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PerlMonks Discussions
node 11112212 displayed as empty but its not empty
3 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by Anonymous Monk
on Mar 01, 2021 at 22:29
Necroposting Considered Beneficial
4 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by eyepopslikeamosquito
on Feb 24, 2021 at 23:43
Anonymous Edit
1 direct reply — Read more / Contribute 		by pryrt
on Feb 23, 2021 at 14:49
    Re: Challenge: Ricochet Robots was an anonymous post that was recently edited (emptied) with no janitation history. But Anonymous Monk cannot edit his own posts. After some back and forth in the CB, the best guess is that the post ran afoul of anti-spam AM-posts-with-links auto-cleaning. Which is fine... but it would be nice to be sure.

    More importantly than this specific instance: should there be some sort of indication on such posts, whether in the janitation history or in the body of the emptied post, to indicate that it was auto-cleaned for potential spam? This would give people a chance to weigh in with a consideration-to-edit/restore: "no, I saw the content and followed the link before it was purged: it was a link to a A* algorithm implementation of this problem in another language, which doesn't seem like spam given the conversation". (It's obviously been fixed in this case, but I'm using my reaction to this case to explain the general idea)

Anonymous Identifier
6 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by pryrt
on Feb 23, 2021 at 14:32
    Recently, the anonymous account is mostly one infamous user, one detractor who seems to think that every anonymous post (other than his) are by that infamous, and an increasingly-rare useful post.

    I understand the desire for an anonymous account -- it lowers the barrier of entry for one-off questions, and it probably helps with GPDR.

    But often, especially in the last year or so, it seems to me to be more trouble than it is worth. It allows infamous monks to hide behind a cloak that sometimes (but not always) masks who they are and how dangerous their "advice" is. But it also allows angry monks to carry out vendettas against the infamous monks any time there's a non-zero probability that an anonymous post might be from that infamous monk. And, on those rare occasions when the AM isn't one of those two, it makes it hard to follow questions, "no, I'm not that AM, I am a different one, the one from id://...."

    Most forums I've visited don't allow any anonymous posts. Do the negatives here outweigh the positives? And if TPTB don't want to disable AM, could we at least add a non-identifying identifier to AM posts?

    Something I've thought of before, I finally suggested in CB after today's anonymous-edit, and am now reiterating here: I would suggest a one-way hash on the IP address -- so it wouldn't tell us who or where the person is, but it would say "this is likely the same AM as from that other post". For the useful AM conversation, it would help other readers follow which AM said what; and for the infamous and his detractor(s), it would make it easier to confirm or deny whether it is likely the same monk or not. Both seem like "wins" to me. I understand that IP addresses can change or be behind big corporate blocks, so it's not a foolproof identifier in either direction (same IP might feasibly be used by good AM and bad AM, or a single AM's IP might change between posts) ... but it might help some. As long as the particular hash is not also applied to logged-in posts, I wouldn't think it would run afoul of GPDR (but, IANAL, so take it for what it's not worth).

    Anyway, just an idea I've had, and since there was some support in CB, I finally decided to suggest it officially.
Preview for Post Editing
2 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by kcott
on Feb 20, 2021 at 09:26
New posts added earlier in posted list
2 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by kcott
on Jan 22, 2021 at 11:01

    I was just about to post a new SoPW item and noted that I needed to scroll through lots of old posts. On commenting on that here (i.e. this PM post), I sill needed to wade through many posts to get to "Post new ...".

    My suggestion is that new SoPW, and all other new PM posts, are presented at the top of the list.

    Obviously, having been here for over a decade, I'm quite familar with the status quo. Those, who are newer to the monastery, may well get disoriented negotiating the cloisters: let's make it easier for them.

    Update: Rewrote title (before any respones) to make intent clearer.

    — Ken
Random Nodes are prohibited
4 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by Bod
on Jan 02, 2021 at 15:03

    When I use the Random Node feature, more often than not I arrive at a node which I don't have privileges to view. Whilst this is not a big issue, I suspect it comes from people in pmdev having access to all these prohibited nodes and not seeing the issue.

    Either I'm rather unlucky with the random nodes I get served or there are a lot of prohibited nodes in the Monastery.

how to delete my account permanently
5 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by bigup401
on Dec 30, 2020 at 14:02

    how can i delete my account off this site
Dealing with spam users
5 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by hippo
on Dec 04, 2020 at 10:55

    I've noticed an increasing number of spam users over the past few weeks: new accounts which don't post any nodes but put a link on their home node to their external site for SEO benefit. I wonder if a threshold for this facility should not be put in place such that it is unavailable to initiates? Either disallowing links in the Bio or just disallowing the Bio entirely would work.

    Or maybe the spam links aren't considered that much of an issue, I don't know. Any thoughts?

    🦛

Quick and dirty mobile fix
5 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by Bod
on Nov 22, 2020 at 11:51

    In several places I have mentioned my surprise at how archaic this site looks and feels - I know that for those of us who value the content, the connection with other Perl people and the discussion, the look and feel is worth the effort. But what about those outside The Monastery? Perl is considered old-fashioned, irrelevant and redundant to many people...right or wrong that is the way it is. Having one of the primary recourses for the language looking outdated does nothing to promote Perl's rightful place as a meaningful part of today's technology.

    In no way do I mean to question the amazing work that has been done bringing this community into being or the fabulous contributions that continue to be made.

    In another thread marto suggested it was more than trivial to convert the site to being mobile friendly - IMHO, the first stage of converting a legacy website to something more modern. So I thought I'd take a look at what was really needed to make a change...for a bit of fun and to, perhaps, generate some useful discussion.

    I went back a decade to a node, sv_upgrade error that was being discussed in November 2010 for no other reason than 10 years is a nice round number! I copied the HTML source, changed the existing image and script paths from relative to absolute, added a little CSS and a little Javascript and produced a quick and dirty mockup which is pretty much identical on desktop but behaves marginally better on mobile. Note that it's not a truly responsive page as it doesn't properly transition from narrow to wide screen width unless it is reloaded.

    I made the minimum changes I could which involved:

    • Adding a viewport meta tag
    • Converting a couple of deprecated HTML attributes (width mainly) to CSS
    • Adding a block of CSS and a single Javascript function
    • Adding a table cell containing a hamburger menu image to use on mobile
    Less than a couple of hours in total to make what I consider a very slightly better mobile display.

    Clearly this is just a conceptual idea - as The Monastery is built on a framework I have no idea what is involved in changing the source code that framework spits out and it would need much more then just a quick fix. However, from the comments I have seen scattered around, I'm not the only one who feels that this site no longer showcases Perl in the best way and any change in the right direction is probably a good thing.

    If there is a move towards creating a responsive site, I am happy to contribute where I can although I am very much aware that my coding skills are very inferior to many others here. But I am eager to learn and to help.
Transient nodelet problem
1 direct reply — Read more / Contribute 		by hippo
on Sep 30, 2020 at 08:37

    I've just encountered an odd problem whereby the nodelets stopped part-way through. Looking at https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=11122359 the Nodelets only included the XP nodelet and the first half of the Approval Nodelet - it stopped just after the "moderation history" link. The rest of the nodelets were absent as was the page footer ("PerlMonks lovingly hand-crafted by Tim Vroom.", etc.). I had not been logged out, according to the rest of the page. To see if it was reproducible I opened the same page in a fresh tab and the nodelets all appeared as they usually do and the footer had returned.

    Both requests would have probably been made at 13:27 BST (UTC +1) or so today.

    I've never seen this before but it might, if related, shed more light on the intermittent 500s. HTH, either way.

    🦛

Unable to upvote answers
1 direct reply — Read more / Contribute 		by pritesh_ugrankar
on Sep 26, 2020 at 13:55

    Resepcted Monks,

    Since past few days, I am not able to upvote any answers here at PerlMonks. I was able to upvote up until a few days ago, but it's been about 2 weeks, and I've checked at different times, upvote radio buttons do not show.

    Many of the answers to the questions I asked were absolutely fantastic and the least I can do is upvote them. I've been referring to books and writing code, but the help offered here is far beyond imagination. It has been an eye opener to say the least and then it really feels bad that I cannot upvote. Please help me.

Server Error in NTC
1 direct reply — Read more / Contribute 		by hippo
on Sep 16, 2020 at 06:02

    Today I am consistently seeing a Server Error message in Nodes To Consider where the keep/edit/reap/nada radio buttons would ordinarily be. LanX reports seeing the same.

    The error reads like this:

    Server Error (Error ID 4080294c3022)

    An error has occurred. The site administrators have been notified of the problem and will likely soon fix it. We thank you, for you're patients.

    but with the span also having style="color: #cc0000" being applied, so that line of text is in red. It is consistent - it appears to happen every time when visiting that page (although the Error ID changes each time). If I view the node under consideration itself then the radio buttons appear in the Approval Nodelet as usual.

    🦛

div class reputation nit
2 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by Lady_Aleena
on Sep 14, 2020 at 13:18

    <center> elements are being used in the divs with the class reputation. <center> has been rendered obsolete, deprecated in HTML 4 and XHTML 1.

    Obsolete

    This feature is obsolete. Although it may still work in some browsers, its use is discouraged since it could be removed at any time. Try to avoid using it.

    - <center>: The Centered Text element (obsolete) on MDN web docs

    Please remove the <center> elements in favor of using the CSS property text-align: center?

    Edit: It is easier to restyle text-align: then to style the <center> tag.

    My OS is Debian 10 (Buster); my perl versions are 5.28.1 local and 5.16.3 or 5.30.0 on web host depending on the shebang.

    No matter how hysterical I get, my problems are not time sensitive. So, relax, have a cookie, and a very nice day!
    Lady Aleena
Title bar and menu face lift?
3 direct replies — Read more / Contribute 		by Lady_Aleena
on Sep 08, 2020 at 17:27

    I played around with some new code for the top bar and the menu. I removed the tables and used flex. It isn't perfect, but it might be a slight improvement.

    Note:This, or something close to it, is what I originally posted. The code in the first one is different.

    My OS is Debian 10 (Buster); my perl versions are 5.28.1 local and 5.16.3 or 5.30.0 on web host depending on the shebang.

    No matter how hysterical I get, my problems are not time sensitive. So, relax, have a cookie, and a very nice day!
    Lady Aleena
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