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digitalmars.D - Social comments integrated with dlang.org

reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
All - please take a look at Sönke's integration of Disqus with dlang.org:

http://vibed.org/temp/d-programming-language.org/phobos/std/algorithm/balancedParens.html

What do you think? Again, I'm very much into the idea of integrating 
community-provided content but I was hoping a more D-friendly thing, 
like PHP documentation has PHP-friendly comments.

In particular, I'm hoping to allow people to include code runnable 
on-line in disqus comments. Is that possible?

Other thoughts?


Thanks,

Andrei
Dec 28 2012
next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Friday, December 28, 2012 23:36:09 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 All - please take a look at S=C3=B6nke's integration of Disqus with d=


lang.org:

=20
 http://vibed.org/temp/d-programming-language.org/phobos/std/algorithm=


/balanc

 edParens.html
=20
 What do you think? Again, I'm very much into the idea of integrating
 community-provided content but I was hoping a more D-friendly thing,
 like PHP documentation has PHP-friendly comments.
=20
 In particular, I'm hoping to allow people to include code runnable
 on-line in disqus comments. Is that possible?
=20
 Other thoughts?


I confess that my initial reaction is that it's incredibly messy to hav=
e user=20
comments on documentation. It seems unprofessional to me, and if the=20=

documentation isn't adequate, then I'd argue that it should be improved=
 rather=20
than having stray users comment on it. This is API documentation, not a=
 blog.

There's also the issue of the comments becoming outdated when the docum=
enation=20
_is_ properly updated.

Maybe it's ultimately a good idea. I question it though.

- Jonathan M Davis
Dec 28 2012
next sibling parent "bearophile" <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Jonathan M Davis:


 I confess that my initial reaction is that it's incredibly 
 messy to have user
 comments on documentation. It seems unprofessional to me, and 
 if the
 documentation isn't adequate, then I'd argue that it should be 
 improved rather
 than having stray users comment on it. This is API 
 documentation, not a blog.


The PyGame documentation 
(http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/draw.html ) divides the 
documentation in two parts, the professional serious part, and 
the user comments. Sometimes user comments are like a staging to 
later become parts of the official documentation. User comments 
are useful for example usages.

Bye,
bearophile
Dec 28 2012
prev sibling parent reply =?UTF-8?B?U8O2bmtlIEx1ZHdpZw==?= <sludwig outerproduct.org> writes:
Am 29.12.2012 05:45, schrieb Jonathan M Davis:

 On Friday, December 28, 2012 23:36:09 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 All - please take a look at Sönke's integration of Disqus with dlang.org:

 http://vibed.org/temp/d-programming-language.org/phobos/std/algorithm/balanc
 edParens.html

 What do you think? Again, I'm very much into the idea of integrating
 community-provided content but I was hoping a more D-friendly thing,
 like PHP documentation has PHP-friendly comments.

 In particular, I'm hoping to allow people to include code runnable
 on-line in disqus comments. Is that possible?

 Other thoughts?


 
 I confess that my initial reaction is that it's incredibly messy to have user 
 comments on documentation. It seems unprofessional to me, and if the 
 documentation isn't adequate, then I'd argue that it should be improved rather 
 than having stray users comment on it. This is API documentation, not a blog.
 
 There's also the issue of the comments becoming outdated when the documenation 
 _is_ properly updated.
 
 Maybe it's ultimately a good idea. I question it though.
 
 - Jonathan M Davis
 


We could also make the comments collapsed by default to clean up the page
appearance. But regarding
professionalism, even Microsoft has user comments on MSDN:
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms632679%28VS.85%29.aspx>. Nothing
keeps a moderator from
deleting outdated comments (you can have as many moderators as needed and can
also enable
pre-moderation).

And frankly, in my experience such comments were immensely helpful in a number
of cases on various
online documentation sites (including MSDN and ...PHP). They are like an
in-place stack overflow
discussion that you don't have to search for, often with some real gems.
Dec 28 2012
next sibling parent reply "F i L" <witte2008 gmail.com> writes:
Sönke Ludwig wrote:

 And frankly, in my experience such comments were immensely 
 helpful in a number of cases on various
 online documentation sites (including MSDN and ...PHP). They 
 are like an in-place stack overflow
 discussion that you don't have to search for, often with some 
 real gems.


I couldn't agree more. Half the time I find answers to questions 
in old forum conversations or similar user dialog. The new doc 
layout looks great, with lots of room for descriptions and 
examples per-item. User comments makes a lot of sense, and could 
help fill any gaps in the documentation itself.

ps. I don't think it looks ugly or out of place at all, and I 
don't think it should be collapsed by default (it's less 
googlable that way).. just throwing that out there.
Dec 28 2012
parent reply "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 07:56:15 UTC, F i L wrote:

 I don't think it should be collapsed by default (it's less 
 googlable that way).. just throwing that out there.


Disqus comments cannot be indexed by Google either way, as Disqus 
is a purely JavaScript-based comment system.
Dec 29 2012
next sibling parent "mist" <none none.none> writes:
AFAIK, Google Bot can do some basic JavaScript.

On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 12:40:13 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev 
wrote:

 On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 07:56:15 UTC, F i L wrote:

 I don't think it should be collapsed by default (it's less 
 googlable that way).. just throwing that out there.


 Disqus comments cannot be indexed by Google either way, as 
 Disqus is a purely JavaScript-based comment system.
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling parent reply =?UTF-8?B?U8O2bmtlIEx1ZHdpZw==?= <sludwig outerproduct.org> writes:
Am 29.12.2012 13:40, schrieb Vladimir Panteleev:

 On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 07:56:15 UTC, F i L wrote:

 I don't think it should be collapsed by default (it's less googlable that
way).. just throwing
 that out there.


 
 Disqus comments cannot be indexed by Google either way, as Disqus is a purely
JavaScript-based
 comment system.


They claim otherwise: http://disqus.com/for-websites/control-and-seo

"Disqus is fully indexable for search engines out- of-the-box. We have been
approved by the Google
Search Quality team to be organically crawled unlike any other comment
platform."
Dec 29 2012
parent "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 13:11:24 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

 Am 29.12.2012 13:40, schrieb Vladimir Panteleev:

 On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 07:56:15 UTC, F i L wrote:

 I don't think it should be collapsed by default (it's less 
 googlable that way).. just throwing
 that out there.


 
 Disqus comments cannot be indexed by Google either way, as 
 Disqus is a purely JavaScript-based
 comment system.


 They claim otherwise: 
 http://disqus.com/for-websites/control-and-seo

 "Disqus is fully indexable for search engines out- of-the-box. 
 We have been approved by the Google
 Search Quality team to be organically crawled unlike any other 
 comment platform."


It's vague whether that applies to their basic JS widget (which 
is used on vibed.org now), or their WordPress plugin. I believe 
that in order for Google to see their comments, the comments need 
to be visible with JS turned off (cached locally and sent by the 
website's web server), which their WordPress plugin does - but 
which can't be achieved with our current dlang.org setup, which 
serves static HTML pages.
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/29/12 2:38 AM, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

 We could also make the comments collapsed by default to clean up the page
appearance. But regarding
 professionalism, even Microsoft has user comments on MSDN:
 <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms632679%28VS.85%29.aspx>. Nothing
keeps a moderator from
 deleting outdated comments (you can have as many moderators as needed and can
also enable
 pre-moderation).

 And frankly, in my experience such comments were immensely helpful in a number
of cases on various
 online documentation sites (including MSDN and ...PHP). They are like an
in-place stack overflow
 discussion that you don't have to search for, often with some real gems.


Yes. I very strongly believe we need to have a form of 
community-provided contents. (Not sure whether disqus is the most 
appropriate vehicle, but since it's the only one that's currently 
implemented, it's by definition the best we have.) So I'm willing to 
fight issues and do more work as a moderator for the sake of crowdsourcing.

Andrei
Dec 29 2012
parent reply "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 14:22:27 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

 Yes. I very strongly believe we need to have a form of 
 community-provided contents. (Not sure whether disqus is the 
 most appropriate vehicle, but since it's the only one that's 
 currently implemented, it's by definition the best we have.)


We also have a wiki, and the existing links to it on each page.
Dec 29 2012
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/29/12 9:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

 On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 14:22:27 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Yes. I very strongly believe we need to have a form of
 community-provided contents. (Not sure whether disqus is the most
 appropriate vehicle, but since it's the only one that's currently
 implemented, it's by definition the best we have.)


 We also have a wiki, and the existing links to it on each page.


We've had that for a while, wasn't successful.

Andrei
Dec 29 2012
next sibling parent reply "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 17:37:37 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 12/29/12 9:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

 On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 14:22:27 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 Yes. I very strongly believe we need to have a form of
 community-provided contents. (Not sure whether disqus is the 
 most
 appropriate vehicle, but since it's the only one that's 
 currently
 implemented, it's by definition the best we have.)


 We also have a wiki, and the existing links to it on each page.


 We've had that for a while, wasn't successful.


How did you reach that conclusion?

When comparing the amount of contributions, we should take into 
account that D is not as popular as PHP or jQuery.

The previous system used ProWiki, the problems of which have 
already been discussed in depth. One of the more important ones, 
as it pertains to discussion, is that it did not provide a simple 
way to monitor all changes to comment pages (it does not seem to 
have an equivalent of MediaWiki's Special:RecentChanges and 
RSS/ATOM feed). Thus, questions could go unanswered for months, 
until someone actually noticed that a question has been asked.

With MediaWiki, I have the option of integrating edit 
notifications into DFeed, and turn them into IRC notifications. 
This has allowed #d users to answer StackOverflow questions 
within minutes of them being posted. (I have delayed this to 
avoid pointless flooding while the bulk of initial edits 
occurred.)
Dec 29 2012
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/29/12 12:54 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

 On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 17:37:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 12/29/12 9:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

 On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 14:22:27 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
 wrote:

 Yes. I very strongly believe we need to have a form of
 community-provided contents. (Not sure whether disqus is the most
 appropriate vehicle, but since it's the only one that's currently
 implemented, it's by definition the best we have.)


 We also have a wiki, and the existing links to it on each page.


 We've had that for a while, wasn't successful.


 How did you reach that conclusion?


By recknoning that next to no library documentation content has been 
produced on the Wiki.


 When comparing the amount of contributions, we should take into account
 that D is not as popular as PHP or jQuery.


Wasn't comparing against those - just saying it's not happening. FWIW in 
my opinion: click on a link to get somewhere vs. content integrated on 
the page - big difference.


 The previous system used ProWiki, the problems of which have already
 been discussed in depth. One of the more important ones, as it pertains
 to discussion, is that it did not provide a simple way to monitor all
 changes to comment pages (it does not seem to have an equivalent of
 MediaWiki's Special:RecentChanges and RSS/ATOM feed). Thus, questions
 could go unanswered for months, until someone actually noticed that a
 question has been asked.

 With MediaWiki, I have the option of integrating edit notifications into
 DFeed, and turn them into IRC notifications. This has allowed #d users
 to answer StackOverflow questions within minutes of them being posted.
 (I have delayed this to avoid pointless flooding while the bulk of
 initial edits occurred.)


That sounds great.


Andrei
Dec 29 2012
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/29/2012 10:08 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 FWIW in my
 opinion: click on a link to get somewhere vs. content integrated on the page -
 big difference.


In my opinion, too.
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/29/12 12:54 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

 With MediaWiki, I have the option of integrating edit notifications into
 DFeed, and turn them into IRC notifications. This has allowed #d users
 to answer StackOverflow questions within minutes of them being posted.
 (I have delayed this to avoid pointless flooding while the bulk of
 initial edits occurred.)


I should add that I just explored disqus.com's moderation and related 
amenities are pretty compelling. You'd be looking at a fair amount of 
work to implement such. (Not to discourage you or anything as I do agree 
with the advantages of in-house.)

Andrei
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling parent "deed" <none none.none> writes:
 We also have a wiki, and the existing links to it on each page.


 We've had that for a while, wasn't successful.


It is not obvious where to find the new wiki entering dlang.org.
There is no link to it from dlang.org in the menu under community
and the comments link at the bottom of each page leads to the old
wiki.

In my opinion, it should be given a chance with the intended
integration in place before drawing any conclusions.
Jan 03 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/28/2012 8:36 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 All - please take a look at Sönke's integration of Disqus with dlang.org:

 http://vibed.org/temp/d-programming-language.org/phobos/std/algorithm/balancedParens.html


 What do you think? Again, I'm very much into the idea of integrating
 community-provided content but I was hoping a more D-friendly thing, like PHP
 documentation has PHP-friendly comments.

 In particular, I'm hoping to allow people to include code runnable on-line in
 disqus comments. Is that possible?

 Other thoughts?



First off, thanks to Sönke for doing this.

I'm a little concerned (well, more than a little concerned) about it becoming a 
collection of junk posts. How does the PHP one avoid that?
Dec 28 2012
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/28/2012 8:56 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 I'm a little concerned (well, more than a little concerned) about it becoming a
 collection of junk posts. How does the PHP one avoid that?


Further perusal of the PHP ones show quite a bit of junk posts. Is there a way 
to enable a single button delete for the moderator?
Dec 28 2012
next sibling parent reply =?UTF-8?B?U8O2bmtlIEx1ZHdpZw==?= <sludwig outerproduct.org> writes:
Am 29.12.2012 07:08, schrieb Walter Bright:

 On 12/28/2012 8:56 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 I'm a little concerned (well, more than a little concerned) about it becoming a
 collection of junk posts. How does the PHP one avoid that?


 
 Further perusal of the PHP ones show quite a bit of junk posts. Is there a way
to enable a single
 button delete for the moderator?


As a moderator you have quick access to "Mark as spam", "Blacklist" and
"Delete" for each message
and there is a separate moderation page, where all messages can be filtered and
handled in batches.

Also there is voting for ordinary users, which at least should quickly move
them to the bottom (not
sure if they get collapsed as on reddit at some point).
Dec 28 2012
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/28/2012 11:30 PM, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

 Am 29.12.2012 07:08, schrieb Walter Bright:

 On 12/28/2012 8:56 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 I'm a little concerned (well, more than a little concerned) about it becoming a
 collection of junk posts. How does the PHP one avoid that?


 Further perusal of the PHP ones show quite a bit of junk posts. Is there a way
to enable a single
 button delete for the moderator?


 As a moderator you have quick access to "Mark as spam", "Blacklist" and
"Delete" for each message
 and there is a separate moderation page, where all messages can be filtered
and handled in batches.

 Also there is voting for ordinary users, which at least should quickly move
them to the bottom (not
 sure if they get collapsed as on reddit at some point).


I know there are ways to cheat using the voting system, and reddit has a way to 
deal with that, too.

Essentially, none of these systems are foolproof, and may wind up requiring 
constant attention to keep the spam out.
Dec 29 2012
next sibling parent reply =?UTF-8?B?U8O2bmtlIEx1ZHdpZw==?= <sludwig outerproduct.org> writes:
Am 29.12.2012 10:48, schrieb Walter Bright:

 Essentially, none of these systems are foolproof, and may wind up requiring
constant attention to
 keep the spam out.


Regarding spam, it also supports the following:

 - Allow only registered users to post or require pre-moderation for
unregistered users or users
without validated email address
 - Black/whitelists for users, e-mail addresses, IPs and keywords
 - A list of restricted words that will cause a message to require
pre-moderation
 - Automated spam filtering using Akismet

Together I think these should be very effective at dealing with both, spam and
troll comments
Dec 29 2012
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/29/12 5:23 AM, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

 Am 29.12.2012 10:48, schrieb Walter Bright:

 Essentially, none of these systems are foolproof, and may wind up requiring
constant attention to
 keep the spam out.


 Regarding spam, it also supports the following:

   - Allow only registered users to post or require pre-moderation for
unregistered users or users
 without validated email address
   - Black/whitelists for users, e-mail addresses, IPs and keywords
   - A list of restricted words that will cause a message to require
pre-moderation
   - Automated spam filtering using Akismet

 Together I think these should be very effective at dealing with both, spam and
troll comments


Terrific. Sönke, could you please babysit me through all of these 
features? I'd love to take a look at the amenities. What should I do?

Thanks,

Andrei
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/29/12 4:48 AM, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 12/28/2012 11:30 PM, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

 As a moderator you have quick access to "Mark as spam", "Blacklist"
 and "Delete" for each message
 and there is a separate moderation page, where all messages can be
 filtered and handled in batches.

 Also there is voting for ordinary users, which at least should quickly
 move them to the bottom (not
 sure if they get collapsed as on reddit at some point).


 I know there are ways to cheat using the voting system, and reddit has a
 way to deal with that, too.

 Essentially, none of these systems are foolproof, and may wind up
 requiring constant attention to keep the spam out.


There is a price, but it should be seen in conjunction with the 
corresponding benefits. I think we should definitely experiment with this.

Andrei
Dec 29 2012
parent reply "SomeDude" <lovelydear mailmetrash.com> writes:
On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 14:27:18 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 12/29/12 4:48 AM, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 12/28/2012 11:30 PM, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

 As a moderator you have quick access to "Mark as spam", 
 "Blacklist"
 and "Delete" for each message
 and there is a separate moderation page, where all messages 
 can be
 filtered and handled in batches.

 Also there is voting for ordinary users, which at least 
 should quickly
 move them to the bottom (not
 sure if they get collapsed as on reddit at some point).


 I know there are ways to cheat using the voting system, and 
 reddit has a
 way to deal with that, too.

 Essentially, none of these systems are foolproof, and may wind 
 up
 requiring constant attention to keep the spam out.


 There is a price, but it should be seen in conjunction with the 
 corresponding benefits. I think we should definitely experiment 
 with this.

 Andrei


I think there should be a few designed moderators for the 
community, and a way to quickly report abuses.

Let me remind we have in this very newsgroup a drunk dude who 
regularly keeps throwing random insults around under different 
nicknames (right now, Han). Not to mention the occasional spam. 
Maybe if someone started taking care of these guys already...
Dec 29 2012
parent reply "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 15:59:16 UTC, SomeDude wrote:

 Let me remind we have in this very newsgroup a drunk dude who 
 regularly keeps throwing random insults around under different 
 nicknames (right now, Han). Not to mention the occasional spam. 
 Maybe if someone started taking care of these guys already...


Walter removes such posts regularly. The problem is that 
forum.dlang.org caches them indefinitely. I'm working on this 
problem right now.
Dec 29 2012
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/29/2012 8:03 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

 Walter removes such posts regularly. The problem is that forum.dlang.org caches
 them indefinitely. I'm working on this problem right now.


Thanks for working on that. His posts are ugly and make us all look bad having 
them on the front page of the forum.
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/29/12 2:30 AM, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

 Am 29.12.2012 07:08, schrieb Walter Bright:

 On 12/28/2012 8:56 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 I'm a little concerned (well, more than a little concerned) about it becoming a
 collection of junk posts. How does the PHP one avoid that?


 Further perusal of the PHP ones show quite a bit of junk posts. Is there a way
to enable a single
 button delete for the moderator?


 As a moderator you have quick access to "Mark as spam", "Blacklist" and
"Delete" for each message
 and there is a separate moderation page, where all messages can be filtered
and handled in batches.


Great. Could you please make e.g. Walter and myself moderators so we can 
experiment?


 Also there is voting for ordinary users, which at least should quickly move
them to the bottom (not
 sure if they get collapsed as on reddit at some point).


Let's try that. Everyone, please downvote the comment by "Peter Spammer" 
down to hell at http://goo.gl/j5nA4.


Andrei
Dec 29 2012
parent =?UTF-8?B?U8O2bmtlIEx1ZHdpZw==?= <sludwig outerproduct.org> writes:
Am 29.12.2012 15:19, schrieb Andrei Alexandrescu:

 On 12/29/12 2:30 AM, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

 Am 29.12.2012 07:08, schrieb Walter Bright:

 On 12/28/2012 8:56 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 I'm a little concerned (well, more than a little concerned) about it becoming a
 collection of junk posts. How does the PHP one avoid that?


 Further perusal of the PHP ones show quite a bit of junk posts. Is there a way
to enable a single
 button delete for the moderator?


 As a moderator you have quick access to "Mark as spam", "Blacklist" and
"Delete" for each message
 and there is a separate moderation page, where all messages can be filtered
and handled in batches.


 
 Great. Could you please make e.g. Walter and myself moderators so we can
experiment?
 

 Also there is voting for ordinary users, which at least should quickly move
them to the bottom (not
 sure if they get collapsed as on reddit at some point).


 
 Let's try that. Everyone, please downvote the comment by "Peter Spammer" down
to hell at
 http://goo.gl/j5nA4.
 
 
 Andrei


I've made you (using the auto-generated FConnect user) and Walter (using the
walter digitalmars.com
e-mail address) moderators with full access. If you log in on
http://disqus.com/dashboard/
you /should/ see "vibe.d" under "Your Sites". Choosing that will reveal a
number of tabs where all
the features are found. Feel free to change anything you like, the account is
used only for testing
this out.
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 06:08:30 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 Further perusal of the PHP ones show quite a bit of junk posts. 
 Is there a way to enable a single button delete for the 
 moderator?


As regards PHP I have to admit that I hardly ever use the code 
examples in the comment section - too basic and too messy. The 
best real world PHP code is still either on Stackoverflow or on 
webprogrammers' homepages, articles etc. But that is because PHP 
is used by amateurs and professionals alike, I think, (cf. 
http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all). In the 
case of D, I trust that the code samples will be of high quality 
given that the D community consists mainly of programming and 
computer science experts (and I exclude myself here!) or at least 
people with a keen interest in the subject. D could definitely do 
with more code samples especially those showing clever and 
optimal ways of doing things (commenting on the pros and cons 
like on Stackoverflow).
Dec 29 2012
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/29/2012 5:47 AM, Chris wrote:

 As regards PHP I have to admit that I hardly ever use the code examples in the
 comment section - too basic and too messy. The best real world PHP code is
still
 either on Stackoverflow or on webprogrammers' homepages, articles etc. But that
 is because PHP is used by amateurs and professionals alike, I think, (cf.
 http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all). In the case of D, I
 trust that the code samples will be of high quality given that the D community
 consists mainly of programming and computer science experts (and I exclude
 myself here!) or at least people with a keen interest in the subject. D could
 definitely do with more code samples especially those showing clever and
optimal
 ways of doing things (commenting on the pros and cons like on Stackoverflow).


The interesting thing is I am always trying to write the canonical great 
example, yet I am always unhappy with it later because I've run into a better 
way of doing things.
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/28/12 11:56 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 12/28/2012 8:36 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 All - please take a look at Sönke's integration of Disqus with dlang.org:

 http://vibed.org/temp/d-programming-language.org/phobos/std/algorithm/balancedParens.html



 What do you think? Again, I'm very much into the idea of integrating
 community-provided content but I was hoping a more D-friendly thing,
 like PHP
 documentation has PHP-friendly comments.

 In particular, I'm hoping to allow people to include code runnable
 on-line in
 disqus comments. Is that possible?

 Other thoughts?



 First off, thanks to Sönke for doing this.

 I'm a little concerned (well, more than a little concerned) about it
 becoming a collection of junk posts. How does the PHP one avoid that?


Let's see. I went to http://goo.gl/x0h2O and clicked on the small "add a 
note" link. That took me to http://goo.gl/bWtzF, which is essentially a 
warning/instructions page. That page mentions the added content is 
moderated manually.

So, here's what I see as differences between Sönke's current integration 
of disqus and the PHP docs, along with questions for Sönke:

1. PHP's list is flat, ours is a tree. Flat encourages one-shot 
examples, tree encourages conversations. Not sure which is better. Is it 
possible to limit depth in disqus?

2. PHP has compulsive moderation before posting, we don't seem to have 
any. Is it possible to add moderation before (or at least after) 
posting? I see Sönke has a "mod" tag next to his name.

3. Both allow anonymous comments, but since PHP is compulsively 
moderated that's less of an issue. Can we require registration 
(disqus/facebook/twitter/g+) for posting?

4. PHP's comments with code have it formatted beautifully just like the 
main site. Disqus does support some D apparently but an older version. 
Is it possible to add some styling so we format code snippets just the 
same as our current runnable examples?

5. Both have voting, and PHP sorts comments in decreasing order by 
upvotes. Can we also sort the same? Also, can we add some randomness 
(e.g. randomly push one of the comments in a top position) such that new 
good content has a chance to be upvoted?


Andrei
Dec 29 2012
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/29/2012 6:15 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 5. Both have voting, and PHP sorts comments in decreasing order by upvotes. Can
 we also sort the same? Also, can we add some randomness (e.g. randomly push one
 of the comments in a top position) such that new good content has a chance to
be
 upvoted?


This is an interesting issue. I think an interesting metric would be a 
combination of number of votes which add to a ranking score, and age of the
post 
which subtracts from it.

Or maybe simply have a couple of buttons which change the sort order:

1. by vote
2. newest first
3. by karma of the poster
4. by number of posts by the poster
5. by a "house blend" of the above (!) If Sönke wants to get really creative, 
have an "equalizer" with four sliders to control the weight of 1..4.
Dec 29 2012
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/29/12 4:09 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 12/29/2012 6:15 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 5. Both have voting, and PHP sorts comments in decreasing order by
 upvotes. Can
 we also sort the same? Also, can we add some randomness (e.g. randomly
 push one
 of the comments in a top position) such that new good content has a
 chance to be
 upvoted?


 This is an interesting issue. I think an interesting metric would be a
 combination of number of votes which add to a ranking score, and age of
 the post which subtracts from it.

 Or maybe simply have a couple of buttons which change the sort order:

 1. by vote
 2. newest first
 3. by karma of the poster
 4. by number of posts by the poster
 5. by a "house blend" of the above (!) If Sönke wants to get really
 creative, have an "equalizer" with four sliders to control the weight of
 1..4.


I think this would be available in the homebrew thing but not on disqus.

Andrei
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Maxim Fomin" <maxim maxim-fomin.ru> writes:
On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 04:36:09 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

 All - please take a look at Sönke's integration of Disqus with 
 dlang.org:

 http://vibed.org/temp/d-programming-language.org/phobos/std/algorithm/balancedParens.html

 What do you think? Again, I'm very much into the idea of 
 integrating community-provided content but I was hoping a more 
 D-friendly thing, like PHP documentation has PHP-friendly 
 comments.

 In particular, I'm hoping to allow people to include code 
 runnable on-line in disqus comments. Is that possible?

 Other thoughts?


 Thanks,

 Andrei


It is easy to open discussion here and make a pull request to 
dpl.org, so I see no reason in allowing user comments in official 
spec site.
Dec 28 2012
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/29/12 12:54 AM, Maxim Fomin wrote:

 It is easy to open discussion here and make a pull request to dpl.org,
 so I see no reason in allowing user comments in official spec site.


I wouldn't say it's that easy. Also, integration of user provided 
content has been a huge success for PHP.

Andrei
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent "F i L" <witte2008 gmail.com> writes:
 What do you think?


It's great!
Dec 28 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Faux Amis <faux amis.com> writes:
On 29/12/2012 05:36, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 All - please take a look at Sönke's integration of Disqus with dlang.org:

 http://vibed.org/temp/d-programming-language.org/phobos/std/algorithm/balancedParens.html


 What do you think? Again, I'm very much into the idea of integrating
 community-provided content but I was hoping a more D-friendly thing,
 like PHP documentation has PHP-friendly comments.

 In particular, I'm hoping to allow people to include code runnable
 on-line in disqus comments. Is that possible?

 Other thoughts?


 Thanks,

 Andrei


Good experience with this in PHP and jQuery.
I think it is a great way to help people coming to the language who do 
not yet know all the gripes and grumbles.

About the cloud aspect: Does Disqus have a backup feature?
Dec 29 2012
parent =?ISO-8859-1?Q?S=F6nke_Ludwig?= <sludwig outerproduct.org> writes:
Am 29.12.2012 10:01, schrieb Faux Amis:

 
 Good experience with this in PHP and jQuery.
 I think it is a great way to help people coming to the language who do not yet
know all the gripes
 and grumbles.
 
 About the cloud aspect: Does Disqus have a backup feature?


It has an "export" feature which uses an XML based format:
http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/472149-comments-export

They state that it cannot be imported again, but a WordPress based format can:
http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/472150

Anyway, backup is possible, but the (unlikely I'd guess) case that it is really
needed will make
some additional conversion work necessary. Doesn't seem to be a big deal,
though.
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 04:36:09 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

 All - please take a look at Sönke's integration of Disqus with 
 dlang.org:

 http://vibed.org/temp/d-programming-language.org/phobos/std/algorithm/balancedParens.html

 What do you think?


Sönke has listed the advantages provided by Disqus. I'll list a 
few disadvantages (some of which may be obvious) for 
consideration:

1. It is a free service provided by a third party.
    As their TOS states, they may cancel or limit the service at 
any time without prior warning. Although data export is great, it 
would still require finding or coming up with an alternative 
should the need occur, and it is unknown whether someone will 
volunteer for the effort.

2. It is based on JavaScript.
    The implications are possible usability/accessibility issues, 
increased page load times, adding another loading stage (the 
content will shift/rewrap due to e.g. appearance of a scrollbar 
once new content is loaded), and possible issues with search 
engine indexing.

3. It is not integrated with anything we have now.
    This is subjective, but I think it's not that great to spread 
ourselves over a multitude of services (some third-party), 
especially when there is some overlap in functionality between 
them. Discussions can be held on the mailing lists, newsgroups, 
wiki talk pages, IRC, Trello (?), and now Disqus. Is this 
desirable?

Alternatives:

1. Consider an open-source comment system which uses a local 
database and generates static HTML (solves problems 1 and 2).

2. Integrate wiki.dlang.org into dlang.org pages. We already have 
wiki integration to some extent (a button that currently links to 
a page on the old wiki).

3. Integrate forum.dlang.org into dlang.org pages, e.g. using an 
iframe and some CSS tweaks.

Disclaimer: I maintain forum.dlang.org and wiki.dlang.org and 
personally dislike Disqus, so there *might* be some conflict of 
interest ;)
Dec 29 2012
next sibling parent Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 12/29/12, Vladimir Panteleev <vladimir thecybershadow.net> wrote:

 1. It is a free service provided by a third party.
     As their TOS states, they may cancel or limit the service at
 any time without prior warning.


Yep, remember how DMD binaries were finally hosted on Github, which
had faster downloads than digitalmars.com. And then they decided to
kill the feature.
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 12/29/12 10:22 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

 Sönke has listed the advantages provided by Disqus. I'll list a few
 disadvantages (some of which may be obvious) for consideration:


[snip]

Good points. I, too, think a customized, highly integrated version of 
forum.dlang.org would be preferable. Perhaps integration with newsgroup 
wouldn't be necessary, i.e. no need to make posts made on the 
documentation pages appear on the regular fora.

Do you think it would be easy to implement and maintain the features I 
discussed in http://goo.gl/G4pJ9? Let's not forget that we'd benefit of 
future improvements to disqus (if any) by default, whereas if we build 
it we need to maintain and improve it.


Thanks,

Andrei
Dec 29 2012
parent reply "Vladimir Panteleev" <vladimir thecybershadow.net> writes:
On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 17:48:06 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 12/29/12 10:22 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

 Sönke has listed the advantages provided by Disqus. I'll list 
 a few
 disadvantages (some of which may be obvious) for consideration:


 [snip]

 Good points. I, too, think a customized, highly integrated 
 version of forum.dlang.org would be preferable.


I think we should not be too quick to dismiss the wiki option. It 
wouldn't be hard to create a minimal MediaWiki skin for the 
purpose of inclusion in dlang.org pages as an iframe.

One common pattern I noticed in the PHP boards is when one 
commenter tries to one-up the code fragment posted by another 
(and repeat). As a result, you can find a half dozen variants of 
code attempts of the same purpose. Comments pointing out 
criticisms in whatever variant may get lost. Voting and sorting 
by votes helps with this somewhat, but is still a far shot from 
true collaboration that a wiki can provide.

If contributed content is on an editable page, it's much easier 
to organize it. E.g. bulky examples can be moved to a subpage, or 
perhaps to some other place on the wiki (e.g. cookbook or 
whatnot) and linked to from the page visible on dlang.org.

MediaWiki also gives us great moderation. Vandalism is easy to 
undo and vandals are easy to block, and history has shown that 
wiki communities can defeat vandalism as a problem without 
requiring some authoritary moderation force.

The one problem I can think of is that discussion is not very 
intuitive (e.g. signing posts and "threading" is done by 
convention). There are some MediaWiki extensions that provide a 
simpler interface, however.

I think the ideal solution would be some combination of both wiki 
and discussion, something like StackOverflow.

Back to discussing the forum idea:


 Perhaps integration with newsgroup wouldn't be necessary, i.e. 
 no need to make posts made on the documentation pages appear on 
 the regular fora.


The posts could be backed by a separate newsgroup created for the 
purpose. Those willing to contribute could do so from the comfort 
of their NNTP/email client.


 Do you think it would be easy to implement and maintain the 
 features I discussed in http://goo.gl/G4pJ9? Let's not forget 
 that we'd benefit of future improvements to disqus (if any) by 
 default, whereas if we build it we need to maintain and improve 
 it.


Sure, but OTOH we can't improve a third-party service if we don't 
like something in it.


 2. PHP has compulsive moderation before posting, we don't seem 
 to have any. Is it possible to add moderation before (or at 
 least after) posting? I see Sönke has a "mod" tag next to his 
 name.

 3. Both allow anonymous comments, but since PHP is compulsively 
 moderated that's less of an issue. Can we require registration 
 (disqus/facebook/twitter/g+) for posting?


Do you think that misbehavior (requiring moderation) would become 
a problem on dlang.org comments, despite that it's not a (big) 
problem on the forums?


 4. PHP's comments with code have it formatted beautifully just 
 like the main site. Disqus does support some D apparently but 
 an older version. Is it possible to add some styling so we 
 format code snippets just the same as our current runnable 
 examples?


Sure. The greatest hurdle will likely be the bikeshedding over 
the syntax to indicate a code block :)


 5. Both have voting, and PHP sorts comments in decreasing order 
 by upvotes. Can we also sort the same? Also, can we add some 
 randomness (e.g. randomly push one of the comments in a top 
 position) such that new good content has a chance to be upvoted?


Sounds easy enough, bar the plentifully-discussed challenges of 
implementing voting systems.
Dec 29 2012
parent r_m_r <r_m_r mailinator.com> writes:
On 12/30/2012 07:25 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

 I think the ideal solution would be some combination of both wiki and
 discussion, something like StackOverflow.


I recently stumbled across OSQA (free, open source Q&A system): 
http://www.osqa.net/

I'm not sure how well it works, though.

regards,
r_m_r
Dec 29 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On Fri, 28 Dec 2012 23:36:09 -0500
Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 All - please take a look at S=F6nke's integration of Disqus with
 dlang.org:
=20
 http://vibed.org/temp/d-programming-language.org/phobos/std/algorithm/bal=


ancedParens.html

=20
 What do you think?=20


God no. Disqus is complete shit.
Jan 01 2013
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 1/1/2013 10:00 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 God no. Disqus is complete shit.



Reasons?
Jan 01 2013
next sibling parent "Simen Kjaeraas" <simen.kjaras gmail.com> writes:
On 2013-47-01 19:01, Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 On 1/1/2013 10:00 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 God no. Disqus is complete shit.



 Reasons?


Nick & Javascript is a less than optimal combination?

-- 
Simen
Jan 01 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> writes:
On Tue, Jan 01, 2013 at 07:51:20PM +0100, Simen Kjaeraas wrote:

 On 2013-47-01 19:01, Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:
 

On 1/1/2013 10:00 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

God no. Disqus is complete shit.



Reasons?


 
 Nick & Javascript is a less than optimal combination?


[...]

Understatement of the year. :-P


T

-- 
Doubt is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Jan 01 2013
prev sibling parent "Simen Kjaeraas" <simen.kjaras gmail.com> writes:
On 2013-57-01 20:01, H. S. Teoh <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:


 On Tue, Jan 01, 2013 at 07:51:20PM +0100, Simen Kjaeraas wrote:

 On 2013-47-01 19:01, Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


On 1/1/2013 10:00 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

God no. Disqus is complete shit.



Reasons?


 Nick & Javascript is a less than optimal combination?


 [...]

 Understatement of the year. :-P


Already? Wow.

-- 
Simen
Jan 01 2013
prev sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Tuesday, January 01, 2013 22:31:32 Simen Kjaeraas wrote:

 Understatement of the year. :-P


 
 Already? Wow.


LOL.

Well, it's actually very easy to make the understatement of the year when 
there have been very few understatements already made. The question is whether 
it will _stay_ the understatement of the year, but knowing Nick, it probably 
will. ;)

- Jonathan M Davis
Jan 01 2013
parent reply Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On Tue, 01 Jan 2013 14:24:52 -0800
Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> wrote:


 On Tuesday, January 01, 2013 22:31:32 Simen Kjaeraas wrote:

 Understatement of the year. :-P


 
 Already? Wow.


 
 LOL.
 
 Well, it's actually very easy to make the understatement of the year
 when there have been very few understatements already made. The
 question is whether it will _stay_ the understatement of the year,
 but knowing Nick, it probably will. ;)
 
 - Jonathan M Davis


lol, probably right ;)

At least it isn't flash though, I'll give JS that much credit at
least. (But then flash seems to be nearly dead now anyway, or at least
flash player, so FWIW...)

In any case, we're D, we're systems/native, I think we can do much
better than Disqus, and I submit Vibe.d/DFeed/etc as evidence that
settling for Disqus is below us.
Jan 02 2013
next sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> writes:
On Wed, Jan 02, 2013 at 01:05:59PM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 On Tue, 01 Jan 2013 14:24:52 -0800
 Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> wrote:
 

 On Tuesday, January 01, 2013 22:31:32 Simen Kjaeraas wrote:

 Understatement of the year. :-P


 
 Already? Wow.


 
 LOL.
 
 Well, it's actually very easy to make the understatement of the year
 when there have been very few understatements already made. The
 question is whether it will _stay_ the understatement of the year,
 but knowing Nick, it probably will. ;)
 
 - Jonathan M Davis


 
 lol, probably right ;)
 
 At least it isn't flash though, I'll give JS that much credit at
 least. (But then flash seems to be nearly dead now anyway, or at least
 flash player, so FWIW...)


Really?? I thought youtube still uses Flash. I'm no fan of youtube, but
it *is* a significant data point, considering that some people are
actually making a living off homemade videos posted on youtube.



 In any case, we're D, we're systems/native, I think we can do much
 better than Disqus, and I submit Vibe.d/DFeed/etc as evidence that
 settling for Disqus is below us.


Yeah what about plain old HTML submit forms? One can always spice it up
with JS to replace the HTTP POST with the newfangled AJAX stuff, for
when the user has JS turned off. (It'd be hard to justify the additional
effort, though, unless Nick volunteers to write the code. ;-P)


T

-- 
Written on the window of a clothing store: No shirt, no shoes, no service.
Jan 02 2013
parent "mist" <none none.none> writes:
Almost all YouTube videos are HTML5-ready.


 Really?? I thought youtube still uses Flash. I'm no fan of 
 youtube, but
 it *is* a significant data point, considering that some people 
 are
 actually making a living off homemade videos posted on youtube.
Jan 02 2013
prev sibling parent "Joakim" <joakim airpost.net> writes:
On Wednesday, 2 January 2013 at 18:06:00 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
wrote:

 In any case, we're D, we're systems/native, I think we can do 
 much
 better than Disqus, and I submit Vibe.d/DFeed/etc as evidence 
 that
 settling for Disqus is below us.


So, livefyre then? ;) Agree with Nick and Vladimir fwiw, Disqus 
and its competition are beneath dlang.  Always funny to see the 
cycle with these free commenting widgets: they raise millions 
from dumb VCs, never bother to make any money, start furiously 
selling user data 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disqus#Criticism_and_privacy_concerns), 
then go bust as everybody leaves.  Well, I guess that's every 
dot.com nowadays, Facebook and Google 
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014241278873247313045781
3781852024980.html) 
are on step 3 atm.
Jan 04 2013