In "Re^4: one liner error" I see:

Reputation: -12 (+-2 -10)

The "+-2" seemed very strange and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen that in the past. I reloaded that page a couple of times but the "+-2" persisted.

I checked another from today's Worst Nodes. In "Re^2: delete single user" I see:

Reputation: -12 (+0 -12)

That looks normal. Any ideas on that first one with "+-2"?

This question was prompted by the following node: json no reload

Its author has repeatedly made low quality posts with an obvious lack of ability or intent to learn anything, expecting us to give him ready-to-use solutions to help him in his nefarious endavors. To put it bluntly, the poster is likely a scammer or script kiddie, except he keeps tripping up in his own shoelaces and he is too retarded to notice even that.

What is the right thing to do with posts like this, given that replying to them is at best a waste of time, but at worst might lead to other, innocent people being hurt?

1. ignore completely
2. delete and ban
3. try to educate the poster
4. give a malicious answer that hurts the scammer if he is dumb enough to blindly run code from the internet
5. report to the authorities

Ignoring or deleting seems like avoiding responsibility, like saying "it's not my problem".

Educating doesn't seem to work - now, nor in general.

As for giving a fake answer, I've once read a chatlog where an angry and overconfident kid wanted to hack his neighbor's wi-fi, and someone convinced him to run yes I want to enable wireless hacking > /dev/sda as root on his (or as it turned out, his father's) computer - which is both evil and hilarious. In any case, this is a dangerous option.

Reporting makes me feel like a snitch - but at the same time, if there is evidence for a crime, I (we) have a moral or even legal obligation to report it.

Over the past week or so I have noticed very occasionally that a page or an asset has not rendered in response to a request. choroba has also mentioned in the CB seeing this or something similar. Just now this has happened fortuitously while I had the network console running in my browser and it reports these problems:

A 500 response when attempting to retrieve https://www.perlmonks.org/css/common.css from the server at 209.197.123.153 at 11:16:54 GMT (Response header timestamp).

A 500 response when attempting to retrieve https://www.perlmonks.org/?node=list replies toggle javascript from the same server at the same time.

The 2 assets were then immediately re-requested by the browser and successfully served by that same server with the same timestamps.

I hope that this helps in tracking down the problem.

I was wondering if <details> with <summary> could be added as acceptable html here in PerlMonks. Those tags could be used when code or data examples are more than 10 or so lines. <readmore> is great for keeping long batches of code or data from the main list of posts, however, long batches of code might do well if kept in a <details> tag where the code or data can be hidden to keep page lengths from being over long upon initial load. So what do you all think?

I've been unable to approve "[OT] Am I just a bad programmer?" [#11116576] — I tried a few times. The same problem was noted by davies: see the update to his "Re: [OT] Am I just a bad programmer?" response.

Looking at the moderation and janitation histories, two things happened at the same time ("2020-05-08 21:42" in my timezone):

• The post was moved from SOPW to Meditations.
• The post was approved (apparently in SOPW section).

We've previously seen this situation where a move and a subsequent approval were registered in the database out of order. I suspect this node is approved in SOPW so further attempts to approve it are ignored; however, as it's actually in Meditations, it's showing as unapproved in that section.

In the past, this has needed senior moderator intervention to fix. I've no idea of the exact cabal/level/other requirements.

You need to be logged in, then enable the Free Nodelet in your Nodelet Settings, turn on the option "Code Wrapping Off" in your Display Settings, and in your Free Nodelet Settings, paste the following, and all textareas and code blocks will become CodeMirror editors with syntax highlighting, line numbers, etc. For code blocks, the syntax highlighter is Perl (which doesn't appear to mess up the syntax highlighting on non-Perl source too much), and for text areas, the syntax highlighting is HTML, with support for JavaScript in <script> tags and CSS in <style> tags, as well as for Perl in <c> tags (not <code> tags for now, because those are actually valid HTML5 tags; I'm open for suggestions otherwise).

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/co
+demirror/5.53.2/codemirror.min.css"
  integrity="sha256-vZ3SaLOjnKO/gGvcUWegySoDU6ff33CS5i9ot8J9Czk=" cros
+sorigin="anonymous" />
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.53.2/
+codemirror.min.js"
  integrity="sha256-sRwcFCKzBvYiAJfddXlx1Ld5+hAxpYzCM+drX/GHMKE=" cros
+sorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.53.2/
+mode/xml/xml.min.js"
  integrity="sha256-Lfk8z6WUsBN6YiCaMpH6bxBHyRqkPK4O2QbQHFNUS40=" cros
+sorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.53.2/
+mode/javascript/javascript.min.js"
  integrity="sha256-tnhIfKT2keR1i4Y7lQL70BBfwnxp10ywUpnXjSjIlH4=" cros
+sorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.53.2/
+mode/css/css.min.js"
  integrity="sha256-Np6VKUByekB6pozOOgM2TcmhyGX46hnWr9TpJbUXpyo=" cros
+sorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.53.2/
+mode/htmlmixed/htmlmixed.min.js"
  integrity="sha256-9Dta/idKg17o/o0a3PEsL6JjkYvijj9UMh3Z86HhUcg=" cros
+sorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.53.2/
+mode/perl/perl.min.js"
  integrity="sha256-fQeGcgwNMEHlEqr9CCAoDsorVyJXm1mDMq1E/rB1wiQ=" cros
+sorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.0.min.js"
  integrity="sha256-xNzN2a4ltkB44Mc/Jz3pT4iU1cmeR0FkXs4pru/JxaQ="
  crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="/?node_id=11116375;displaytype=displaycode;part=2"
  type="text/javascript"></script>
[download]

(If you've already got jQuery loaded from another nodelet hack, you don't need to put that <script> tag twice, of course.)

Note: If something goes wrong in your browser, and suddenly the text areas break, you need to disable JavaScript to be able to edit your Free Nodelet to disable this hack. And of course let me know, with OS and browser version, and best would be the error messages from your browser's JS console too.

Since this code isn't particularly long, if you'd like to customize any of the CodeMirror settings (like indentation), you can also copy the below code into your Free Nodelet directly (inside <script> tags, and omit the final <script> tag above).

There is support for CodeMirror Themes: add the desired stylesheet to the Free Nodelet (e.g. <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.53.2/theme/lesser-dark.min.css" integrity="sha256-kRDm75ZpAk6HEGxwszCLc7vt79azRsrfybbL4llVXBw=" crossorigin="anonymous" />) and then add <script> CM_THEME="lesser-dark"; </script>.

You need to be logged in, then enable the Chatterbox and the Free Nodelet in your Nodelet Settings, and in your Free Nodelet Settings, paste the following, and you get a chatterbox that refreshes itself dynamically, with optional browser notifications! Sending messages also works without reloading the entire page. It now also refreshes the "Other Users" nodelet and the Chatterbox regularly.

Since it was a little quiet in the Monastery when I implemented this, it's currently not 100% tested yet, let me know if you have any issues. (Update: So far, so good...)

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.0.min.js"
  integrity="sha256-xNzN2a4ltkB44Mc/Jz3pT4iU1cmeR0FkXs4pru/JxaQ="
  crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="/?node_id=11116369;displaytype=displaycode;part=2"
  type="text/javascript"></script>
[download]

(If you've already got jQuery loaded from another nodelet hack, you don't need to put that <script> tag twice, of course.)

If you don't want the AJAX CB enabled by default, then put this before the above <script> tags: "<script> AJAXCB_DEFAULTOFF=true; </script>".

In [Free Nodelet Hack] Browser Notifications for New Nodes, I'm using the newest nodes XML Generator with the ticker=yes parameter. This seems to prevent the "Last here" time on my profile from updating most of the time, but not always, and I still see myself in the Other Users Nodelet. Does anyone happen to know what's up with that?

Update: Hmm, I can currently not reproduce this anymore.

You need to be logged in, then enable the Free Nodelet in your Nodelet Settings, and in your Free Nodelet Settings, paste the following, and on supported browsers you'll get a checkbox "☐ New Node Notifications" above your nodelets that you can turn on, and you'll get a browser notification for each new node that is posted.

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.0.min.js"
  integrity="sha256-xNzN2a4ltkB44Mc/Jz3pT4iU1cmeR0FkXs4pru/JxaQ="
  crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="/?displaytype=displaycode;node_id=11116359;part=2"
  type="text/javascript"></script>
[download]

(If you've already got jQuery loaded from another nodelet hack, you don't need to put that <script> tag twice, of course.)

The notifications are disabled by default because if you have multiple tabs open to PerlMonks, you'd get a notification per tab. If you want to have notifications turned on by default, you can add this before the above <script> tags: "<script> NOTIFICATIONS_ENABLE=true; </script>", and if you additionally want to hide the checkbox, add "NOTIFICATIONS_HIDECB=true;" inside those <script> tags.

Does the Perl Monks site forbid VPN usage? When I tried to post a reply in a forum, I got the error message, "You do not have permission to post. Tough beans." The error went away when I disconnected from my VPN. Thanks.

G'day All,

I was looking at a node which I thought may have been modified by the poster. I wondered if Janitation History would enlighten me. It didn't: "This node has not been edited yet.".

Just to confirm that, I checked "Re: how to write a vertical TK Entry?". I had fixed a minor typo in that: s/wigdet/widget/. Again, Janitation History reports: "This node has not been edited yet.".

I wasn't really expecting Janitation History to report on poster edits; however, I thought it was worth checking. It's often useful to know if a poster has made modifications, especially when subsequent posts by others don't seem to make sense.

I'll just throw this open for general discussion:

• Would a new Poster History link be useful to others?
• What about a combined Janitation History and Poster History (possibly renamed to something like Edit History)?
• Are there any technical issues with doing this (e.g. increased database load)?
• Is there another way to get this information of which I'm unaware?

Using Perl documentation with deeplinks (ie with #goto_anchor in URI) only worked with normal perldocs.

But with others like perlfunc they were not rendered correctly.

With today's patch this is fixed.

Try split /PATTERN/

Private /msg [messages] are sometimes hard to understand if they are a reply to something you wrote a day ago.

Actually they are still available in the "Delete" folder but only for a limited time (36h ?)

click here to check

The chatterbox nodelet used to have various links to the message box in the bottom row

  • And 69 more, 90 archived

It now contains a link to recently sent messages too

  • And 69 more, 90 archived, recently sent

The "recently" was necessary to avoid confusion about older messages missing. You need to archive them explicitly if you want keep them longer. °

Thanks to the gods for accepting my patch. :)

°) The link is a bit long for my taste, probably "just sent" or only "sent" with alt-text would have been better

Hello fellow monks :). There are a few things that (might) need some change in the Monastery Gates' page

First: the Quests section gives a current staus for the quest. Same for Quests. In both cases only the active quests are displayed anyway so I'm not sure that the line is useful. Does this come from a template used elsewhere?

Second, in the same section, is it me or does the prompt "Offer your reply" sound a little weird? Anyway, having that link for the top node preview of the page but not the other ones might make it seem like it's missing in other places.

And lastly the PerlMonks Discussion section of the Gates is called "New Monks Discussion" which is very misleading (for a second I thought there was a section to welcome newcomers that I had never noticed).