Node approval overriding

I noticed that later node approvals override previous ones. Today, I approved a node, but when the page reloaded I saw that it was approved by me but already frontpaged by ysth - which seems a clue to the fact that ysth already approved it.

Is this the expected behaviour?

Flavio (perl -e "print(scalar(reverse('ti.xittelop@oivalf')))")

Don't fool yourself.

Comment on Node approval overriding

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Node approval overriding by RazorbladeBidet (Friar) on Apr 13, 2005 at 12:10 UTC
From What is moderation? - A node cannot be "front-paged but unapproved". Front-paging a node also approves it! So, ysth probably just front-paged it whilst you approved it, meaning that a step was in effect skipped from ysth's perspective. -------------- "But what of all those sweet words you spoke in private?" "Oh that's just what we call pillow talk, baby, that's all."	[reply]
Re^2: Node approval overriding by ysth (Canon) on Apr 13, 2005 at 16:16 UTC
Yes, I just frontpaged it.	[reply]
Re: Node approval overriding by davido (Cardinal) on Apr 13, 2005 at 16:43 UTC
There are essentially two types of approval. When you click "Approve", you are approving the question to appear in the section under which it was composed (Seekers of Perl Wisdom, Meditations, etc.). When you click "Front Page", you are approving the node to also appear in The Monastery Gates. If you approve a node for The Monastery Gates, it will also be approved for its intended section. If it is FP'ed before being "Approved", the approval nodelet will only show the name of the person who FP'ed it. On a side-note, we should always remember that when we're approving a node, we aren't approving it for the Monastery in general, we're approving it for the section in which it has been placed by its author. If it is not on topic for the section in which it has been placed, don't approve it for that section. If it would be on-topic in another section, put it there instead. This need is most common with respect to Perl questions being posted incorrectly in PerlMonks Discussion. Dave	[reply]
Re: Node approval overriding (1 2 3) by tye (Sage) on Apr 13, 2005 at 19:08 UTC
I appear to read this question differently than the others who have responded to it. My interpretation of the question is frodo72 wondering why s/he is shown as having approved the node when ysth had already approved it. Yes, there will likely always be race conditions like this. That is, if two people approve the same node at near the same time, then both of their actions may cause approval machinery to act. All that matters (much) is that such duplicate "effort" doesn't create real problems. The oldest style of approval machinery actually inserts duplicate records for such a case, which is only a problem in that it adds inefficiency (as I recall). The second-generation approval machinery (which was meant to replace the above but never quite got that far) inserts duplicate log records but avoids the inefficiency. The third-generation approval machinery (which I started and castaway kindly finished writing and which will replace both of the above once it gets deployed, which isn't an easy thing to do which is why it hasn't happened yet despite it having been tested many months ago) is quite a bit more efficient in several ways. It also greatly reduces the size of the windows for such race conditions. It also fixes other race conditions that are actually problems. But it will still (though much less likely, as I recall) sometimes record two approval requests (who cares?). - tye	[reply]
Re^2: Node approval overriding (1 2 3) by Tanktalus (Canon) on Apr 13, 2005 at 20:51 UTC
I thought it was just simpler than that. The act of front-paging only implicitly approves a node. The approval is not actually stored - when gathering a list of nodes that are approved, I'm guessing PM will just look at any node that is either approved or front-paged (and, as perl programmers, we know that $a or $b is true even when $a and $b are both individually true). I noticed this when I had two windows opened to the same thread. In the first window, I had opened the second window as a response. Once I finished the response, I used the second window to view the whole thread again, and noticed it was front-paged by someone. On the first window, I clicked "approve", and hit moderate. It accepted my moderation, and the node showed "approved by Tanktalus" and "front-paged by someone else". I dunno. I thought it was funny. :-)	[reply]
Re: Node approval overriding by jbrugger (Parson) on Apr 14, 2005 at 05:51 UTC
The question, as i read it as well, makes me wonder about the following. If a node is approved, i can still put it on the frontpage afterward. Is that ment to be, or should it be better if you put that into concideration. It seems to me, that if someone approves a node, he actually did not frontpage it with a reason. "We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise." - Larry Wall.	[reply]
Re^2: Node approval overriding by polettix (Vicar) on Apr 14, 2005 at 08:11 UTC
I agree with tye about this. Being a rather "young" monk (in the sense of partecipation), I don't still feel comfortable in frontpaging posts - leaving this to more expert "saints". Flavio (perl -e "print(scalar(reverse('ti.xittelop@oivalf')))") Don't fool yourself.	[reply]
Re^2: Node approval overriding (a!fp) by tye (Sage) on Apr 14, 2005 at 07:21 UTC
He did not front-page it because he didn't feel comfortable front-paging it. Hopefully someone else will (though, last time I checked it, the front page was shamefully stale due to a great lack of front-paging of perfectly acceptable nodes). (Yes, it is very intentional.) - tye	[reply]

Back to Perl Monks Discussion