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Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles

Greg Utas16-May-20 2:10

Greg Utas

16-May-20 2:10

I'm guessing, based on my very limited knowledge of such things, that a colorized link is provided by your browser consulting its history. And that, for some reason, the links in question are fake, and are in reality front-ends to something that redirects to the target without your browsing knowing.

phil.o17-May-20 0:03

phil.o

17-May-20 0:03

No, there is definitely something in the CSS for the S&A section which prevents visited links from appearing as visited. If you watch for the link of a visited member page in the Who's who section, for example, you can see this link as visited.
I had asked the same question here months ago, but never got any answer.

"Five fruits and vegetables a day? What a joke!
Personally, after the third watermelon, I'm full."

Richard Deeming18-May-20 0:34

Richard Deeming

18-May-20 0:34

Because this CSS rule:

CSS

.content a {
    color: #005782;
}

has a higher specificity than this rule:

CSS

a:visited {
    color: #800080;
}

and there are no other rules applied to the links.

Specificity - CSS: Cascading Style Sheets | MDN[^]

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer

BUG: Error when trying to submit a new Question

Wendelius18-May-20 7:36

Wendelius

18-May-20 7:36

Ah, now I understand, thank you!

Andreas Mertens13-May-20 10:24

Andreas Mertens

13-May-20 10:24

I've been trying a few times now to enter a question. When I submit, I get an error message about an internal error. Any ideas?

Re: BUG: Error when trying to submit a new Question

Richard Deeming14-May-20 0:32

Richard Deeming

14-May-20 0:32

This seems to happen from time to time. I suspect it's when some scheduled maintenance task is running. The problem usually goes away after a while.

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer

Re: BUG: Error when trying to submit a new Question

Matthew Dennis14-May-20 3:46

About the approval (this time a question)

14-May-20 3:46

We've been trying to track down this and similar issues for quite some time. Something is overloading the servers in a way that impacts the system's ability to handle the database responses in a timely fashion, and the requests fail.

It goes away eventually, which of course is both a blessing and a curse. This work now, but then we can't recreate the issue.

We'll find it eventually. We always do.

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

Nelek13-May-20 10:08

Re: About the approval (this time a question)

13-May-20 10:08

As I said below:

Quote:
The Article is potentially useful

I don't click "approve" if I don't think it.

Because if it is formally correct and doesn't miss the other points, it is still not a MUST approve from my side.

I don't approve if I don't think it might be usefull.
I don't approve if I don't understand minimally the content.
I don't approve if I think it contains errors of thinking.
I don't approve if I think it is yet another guy reinventing the wheel.
I don't approve if I see content that google gives a couple of times in the first result page.

But I don't report them to get them nuked, because the item is not failing the "try to publish" directives.

Is there a time limit for moderation?
I mean...
if after X days still not approved gets discarded?

If there is none. It could be interesting to see the experiment of adding such a time limit (let's say one week or two) and a "Neutral report" (that can be clicked without saying it is wrong) would be used. I mean something like "OK, I have read it, it is not that bad / is OK, but I am not feeling to approve it"
I think many people just approve because they think they "have to click on something".

M.D.V.

If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.

Chris Maunder14-May-20 5:31

Chris Maunder

14-May-20 5:31

There's no systematic time limit, but either Sean or myself will nuke (or fix) articles that have hung around for more than a day or 2.

cheers
Chris Maunder

Re: About the approval (this time a question)

Nelek14-May-20 8:23

Options for article approval

14-May-20 8:23

Fair enough

M.D.V.

Nelek13-May-20 9:56

13-May-20 9:56

Are really that useful?

Quote:
The Article has no major formatting issues (missing images, formatting issues etc)

If I see them I report "needs help >> format / Layout issues" and don't click approve.

Quote:
The Article has no major spelling and/or grammar issues

It is not so esay to fnid tehm bcuesae yuor biran suhlod be cabpale to rroeder the letrtes wehn reading.
And if I find them I tell it the author in the message board (already have found some that were a couple of years undercovered)
On the other hand, this sometimes is difficult for non-natives moderators.

Quote:
The item matches the definition of 'Article'

If not I report "needs help / Wrong Type" and don't approve

Quote:
The purpose and goal of the Article is clear

If not I tell the user or report "unclear / incomplete"

Quote:
The Article is potentially useful

I don't click "approve" if I don't think it.

Quote:
The Article is appropriate for this audience, and does not contain inappropriate content

If I thought it is not appropiate I would report "unclear", if it contains inappropiate content I would report as "poor or off-topic or inaccurated" depending on what fits best.

I still see people approving articles where there are already some reports of format / missing images / wrong types or things like that. If they are clicking that 6 options although the articles is obviously not complying with at least one of them... what is the value for the checkboxes?

Additionally, my lazyness complains a lot having to do 7 clicks when with 2 (approve and confirm) would be enough.
Having the list there to have a guide / recordatory is fine, but I don't really think the check boxes are an improvement.

M.D.V.

modified 13-May-20 16:17pm.

Richard Deeming14-May-20 0:29

Richard Deeming

14-May-20 0:29

They're not an improvement for you, because you're not the intended audience. Smile | :)

We recently* had a few users with access to the moderation queue who were just blindly letting articles through despite major formatting issues. Nothing's going to completely prevent that, but at least the check-list should encourage them to consider before clicking approve.

And if they still approve something that's obviously not fit for publication, it gives Sean more of an excuse for visiting them with the cluebat. Big Grin | :-D

* Whatever "recently" means at the moment. Last week? A couple of months ago? 5 years ago? Time has lost all meaning.

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer

Nelek14-May-20 8:25

14-May-20 8:25

Richard Deeming wrote:
who were just blindly letting articles through despite major formatting issues

I know.

I said:
I still see people approving articles where there are already some reports of format / missing images / wrong types or things like that.

Despite the check boxes.

And not the first time I summon the approvers to give them a "heads up"

M.D.V.

Chris Maunder14-May-20 5:30

Chris Maunder

14-May-20 5:30

You can ignore all the checkboxes. It just means you have to click the "OK, I'm ignoring the checkboxes", so just one more click.

As Richard observed: this is for those blindly clicking "Approve". There needed to be a little more thought in why they are approving it. Sorry it's a hassle but we needed to push the message a little more.

cheers
Chris Maunder

Nelek14-May-20 8:23

Can we have a function that autodrops certain spam accounts?

14-May-20 8:23

Chris Maunder wrote:
this is for those blindly clicking "Approve"

I supposed it

Chris Maunder wrote:
Sorry it's a hassle but we needed to push the message a little more.

I agree

Chris Maunder wrote:
It just means you have to click the "OK, I'm ignoring the checkboxes", so just one more click.

I said it in my message "Approve and confirm" and lazy to do 7 clicks Poke tongue | ;-P

M.D.V.

Jörgen Andersson12-May-20 8:20

Jörgen Andersson

12-May-20 8:20

When I'm looking at a lot of the accounts Phil.o is collecting in his SAOTD I recognize that a lot of the linked homepages are the same. Mostly they are linking to different Tiktok and Bitcoin sites.

Could we have a function that keeps track on blocked urls and quietly drops them?

Or perhaps better, add account creation to its own moderation queue?

<edit>Ok, forget that, I just checked items in Progress and realized it's already happening at the moment</edit>

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello

Unchangeable subject

Nelek7-May-20 19:31

Re: Unchangeable subject - changed

7-May-20 19:31

The owner of This message[^] complained, that he can't change the subject when editing the message. I have tried it too and is true.
I can click "Edit", the subject is available to be changed in the new window, but when I hit save the changes are reverted back to the original "My vote of 3"

And no, it should not have anything to do with "the first message of a thread" because I do it in many other cases (the most usual example is adding " - gone" in the S&A forum) and it doesn't affect if the message have been answered or not.

M.D.V.

modified 12-May-20 16:10pm.

Matthew Dennis8-May-20 8:58

8-May-20 8:58

I've confirmed this and will add it to the pile.

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

modified 12-May-20 15:49pm.

CPallini12-May-20 2:02

CPallini

12-May-20 2:02

And I confirm Matthew words. Big Grin | :-D

modified 12-May-20 15:50pm.

Matthew Dennis12-May-20 10:58

12-May-20 10:58

This is by design. The proper way is to change his vote.

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

Nelek12-May-20 11:28

12-May-20 11:28

Read the thread... AFAIK he changed it to a 5 and still don't able to change the subject.

Is it possible to be sure about the change of mind?

M.D.V.

Matthew Dennis12-May-20 12:27

12-May-20 12:27

I did re-read it and no where does he say he re-voted, only that he couldn't change the title.
However, I checked the votes and it is apparent that he did re-vote and that the message title did not change.

Re-opening the bug.

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

Nelek13-May-20 8:02

13-May-20 8:02

Matthew Dennis wrote:
I did re-read it and no where does he say he re-voted,

Quote:
I voted 3 because of this %$*¨^ù web interface: I "misclicked"! I wanted to rate 5 of course (have you seen all the answers I made to the others? Big Grin | )

And YES! This title is better!

Quote:
This is 5 stars! But I cannot change the title ! Sigh |

modified 21hrs ago.

M.D.V.

Matthew Dennis13-May-20 6:26

13-May-20 6:26

Ok, I've learned something new about our Rating system. This functionality is working as designed and the logic behind this is:

When you rate an article with a comment, a message is created with the Subject "My Rating of N", where N is the value of the rating.
You can not change the Subject as that would change the history of the Rating. In this case you voted '3'. You can, however, edit the text in the message to indicate that it is an erroneous vote.
To change your vote, refresh the page to re-enable voting (yeah a bit clunky) and vote again, optionally with a comment. Your old vote will be replaced with the new vote.
If you included a comment with the new vote, a new message will be created.

The reason for this is that articles evolve. You may have originally voted 2 and explained why you thought the article was substandard. The author reviewed your comment, agreed with you, and made changes to improve or correct the article content. Upon reviewing the changes, you find that it is much better and vote it a 5.

We don't want to lose the history of the comments and voting reasons by just changing the Subject of the messages. Also, the date of the message indicates when the vote was made, so you can associate the vote with a particular version of the article.

I hope this helps.

Matthew

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

Nelek13-May-20 8:06