I’ve just incremented the OSNews version number from 3.0 to 3.1. I’m not really sure if now is too early or too late to make this change, but some fairly large backend changes have occured recently that prompted me to revisit whether or not this is really the same site that 3.0 was at rollout. Anyway, there’s a nice new feature that comes along with the change to 3.1 — THREADING. Read on to find out about it.
I think many readers will be happy to find out that we have implemented the oft-requested comment threading. Threading comes in two modes: “Collapsed,” in which you can view a linked comment title beneath a parent comment, and “Expanded,” in which you can view the entire comment, associated via indentation. Here is some detail on that.
First off, threading is only available to registered users. This will not change – the editors all agree that threading is an incredibly unfriendly, illogical, counter-intuitive system for tracking comments for those not familiar with it. Although it may seem to make sense, it carries several drawbacks.
1. Threading does not provide an easy way for a user to decipher which comments have been added since they last visited the site. Currently you must either remember it or somehow divine it. This is the largest drawback, I believe, and the only way around that is to track which comments you’ve seen or to provide that information in a cookie. Since we know that several of our tin-foil hat wearing users do not like cookies, we are forced to track the information ourselves, and its not in our best interest to additionally hammer the database until v3 optimization is complete. Either way, I think everyone agrees it’s unreasonable for a large website to track user views for each story, even if it’s simply the highest number comment you’ve seen.
2. I experimented with “reparenting,” which is displaying a reponse to a comment which has been voted below your threshold. I found it to be more confusing than anything else, as it was not immediately clear that the comment was a reply. Instead, collapsed parenting has been added, which means that comments below your threshold are ignored unless they have replies which are at or above your threshold, in which case they are collapsed. Doesn’t that sound really confusing? That’s why we’ve avoided threading for so long, because those of us who know how to use it often forget how much assumed logic there is in deciphering what one sees.
3. Because of the basic usability design of the site, it is not easy to provide a consistent interface that can accurately capture all replies without making the comments per page variable. This means the first few pages are likely to be very long as the replies will always be higher, and the last few pages shorter. I’m looking into ways to fix this disparity, but I don’t think it can be done without rewriting large portions of the comments engine.
For these reasons and more, threading is neither extremely practical or usable enough to be our default interface. We provide it solely as an alternative for our registered users. I can tell you after using it for a few days, it’s very useful, although not always as easy to use as flat view.
For those who are wondering, I intend to add an on-the-fly view toggle to the comment page, although it will almost definitely rely on a cookie. If cookies are a problem… well, you have your preferences page.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the threaded view has not been fully tested in all browsers. The threaded view has been tested in Gecko (Mozilla/Firefox), Opera, MSHTML (IE), and KHTML (Safari/Konqeror). Please consider all other browser support experimental. Additional browser support will continue to be added over the next days/weeks.
We are always asked the same few questions every time we solicit feedback, so let me provide some official answers here and now, and let this story be added to your browser bookmarks for everyone to see. These questions have been answered in the comments before, but I will provide the answers here, lest someone mistake the comments for unofficial.
Why don’t you use valid HTML/valid XHTML/XML&XSLT?
I have had many long conversations about this with many of our users, and it’s generally a stalemate each time. We have very skilled users who have a lot of very valid opinions on this. However, the fact remains that the goal of this site is to provide a website that renders properly everywhere, everytime. The typical argument goes something like this: “If you use valid code, it will gracefully degrade in older browser who will simply not get the style.” Unfortunately, this is simply not true.
We figure if OSNews reports on hobbyist OSes we’d at least like to render the full site on their Netscape 2 compatible browser as well. That’s why there’s no critical javascript on the site – you can even get the full experience on Netpositive.
We’ve gone through painstaking testing to make sure we render anywhere we can, in some cases using individual browser identification. We monitor which browsers hit our site, and know that we often have hits from obscure browsers.
I get lambasted for this viewpoint often, and there are many who very publically tell me our reasons are “lame” or “weak,” but they aren’t. We don’t want the site to be a lesser experience anywhere, and right now, it isn’t. This is the purpose of OSNews, and we believe a large part of what sets us apart from other sites.
Strangely though, for the record, I do maintain a validating version of OSNews, and at some point, we may make it public. However, as of today, the site is intentionally broken (with respect to compliance), and we’re well aware. If should look ok in your browser right now, no matter what browser you’re using.
If you wrote valid code, you’d have fewer versions of the site to maintain.
We currently maintain only one version of the core site, although many sections/pages have a mobile version and a desktop browser version. That’s it: two.
Why don’t you use Slash/Nuke/Scoop?
We understand that OSNews has replicated many features of popular sites like Slashdot, but that doesn’t mean that Slash is the way to go. It just means that they have implemented logical “stuff” that users wanted, as have we. We like the simplicity of our site, and will always listen to users who have suggestions on logical ways to further simplify the interface.
Why don’t you use Perl/Python/Ruby on Rails?
This is my favorite question lately. We get a lot of suggestions to rewrite the site in a new language, but we like PHP and will continue to use it for the forseeable future. If you like another language, we encourage you to use it on your site and discuss it here.
It amazes me that so many people have taken the time to email me about rewriting OSNews using Ruby on Rails. While I have only played with this framework on the side, and must admit it seems very powerful, it’s still very young and should probably be proven to scale on large, high-traffic sites before anyone would consider deploying it.
Why can’t anonymous users post with a username?
Perhaps at some point in time we’ll add this feature. Right now, if you want to use a moniker, you need to register. There are several other benefits to registration, including tons of site customization.
Why can’t we moderate admin comments?
Why don’t moderators use two accounts?
Put simply, there are definitely (definitely) people out there who will mod down admin comments *because* they are admins. We know because our posts were very frequently reported as abuse in the previous incarnation of OSNews. We’ve made an internal effort to not get involved in flamewars and high-tempered debates to avoid these problems, but we will not be enabling admin moderation.
Furthermore, it our site, and we said so.
Why not start anonymous comments at -1?
Again, we’ve discussed this, and we simply have too much anonymous participation to handicap those comments, many of which are valuable. However, we have discussed, and may soon implement, a system by which more trusted users start with a higher score.
Why have my comment votes increased/decreased?
We have complex algorithms that now determine your “trust.” Trusted users are often given more votes, while untrusted users’ votes are regularly reduced. We do this to help weed out the trolls who take joy in ruining a community. I think it’s likely that at some point in the near future, new accounts will start out with 0 comments votes and have to “earn” them via high quality comments, moderation, accepted story submissions, and story rating.
Why can’t I log in/reply on the mobile site?
Mobile improvements are coming. The mobile site will be getting additional features at some point to bring it more in line with the main site, although it’s unlikely that it will support logins.
Since rolling out “OSNv3,” we’ve steadily added new features. Chiefly amongst them are the following, in no particular order:
Just added today – finally…
Although tempted, I don’t think I’ll be implementing this humorous suggestion from Roguelazer, who says, “Add 3 new fields to our User Profiles. They can be “combo box” fields. The first one will be “Stance on GNU GPL”. The second one will be “Stance on Gnome devs”. The third one will be “Stance on OS X/Windows” … Through this addition, most of the comments here can be avoided, just by clicking somebody’s user profile. Brilliant!”
As always, suggestions, feedback, flames, gift certificates and evites can be directed to osnews-crew at osnews dot com, or to me personally at adam at osnews dot com.
Thank you.
Does it work ?
Yes, it works just fine. It does take a little getting used to the collapsed appearance though.
I prefer expanded. Does indeed look very nice though, thanks a ton OS New! This site just keeps getting better and better.
Expanded is also more my cup of tea. Slashdot’s way of collapsing all but the highest-rated ones is neat, but only really applicable on highly contentious and commented-on articles …
Is this a bug? I see a ‘more’ link but the comment_id parameter is blank, which apparently causes it to be redirected to index.php … possibly the proper variable name isn’t being used?
Is there a cvsweb-style viewer for the OSNews source code so I can take a peek?
It’s fixed. Sorry about that.
Ah, thanks. Is the “More” link supposed to contain the entire subtree starting from the node that links to it? All I’m seeing is a single comment.
Hope you don’t mind my poking holes
Poke away. The point is to find and repair the bugs.
ok here is my 2 cents.
2 cent!
Oh, weird; it looks like it was outputting the “More” link when it reached the maximum level of nesting, but that it wasn’t putting an ID in because no comments existed below that level. Once I posted the above comment, either the bug was fixed or the code added the proper comment_id to the ‘more’ link …
In other words, looks like an off-by-one error.
yes it does
Nvm, looks like a pref that must be set …
Ditto. Thanks, folks. This threaded view is VERY slick, and I think it will help some of us navigate the site a little more easily.
It’s good that folks who like flat mode still have that option, too. 🙂
Very nice…
thanks for your work, osnews is great!
Ok someone has to start, let’s see if threading works so please feel free to reply.
testing123
Let’s see how far it will indent before auto-collapsing!
Also, let’s see if they ever implement LiveJournal-style inline comment boxes (I’ve been meaning to implement that in my code, as well) …
Testing
[FreeBSD mindset]
Can we cvsup to 3.1 then?
[/FreeBSD mindset]
😉
It seems that the ‘more’ link pops up before it is actually needed.
It also appears that the nesting goes four deep, then the ‘more’ link takes you only to the fifth reply and it’s parent. The sixth reply shows up back on the main page and we start the nesting again.
The sixth reply is still nested. That was a bug, in which the read_thread page didn’t ring up as a reply, but it’s changed. It’s clear we need a better way to view threads once they get more than four deep.
Perhaps a change to “read_thread” is in order.
Am I missing something? Are threaded views supposed to be active right now? or no? Because all I can see is the standrd flat view…..
You have to select it in your preferences.
Thanks, already found out about it.
I guess I am too used slash.
It seems that after I’ve posted to a “thread” I can’t vote any comments thereunder up or down. They’re greyed out just like they are for my own comments, but *not* like those from moderators where it actually says that they’re a mod/admin.
My setting is set to “expanded”.
hmmm. try now.
In expanded view it still doens’t work.
And it seems if I go to a specific comment (even my own, see link below) I can then vote up or down on them.
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=11684&comment_id=23150
Ok, it should work now, I was able to replicate it.
It does indeed work now.
Awesome!
Kudos to the OSNews people, threading is very cool.
The only thing that (IMHO) isn’t the best is the “more…” thing. What about something like showing the exceeding comments all aligned to the last level of indentation?
Or maybe the “more” thing is made on purpose, to discourage from making the threads too long.
Threading is very nice indeed!
The more thing is useful: it keeps the comments from being cluttered. Also, I’d suggest to show in some way how many more comments are hidden by this “more”.
More is only showing one sub-comment, and not the whole sub-tree.
How about an option to disable the password requirement every time you edit your preferences? Or is that not possible?
And perhaps we could have a link to http://www.osnews.com/topic.php
on the main page, it can take several clicks to understand what a topic icon stands for (since mouse-hover simply gives “read similar articles…”
Anyway, keep up the good job guys!
Ha ha! I fixed that yesterday! I just haven’t implemented it. Hovering over a topic should be available very soon.
Edit by AS: Scratch that, I just activated it. It should be available within a few minutes, when the cache next refreshes.
well at 3:30 CEST it still is not active.
Yup, still not working here…
++ is used for adding 1 not 0.1, suxx0r LMFAO n00b
Everyone knows what ++ means. It’s a joke. Have a freakin’ sense of humor.
I think he was trying to be funny
Someone obviously doesn’t understand the concept of operator overloading 😉
Obviously he was using fixed point not floating point. Who’d use floating point for version numbering? 😉
Don Knuth =p
I just switched to threaded (expanded) view, and noticed this at the top of the page (right above the “Post a new comment” box, right justified).
Parse error: parse error in /home/osnews/web/storybox.tmpl.php on line 169
Ok, I added a little bit so that the “More…” link sends you to a page where you can continue to drill down, but perhaps the best thing to do is create a new subthread page, so to speak. I’ll work on that. But it won’t be immediate.
Sounds good.
Looks good, but I prefer the flat view. But I am glad the people who like threaded have been made happy.
So, any movement on numbering comments or being able to rate (non-OSNews) stories?
By numbering comments, I just mean that the first comment to come in is 1. Comments that have been modded down still have their number, so I could be reading along and see
1. RE: Threaded view
2. Test
4. RE[2]: Threaded view
(because 3. was modded down.)
This doesn’t have to be a per-user setting. That way I can easily remember which was the last post I read when I come back to read some more. Also when I decide to switch to a lower threshold I have an idea of where to look for those missing messages since they are not on their own page any more.
Rating stories would be an incredibly useful tool.
Numbering comments isn’t going to work. It might have worked if we designed v3 to work that way, but we didn’t, so I don’t think it’s practical, nor do I think the benefits are worth the time to do it. It would be cool, in hindsight, though.
Rating stories is something I’m all for, but not everyone agrees with me. Perhaps this is good topic for discussion here now. Would you all like to be able to rate ALL stories? And furthermore, would you like to see the ratings on the front page?
>Numbering comments isn’t going to work. It might
>have worked if we designed v3 to work that way, but
>we didn’t, so I don’t think it’s practical, nor do I
>think the benefits are worth the time to do it. It
>would be cool, in hindsight, though.
Pity. Maybe during the next big overhaul!
>Rating stories is something I’m all for, but not
>everyone agrees with me. Perhaps this is good topic
>for discussion here now. Would you all like to be
>able to rate ALL stories? And furthermore, would you
>like to see the ratings on the front page?
Well, since I brought it up I *will* vote for it.
Yes, I would very much like to be able to rate all stories and double yes that I’d like to see it on the front page. I hate to say it, but every now and then a dumb story (or factually incorrect one) slips through. It would be great to be able to avoid clicking into the story to find out. Having a “hide stories with score less than X” preference is the next logical step, but unessecary I think. Just showing the current score on the front page would be a boon.
Why not do some AJAX (for the browsers that support it), reload the page continioulsy in the background, on each iteration make new posts stand out. Eclipse has a nice way of marking importnat stuff in/by the scrollbar, it might be possible for to do something similar.
In any case, doing post numbering in javascript shouldn’t be hard, isn’t comment_id incremented with each post? Just sort them in an array and add the array index to the post.
One more thing:
when I decide to switch to a lower threshold I have an idea of where to look for those missing messages since they are not on their own page any more
Yeah, it’s funny how that works. When we used to mod down comments the old way, when they were on their own page, users would flock to the comments to “see what was so bad that it got modded down.” But see, the idea is that users mod down comments so people don’t have to see the junk. We don’t really want it all on a page, we want it out of the conversation, so to speak. You know?
>When we used to mod down comments the old way, when
>they were on their own page, users would flock to
>the comments to “see what was so bad that it got
>modded down.” But see, the idea is that users mod
>down comments so people don’t have to see the junk.
>We don’t really want it all on a page, we want it
>out of the conversation, so to speak. You know?
I understand the concept, but it has the opposite affect sometimes. Maybe I should just set my threshold lower, but items that get -5 would still draw my attention.
I like the fact that modded down comments can be segregated from the primary conversation. But the curiosity to see what was so bad it got modded down is still there.
I prefer the way Groklaws threading works. In Growlaw I can see all the thread titles under all original postings without having to click anything and with Firefox tab browsing I can go to any thread subposting easily.
We can do that if we dispense with indenting. Groklaw isn’t confined to some of the rules we impose on ourselves, like the usable screen width. There simply isn’t enough room for us to constantly indent without wrapping.
Groklaw is “ehhh” for my tastes, but the indenting here in expanded threaded view is really da-bomb. I vote for keeping indenting.
It took me a very long time to get used to the way slashdot worked but strangely enough I’ve never had a problem with usenet. I think I’ll stay with flat view.
That is pretty sweet.
First off, let me say, way to go Adam and the rest of the OS News crew! (yes even you Thom).
As always, suggestions, feedback, flames, gift certificates and evites can be directed to osnews-crew at osnews dot com, or to me personally at adam at osnews dot com.
I just have to ask, has anyone really sent you a gift certificate?
I just have to ask, has anyone really sent you a gift certificate?
You could be the first!!
I’m going to hold you to that. Expect something in the mail next week.
Cool. Now there’s one less thing for the various trolls and whiners to complain about. But I think I’ll stick to flat view- I still feel that it leads to better conversations. On a side note, any thoughts about that “anti-bad repliers” idea I sent you?
Can we have some screenshots?
I can’t wait until Threading goes live for registered users. It should be interesting to see how it is visually implimented.
Although there is one thing … In the article, it sounds like they are talking about “unthreaded views” and not “threaded views”. A good example of threaded views is slashdot. There, you can easily follow a thread and replies via tree-like view. Makes it simple for both beginners and vets to follow.
Which one are you talking about?
I can’t wait until Threading goes live for registered users.
Uh…. threading *is* live for registered users. Instead of screenshots, navigate to your preferences and turn threading on in the section that says “View.”
Yup. It would have a smoother learning curve if there was a dropdown at the top of the page right next to Browse At: [-1 ].
And….. done.
I don’t really see the point in numbering the changes to OSNews. Does anybody really care if it’s 3.0 or 3.1? I can’t even see anywhere on the site where it gives the version number, besides these types of posts.
“I don’t really see the point in numbering the changes to OSNews. Does anybody really care if it’s 3.0 or 3.1? I can’t even see anywhere on the site where it gives the version number, besides these types of posts.”
Nope. No one cares and it doesn’t matter. It’s just fun because lots of people use the site and enjoy new features.
I would prefer to see only posts being allowed for those that register. Those that don’t register are able to read the news but not post in the threads. It gets tiresome seeing all the anonymous posts and having to reply to an IP Address instead of a username.
Well, you don’t have to reply to an IP, if you choose the “reply” to a comment, it will be linked, so you’ll see which Anonymous it’s directed to.
There are simply too many users who prefer to use the site anonymously for us to disable this access, although I agree that it would very likely raise the quality of the posts around here.
Now when will you focus on accurate & decent news articals?
When you start submitting them!
Now when will you focus on accurate & decent news articals?
Name on recent newsitem that was untrue.
–Thom Holwerda
Mmm. Let there be friends!
Yes, “friends” is now active in user profiles. I’m going to try and find a better way to allow adding in the comments as well.
You could store the last read post in a cookie for registered users, and provide an option for paranoids to disable it.
(additional comment)
This wouldn’t add more database lookups. If the users has post-tracking set, it would be stored in a cookie as well. If there’s no cookie, don’t do it 🙂
Why don’t you just put [new] or something similar in front of new comments. Let say if the comment is less than 1 hour the [new] will be red, after 4 hours it will turn green and after 12 say black. When the comment is more than say 16 hours old you dont show [new] label at all. As I see you keep track to the time comments were submitted so no new datasets are necessary easy you just calculate the age on the fly.
Do you own research and find the appropriate timings.
Of course this does not reflect what is actually new for the users, but it is very handy when you come back say 5 hours later. Or if you wish you could track when user last visited the site and calculate the age of the comments according to that time (if cookies are not a problem for the users).
I don’t know if it is possible to do in your current implementation, but I saw that on another site I regularly visit and this helps a lot.
Go ahead and mod me down for this(I feel its within your 14 rules), but why are you guys re-inventing the wheel? You writing a CMS and updating it when it is closed source and non-distributed isnt exactly what I would call news-worthy.
Yep, that’s a good point.
It’s not a good point. Name me one CMS (backend AND frontend) that will *for sure* render well on every browser, no matter how obscure it is. And then I mean PDA browsers, phone browsers, text-based, Net+, the whole shite.
Then we’ll talk.
–Thom Holwerda
Your post doesn’t make any sense. If they feel like reinventing the wheel, its their right to do so. I am sure they have their own technical and ‘political’ reasons. You don’t pay them to do this do you? So why are complaining? It’s newsworthy because it concerns the site. Anyone who regularly visits would be interested in changes, this is especially true considering that one of the new features is threaded views.
Secondly, who are you to decide whats not newsworthy? If you don’t like this article, just don’t spend your time on it. Simple!
How is this ANY different than someone whining about there being too many Linux distributions? Is it SO incomprehensible that we want to have our own, unique CMS that renders in multiple browsers?
You writing a CMS and updating it when it is closed source and non-distributed isnt exactly what I would call news-worthy.
You grousing about our CMS is what I’d call class A trolling.
Translation: Waaaah, how dare you not use OSS?
Every /. kiddie out there can understand threaded view. It’s not that hard to understand, and any comments to the contrary remind me of MS saying that tabbed views in a web browser are just so confusing to end users. i.e. hogwash If you want to keep a cool feature for subscription members then that’s fine, just don’t make up lame excuses. In reality people don’t really care about time order so much between threads, the whole point of threading is that you group similar subject items together, and that’s what most normal, semi-organized thinking people care about, not absolute time order of messages.
The above rant is ridiculous. First off, threading is not just for subscription members, it’s for all registered users, paid or not, rendering the entire rant about “lame excuses” completely pointless.
Secondly, this site is not just for “/. kiddies,” as described, but, rather, for anyone. We’re not catering to just the “News for Nerds” crowd, and we want our site available and understandable to anyone.
Just because you understand threading does not mean most people do; we have done our research, and, not entirely surprisingly, most people do not. This “hogwash,” sadly, is your own opinion, one that’s founded on principals we’ve specifically said are not our goals.
There should be a preference option so that when you reply to a comment you should either go to your comment in threaded mode or go to the comment you were replying to if you are in flat mode. That way you can continue to read the rest of the comments without having to scroll down to where you were before.
The expanded view is quite nice, reminds me of the nested view from the IMDB forums.