSS pages for the themes are now cacheable for 24 hours instead of 1 hour as previously.

All shortcuts now link usefully with no arguments
Aug 28, 2006 at 19:00 UTC

Per the discussion Let shortcut types have useful behavior in the parameterless case, all shortcut types now link usefully even if given with no arguments. (Certain shortcut types, such as [pad://], [c2://], and [apc://], already had this behavior.) In most cases, the link created will lead to the main page or search form of the relevant site. In cases where this does not make sense, such as [http://], the link will go to the usage documentation.

See full details on PerlMonks shortcuts.

Newest Nodes RSS Feed now is more RSS 2.0 compliant
Aug 21, 2006 at 23:00 UTC

The pubDate element of the generated RSS contained the node creation timestamp in the user-specified format instead of the RFC822 format as mandated by the RSS 2.0 standard. Now the element is output RFC822 compliant.

New RFC822 user time format
Aug 21, 2006 at 23:00 UTC

The "Format for date-times" field in User Settings now accepts the string RFC822 as a convenient alias for
%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z
(This parameter controls how timestamps on nodes and various other things are displayed to you.)

Newest Nodes timestamp format now respects your format for date-times
Aug 09, 2006 at 16:19 UTC

The timestamp in Newest Nodes and Recently Updated Home Nodes was incorrect and not respecting the user formats. Now it does.

Happy MonkDay Message
Aug 01, 2006 at 04:00 UTC

A frivolous little message has been added to the XP Nodelet to wish users a Happy MonkDay on their anniversary. Select "Show quips on XP loss/gain messages" in User Settings to enable additional quips.

New shortcut type for perl source code: apc://
Jul 11, 2006 at 15:22 UTC

A new shortcut type, [apc://...], has been introduced. This allows to link to files and patches in the perl source code base. There are three variants:

  1. Link to a specific file: [apc://file], e.g. [apc://perl.c]
  2. Link to a specific patch: [apc://patchNum], e.g. [apc://1575]
  3. Link to a specific file at a specific patch number: [apc://file@patchNum], e.g. [apc://perl.c@1575]
  4. Link to the perl code repo browser: [apc://], e.g. [apc://]
Note: this is ActiveState's perl code repository.

Search and Talk entry fields are stylable
Jun 05, 2006 at 14:30 UTC

The text entry field at the top of each page now has an HTML ID, search_text. This allows to style it in CSS (e.g. in your Display Settings), for example

input#search_text { width: 40em; }
Similarly, the text entry field in the Chatterbox nodelet now has ID talkbox; so you could do (for example)
input#talkbox { width: 20em; }
Scripting (e.g. via javascript in your Free Nodelet) of these elements is thus facilitated as well.

Filter Out CB Messages Based on Content
May 12, 2006 at 16:15 UTC

A new filter feature lets you avoid seeing messages with "offensive" content in the Chatterbox. To set it up, go to your Ignored Users Settings. For details on how it works, see the help for that page.

'ISO' date/time format now acceptable
Apr 28, 2006 at 12:30 UTC

The "Format for date-times" field in User Settings now accepts the string ISO as a convenient alias for
%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z
(This parameter controls how timestamps on nodes and various other things are displayed to you.)

Some bots banned from back door
Apr 27, 2006 at 03:00 UTC

User agents matching m/msnbot/ have been banned from "back-door" accessing the site (through http://alternate-hostname/~monkads/index.pl?...) as they were mildly suspected of contributing to the 'A' web server locking up for an extended time periodically. Other user agents (probably all) will likely be banned (will get an HTTP 403 response, "Forbidden, use http://perlmonks.org/ instead") in future.

RAT prefers user-selected colors
Apr 26, 2006 at 03:00 UTC

The colour key for Recently Active Threads has been altered so that is shows user selected colours if they have been supplied using RAT Style Settings.
Relevant PMD: A row of spades in Recently Active Threads?

New shortcut type for Everything2
Apr 20, 2006 at 16:14 UTC

To facilitate linking to articles on Everything2, the e2:// shortcut type has been created.

See What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information?
Relevant PMD: Proposal for some new/improved shortcut types

'View Scratchpad' now defaults to Public
Apr 17, 2006 at 15:47 UTC

Previously, the 'View scratchpad' link on homenodes would lead to either public or private pads, depending on your last explicitly selected one. This had its purpose, but was counterintuitive to most people. It now DWYM, and goes to public pad everytime.
Relevant PMD: Scratchpad Bug

Newest Nodes Settings Consolidated
Apr 13, 2006 at 21:00 UTC

As a result of earlier, incomplete, reorgs, Newest Nodes Settings had most but not all Newest Nodes related settings. The last few were moved, mostly from User Settings.

wikipedia:// is now an alias for wp://
Apr 13, 2006 at 20:31 UTC

'wp' has been a shortcut type for quite some time, but some people were expecting wikipedia:// to work. Therefore, it has been added as an alias.

module:// shortcut now goes straight to the docs
Apr 13, 2006 at 20:28 UTC

The 'module' shortcut type previously used a CPAN search feature which was not optimized for documentation. This has been rectified.

Timezone selection removed from User Settings
Apr 11, 2006 at 15:19 UTC

The timezone selection widget in User Settings was redundant with Timezone Settings, and in fact not as powerful. It has been removed. Use Timezone Settings instead.

perlmonk.org back on line
Mar 11, 2006 at 12:18 UTC

After some lengthy downtime, http://perlmonk.org is back up. One consequence is that long-time cherished services such as CB Stats are available again.
See relevant PMD perlmonk.org II: Son of Perlmonk

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