suggestions - randomnode keyword ENN edev

[N-Wing]

Here are 4 suggestions, 75% of them which betray my Everything origins, and roughly sorted by increasing level of difficulty. (blah blah sorry blah blah standard apology if some of these have already been covered)

add a "garbage" parameter to the "randomnode" link in the leftovers nodelet
This would yield a URL of something like:
http://perlmonks.org/index.pl?op=randomnode&garbage=<var>314159</var>
where <var>314159</var> is a random integer. This would prevent problems when browsers cache the page when hitting the random link repeatedly. And for ultra-ease, here is the code for randomnode (htmlcode) stolen from E2 (node_id=366162): (most of you can't see it there)

my ($title) = @_;

$title||='random';
my $rnd = int(rand(100000));

'<a href='.urlGen({op=>'randomnode', garbage=>$rnd}).">$title</a>";

removal of keywords from keyword nodelet
(Editing the keywords entered for a node mentions this idea, but that it about it) Allow some people (maybe a level power) to remove keywords from the keyword nodelet - the UI would be simple, just put a checkbox in front of each "keyword", and hit the submit button there. I don't know how frequently people use it, but some things have rather silly "keywords" attached to them. For example, Perl Monks Discussion has: "why mdillon?", "why not?", "whining", "mdillon", "because", "NI!", "shrubbery!", and "patsy", and only the "why not?" and "whining" seem somewhat relevant.
/me sees people now adding "N-Wing is a dork" and similar things there :)

Everything New Nodes (updated)
Yes, I do know about Newest Nodes here, but how about something like the new nodes on E2? (To clarify: have the feature of the last <var>n</var> nodes here, in each category, not a list of E2's new nodes.) I think the version here would have to either split it into categories or add a column that lists which category a node is in. newnodes (htmlcode) (node_id=505479) is longer and would probably require some big changes to work on PM, so I won't list it here.

edev
On E2 is a little group called edev, which allows wannabes to see the site's code (but not edit it) (via the displaytype=viewcode CGI param). I would think adding this group here would be fruitful, since instead of people just complaining about things to fix, they could attempt to write the fix, and give it to vroom (or just post it, so people can pick it apart). Of course, a con would be that people could directly see certain people's terrible^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H unique coding style. But then again, how many times has the pitfalls of security through obscurity been talked about? Yes, I have a selfish reason for wanting this - so I can steal^H^H^H^H^H^H borrow some things on PM for E2 (like Message Inbox's archive feature).

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[AgentM]

Quick note: The keyword nodelet, at least as far as I can see and as you imply, is completely useless. I have it disabled and I have no doubt others do too. Honestly, I don't know what it's for anyway. It might have been once a good way to search for relevant information, but obviously, that's not the case anymore. I would hesitate to say that only esteemed Editors should be allowed to add to it since that's wasting their time and deleting trash from it would be particularly wasteful since any trash can simply be re-added. Especially since we now have Super Search, my theory on the evolution of the keyword nodelet actually deprecates its original purpose. If it saves a few clock cycles, I would be in favor of removing it altogether- that is, unless someone can think of something useful for it to be other than a scratch pad and joke box-- really- I'm open to suggestions.


AgentM Systems nor Nasca Enterprises nor Bone::Easy nor Macperl is responsible for the comments made by AgentM. Remember, you can build any logical system with NOR.

[Masem]

Just a couple of notes:

on Everthing New Nodes: it's a nice idea, but since Everything is not necessarily perl, if this was added, someone's going to ask for a slashdot box to be put in; and then someone's going to ask for a K5 box, and then...well, you get the idea -- you stumble into the fact that /. has at least 50 possible boxes. While I do agree that with the Everything engine powering both sites that cross-'advertizing' of the sites isn't a ethical problem, it could lead to the wanting of more features.

On Deleting Keywords - I do think this would be useful; another possible way (to add YET more form elements :D), would be to have a "helpful"/"not helpful" radios for each keyword; if a keyword amasses more than, say, 25 non-helpfuls, it's sent either directly to dev/null, or to a limbo area where a level 10-er decides it's fate. Alteratively, one could have the owner of the node suggest for keywords to be deleted to some higher power, whom decides if that's the case or not. For the site-wide nodes, all higher levels would 'own' the node as to help clean out the lists on these bigger nodes, since most of them are owned by vroom to start with.

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - [e-mail] || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain