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A comment on the pace of macosxhints...
Authored by: pcunix on Mar 28, '03 07:51:12AM

There's nothing wrong with having even no hints. Better that than useless filler.

I do have one small complaint though. I have now and then submitted links that never showed up. There's no way for me to know why: did the submission get lost, did you just decide you didn't like the links I submitted, or what?

Perhaps you get so many link submissions that you can't even take the seconds necessary to send email saying "Sorry, but I'm not going to use this" ? That seems hard to believe - heck, I could write a script in a minute that would automate that. I'm not even looking for an explanation: it's your site, if you don't want a link I submit that's YOUR business - I don't have to know why. But a great big black hole just leaves me with no clue as to whether you ever SAW the submissions.

A similar thing happened with a tip I submitted - you decided it should be a link instead. Fine. But there was no way that I knew what happened to it except that I happened to notice that it popped up in Links. Same black hole.

Consequently, I'm not going to bother with submissions of any kind. I still read the site, but I'm not going to submit stuff when I don't even get the courtesy of a "No thanks".

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Tony Lawrence
Free SCO, Mac OS X and Linux Skills Tests: http://aplawrence.com/skillstest.html



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A comment on the pace of macosxhints...
Authored by: robg on Mar 28, '03 10:28:53AM
Tony:

Your link was just put online today (before I read your comment, I might add). It sometimes takes me a while to get to link submissions, as opposed to hint submissions, which get most of my time and attention. This site is primarily a hints site, not a link cross reference, so I focus on hints first and foremost.

However, you need to realize -- if I use a link or don't use a link, I have no way of notifying the person that submitted it -- there is no contact information given with a link submission, and I cannot assume that the submitter of the site is affiliated with the site. So links are a black hole -- they either show up or they don't show up, and I can't do anything about that. No script in the world can solve that problem, unless the core Geeklog engine is modified to require a valid email address when submiting a link. If it were, then I would use it, obviously, to let people know what was going on.

As for taking the time to reply to everyone that submits stuff, I do my very best. I'll use this morning as an example. I had 15 submissions to go through. Of those 15 hint submissions ...
  • Five were published. Each one needs to be tested (most of the time, when I can), edited, previewed, revised, then published. Very very few articles are received in 'ready to run' formats. I probably spent about an hour or so on the five hints you see here, between testing and formatting.

  • Seven were duplicates. In order for me to prove this, I need to search the site and find the reference. I do that. I then try to send an email to each person that sent a duplicate and give them the URL of the original article. I try to do this every time, but there are some days I'm just too busy to do so -- it takes about two minutes to send an email to someone saying "Duplicate hint," so when you multiply by seven, that's about 15 minutes of my time just saying "Please read the instructions." And today was a 'light' day for duplicate hint submissions.

    There's also a warning on the hint submission page about this: Duplicate hints: If you submit a previously published hint, you will not receive any notice to that effect, your hint will just seemingly vanish. So please search for duplicates prior to submitting a hint. I had to start doing this due to the high volume of duplicate submissions I receive. In spite of the warning, I'd say about 75% of the duplicate submissions DO receive an email.

  • Three were completely stupid spam attempts ("Use our XYZ program and your life will be that much better!"). I do not bother sending these people a response, as it's a complete waste of my time. They clearly knew they weren't submiting a hint, and as such, I can't spend the time to tell them what they already know.
When I choose to change a hint submission into a link or a comment, sometimes I'll send an email, sometimes I won't. In general, I try my best. Again, it depends on my workload.

Regarding your "Consequently, I'm not going to bother with submissions of any kind. I still read the site, but I'm not going to submit stuff when I don't even get the courtesy of a 'No thanks'.", I must say I'm disappointed. I've received well over 100 submissions this week alone, and I've probably send 75 emails explaining why a hint wasn't going to be used (and used 20 of the other hints). If you didn't get one, it's just because I didn't have the time on that given day, and I apologize for that. But it is a manual system, and I do my best...

I would welcome your assistance in creating a more structured system to insure that everyone gets something, as I certainly don't have the skills to do such a thing on my own. I know just enough about PHP and MySQL to be dangerous but not necessarily useful. So if you'd like to contact me via email, I would welcome the assistance with anything you think you could do to help improve the system. Barring that, however, I will continue to do the best I can do with the time and resources I have available -- basically, about two to three hours every morning before work.

regards;
-rob.

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A comment on the pace of macosxhints...
Authored by: pcunix on Mar 28, '03 10:52:10AM

Well, if I were more patient I wouldn't have made my comment.

I understand your problems. I run a fairly large website too, and like you, I'm it: maitre d', chef and bottle washer. It sometimes takes me days to get to submissions too, and I don't get as many as you do.

I apologize.

But a couple of questions: although you only require someone to be logged in to submit hints, your link submission could pick up the login info if the submittor were logged in, and could pass that to you. So that doesn't always have to be a black hole.

Your own posting/approval process could also pick that info up when available and send out automatic email telling the person that their submission/lin/whatever was accepted and will appear.

Likewise, you could design a simple trash bucket that looked for that info and sent polite automatic rejections. If you wanted to add comments that would be fine though it probably isn't necessary - most of your rejections probably aren't from real people anyway.

So - now that I know that it isn't quite the black hole I thought, I will add things now and then. Sorry for my impatience, but it probably doesn't hurt that other folks read this and maybe you can easily implement the suggestions I had too.

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Tony Lawrence
Free SCO, Mac OS X and Linux Skills Tests: http://aplawrence.com/skillstest.html



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Coding...
Authored by: robg on Mar 28, '03 11:11:26AM

All of your suggestions are valid ... but there are two problems.

The first, and biggest, is that I'm not a coder :-). I dabble in PHP and MySQL, and can occasionally do useful things (the What's New box is my code, as an example). But when it comes to adding fields to databases, getting those fields in the right spot, adding auto-responders, etc., that's where I have to say "Huh?" and plead lack of skill.

Second, I rely on Geeklog to drive the site. If I modify (or have others modify) the core engine at all, then upgrading becomes a nightmare. I've seen it -- I had a heavily tweaked site based on Geeklog 1.1, and it took the better part of five months to get all the customizations removed and recreated (in a manner that didn't tweak the core too much) on version 1.3.7. So I'm sorta stuck -- I'd love to hire someone to code all of the solutions you mentioned (and more). But if/when I do, then I can't upgrade to the next release of Geeklog very easily at all. In that sense, I feel trapped between the proverbial rock and hard place.

So the ideal solution is that all these tweaks wind up in the core Geeklog product. But that will take a lot of time. In the interim, if you (or anyone else) is willing to take a look at creating some of this stuff, I'm more than willing to pay for (some level!) of custom code work. To anyone that might be interested, please drop me an email.

Thanks for the (kind but not necessary) apology;

-rob.



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Coding...
Authored by: pcunix on Mar 29, '03 05:01:13PM

Well, that's exactly why I refuse to use anything I didn't write myself on my site. It hurts me in some ways: I don't have the skills or the patience to do something like Geeklog, so I remain much less polished and awkward.

On the other hand, I gain the ability to control things MY way.

It's a tradeoff, and there is good and bad either way. You went one way, I went another. I envy the polish of MacOSXHints, but I'd never want to give up the control that I have.

I can't help you with Geeklog, sorry.

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Tony Lawrence
Free SCO, Mac OS X and Linux Skills Tests: http://aplawrence.com/skillstest.html



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