This section is only for discussing issues pertaining to the PerlMonks web site itself.
For example, asking about how things work, or offering ideas on how the site could be made better.
Yes, negative Karma also works. The feature is quite flexible, pretty much anything in square brackets that the Monastery can turn into links can be given Karma. So if you like, for example, CB Stats, you can do:
Karma points are tracked for 7 days. Well, technically, they remain in my database forever. But to match the other CB Stats, i only look at the last 7 days.
I also track WHO is handing out the points and show the 5 most active Karma givers in the stats as well.
Another special feature is that chatterbot can watch homenodes and "last seen" time and show last online time of a user. This may have serious timezone bugs!. I'm not sure if this feature is of any use, other than novelty. I configured some random users at the moment to test the stability of my homenode parser.
PerlMonks was timing out for me from about 8:30 UTC to 13:15 UTC. On the weekend, I noticed a similar behaviour, but the period was much shorter. Does anyone have an explanation?
What this essentially does is split out the system-generated notification messages into a separate nodelet from the Chatterbox nodelet.
So if you enable this nodelet, then all of the messages which come to you from the system (i.e. from root or NodeReaper) are shown in this nodelet and not in the Chatterbox nodelet.
This is structured very similarly to the Chatterbox nodelet, but with a few simplifications:
OK, folks, I've got yet another steaming-fresh feature for you: Private groups of one.
Each monk can have a private group of which they are the only member.
In this group, you have access to the feature which supports threaded discussions on groups.
Here's the trick which makes this feature useful (in my hubrile opinion): the Godsalso have access to your private group of one!
This enables to have private threaded discussions with the gods.
I made this because I feel that our inbox-based message system and wikis are rather inadequate for extended discussions.
To access your private group of one, go to your home node. You should see a row labeled
"Private Group:"
at the bottom of the table next to your picture.
If the private group doesn't exist yet, there will be a link to Create it. Otherwise, the link will say Visit.
Alrighty, folks! I've got another steaming-fresh feature for you: What Links Here
There is a new nodelet you can enable, if you are interested in this feature. Go to your Nodelet Settings and find "What Links Here" somewhere near the top of the list.
Then, whatever node you're on, this nodelet will show what other nodes link to the current node.
The list is capped at 20. For nodes which are the target of many links, such as the PerlMonks FAQ, the nodelet will list 20 nodes, followed by a link to What Links Here where you can see the full list.
The database table behind this feature is not automatically maintained (yet), so I'll need some volunteers from pmdev to occasionally visit Update Userspace Links. Doing so will cause a delta update to the table.
The thing that I always thought was the most interesting in Xanadu is the idea that links are bi-directional. And the Everything Engine was designed around that.
For a few weeks and for AM only (I guess), links in "boxes" on the right (nodelets they are called?) that have been already visited are now rendered as invisible text. I'm not too good with HTML/CSS to know why. Seen in different browsers/OSes/platforms. Maybe not very important and affects despicable AMs only, but still kind of broken window perspective.
Also, I have put "boxes" into quotes above, they used to be nice clean boxes with strict lines to serve as borders, now without these lines it's amorphous pile with huge gaps of invisible text, but I understand that march of modernity/design is unstoppable, this latter complaint is just imho.
Having the +/- on the left side seems like the natural place for showing/hiding a sub-tree. However, when you do this, the + is left aligned with sub-trees at the same depth. This is fine if all sub-trees have descendents, and thus a +/-. But, if a sub-tree without descendents is above a sub-tree with descendents at the same level it appears as though the lower sub-tree is a descendent of the upper instead of a sister. For example, if the following are at the same level it looks like this:
Re: Great subject[^19] 24 hours ago [him]
+/-Re: Great subject(1) 11 hours ago [her]
Currently you can clear your "newest nodes" list up to the current time. However, it might be useful if you could remove specific nodes that you no longer want to show up. The "Newest Nodes" node is where I usually go so it would be nice for it to be more configurable.
I am pleased to announce a new feature: thread watching. This lets you receive notification whenever someone posts a comment in a thread of interest.
More specifically, you can get notified when someone replies directly to a specific node of interest, or when someone replies anywhere under a node of interest, no matter how many reply levels below the node. These two modes are called 'direct' and 'any'. The node of interest doesn't have to be a root node in one of the sections; it could be any reply as well, in case you're only interested in a subthread under some post.
To register for notifications, click one of the new links you'll find by each node, near the "Comment on" link. For a node you're viewing directly (that is, the 'root' of a (sub)thread you're viewing), the new text looks like:
Watch for: Direct replies / Any replies For all other nodes in a (sub)thread you're viewing, the new text looks like:
Watch: Dir/Any
If you have already registered interest in a node in this way, you will instead see a link like:
Unwatch
To see a list of all the nodes you are currently watching, go to My Watched Nodes.
Next to each watch listed, you'll see a "button" (like [X]) which you can click to delete that watch.
In addition...
You can watch a user, i.e. receive notification whenever a specific user posts.
To set up this kind of watch, go to the user's homenode, where you will see a link like Watch for posts by this user.
When you are stalking a user in this way, you will also get notifications of whenever they submit root posts in any of the main sections of the site.
If a post happens to hit multiple criteria you have set up — for example, you're watching for posts in a certain
thread and by a certain user, and that user posts in that thread — you will get just a single notification message.
I think it would be really good for new users to have a prominent link to basic syntax for posting. It could be like a mini-faq that has the most common things people might want to use. It would be very helpful. This site can be challenging when new.
Two weeks ago I provided a patch Re: node_info_string - (patch) to change the linking of the ID in the header of all nodes to [id://...] style.
The idea is to facilitate linking to nodes by simple copy&paste.
NB: Some browsers facilitate this further by providing a "copy link text" entry
in the context menu (right-click/long touch)
Explicitly
==== BEFORE:
The links in the page headers below the title looked like
on Jan 25, 2024 at 13:46 CET ( #11157250 =pmdevnote: print w/replies, xml )
==== AFTER:
Now they display [id://...] around the link
on Jan 25, 2024 at 13:46 CET ( [id://11157250] =pmdevnote: print w/replies, xml )
History
This patch was experimental, but so far nobody complained. I'd even say almost nobody noticed. :)
Linking with id:// has many advantages, like avoiding lock-outs and displaying the nodes title.
I hope this will make proper linking easier.
On a side note: I personally used this for over a decade already, changing the link was one of my first Nodelet hacks in JS.
Implementing it for PM proved to be far more complicated tho.
Snippets of code should be wrapped in
<code> tags not<pre> tags. In fact, <pre>
tags should generally be avoided. If they must
be used, extreme care should be
taken to ensure that their contents do not
have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent
horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor
intervention).