Bruce Perens's Journal: I Hit The Slashdot Comment Limit!

I posted 30 replies to the story about my Open Source book series with Prentice Hall PTR. The slashcode stopped me at that point. It says you can only post to Slashdot 30 times in 4 hours. It won't even let me do it as an AC. So, the software has cut off comments from the "Horse's Mouth" in favor of ones from the other end of the horse :-) It doesn't seem productive of information. Moderation of the previous comments in the article should be counted in this limit - I haven't checked, but I could probably have made it a good deal of the way from 0 to the 50 karma cap with those 30 comments.

Bruce

Ways around it...

[evilviper]

It won't even let me do it as an AC.

As an AC how? Completely logged-out, or just having check-marked the "Post Anonymously" box?

If the system has you blocked when completely logged out, you could always change your IP address either by going through a proxy, or some other means.

Slashcode IS incredibly stupid. While those at the karma cap are limited to 30 comments... those with negative karma are able to post just as many (assuming they aren't moderated down very quickly). Certainly doesn't seem fair, nor a good idea, but it's certainly not the first bad behavior of slashcode.

Re:Ways around it...

[jamie]

"Slashcode IS incredibly stupid. While those at the karma cap are limited to 30 comments... those with negative karma are able to post just as many"

Users are the karma cap are limited to 50 comments a day, not 30 (though 30 per four hours due to a bug which we'll fix). Users with negative karma are limited to 10 or 2 comments per day, not 30, depending on how negative.

The Slash code isn't perfect, but your understanding of it seems to be among the things that are limited.

Re:Ways around it...

[evilviper]

Ahem... While that may be true if those with negative karma are nice and log-in, they still have the ability to post anonymously.

I'll admit that I'm not sure of the limit of anonymous postings from one IP address, but I've noticed, before, that slashcode pratically encourages you NOT to log-in, so I would assume that tendency would apply here as well, and give users the ability to post a good number of comments that way.

I could be wrong, and slashcode may do username+IP recording and tracking, but from my past experience, I would sincerely doubt it.

I almost hate to suggest it...

[MarkusQ]

I almost hate to suggest this, but you might try creating a second account. I'm not sure if it would work and I know that it's a bad idea (esp. since the filters won't let you digitally sign your posts). The best compromise I can think of: if you can post from a new account, post links to your real account's journal, with the body of the comment contained in the journal.

Or you could sigh and say to yourself "I've said my say. Anyone who doesn't get it, it isn't through lack of trying on my part" and go get a coffee & pastry or something.

-- MarkusQ

Slashcode "features"

[schlach]

I'm curious about other slashcode misbehaviors you all might have found.

I run a small slash site, mostly to hack the code. I'm primarily interested in the demo/meritocratic speech properties of slash, and every once in a while I learn about a 'feature' of the slashdot-specific slashcode that runs contrary to those principles. I think this is one of them.

The editors are another one, if it's fair to lump editors in as 'features'. I'm working on a design that eliminates editorial oversight in terms of choosing story submissions, a big one. Editors also should not have permanent-moderator status. And code-changes...

There are also pros and cons to the +1 posting bonus, and having to wait until one is in the most senior 85% of the population to fully participate. But I can at least see the merit in those compromises.

Thoughts?

Re:Slashcode "features"

[kill-hup]

"I'm working on a design that eliminates editorial oversight in terms of choosing story submissions"

Why not use scoop [kuro5hin.org], the engine that runs K5? It already has a user-based story approval system that can run without any editorial intervention.

Just a thought, in case you hadn't seen it.

Re:Slashcode "features"

[schlach]

Why not use scoop [kuro5hin.org], the engine that runs K5?

While I like the Open Queue feature on scoop, there are a few other features that turn me off to the platform in general. Permanent mod status, mojo, the lack of static caching, and the (low) amount of development and support going on with it, compared to slash. And then a bunch of features that I take for granted in slash that aren't present in scoop, like messaging, friend/foe, etc. There are a goodly amount of people writing plugins for slash, plus full-time coders, and slashdot is one of the most frequently hit sites on the net, so it's proven up to the task.

I'd have to rewrite the Queuing feature on scoop anyway, so that in and of itself would not be a large enough reason to switch.

Thanks for the tip tho. Have you done much slash-hacking on your site?

Re:Slashcode "features"

[kill-hup]

You've got some good points there. I demoed scoop as a potential replacement for slash on my site not too long ago, but reached some of the same conclusions you did. I just like the way slashcode does some things better.

I've hacked a bit in the dev version(s) of my site, having yet to apply changes to the public site. One of the major changes, in terms of function and not really code, was to enable spell-checking for logged in users in comments and submissions. I've also dome some template mods, like the "written by" that slashcode.com uses. Slashd tasks have been my latest playground, hacking up a niftier Mozilla sidebar [perldude.org] and a job that creates a "last updated" section box like /. has.

All in all, I think slashcode is a great product/project and it certainly makes for a decent news/blog/whatever CMS.

An Idea

[AntiFreeze]

Since you've hit the limit, why not just post a journal entry with replies to some of the various comments? Then email Rob (he tends to reply pretty quickly) or whomever wrote the story and have them post an update pointing to your journal with the replies?

And on a lesser note, sorry for the redundancy of my comment [slashdot.org] last night, my connection was abnoxiously slow and I was unable to check out other comments or the BN listings. They cleared up most of what I was asking about. Although, I'd still like an answer =]

It's a bug

[jamie]

You have been moderated 50 times today, all up. That must be some kind of a record.

But, the thing is, those upmods should be allowing you to continue posting. It says you've posted 35 times in the last 24 hours, and been upmodded 50, so actually you should have right now whatever your normal daily allowance is plus 15 more posts!

# perl -MSlash::Test=slashdot -le 'print join(":", $slashdb->getNumCommPostedByUID(3872, 24))'
35:50

The clue that you say the software is trying to limit you over the past 4 hours. That's our formkey timeout window. So there's this other limit, the number of comment-posting formkeys you can get within the formkey timeframe. That's max_comments_allowed, set to 30 and evaluated in checkMaxPosts(), and that doesn't pay attention to how much you've been upmodded. It should. If you can't get a formkey, you can't post, so this is what's stopping you.

So, yep, this is a bug; I've filed a bug report and will try to get it fixed this week.

Bug fixed

[jamie]

Bruce, the bug you found was fixed, and the fix went live night before last. If you post a ton again within four hours, every up-mod that you get will be one more time you can post within that window. In the case of what happened 11 days ago, this would mean you'd get to post infinitely often (those darn moderators just can't get enough of you).

Re:Bug fixed

[Bruce Perens]

Thanks!

Bruce