Alex Harries's diary

(I must learn to write more interesting less terminally dull post titles...)

Today I've been mainly pushing php around the forums: one thing about open source projects is that, when you dig around in the code a bit, you find lots of hidden "extras" that, for one reason or another (lack of time to document, security concerns, lazy developers ... ok the last one is plainly wrong since noone would bother writing open source code if they were *that* lazy) never made it into the released product, or at least weren't fully exploited.

One of these handy little gems (bear with me - this post is about to get a whole load more boring) is the way moderators can "hide" a post which they think might break the forum rules, without actually deleting it; say, for example, someone posts something which might help other members cheat in an exam; it's probably against the site rules, but the moderator who spots it wants to e-mail an admin and check. They hide the message, fire off an e-mail, and twiddle their thumbs for an hour or so. In the meantime, anyone who wanders past the post can see a post has been hidden, but not who posted it or what's in it, and aren't any the wiser.

Of course, the person who posted the message might be getting a bit cross about all this, but I'm hoping a combination of sensible moderators and sensible members will mean there's a bit of understanding if this has to happen. Maybe; maybe not...

An extension of this system is that we can also pre-moderate a member's messages; it's unlikely it'll ever need to happen, but we can flick a pixel-switch to make sure all posts by a user are moderated if, for example, they develop the habit of drunkenly posting nasty comments about the quality of their housemate's cooking when drunk.

Both bits of the system are designed, ultimately, to make the forums a) safer and b) less harshly moderated (since it's less likely a post will be deleted on the spot "just in case" it upsets someone). That said, anyone and everyone can  complain about any message (or comment, or - starting Tuesday, photo in the galleries) which they feel particularly strongly about. It's all about feedback - it's not possible to make a decent website which people want to come back to if no-one but the pixel-pushers feel like they have a say in how things are done.

Randomly, Angry Boss sent me a link to an Idiot's Guide to CSS positioning. I'm studying it as we speak. Maybe I'll learn something... I doubt much will go in though...

p.s. If anyone's at a loose end on Tuesday, come and see Flightplan in the Union. If I see you there, I promise I won't try and talk to you. And I'll make a concerted effort not to trip over your feet while trying to find somewhere to sit, too.

p.s. 2 - for my own reference, Things I Must Do Or I'll Be Sacked this week are:

• send Mothers' Day cards out to mum, extended family, women from down the road, some old lady I've never met but who sends me a card so I must know her, and ...
• Finish tidying up the forums code - "Thanks for posting your message" screen looks like Etch-A-Sketch gone baaad....
• Find a way to stop spamming the admins when a new post comes in
• Finish off the diaries side-bar, message layout and homepage - no-one wants to have to wade through my incessant waffling to get to their mate's diary. Oh, and find a way of allowing people to select a couple of different templates. And create a couple of different templates. Aaand....
  
  About 50 more words in this entry

... in one simple step: forget to connect up the centre channel on 5.1 surround sound.

The result? Since most of the vocals in a movie go through the centre channel, as well as most of the "on screen" sound, you get some strangely quiet actors.

Oops.

Fix, restart, apologise over the mic (I hate doing mic work - I sound like a cross between a dalek and a helium-abusing monkey, if you can imagine what that would sound like). As I type this, we're about half way through Wallace & Gromit's "The Curse of The Were Rabbit". We're packed to the rafters, too - almost 200 people in (compared to last week's 50-ish), which is nice. Shame the free popcorn ran out before I got there though...!

Fraggy's been snowed-under with PWs and hustings, so there's no PWs online this week (he's only just finished the printed version I hear), and I've been called in to do the film night at the last minute (hence why I was totally winging the it with the sound system and slightly came unstuck!) so I couldn't help out with it, so it's back to the printed version this week. It'll be online next week as usual, but I'm going to take this opportunity to get on with some of the updates to the Social Life section instead, tonight. Bring on the Bink!

(Title inspired by RobinB's rant about pancake-making...)

While I was pushing pixels around the forums yesterday, I remembered something a friend had mentioned about the way the authentication system on UPSU.net works. More out of luck than judgement I checked the code for the commenting system and, sure enough, the code that was needed to allow comments to be posted by non-Administrators was missing.

One simple code change later and the commenting system is now working (I think... touch wood...). This is great timing for us - the elections are looming and I want to get the candidates keeping a blog of their campaigning activities. While there's nothing stopping this at the moment, it's also important that the electorate can comment and ask questions of the candidates. No commenting system just means that the candidates have a one-way sounding-off platform, which no-one is going to be interested in.

There are a few final things I need to do with the layout of the commenting system before I'm happy with turning it on; these are all layout adjustments though, rather than any changes to the underlying structure. Basically, I just want to provide a box for people to provide their name, their course/job (optional), a contact e-mail address (for our reference, and again optional), and their comment. We shouldn't make it any harder than that to comment on something you read on the site, and - as with the forums - the "simple is definitely better" mantra seems to be the way forward.

By the way, UPSU.net had 1.2 million hits yesterday. That's (almost) a record for us, and I think the site will start seeing more traffic as the semester 1 exams get out of the way and people can start taking a bit more interest in what's going on at their Union.

Tomorrow night is the first of our film nights, and we're showing Shaun of The Dead. Entry - and popcorn - are both free, and with our £45k sound system, I reckon we're going to have quite a good night of it.

Interestingly, ISO have just announced that they're relaxing the restrictions on accessing the wireless network; while you still need to have a valid Netware login, you no longer need to apply for access, and if you change your laptop, you don't need to re-apply. ISO's mobile computing website doesn't look like it's been updated yet, but they say they will be providing the latest information soon, so keep an eye on it to find out what's changed if you're a FreedomNet user.

Right, I'm off to work on the commenting code, blogs and RAG website. I'll report back with more terminally dull "news" as it happens - don't touch that button...