ok so we have a new feature: usergroup-private discussion threads. I've been thinking we should have this for quite a long time. Currently we use wikis for intra-group discussion, and it's really very sub-ideal. (I first floated this idea in Create new [pmdev]-only section "Pmdev Discussion". That was much more generic and open-ended, but this solution meets the immediate need.)

If you're a member of any cabal groups, try going to one of your group pages (janitors, pmdev, etc.) and see what's at the bottom.

If you're in pmdev, you can see a technical description of the implementation by visiting the new nodetype usergroupnote; scroll to the bottom to the documentation.

Question: Is this a good feature? Should we publish it, or roll back the change? TIA for your thoughts.

I noticed that all nodelets have help-pages (like this) which are linked to via ^? next to the name

But the display is disabled via CSS

<a class="nodelethead-annot" href="?node=About the XP Nodelet">
<sup>?</sup>
</a>
[download]

a.nodelethead-annot {
    display: none;
}
[download]

Why?

It will always show stdcontainer and nothing else, I suppose the intention was to show the whole hierarchy. I couldn't identify the responsible code, I had some grep matches in the everything library.

FWIW: there is a poor man's workaround, click on "display page" and click thru the "parent container:" links.

 
Authorized Readers: developers(usergroup)  # <--- WOT? 

Authorized Creators: gods(usergroup)

...   
[download]

This must be wrong because developers only includes root.

I'd say it should be pmdev like in  htmlcode

One of the things that people have said we ought to have is a mobile version of the site. I agree. :-) So to get development started, I have set up a small framework for the developers to work on. There are three infrastructure nodes which any pmdev members can submit patches to:

• mobile css fullpage
• mobile js fullpage
• mobile page header

To access the "mobile" version of the site, insert the /mobile/ path component in the URL, for example:

[href://mobile/?node=SOPW] => mobile/?node=SOPW

We need people who are good with CSS and Javascript. :-)

If you'd like to help, and are not yet a member of pmdev, you may message the gods to ask to be added.

Update:

In order to support expedited development of the CSS and JS bits, I have set up a wonki, mobile css and javascript, which contains the CSS and JS used by the mobile site. This is temporary; when the CSS and JS have stabilized, I'll move their respective code into the fullpages linked above. If you would like to try hacking on the CSS and/or JS, let me know and I'll add you to the wonki. But I want to keep the number of writers small, to minimize collisions. Wonkis work like wikis. :-)

Inspired by the thread voting does update, I have made a change -- experimental at this point -- to test the viability and desirability of separating the edit your post capability out of the normal threaded view; the vote on posts capability would remain in the normal threaded view as it is.

To check it out, find and view a root post of yours in the Obfu section. (You can find a list (if you have any) here.) Currently this change is only in effect for that specific scenario: root Obfu posts.
You'll see two differences:

1. The textarea labeled "Your obfuscated code", where you could edit the content, is gone;
2. There is now an "Edit" link above your post, on the far right side.

Note: janitors (and other authorized members) will see this 'Edit' link on any post* to which they have edit permissions, not just ones they own.

* Currently only Obfu root posts, as I said above.

I think this change, if adopted across the board, would have the desirable side-effect of suppressing, however slightly, the tendency of monks to edit their posts later. What are your thoughts?

a google search for another monk led me to a profile page saying he hasn't been here for more than 7 years!?!

After investigating the URL (which I hesitate to disclosure here) I realized that this must be a development version of the monastery accessing an old DB instance.

Changing the topdomain produced different results, sometimes I had to change index.pl to index.cgi, sometimes I was able to read the scripts source, sometimes got just 404s for links which worked before and vice versa.

Not sure if this might be related to my privileges ...

I think either this has to be taken offline or password protected, in any case it shouldn't be indexed by google.

update

this post was initially written for PMD, till I found this pmdevtopic board.

I think it should be safe to post links here

links deleted ¹

if you are getting errors, please try to switch to .com or .net or change .pl to .cgi, it seems like different servers in the background react inconsistently.

update

¹) why is this branch called "inner scriptorium" but publicly readable? I deleted the links again, google didn't cache them yet.

There's been a fair amount of discussion lately about how to designate off-topic posts (i.e. whether to set up a separate section for them, or not). (I think a good place to start getting familiar with the subject is here.)

The implicit underpinning of these discussions is what "off topic" means at PerlMonks. Indeed, part of the difficulty in arriving at a solution of which a plurality of monks would approve is that "off topic" is not well defined, and seems to mean different things in different contexts. I am starting to think it might be a good idea, then, to establish definitions for the following:

1. What is so far off topic for PerlMonks that it simply won't be acceptable? A post that is beyond this pale would be reaped, or possibly moved to the offtopicroot "section". (Note: not a section.)
2. What is off-topic enough to warrant not being approved into a section?
3. What is off-topic enough to warrant being designated (labeled, binned, etc.) as "OT"?
4. And indeed, what is the relative "severity" of the latter two criteria?

These definitions would be documented for all to see, and in particular would be incorporated into the Janitors' Guidelines, as well as the moderation and consideration guidelines.

Question #1 is: Do we agree that having something written down would be a good idea? I get a vague feeling that the answer to this question, historically, was "No". But it could just be that we never got around to it...

Is there a complete log of consideration events anywhere? By complete, I mean including the logging of events such as unconsideration. I don't know of any such; and what that means is that if a monk puts on a consideration, and then a janitor removes it, there is no trace of that consideration at all anywhere. Am I just missing something? Thanks...

Over at E2, we are about to take what is going to be an very incompatible change and forever move away from Perlmonks: we're going to be getting rid of the $VARS hash, and replacing it with a $DB->getNodeParam($NODE, "paramname") type setup where we have a large, indexed key-value store for each node. We'll be caching the contents of the vars in the nodeCache, but the goal is to not have to rewrite $VARS every time, and to be able to expand the code so that any type of node can have a key/value parameter.

The goal is to move some non-index-needing, non-primary columns over to it, and be able to add arbitrary metadata to any type of node, without having to muck with types and database schemas. If you guys are interested in syncing up, drop me an email or a message here, and we'll try and figure out what our engine deltas look like. In ecore terms, it is like every node would virtually join on setting.

I'd like to continue to be on the same rough engine branch, and be able to share performance improvements with you guys, but it's going to require a bit of engineering work.

Also, we've had some great success moving to AWS, so if you're thinking about picking up stakes and moving anywhere, please let me know and i'll have happy to share my recipes and practices getting E2 up and cooking on a modern web platform. Having S3 and RDS available has been a huge boon for our performance. I don't know what the state of the site is now that Perl foundation has it.