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Experimental feature coming Friday morning... Site News
As an experiment, I have posted five stories for Friday morning in a new "Is it a hint?" category. This category is only visible to registered users (anyone can sign up for a free account and become a registered user, of course), and the idea is to take the "marginal" hints and get a general consensus from the registered users before making a final decision on publishing the hint to all readers.

If you're a registered user, you'll see these five hints about 15 minutes or so before the day's normal hints appear. Please feel free to comment on each hint's technical accuracy and suitability for general publication. After a few days have gone by, I'll review the entries in the category, transferring the "yes" entries to the proper categories for all readers, and deleting the others.

This doesn't mean I'm no longer reviewing hints, testing them, or looking for duplicates. Rather, there have always been a few hints each week that fell into a "maybe" category, and instead of just deleting them or asking one or two friends, I figure I'd ask the registered users for their thoughts.

If you'd rather not see these "Is it a hint?" entry, just go your display preferences, and disable the category (it's the last one on the list). Once you've done that, macosxhints will look as it always has. Also, please feel free to use the comments to this hint to give me feedback on the general concept of the "Is it a hint?" category. Hopefully it will lead to more good hints making it to the site that may have otherwise dropped by the wayside...

-rob.
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Experimental feature coming Friday morning... | 25 comments | Create New Account
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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: NathanRX7 on Jul 11, '03 03:18:23AM

Cool idea.



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: Kool on Jul 11, '03 03:40:30AM

Yes, indeed. But isn't 15 minutes just a bit of a tiny timeframe? I mean, NetNewsWire Lite shortest period to check the RSS is 30 minutes for example.



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Not a 15 minute window...
Authored by: robg on Jul 11, '03 08:11:23AM
I think there's a bit of confusion here ... I just chose to post the "Is it a hint" stories 15 minutes before the regular stories. They don't disappear when the regular stories appear -- they're all still online right now. However, the main page only displays 10 stories at a time, so you'll have to use the "Next" button to get to page two, as there are a total of 12 "new" hints today -- this site news article, six regular hints, and five "is it a hint" hints.

I intend to leave the "is it a hint?" entries up for a number of days for comments, then look and see which should become "real" hints. I just put a 15 minute gap between them so the registered users would have something to start reading a bit earlier than the published hints; it wasn't meant to represent the allowed time limit for commenting.

Make sense?

-rob.

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Not a 15 minute window...
Authored by: Kool on Jul 11, '03 11:13:31AM

Ok, yes, that makes more sense. Sorry, I'll have to read better... Then this certainly will be a nice addition to the site!



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: c_shotton on Jul 11, '03 07:05:42AM

The window of opportunity for commenting may be too narrow. I started to participate in this feature and half way through, all the "hints" I was commenting on disappeared. Oops.

How long with the suspect hints be on-line before this generally happens? For all I know, they were on-line all night, but just saw them 5 minutes before they disappeared.



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See my reply above...
Authored by: robg on Jul 11, '03 08:13:29AM

I'm not sure what you meant by disappeared -- the articles are still all there (see my answer above). If you truly cannot see them, please email me directly, as they're clearly still here according to both what I see when logged on and the entries in the database.

-rob.



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: vancenase on Jul 11, '03 09:21:40AM

it seems that either A) everyone is a hint hater or B) a lot of horrible hints get submitted (based on the comments so far for the hints 'to-be-considered')



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: bluehz on Jul 11, '03 09:42:44AM

I like this idea - but am not seeing the "Is it a hint?" hints. I am logged in as usual. Maybe I am missing something - but the 2nd hint for me on the main page is yesterday's hint about MS Remote Desktop.



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: filburt1 on Jul 11, '03 11:28:12AM
The "Is this a Hint?" hints are at the bottom of the page (and continue on to the next) and have the image: http://www.macosxhints.com/layout/Classic/images/topics/rg-isit.gif

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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: bluehz on Jul 11, '03 12:07:34PM

Ahhhh.. now I see... I had "Topic Icons" turned off. Is that the only way to differentiate them?



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: bluehz on Jul 11, '03 12:23:18PM

Ok - finally got to view the "Is This a Hint" items. I really like the concept, but I really fail to see where it differs from actuall publishing the hint itself. The lines are blurred. For example when I look at the "Is This a Hint" hint - its really no different in format or structure than any other hint posted. If you are going to do this - I would like to see it as more of an overview on a single page or maybe a sidebar box. You know - instead of the full hint text - it could be something like an rss newsreader with all topics condensed onto one page....

Title
Synopsis

then maybe a method of voting yes/no.

Not only would it be faster to read, and not become blurred with the "real published" hints but I think it would faster for Rob to publish them this way. Instead of having to format and proof, etc a full hint - its simply a one sentence blurb about the hint.

On a somewhat related note - what I would really like to see here at MacOSXHints is something along the lines of the the daily mailing of the "Unix Guru Tips" <http://www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/show?tip.today>. These are short usually "oneliners" that come in a daily text only, no adv, links, etc mailing. The tips are fantastic and usually fall into categories that just don't warrant a full web page, etc.

For example - this is a tip from a day or so ago...
----

VI LINE NUMBERS

Ever want line numbers
while editing a file:

:set number

We can see the line numbers...

------

Obviously this is UNIX related tip, but MacOSXHints could be OS X related. I doubt you want to do a mailing list (although that would be great - I have a fantastic archive of these UNIX oneliners now that I have been subscribed for a while) - but maybe you could do a section of daily quick tips, one-liners, etc.

Just my 2 cents worth.



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I wanted them to be identical...
Authored by: robg on Jul 11, '03 02:59:49PM

They are, in all sense, finished hints. It's just not clear whether everyone would want to see them or not. Doing a synopsis is actually tougher than just editing it, for then I have to try to distill the essence of the hint down to a sentence or two ... and then, if it's "approved," I'd still have to go back and edit the original again.

Conceptually, your other mailing list idea is good, but the reality of my spare time is that it won't happen unless this turns into a full-time occupation and I can hire some help! :)

-rob.



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: DC Watts on Jul 11, '03 10:50:54AM

Great idea. Just so you'll know, I am seeing the "Is It A Hint?" category even before logging in as a registered user. More importantly, I have been very happy with the judgement of you and your circle of advisors re "hintworthiness" thus far; so to me the real question is - does adding this new feature take up more of your time on submissions that ultimately go unpublished than was previously the case?



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: mjones1040 on Jul 11, '03 12:39:15PM

I think this is a very nice idea. Sounds like you may be a Dave Letterman fan...



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: mjones1040 on Jul 11, '03 12:51:11PM

This is a neat feature. I have a suggestion. Why don't you include a visible tally somewhere near the title for the hint that would indicate how commenters feel about the hint (Y/N). Reading all of the comments takes some time. Perhaps there could be a check box available for voting (Y/N) along with a comment box for justifying the vote. I am sure the comments are probably useful for you, so you might require that one enter a short comment along with checking (Y/N) for the tally.



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maybe...
Authored by: robg on Jul 11, '03 03:36:24PM

If this idea takes off, then I'll see if I can't find a programmer to make some changes to the Geeklog code to support voting in hints...

-rob.



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: 5chm31din6 on Jul 11, '03 01:09:46PM

"Will it float? Will it float? Will it flooooat? Will it float...?"



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: bluehz on Jul 11, '03 01:20:29PM

We need a MacOSXHints Grinder Girl!!!!



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needs to be visually more different
Authored by: hayne on Jul 11, '03 02:47:53PM

1) I think this is a good idea - to get more input into whether a proposed hint is a good one or not.

2) I think it is very important (as bluehz has already said) to make the is-it-a-hints differ more from the regular hints so that no-one can possible miss the difference. They should be dramatically different visually. Maybe with a different background colour? Maybe only available via a box on the side? I realize that this sort of thing would be much harder to implement than merely changing the category.



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Differentiating...
Authored by: robg on Jul 11, '03 03:48:41PM

I'll see if I can't differentiate them somehow with background colors, etc. That's about all I can do for now...

-rob.



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Experimental feature : Fix log-in first
Authored by: MtnBiker on Jul 11, '03 05:15:31PM

I think you should fix the log-in persistence first. I have to log-into Mac OS X Hints manually each time I come here, unlike almost everyother site (and even your discussion site). I had written to you about this before.

---
Hermosa Beach, CA USA



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Using Safari?
Authored by: robg on Jul 11, '03 08:59:44PM

It's a Safari glitch of some sort. Try emptying cache, deleting the macosxhints cookies, then re-logging in. Persistent login here works on every other browser.

-rob.



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Yet another differentiating possibility
Authored by: kpmcabee on Jul 11, '03 05:17:12PM

My suggestion is to replicate index.php and adjust the database to accommodate possible hints.

-Basically, add a field to your database that allows you to flag a hint as a true hint or possible hint.
-Update all current hints to have the flag reflect that they are real hints.
-Then add said field to your hint creation/editing admin php pages to flag future hints.
-Then adjust the index.php file to filter out any 'possible' hints and make a copy of index.php and adjust the copy to file out 'real' hints.
-Finally, provide a link from the original index.php 'real' hints page to the fake hints.

Other:
-if a fake hint is voted as being a real hint, the flag field would change the possible hint into a true hint and allow you to check a box that would update the 'entry' date of the hint so it can be placed on the index.php page of current true hints.

Of course there are a multitude of different ways to accomplish the above, but by performing the separation you have a visible difference between real and possible hints. Anybody who is interested in testing possible hints or voting on said hints can go to the copyofindex.php page and add their input. Otherwise, regular returning visitors do not have to worry about mistaking a possible hint from a real hint.

Just a couple cents.



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Experimental feature coming Friday morning...
Authored by: ravigv on Jul 11, '03 09:32:57PM

Presuming it does take off perhaps moving towards a more automated system would be good. In that except for all but the clear hints they go through the assessement if they receive enough votes they are automatically posted.

Have a look at kuro5hin.org 's story submission process for what I mean. Obviously it would require a lot more changes to the geeklog code, but in the end it could mean a much more self-sufficient site?



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RSS Feed
Authored by: shreddiez on Jul 12, '03 06:37:30AM

Can we get a version of the RSS feed that feature's these hints?

The way I read hints is to let NetNewsWire inform me of an update, I take note of the oldest one that is new to me and I go to the site to read them all. However, the fact that NNW no longer represents the site makes it rather difficult to see what I have and haven't read.



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