How are you liking it so far?

Here's another question, not just for apsmith this time! -- as he says, "It may be as important for the way it adjusts behavior as for the actual fuel economy of the car itself." So why doesn't some manufacturer produce a little car (I'm thinking Ford Fiesta and that size) that has those cheap bells and whistles like the instantaneous mileage readout and whatnot, and market it as the frugal green car? Why should I feel that I have to buy a car with two engines, essentially, to be green? Does the gas savings really, truly, recoup the cost (greenhouse gasses in manufacture as well as consumer $) of the electric portion of the engine?

Here's another question, probably an idiot question which I could find in The Idiot's Guide to Global Warming (hee hee, they'll write an idiot's guide to anything, won't they?!) -- why is a hydrogen car better than an electric car? Electric cars seem to work fine, and I could "refuel" it at home, right? What is the advantage to a car that needs a whole new infrastructure for refueling?

(Not sure if this is off topic for the Soapbox, sorry if so! I didn't want to reply to the comment in the story because it is pretty old and he might have missed it.)

Check out the Eurekalert Newsfeeds (and any other press release sources of course such as Newswise) to get an idea of the kinds of stories we're after and don't forget to create your own enticing headline, put a bit of personal spin on it and add in some interesting links.

If you have access to the embargoed materials on press sites, please make sure you post after the embargo release.

Thanks

Still working on the spam issue. I've barred the perpetrator so he cannot post with the same username ever again.

I've also blocked the html anchor tag in comments. Sorry about that, but we have several hundred spam posts to clear out and if the spammers see that they cannot post text links they won't bother us again. I am afraid commentators will have to simply display the URL of any pages they want to refer to and visitors will have to cut and paste into their browser address bar. If I can find another way around this I will reinstate href in comments again.

Thanks

There is a great tranche of spam messages with the subject line "here is good website" posted anonymously, I've asked janra for a method to delete en masse, so if they're annoying you please be patient, or delete them if you have privs to do so

It's 47 minutes long and amounts to about 250 Mb in WMV format. Other formats are available from that page too.

Good and Bad News

We had another spam attack, and it's taking up far too much of my time deleting each spam post, so I've barred anonymous users from posting comments altogether. Sorry. You'll just have to register if you want to chip in (it's easy enough to anonymize yourself when you register, so legit users shouldn't find that a problem). It means I can delete all users who abuse rather than use.

The flip side of this is that logged in users can once again use href! Anyone abusing this will be Vap-o-Rized(TM), which means slices of spam can be blasted into oblivion at the push of a button.

I hope everyone's happy with this, I certainly wasn't happy with spending my time frying spam slice by slice. I know this approach has limitations, but what I've taken away on one side, I've given back to those who register, which should improve things considerably.

I've been having a bit of a problem where I down-moderate an article and then the submission is edited such that it becomes acceptable. But I can't change my moderation from negative to positive (or at least I don't know how). I would like the ability to undo or change a moderation. Is this something that'll hard to implement?

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So now logged in users get the complete sciscoop news sources listing of old (it displaces my abbreviated list when you log in). Lots of you voted for the return of this feature and it's right there in the left-hand column. Because of that, I've shoved some of the stuff that was on the left over to the right, to try and balance the homepage a little better. So, you might have to hunt around a bit to find your old favourites.

Is there any way to modify the RSS feed (which, aside from the moderation queue, is my main method of accessing SciScoop) such that it would show the total number of comments for each topic? They do it at bureau42.com (RSS), and I find it quite helpful. Currently I'm pretty much ignorant of new comments posted on topics that move out of the moderation queue, unless I pay special attention to them.

It could be something simple like a number in parenthesis after the title. For example:

When Planets Collide? (3)

I'm hoping the existing SciScoop code allows for this and it's only a matter of configuration.

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When submitting a new article, the 'style' attribute is flagged as an error when used with the 'P' HTML tag (and maybe other tags as well). Yet when editing existing articles, the 'style' attribute is okay.

Why not allow the 'style' attribute for all of the permitted HTML tags. It comes in quite handy.

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Apologies for the various outages and problems users have been facing this last week or so. I have been on vacation and am only just catching up, but the Scoophost team have endeavoring to do the necessary fixes (something to do with database compatibility issues). They've carried out a quick fix for now and will do the full fix later today, which will mean a short period (about 20 mins) of additional downtime. Hopefully after that everything will be fine and the various editing problems and missing page problems will be resolved.

Thanks for your patience, your dedication to SciScoop is, as always, much appreciated.

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In other areas it's shrunk - postings are down and comments have fallen.

There is a dedicated core of people regularly posting and discussing, which is great. But, the perennial issue is how to persuade casual visitors and lurkers to join in.

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I reckon if an item has been in the mod queue for more than a month and has fewer voters who actually voted for it than against or didn't care then we should dump it. If it's t'other way round then we can post it.

I'm applying this principle to those in the queue that have been there since the summer. Apologies to any authors if they feel hard done by, but most people who are going to vote will have done so by now.

I also reckon if an author has posted anonymously, been asked to revised, and totally ignored us they ought to be spiked.

Thanks

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Thanks

Dave

To enable the queue digest login in and visit the user interface page

http://www.sciscoop.com/my/prefs/Interface

and check the box  "Queue Digest"

If enough people suggest this should be enabled by default then I'll toggle it so that you have to opt out not to receive the voting queue by email.

Let me know how it works out

Thanks

db