Write On! :: Comments :: Site updates and requests for comments

I've never really understood the "abstain" option on story moderation. It doesn't make sense to me over on Kuro5hin, where scoop was born, and it doesn't make sense here.

Why, if someone wanted to abstain from voting, would they bother registering a vote at all? The idea behind it seems to be nothing more than clicking a button to say, "Hey, I looked at this story, and I really don't care about it at all!" It would be more intuitive to me if the options were merely "Publish" and "Reject," leaving apathetic reviewers the option of abstaining by simply doing nothing.

Just my $0.02.

As for the layout, it's nice like it is. The site is clean and readable, which is the most important aspect of web design. Flashiness should be reserved for sites that don't offer real content, like this site does.

The only gripe that I have with the layout is that most text does not adhere to the font size I specify in my user configuration. As it is, the comments are nice and readable, but the story text is bigger than I would prefer. My assumption would be that this is due to the use of the stylesheets instead of <FONT> tags to set font size. Perhaps you could have separate stylesheets dependent upon this choice in order to rectify this issue.

Other than those two things, the site is great, and I look forward to some serious writing discussion. I'm new to the site and have been reading through some of the older stories and am quite impressed. This is quickly becoming my second favorite book-related website.

-- The world is quiet here.

Well, there are a few things the abstain vote is good for, some not necessarily on this site though :-)

First, it lets you see accurately how many articles in the queue are actually new, because "new" is defined as "I haven't voted on it yet." If you don't want to either publish or reject a particular story, it will stay visible in that nice eye-catching red unless you vote to abstain. If you prefer, you can just not vote, and check the queue to see if that "new" article is actually new or if it's one you abstained from.

Second, if auto-post is used (which it isn't on this site) "abstain" votes are used when weighting the votes to determine if the story should be posted or not. Abstentions count slightly negatively, but not as much as votes to reject, because people who abstained didn't particularly want to see it published.

And third, it lets you see who all has voted on the story and how.

Flashiness should be reserved for sites that don't offer real content

I agree... rather, I have found that flashy sites rarely have content, so on seeing flashy design I already know what level of content to expect.

The layout won't be getting flashy, but it's been getting slowly cleaned up. Having a nice-looking site isn't the same as having a flashy one...

The only gripe that I have with the layout is that most text does not adhere to the font size I specify in my user configuration. [...] My assumption would be that this is due to the use of the stylesheets instead of <FONT> tags

Your assumption is correct. The font size preference that you're trying to set assumes that I'm using font tags all over, which I am not, using CSS instead. Since there are no font tags for the system to modify based on that setting, the font won't change. This is, I guess, a "historical" behaviour of the program, and is coming up in the list of things to fix. Hardly anybody used CSS when it was written, and nobody has gotten to it yet...

Actually, I'm pretty sure the main content text uses your default browser font and size. I'm a big fan of letting people set their own display, which is why the two columns scale with the size of your browser window, too.

I'm new to the site and have been reading through some of the older stories and am quite impressed.

I'm glad you've enjoyed your self-guided tour ;-)
--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]

Thanks for clearing my head. Now, if only I could clear my sinuses....

First, it lets you see accurately how many articles in the queue are actually new, because "new" is defined as "I haven't voted on it yet." If you don't want to either publish or reject a particular story, it will stay visible in that nice eye-catching red unless you vote to abstain. If you prefer, you can just not vote, and check the queue to see if that "new" article is actually new or if it's one you abstained from.

Second, if auto-post is used (which it isn't on this site) "abstain" votes are used when weighting the votes to determine if the story should be posted or not. Abstentions count slightly negatively, but not as much as votes to reject, because people who abstained didn't particularly want to see it published.

Those are good enough reasons for me. :) I never took either of those into account when thinking of the "Abstain" option, and never saw it explained elsewhere. Personally, I never abstain on an article, as I figure that I should always have an opinion one way or the other. But that's just me, I guess.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the main content text uses your default browser font and size. I'm a big fan of letting people set their own display, which is why the two columns scale with the size of your browser window, too.

Right you were. I had wrongly assumed that there was a hard-coded font size in the stylesheet, and didn't bother to check and see. I'll learn to do a little more digging before complaining next time. :) I guess it was just that nearly every other site out there on the Internet had a hard-coded value and I had never checked my own browser's settings.

-- The world is quiet here.
[ Parent ]

Font tags are bad and evil. I don't know what you are smoking if you believe stylesheets makes your fonts unreadable, it is the other way around. Stylesheets make fonts adhere to your size preferences and make them scalable. The FONT tag does the complete opposite (as does pixel sizes in stylesheets, I'll give you that).

For more information about proper use of stylesheets and html tags read the specs (of HTML 4.x and XHTML 1.x and CSS 1.x through 3.x) located at http://www.w3.org/ also look at sites which use stylesheets to demonstrate that they're okay, and fonts and tables are not.

That the font tag still is hailed in this day and age is beyond me, who on earth teaches these kids HTML tags? Pot bellied, pot smoking wannabees, is my guess.

As for the font-tags used on this site, Janra tells me that those will be ironed out in time, because of other issues, so I'm not going to bite in that direction today.

- Grumpy -
--
When in doubt,
turn around,
cry and shout

spdyvkng - my homepage
[ Parent ]

I didn't really mean that the stylesheet made it unreadable. Having a little previous experience with scoop, I assumed that it's font size selection in the display preferences dialog was based on <FONT> tags, which janra confirmed. I also assumed (wrongly) that there was a hard-coded font size in the stylesheet, which was bigger than my personal preference.

I'm a big fan of CSS and agree that they make much more sense than do font tags. I was not at all suggesting that stylesheets be trashed, but rather a method of using them in conjunction with the existing preferences.

-- The world is quiet here.
[ Parent ]

You can use relative sizes in style sheets "small", "large", "larger" are valid ways to set font size in a style sheet, as is "120%", "80%". These are all relative to the size set as base for the parent element; which means depending on what the size has been set before.

The best way, though, is to use "em"s which are the width of the "m" in a given font. There is a corresponding "ex" for the height of the "x" in a given font, but "ex" support is poorer than "em" support.

Everything above will scale with the scaling of your browser "ctrl"+"-" or "ctrl"+"+" in IE and deratives, or "ctrl"+mousewheel in Opera (also accepts the IE shortcuts, as does Mozilla, IIRC).

So the best solution is to use the relative measurements, as opposed to the absolute "pt" points and "px" for pixels (which is default if any value is entered without measurement unit).

It is easy to do the right thing when one knows the above stuff; what I'm grumpy about is thast a lot of people still teach the font tag, and a lot of old html pages on the net says the same, etc.

I have an idea, there should be a way to demolish unhealthy sites like old HTML tutorials. Just like it is possible to condemn buildings, we should be able to condemn old websites.

RFCxxxx - Real Time Condemnation Protocol
--
When in doubt,
turn around,
cry and shout

spdyvkng - my homepage
[ Parent ]

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