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Newsboard Anarchy Trial
Posted by Magnus on 25 October 1999, 14:24 GMT
As any regular visitor to our site knows, there have recently been a lot of controversy about the comments on our newsboard. In accordance with our site policy, we have deleted comments that we have considered to be in violation of the guidelines or completely off topic. This has rewarded us with everything from "thank you"-notices to being called communists. It has also taken up a lot of valuable time from our staff members. It was clear that something had to be done about the situation. As we saw it, we had three alternatives. We have tried the first one, are right now trying the second one, and would like to avoid the third one if possible. The first one was to disable the posting permissions for the people who posted most off-topic or abusive articles (which accounts were affected is not relevant here). Naturally, this was done after multiple warnings to the persons in question. This was done a couple of weeks ago, the result of which each person can evaluate for themselves. The trial was in force around Oct 9th to Oct 19th. The second one is the one we are trying now. For this two week period, we will no longer delete off-topic posts. We will let any kind of discussion go on. We will still delete articles that are clearly out to disrupt the page layout (such as 10 pages of blank lines), or that can be considered illegal or highly inappropriate (such as pornography links or anything like that). Apart from that, anything goes. Please note that there is no change in our policy as to what we will answer in this. We will still not answer off-topic posts. If you want to get in touch with the staff, use e-mail.
This trial will run from the posting of this article for two weeks, and will close on Nov 7th. The third option, which we would like to avoid but will have to fall back to unless the situation is resolved, is to turn off the commenting on our news articles. News would continue to be posted, but the user commenting would be disabled. Discussions would be referred to the mailinglists where appropriate. While we think that this would remove value from our site, there is a limit to how much we can provide as a free service, and we have been pushing close to that limit. Once the current trial is over, on Nov 7th, a survey will be posted, in which we will ask you, our visitors, which way you think we should handle the situation. The survey will be open for one week. This survey will be purely suggestional - we will make the decision based on the result of that survey and based on what we think at that time ourselves. The survey is not decision-binding. However, we can guarantee that the result of the survey (as well as the result of the trial in whole) will have great influence on the decision. We have been accused (by certain parties, as far as we have noticed it is not a general concern, but we would still like to address it here) of not listening to the voice of our community. We feel that this has not been the case before, and certainly will not be in this case. But as usual, we ask you to send your constructive comments to our staff directly at news@ticalc.org (assuming it is about our news system). We do not constantly monitor our comment board for site suggestions. We do, however, keep all mail we receive to the appropriate mailing addresses, and we take into consideration every idea that is proposed to us. We regret that the situation has gone as far as it has. Any other suggestions on how to deal with it are very welcome - drop us a mail anytime.
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The comments below are written by ticalc.org visitors. Their views are not necessarily those of ticalc.org, and ticalc.org takes no responsibility for their content.
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Re: Newsboard Anarchy Trial
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Miquel Burns
(Web Page)
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I just thought of something that ticalc could do: Have users be able to read the entire news article on the front page so that if they have a bad connection to ticalc, they don't have to worry about waiting for the comments to load.
The reason for this is that when there's too many comments, I have to wait kfor a while and hit stop-reload every once in a while. (I should tell my ISP about that)
As you can see, I not the type of person who can put their ideas in writing/text too well and may leave loop-holes on even what should be a simple idea.
Miquel "Kingfire" Burns
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25 October 1999, 22:53 GMT
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Re: Newsboard Anarchy Trial
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XoBoFNi
(Web Page)
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I think hell just froze over.
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25 October 1999, 22:54 GMT
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Re: Newsboard Anarchy Trial
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STL137 
(Web Page)
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Someone said that programmers should form "alliances" so that "Better and quality programs will be more common".
As a TI-85, TI-92, and TI-92+ BASIC programmer, I say that this is bunk. "Alliances" are unnecessary to ensure quality programs. Perhaps if programmers (assembly and BASIC alike) concentrated on quality and not quantity, the desired result would be achieved. I have written a number of programs for the TI-92+, but only RSA and GraphCal deserve to be uploaded. Most are probably aware of my troubles with RSA, and I haven't gotten around to uploading GraphCal yet. PRIME6 for the TI-85 is another program that I've worked very hard on, so much that it's the only program that I've uploaded to ticalc.org (with the exception of a sucky Newton's Method program that I don't support). Hacking out RSA took me months, and I had to read technical journals to learn how to improve the code, and it was HARD - but a quality program resulted. Now, I promise all TI-89, 92, and 92+ owners that it *will* be released shortly after September 20, 2000 at the LATEST, because that's when RSA's patent expires. Heh.
Focus on quality programs.
S. "Cowshevik" L.
- Didn't use a spell-checker here. NFN NMI L. laughs at spell-checking programs. Hah!
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25 October 1999, 23:42 GMT
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Mmm. Patentlicious.
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STL137
(Web Page)
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<<I think he wants to be safe about whatever he is working on. >>
Nope, it's not my patent that I'm waiting for to expire.... I think I said that.
<<You got a patent for a Ti-Basic program??? >>
Nope, you can only patent algorithms, inventions, etc. TI-BASIC programs are copyrighted by their authors.
<<However, I agree with you on the subject of alliances, from personal experience of who ends up doing the work. >>
Yep.
<<I just think that it is ridiculous to patent a basic Program. What do you hope to gain via the patent? This is recreation, and I distribute to the masses anything that I make. Furthermore, my definition of anything includes programs, source code, demos, and text files that would not prove harmful to a Ti calculator. And if you plan on selling your programs, I will purchase them and distribute them to everyone. >>
Try reading what I posted before.
<<No, RSA Labs, a security agency, patented one of their encryption algorithms and the patent expires September 20, so he could then legally use this algorithm in anything. However, I doubt that RSA would come after him for making a TI-92 program that encrypted files =) >>
Yep. And they're being very slow about giving me permission too. Argh.
S. "Cowshevik" L.
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27 October 1999, 06:12 GMT
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