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New functionality has been enabled that allows logged-in users to highlight interesting mailing list discussions. This new feature has been provided out of necessity, as I'm finding myself with insufficient time of late for keeping up with the many mailing lists I track to post articles on KernelTrap. My goal is to inspire you to participate more in the process, occasionally clicking the new up-arrow on mailing list messages that you find interesting and worthy of attention. In the upcoming weeks, improved interfaces will be provided for navigating other people's votes, and for filtering on only the mailing lists you're interested in. Future KernelTrap stories and quotes will be selected from those that are highlighted by this voting process.
KernelTrap remains a hobby that I very much enjoy, but of late I find I have less time to focus on it. Spending an hour or two a day reading through mailing lists often leaves me with no time to then write articles about the interesting threads I've found. My Linux Kernel mailing list inbox alone has over 12,500 unread messages in it as of today, and I continue to fall farther and farther behind. These new voting interfaces aim to address this shortage of time, allowing me to focus more of my time on writing articles.
Going forward, I plan to focus on improving the online mailing list interfaces, making it easier to read the many mailing lists from these pages, and to use them to highlight interesting mailing list discussions. I welcome all suggestions on any improvements you can suggest toward this end!
Some plans that I have include:
Currently voting on interesting mailing list messages requires you to be logged in. Is there value in providing this ability to anonymous users, too? What other changes would you recommend to improve this functionality?
complete threads?
are you planning to show complete threads (including mail contents) like the comments to forum topics? having to click on every single subject line (which are all the same and of the form "Re: <original topic>") and waiting for the page being loaded and having to scroll between the thread display and the mail content and to remember which mail i clicked last and the contents of the mails it refers to recursively in a large hierarchical graph makes my head explode. i like scrolling back and forth in a large hierarchical display of the complete contents, at least if the mails are short. long mails with patches could be cut with "[more...]"-links on the end which users can drag to a second browser window to see the full text while not losing the context.
partial threads
I'll look into it. I provided a full-thread view in an early version of my mailarchive software, but there were some serious scalability issues with that code. This new version performs much better so I'll try again. I'll look into offering a mail archive view offering at least partial threads -- enough to provide context while quasi-intelligently filtering out patches and such. I can also explore adding some Ajax so you can expand threads inline without reloading the whole page, perhaps even more useful?
Any other suggestions/ideas on how to make the mail archives more usable -- and ultimately to make people more likely to help filter messages by clicking the new up and down arrows found on each message -- are much appreciated.
Use frames
Mailing list threads are a great (and probably the only) use-case for frameset navigation - look at how gmane does it, it's much nicer than scrolling up and down the page and having the whole thing reload every time you click a message.
gmane
I personally don't find the gmane user interface especially nice... :( I'm not ruling out frames as an option, but I'm hoping to come up with an alternative solution.
orientation
gmane is better in not reloading the whole page, but it still has 2 problems:
- you have to read the mails one at a time and cannot visually search (scroll through) for the 10 interesting ones in a thread of 100 mails
- I always lose my orientation in the hierarchy of equal mail subjects, especially if I click at the wrong empty space and the current one loses its focus.
threaded view
I drafted up a threaded view, which I've enabled now. Is that a step in the right direction? Suggestions are very welcome.
i like it
i like the threaded view
threaded view is buggy
For the threaded view, the code that strips out quoted text (lines beginning ">") also strips out the preceding non-quoted line. See, for example,
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2008/9/8/3231094/thread#mid-3244884
where the paragraph
is missing the final line
Re:
What about adding an indented view like these forum messages? You've already got the necessary tree display code at the bottom of the single-message view after all.
You might think the massive levels of nesting would be a problem when you display it with indentation, but if you look closer you can see most threads are just really long chains of single replies. It could work if you only do the indentation when there's two or more replies.
Should be in right column
I think the new feature should go in the right column, either above or below the latest forum posts. The current position (floating right under the first article in the left column) looks very awkward.
Seconded
I agree.
Since I don't haunt the forums much anyway, it would work best for me above "Latest Forum Posts."
Or, you could do like Slashdot and let folks raise/lower widgets in the right column to stack the totem pole however you like. (Modulo advertising placement issues.) For example, I don't really gain much benefit from the "my account" blob over there, so that could be moved to the very bottom and I wouldn't mind. I've been here long enough I won't be disoriented that I have to scroll to find it. Its current placement, though, is quite appropriate for newcomers.
--
Program Intellivision and play Space Patrol!
block control
I would like to give greater control over blocks to readers, but the version of Drupal I'm using doesn't support this, and it would not be a trivial change to implement it myself. I'm not even sure it's supported in a newer version of Drupal. I could add a configuration option allowing you to totally disable the block, but that's about it. However as at this time I see this new functionality as critical to KernelTrap's continued existence, I don't want the block disabled just yet...
just one more block
My goal is to avoid this becoming just one-more-block... it's important to me that it stands out so that people figure out what it is and how it works, and start voting on messages, to keep KernelTrap alive. Placing it in the right column above the latest forum posts seems to more or less hide it, something I was hoping to avoid. That said, I don't want to completely replace articles with it, as I enjoy writing articles. Perhaps it would look better at the very top of the page? Or one or two articles lower on the page? Or as a full-width item? Or perhaps the front page needs to be completely re-designed?
Re: just one more block
In this case, you could consider making this a full-width permanently-first article. Or even make it first most of the time, except when you have a new-enough article to put first, or something...
I guess most of my objection is that the other, left-column articles look very odd if you push them into a too narrow space.
fluid themes
Yes, this is a disadvantage to a fluid theme -- the way it looks varies drastically from user to user.
I could make it a full width block, and could float it under any stories that are >36 hours old (or any other arbitrary time limit). Thus, when it floats up to the top of the page, that's my cue that I'm slacking too much! It's also a cue to others that I'm short on time and voting on stories would be very helpful.
Looks pretty good right now
Thanks !
Why not divide kerneltrap
Why not divide kerneltrap into two sites, then? One for voted posts and one for articles? I think it would be far cleaner that way. Also, there could be a larger number of viewable threads on the screen this way and people who like articles can just read the articles without any added visual polution.
time
Because I lack in sufficient time to properly maintain even one website...
Seems like a good idea. It
Seems like a good idea. It could make the site better.
The changes you're making look quite a lot like the way www.digg.com works or www.reddit.com
Maybe it's usefull having a look there.
Greetz
Sjuul
similarities
Yes, the similarities are not accidental! :) I will borrow many good ideas from these sites, and others like them, however hopefully with a little creativity of my own. I'm very much open to any ideas that will help encourage participation in the voting process, and will be focused primarily on this aim.
My suggestion is to move
My suggestion is to move this to the right. Move the ad up to the top right column and place the voted posted below that. Under that can go the menu.
One suggestion from me too is to reduce the font size. You can fit a lot more on the right if you do.
If you need any help with this, let me know. I actually administer a very large Drupal site where I work.
fonts
I've tried decreasing fonts in the past, and this generally doesn't work. Moving around boxes is possible, but doesn't address my immediate concerns. It's more likely that I'll float a full width box, as mentioned above.
CSS contributions are _always_ appreciated, as I'm not a themer!