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776

Developer's Corner / IDEA: Combining Quora with Experience Project

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 30, 2010, 06:57 AM »

Question form: http://www.quora.com...erience-Project-now#

Just posting this here to get more feedback but this is just a Quora question I made:

http://www.experienc...roject.com/index.php

First of all, you guys should know I know nothing of creating a website much less a service.

To me, this seems like a great service to release right now what with some talk of Facebook focusing on Answers.

Imagine a service where the appeal is all about getting back to what Facebook was all about ("social" networks) at this junction of time with an interface like Quora's only for sharing experiences.

Not only that, it's a benefit to Quora members in general as they can avoid creating topics like these which can make Quora's community seem sexist and is all about generating experiential answers:

http://www.quora.com...pid-basically-insane

777

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Compendium Goes Beta (list of changes)

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 27, 2010, 04:07 PM »

Ok, after prolonged use, I can definitely not recommend the beta.

It's not so much one feature or not but the feel of the original Compendium is gone. I think text previewing is also slower.

Generally the current state feels more like a hacked version of the Alpha and while it may not bother new and general users, the snappiness of Compendium despite the Java requirement was it's strongest suit. Now I'm further confused with how to properly position the mouse arrow on the nodes for example and the arrows in general... it all just feels like a diagram program instead of an Argument Mapper now.

778

Living Room / How can we fix government? (U.S.)

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 27, 2010, 01:50 PM »

Quora: http://www.quora.com...an-we-fix-government

I need to disagree with all of the above, unfortunately.  Government is not the elected representatives, 90% of the time.  This is completely opposed to how things should theoretically be, but in the limited time I spent on Capitol Hill, I came to believe that reality does not match the theory.

First off, bills are written by staffers, not the elected officials.  It's obvious if you think about it, but let's follow this chain a little bit.  Who are the staffers?  Generally, late 20s through mid 30s.  Kids and young adults, basically, with little 'real world' experience.  Most are Political Science or Communications majors, meaning they know how government 'works' but rarely about what they're governing.  There are exceptions--like AAAS or NSF fellows--but they are exceptions, not the rule.

Lobbyist reform is important, but not for the reasons people list above.  At worst, lobbyists working at the level described above tweak a bill around the edges.  The health care bill is something like 1500 pages, right?  At this point, lobbyist-driven deals are tweaking a few paragraphs.  It's true that these minor changes can have major effects, BUT think about the staffers writing these bills. 

You're 26, overworked, and your boss is demanding a policy paper on Net Neutrality.  You've got 3 constituent letters that need to get approved that are being written by your interns.  You're working on a constituent response piece dealing with an NRA mailer that dumped 150 angry letters in your boss's office.  You're covering three other major topics--'science,' environment, and Veteran's Affairs, for example.  You're getting this paper done--how? So you turn to a friend, who's working for a think tank that specializes in Net Neutrality.  He or she gets you a bunch of pages that you tweak up to match your boss's position on the issue and deliver that to the Chief of Staff. 

The end result: think tanks, lobbyist groups, and so on have immense power based on their specialization and the overworking of office staffers.  Elected officials are primarily figureheads for the bureaucracy that has run the US government starting during the post-War period.

Long story short: if you want to improve government, increase the tools available to junior and senior staffers that will allow them to quickly sift through massive amounts of information, provide the context in which to understand issues that they were never trained in, and connect them with the constituents that they will affect to properly understand the status quo.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is an excellent tool in this regard, but it's a tool of the 20th century.  The staffers are (extremely) highly trained librarians, skilled at drawing connections between a variety of disparate issues and able to 'dive deep' in explaining the historical context of today's issues.

I'd personally like to see a hyperlinked database allowing staffers and everyday people to dive into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and United States Code (USC) as you're writing up a bill to understand how the CFR or USC has evolved on the issue you're working to change.  The purpose of new laws is to positively affect the status quo.  I'd like to see a translation of legalese into CBO impact numbers section by section, and new IT should eventually make this possible.

PS - As a quick aside, elected officials generally focus on one or two issues that they'll focus on.  Al Gore, for example, researched and wrote many of his speeches on issues of technology and the environment, according to one of his former staffers.  I get the impression that this is pretty rare, though.

779

Site/Forum Features / Re: Should we add tags to forum?

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 26, 2010, 10:27 PM »

The way it's using a tag cloud, I'm not sure it helps at all. 90% of the Living Room in my opinion is untaggable.

It would only be good if there's a system where we can suggest tags that mouser or mods can enable for topics.

The purpose of this is for all those things like free e-books especially older threads where users might not think of searching for it.

I.E. a GOE that can be filtered to index cards or ideas can really help filter things out but it goes to hell if we each not only use different tags but we're wasting it on topics that are better off searched for than tagged. (I.E. outliners/PIMS/Mindmaps)

The key really is filtration though especially for those threads with hordes of pages. Those are the ones that can benefit from tags but those are also the ones that can least benefit unless there was some way to connect the relevant posts together while taking out the mid-between posts that have something to do with some other application.

Edit: I forgot the most important issue against tags: you can do this in a better and separate site and mouser if I recall expressed something about using a social bookmarking service. The only flaw with such service is that they can't narrow and separate two posts that may be about two different things in one thread.

That said, I don't think it's possible with forum tags too though because you have to really really know which posts after which posts connects to get a filtered conversation.

780

Living Room / Very Loosely Based on a True Story

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 26, 2010, 04:33 PM »

Just copy-pasting examples of this TV Tropes link to highlight the page to readers of this forum:

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Real story (based on Anneliese Michel), a young woman from a very religious background had some strange seizures. Based on her beliefs and those of her priests she stopped taking medication and relied on prayer. She died, but was convinced that the Virgin Mary had told her that her death would inspire many. Rather sad, especially since her death was not the result of seizures, but severe malnutrition and dehydration that arose from the ongoing exorcism. In the film, all courtroom scenes and scenes featuring doctors are flat and matter of fact. The fact that the doctors don't fully understand the condition is played up. The fact that the priest has an explanation to offer is played up. Whether his explanation makes sense is not questioned. Scenes concerning the attacks have spooky cinematography and chilling music and a general horror movie feel to engage the viewer.

Also based on Anneliese Michel is the German movie Requiem, which is more reserved (and much better).

The real story is a bit less dramatic when you take into account that she had seen other priests about her being possessed. Those priests told her that she doesn't match the established criteria for demonic possession, something much more dramatic than what she had. She also claimed to be possessed by Lucifer and Nero, among others. The former probably has better things to do with his time, the latter is Roman emperor.

The AmityVille Horror

A family bought a house in a small town. Some murders had been committed there. Later they left complaining that the house was haunted and the site of a number of strange phenomena. Somebody proved that the Lutzes (the family in question) and their lawyer made it up as part of a half-baked insurance scam.

Wikipedia link (longer version): https://secure.wikim...eFeo,_Jr.#References

Law and Order

Law and Order bases most of their stories on (or off—often way off) real cases and incidents. In order to be able to deny that they're referencing a certain real person, they may insert a remark to show that the real person also exists in the fictional world. For example, in one episode that featured a No Celebrities Were Harmed Ann Coulter, one character remarks that she "makes Ann Coulter look like a socialist" or some such remark. There was also an episode where a little boy who apparently got sodomised by a rich pale white guy who donates a lot of money to charity and whose parents deny anything because apparently they were paid off. Sounds familiar?? Debatable though...

Primeval

The movie Primeval, while it deals with an actual, real-life giant crocodile (Gustave), exaggerates every other aspect of the events it claims to recount, from doubling his number of human kills, to depicting him seeking out and attacking entire groups of clearly defended humans (the real Gustave strikes at groups of three or fewer tourists, primarily when they are off-guard, and certainly when they lack shelter). And that's without mentioning the film's ads, which portray him as "the most prolific serial killer in history"... though, to be fair, that last probably wasn't the filmmaker's idea. On top of all that, it's a case of Never Trust A Trailer — Gustave only appears in brief stretches, and most of the film deals with a local civil war, complete with Anvilicious moral about how we Americans ignore fighting in other countries. The crocodile is reduced to Chekhovs Gun.

U571

in 1942, an American submarine crew mounts a daring mission to capture a German sub and return it to American waters, in order to acquire its Enigma decoder and crack the code. In reality, the only team working on cracking the code was British, and machines and code books captured during the war, by British, Polish, or French forces, were sent to England. American forces did capture a U-boat intact (with Enigma) in the South Atlantic, you can see it in Chicago. This caused a major ruckus BECAUSE the code was already cracked at the time, and the Allies were afraid this would cause the Germans to use a brand-new code. A LOT of covering-up was done.

Katyn Massacre

The Katyn Massacre definitely took place, and the British and US governments did indeed suppress evidence of it in order to keep their fragile alliance with the Soviet Union from falling apart, but the events as depicted in the book are entirely fabricated; the only spy to make it to the Bletchley Park station was British and passing information to the Soviets. The 2001 film takes it up a notch by cutting Alan Turing out of the film completely and assigning his role in the war to protagonist Tom Jericho, where in the book Jericho is a junior member of Turing's cryptanalysis staff.

Cottingley Fairies Hoax

Storylines concerning the Cottingley Fairies hoax are sometimes played, at least relatively, straight or assert that Elsie Wright and Francis Griffiths did take photographs of fairies... despite the fact than anyone can tell they're fakes nowadays just by looking at the things. Even Wright's and Griffiths' admission that most of the photos were fakes doesn't stop this.

This happens in Torchwood where the fairies are part of an episode's backstory, and at least one of the fairies in one of the photos is real.

Fairy Tale: A True Story either asserts it was real or is an allegorical story with a lot of "stuff" added and changed from history to pad out the film.

Photographing Fairies has the hero, a photographic expert, prove that the Cottingley fairy photos are fake, but he is then presented with a set of fairy photos that he can't disprove. And of course they turn out to be genuine.

Wolf Creek

The 'based on true events' part of the movie Wolf Creek seems to be limited to "there were some British backpackers murdered in Australia one time." It's partially based on the Peter Falconio case and partially based on Ivan Milat.

The Maids

Murderous Psycho Lesbian sisters Claire and Solange in The Maids are kind of based on Christine and Lea Papin who really were murderous Psycho Lesbian maids... Well, resemblance ends here.

Wikipedia Article of Papin Sisters: https://secure.wikim...n/wiki/Papin_sisters

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was heavily touted as being based on a true story. The film chronicles an inbred family of kidnappers, torturers, serial killers, and implied cannibals who brutally slay a carload of roadtripping teens. The actual case it was based on was a solitary, fairly quiet necrophiliac who killed only two middle-aged women. In Wisconsin. While two murders are indeed tragic, that's still a lot less than the scores of murders seen in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The same story that "inspired" The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Ed Gein) also inspired Psycho. Norman Bates was a good deal closer to Gein, but the story still deviated pretty far.

Gein was also partially the inspiration for Buffalo Bill from Silence Of The Lambs. Something about making a suit of human skin just seems to stick with people.

Ed Gein has inspired quite a few movies about serial killers for someone who wasn't one. According to the other wiki you've got to kill three.

The Strangers

The horror film The Strangers is a prime example of this trope: it opens by labeling the plot of the film as "based on true events," but the fact is, the only thing in the movie with any basis in reality is a technique employed by burglars (burglars, not serial killers) in which they knock on a random door to ask for a person who doesn't live there. If no one is home, they break in and steal stuff. You can tell the film is a work of fiction, however, because I doubt that a survivor of such a horrifying experience that supposedly happened only three years ago would be willing to let Hollywood make a cheap slasher flick based on their experience.

The "true story" that The Strangers was allegedly based on was the Manson Family murders. If that's the case, then there are definitely some similarities. Some.

Nightmare on Elm Street

The non-supernatural parts of Nightmare On Elm Street is inspired by events that happened in the hometown the director lived in as a kid. Specifically, Freddy is the name of the kid who tormented wee little Craven, Freddy's appearance was based on that of a old homeless man wee Craven had a terrifying run-in with one night, and the "died in their sleep" thing was based on a few cases of young Cambodian refugees dying in their sleep of no apparent cause after repeatedly saying they were frightened to go to sleep.

21

The movie 21 and the book Bringing Down the House, both based on the exploits of a blackjack card-counting team based at MIT, both fall squarely into this trope. Probably one of the most infamous changes is that the protagonist, who is Chinese-American in real life, became a Caucasian in the adaptations—but in comparison to some of the other inaccuracies, that's a minor deviation from the truth. Most of the supporting roles are Composite Characters, with one possibly based on three distinct individuals, and several key plot events were entirely invented by the book's author (who was also a co-writer of 21).

Snow White/Rapunzel

Many fairy tales derived from tales of the lives of saints, such as St. Barbara (Rapunzel) or St. Margaret of Cartona (Snow White).

Pocahontas

Many films including the animated versions of Pocahontas and Anastasia made many drastic changes from the real stories for dramatic purposes (for instance, having Pocahontas fall in love with John Smith). While that in itself may only constitute Dramatization, having Rasputin come back from the dead (though to be fair, it took a ridiculous amount of trying to kill the real one. Seriously, Jason Voorhees went down easier) or Pocahontas talk to a talking tree are certainly cases of playing up the paranormal.

To be fair, John Smith himself started the story about his having had a romance with Pocahontas in works he wrote long after the real events. So he Very Loosely Based that one on his own True Story, and Disney and everyone else have bought into it for four hundred years.

Anastasia

Practically any story based on Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, who was killed by the Bolsheviks with the rest of her immediate family. Practically every film based on her takes the approach that one of the many claimants to being Anastasia (usually Anna Anderson, or a made up person) really was the Princess/Grand Duchess. Considering that the bodies of the last two missing Romanovs have now been discovered, anything and everything that suggests Anastasia lived is now firmly in Jurisfiction.

Don Bluth's 1997 Animated Adaptation of the 1956 Ingrid Bergman movie probably takes the most liberties but then Bluth admitted he never intended it to be accurate or even close: he made Rasputin into a fantasy character who cast spells, had a talking bat, and came back from the dead as a walking corpse; and even more outrageous — in the sense of being not merely fantastic but allohistorical — was Rasputin being cast out by the Tsar. In fact, Rasputin (quite undeservedly) remained a royal favorite to the end of his life and after. As everything was falling apart, Tsarina Alexandra wrote many letters to Nicholas lamenting, "If only our Dear Friend [Rasputin] were still with us! He would know what to do!"

300

300 was the Battle of Thermopylae subjected to many, many levels of Sequel Escalation, starting with Herodotus' dramatic but subdued (especially for Herodotus) second-hand record of an actual historical event, passing through 4 or 5 increasingly dramatic versions, and winding up with a movie where the Persian army has a recruiting office in Mordor.

Quite possibly the writers didn't understand how obscure Frank Miller's graphic novel actually is in the real world. It's well known among a small group of young Westerners, but otherwise the actual real Battle of Thermopylae is immensely better-known. The majority of viewers, including most young Westerners, had never heard of 300, and ended up comparing the movie to actual history, against which the movie is a sad, sad joke.

Word Of God says that the novel and movie are the story as told by a Unreliable Narrator. Considering there is magic and fantastical creatures in it, the fact that Viewers Are Morons and can't realize that it isn't truth...

The very reason that the warriors all run around invincible and chewing the scenery and wearing naught but loincloths (which aren't even there in the book...) is because the battle *was* being relayed by an unreliable narrator. In Frank Miller's story, the lone survivor had a job to do, and that was to use his incredible storytelling skills to stir up the rest of Greece into entering the war. Thus, he told the story exactly how the Greeks painted their legends on their urns and sculptures we have in our museums today: naked, over-the-top, and utterly ridiculously badass.

Elizabeth

Rumor has it that the director, who's Indian, was just using Elizabeth as a Lawyer Friendly Cameo for Indira Gandhi and her struggles to defuse religious tension, which might explain the... casual attitude to history.

Memoirs of a Geisha

Many readers believe that Memoirs Of A Geisha is a true story. It's not. Really. It's loosely (very loosely, so much so that she later complained and then wrote her own book to set the record straight) based on actual interviews with an actual geisha. The book deliberately creates the illusion of authenticity—before even getting to the actual memoirs, there is a "translator's note" at the beginning from someone named Jakob Haarhuis, who tape recorded and translated Sayuri's story. He speculates on how Sayuri came to tell her story, explains a few of the book's tropes, describes Sayuri's voice and mentions that you're only reading this because she's dead. The "This is a work of fiction" disclaimer and Arthur Golden's dedications are in the back pages, just to put them out of sight.

Finding Neverland

Finding Neverland tells the story of how J. M. Barrie came to write Peter Pan through his relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family, but kills off the husband, deletes one of the boys, and repeats the conventional wisdom that the story was really about the boy named Peter (not his brothers)... a bit of baggage that contributed to the real Peter's eventual suicide. Oh, and Johnny Depp went without Barrie's trademark mustache.

Braveheart

Braveheart. While William Wallace is a real person, there are a few people and events in this film that should not be there. Most notably is Princess Isabella, who married Edward I's son several years after Wallace was dead, and a year after Edward I died. She never met either of them. The whole scene about instituting primus noctis because Edward II "couldn't do the deed" with Isabella is incorrect, Not only because Longshanks was dead at the time of their marriage but also because Edward II had four children with Isabella (though Edward II was still rumored to be homosexual).

781

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quora - Facebook meets Yahoo Answers meets Wikipedia meets Twitter

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 26, 2010, 03:19 PM »

@urlwolf

First off, this link may interest you: http://www.quora.com...redirected_qid=35617

Can't spot an equivalent question on StackOverflow although I'm not registered.

Design-wise based on the FAQ, StackOverflow is not a discussion board.

Quora is also not a discussion board but it has a very discussion board feel. Not only because subjective questions are allowed but the design is more suited for discussions ala Facebook.

Quora might gain more initial members because as most techies may hate but general users may love, Quora not only connects to Twitter and Facebook by default but they use it to make your friends find you easier.

Quora's incentive is also based on LinkedIn's reputation-like profile and it also borrows heavily from Twitter's follow button (although this is just an illusion for a feed, it adds to the "feel") while StackOverFlow is more of a technical Slashdot/Reddit/traditional rating system although heavily improved upon.

Feature-wise, the core contention is design.

Quora as of right now uses a very unique notification/feed system based off of a combination of many services.

StackOverFlow is more of a tag-based traditionally well designed Q&A model.

In that sense, StackOverFlow has a problem in that it's much closer to Ask MetaFilter but doesn't have that community.

Quora is not only much quicker at adding questions but much quicker at encouraging answers. It's almost like a professional social game built around real questions only it dodges the Yahoo Answers problem both by having a smaller developing community before going public but also because it has no "public" overview page and therefore it's not about just discovering questions but rather it's a combination of auto-discovering questions tailored for your interest like with the way Twitter works (although this sounds much more appealing than it works)

Simply put, the reason the design goes beyond design and is a feature for Quora and not for StackOverFlow is that Stack is all about Ask and Answer. Quora is all about Add, Add, Add. (whether it be question or answer)

Finally neither is really for general knowledge nor a sure fire situation yet because of the instability of Q&A models in itself.

Quora just gets more hype right now because it's a very next generation Wiki besides having the hype of former Facebook members.

Generally, although this isn't the accepted universal definition, Web 3.0 is taking Web 2.0 Ajax sites and instead of creating services, it maximizes filtration.

In this sense Quora's model right now is the first Wiki that feels more like a post editor than a Wiki and it works surprisingly well currently which is why it's like magic before the model gets abused (and it is abusable)

StackOverFlow's biggest problem for general knowledge is that it isn't real time. Much less aggressive at notification. Much less encouraging of edited answers. May be too much of a well designed but classic take of Q&A sites and while that in itself isn't bad for power users, Quora gets "it" more that half of the battle of Q&A is inspiring participation and interaction while StackOverFlow sticks to improving a old model that generally doesn't stray very far from an already existing competitor in MetaFilter.

It's core design advantage though is that like MetaFilter and Yahoo Answers and WikiAnswers and Answerbag, etc. etc. - it's much easier to view and search for questions in a traditional manner. That same model though doesn't translate to generating increased participation of members on the site.

I.E. if I type SQL, I get a Google-like search box style page minus suggestions. If I type SQL in Quora, I may get a poorer view because there's no text box but rather an auto-real time updating suggestion pop-up down box. (Think typing in FARR)

Quora solves this issue though by having tags that are just as much keywords ala Facebook which serves as the "search result page" equivalent of StackOverflow.

Bottomline though, StackOverFlow's system if used generally is going to be much easier to share in public because like many listings such as Delicious, Stack is just a big tagged list of questions.

This doesn't quite work this way though because Quora understands and is banking on long tail Google search as the way to discover Quora answers.

That is, they don't put enough faith that someone is going to treat Q&A site like Delicious.com where I type Delicious.com to skip Google's poorer results.

They are banking someone is going to type a search on Google and because of Quora's high signal vs. noise answers, the page appears without someone searching on Quora itself.

To off-set the sharing problem and short term searching of things to answer, Quora relies heavily on member only features.

This means you'll have a hard time searching for a big list of questions currently but if your question has been asked before WHILE you created the question as a member, it can be re-directed.

Similarly instead of wondering what questions you know the answer to, just follow a topic you want and Quora will show a feed of the recent combo of questions containing your interests while using a notification system to alert you if someone adds an answer, comments on your answer, etc. etc.

It's feel is slightly synonymous to Twitter but it actually works better because the system is much closer to Reddit if you ever participated in that service as a member (I dubbed the system the red message box of ingenuity - Reddit's that is) although the system is also quite different.

The problem with Quora as a general knowledge base though is that in Quora's desire to adhere to signal over noise, they tend to under-estimate how many users will feel bothered by someone editing their post.

In StackOverFlow's system, your question is yours but on a public page.

In Quora just like in most Wikis, your question and answer is still yours theoretically but it feels like someone else's because people WILL edit your post and it can be discontenting until you realize, so far no one is abusing it. The question remains though whether it can scale through abuse.

782

Developer's Corner / How do in-page, non-browser-window 'pop-ups' work?

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 26, 2010, 01:55 PM »

Usually that dialog is another set of HTML markup that exists on the page and is "hidden" via CSS or is constructed dynamically when the button is clicked. This HTML tends to have CSS styles that position it correctly on the page, and other js to handle the form submit or button press after you finish typing in the box. There is nothing special about these popups, they are just more "markup" that happens to be floating above other markup instead of set inside the flow of the page.

Maybe this is common knowledge to web designers but I'm fascinated both by how this was explained as well as why there are no services currently providing this for casual users in Netvibes-level form.

How do in-page, non-browser-window 'pop-ups' such as Quora's Add Question dialog box work?

from: Quora

783

Living Room / When life rains down lemons...

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 26, 2010, 01:17 PM »

The surviving crew of the USS Indanapolis (CA-35). You'd think things would be bad enough, with only 317 of the ship's nearly 1,200 crew surviving getting sunk by a Japanese submarine, then spending four days in shark-infested seas. Things got worse for the survivors when they found out that, at the very least, most of those who made it off the ship alive could've been saved. First, they were sent out of Guam without destroyer escort (which was standard procedure for the area). Then the ship's officers weren't informed that there were Japanese subs in the area (which had already claimed at least one Allied ship). Then when the ship sank, its distress call was dismissed by Allied command as a Japanese trap. Then when the Indianapolis failed to join the rest of the fleet in the Philippines, the ship was marked as "late" instead of "missing", so no search party was sent out. The survivors were found by a scout plane that happened to spot the oil slick from the Indianapolis' wreckage.

And just to polish things off, when people started demanding to know why the ship went missing for so long without being looked for, the Navy made a sacrificial lamb of the ship's C.O., Capt. Charles McVay; court-martialing and convicting him of putting his ship "in harm's way" via his failure to maintain a "zig-zag" sail pattern. They even went so far as to call the Japanese sub commander that sank him as a witness (Who pretty much called the "zig-zag" pattern useless). Mc Vay was the only ship's captain in the U.S. Fleet to lose a ship and be court-martialed for it. (He committed suicide in 1968).

http://tvtropes.org/...Main/TraumaCongaLine

784

Living Room / DonationCoder Success Story (Off-site)

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 26, 2010, 01:13 PM »

The solution was obvious: donate. Iztok was very nice about the whole thing; he created a fix for me and sent me an exclusive preview build so I could test it. In fact, he even refused to tell me how much money he wanted for his time -- he said it was a donation and should be completely voluntary.

Once I had a working fix, I donated a sum that seemed like a reasonable exchange for the personal support I had received. Now, there is a new feature in WriteMonkey (forced default encoding).

The point here is that I am quite sure I would not have gotten the same personal treatment from a large company, and while Iztok never insisted on any form of payment, I think paying for what you get makes a huge difference for both sides.

So, the next time some problem with a freeware product is driving you crazy, try writing the developer, and consider donating for their time. The results can be quite satisfying.

Amazing software tip: Pay free software developers to get stuff fixed!

from Download Squad

785

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quora - Facebook meets Yahoo Answers meets Wikipedia meets Twitter

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 26, 2010, 11:16 AM »

Thanks for the clarification app.

I'm still wary until an actual scandal happens to test the TOS (with public reputation accounts it's always iffy) but right now I'm just glad I can quote Quora like I can quote Metafilter and other sites.

786

Living Room / Re: Scaling issues to keep in mind while developing a social network feed

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 26, 2010, 02:16 AM »

Well, it's kind of a catch-22.

If I can provide better and original content, I wouldn't fear pasting a quoted answer because I can answer that question directly and claim it as my own.

Then there's the issue that if I know enough to have original content, I probably won't share it on a forum to discuss because I would think...hmm... this is too vague of a details or this is wrong, etc. etc. and instead I'd probably be sharing a blog post I made where the details can better be lay-ed out and it can come off more authoritatively.

Btw thanks, it's nice to have two opinions affirming the TOS (I got the other one via pm) of Quora.

787

Living Room / Scaling issues to keep in mind while developing a social network feed

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 12:42 PM »

Ok...testing how much I can get away with anonymous quoting of Quora while linking back to the source:

http://www.quora.com...-social-network-feed

You want to minimize the number of disk seeks that need to happen when loading your home page. The number of seeks could be 0 or 1 but definitely not O(num friends). You also can't store all the data on one machine if you're concerned about scaling, so you've got a couple of options...

If you're willing to tolerate one disk seek, or if your graph has low fan-out (small number of people following any given person), you can de-normalize the data such that the metadata about every piece of activity is propagated to each of the followers of that activity at the time the action occurs. You might think of this as a "push" model. You'd still probably only store one copy of the actual activity data, but you'd push pointers to it (along with whatever other metadata is needed if you're supporting any ranking/filtering) to all the subscribers at the time it is created. Generally the first thing to break in this model will be the process of propagating the activity to all the subscribers, particularly if you have users that have large numbers of followers (celebrities). When this fails, the feed will start to get backed up. This can also be complicated in that you may need to write code that properly updates all of the subscribers whenever the important metadata about the content is updated, and you may want to also add code to update things when someone changes their list of subscriptions.

The alternative is to keep all the recent activity data in memory and not propagate the updates to the subscribers at write time, instead fanning out at the time of loading the home page. This way you avoid all disk seeks. It's also nice in that your fan out size is limited to the number of people a user follows rather than the number of people who follow a user (most people don't have enough time on their hands to follow millions of people, so you don't have the inverse of the celebrity problem). It's also easier to keep things up-to-date, since you don't have to worry about propagating updates to all of the subscribers.  The downside of this approach is that the failure scenario is more catastrophic - instead of just delaying updates, you may potentially fail to generate a user's feed. Having some kind of fallback mechanism that approximates the feed (eg by querying only a subset of your friends) is handy to avoid having to show an error page.

Probably the theoretically best approach would be a hybrid of the above two options, but either of these options can be made to work reasonably well even at very large scales.

788

Living Room / Re: The internet: Everything you ever need to know

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 08:47 AM »

@zridling

You'd be surprised how common that is even in the context of amateurs:

http://www.brokegrad...-to-pay-for-college/

789

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quora - Facebook meets Yahoo Answers meets Wikipedia meets Twitter

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 08:44 AM »

Sorry mouser but I can never figure out bbcode lists. They always tend to get scrumped out no matter what I do with them and it makes it hard for me to skim the details.

Yeah, maybe I should remove the yellow colored text. I thought it would make it easier to skip to the conclusion which is why I didn't particularly care for the invisible effect as I thought this time, it further makes it easier to jump to the conclusion without looking at where that category is.

The red and green was my alternative to having problems gauging what size the sub-headers should be especially since I also bolded the entries below that for easier navigation of points.

790

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quora - Facebook meets Yahoo Answers meets Wikipedia meets Twitter

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 08:21 AM »

Btw thank you for whoever posted that screenshot. I don't know how that got there. It was just suddenly attached to the post.

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Mini-Reviews by Members / Quora - Facebook meets Yahoo Answers meets Wikipedia meets Twitter

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 08:06 AM »

Basic Info:

Simply put. Quora is just a Q&A site like Ask MetaFilter and Yahoo Answers. It's addictive and well designed user interface is what's getting people excited.

App Name	Quora
App URL	http://www.quora.com/
Support Methods	Facebook Connect Account, Twitter account, registration
Trial Version Available?	No
Pricing Scheme	Free plus your real name and position (They do provide the option to interact anonymously with the service though)
Author Donation Link	http://www.quora.com/jobs
Relationship btwn. Reviewer and Product	Member of their service. Unaffiliated.

Intro:


Unfortunately, Quora sounds less interesting compared to actually using it. The initial interface is like Twitter, your later reaction will think Facebook but eventually you'll realize it's like WikiAnswers.

However because of the design of the user interface it works surprisingly clear. You'll be surprised how fast you are jumping from question to question.


Who is this app designed for:

LinkedIn users who want to better represent their expertise.

Quora basically is very reputation based and this is a major part of how it separates itself from other Q&A service.

It also has some active Silicon Valley members already that provide some very insightful answers and really there's so little unhelpful answers as of now that it doesn't feel like a public service at all.

In fact, many of the community vibe still feels like an invite-only service.

The Good

Anyone can edit and improve on an answer even grammatical errors but because of Quora's design, you rarely encounter an edit war. (Although it's still up to the air whether Quora can scale and the guidelines are mostly admin wins for edit wars)

Connects to your Facebook and Twitter followers and recommends content from them.

Quality of answers is surprisingly high besides being friendly as of this writing

Magic is in the air. It's not the perfect user interface in the world but it's really a sensation worth experiencing. It may disappoint some power users who are focusing primarily on the features but regardless whether you hate or like the interface, you just have to try it because as of right now, no interface quite matches what it gives you. Give it at least a day and you'll see one of the unique concepts of web services appear right before your eyes. This is really beyond a case of Twitter or Facebook despite the clear similarities. It is really like how Diigo turned Delicious into Web 3.0. There's nothing quite like it from a sensation perspective even if you feel the features are familiar or copies or been done before.

Suspended Accounts still work! - Not sure whether this is an important feature to others but as a person who often gets in trouble with his posting style and lack of knowledge, I tend to create blogs where I post my replies there instead of directly answering under a comment thread and while it's still a habitual process to not post directly and just blog about it, one of the flaws I felt with push notification systems is that if you're not directly replying underneath the page, you lose much of the "updated" ness of the question. A suspended account is still vastly limited because as far as I can see there's no notification aside from someone voting up an answer you posted prior to being suspended (so no e-mail notifications there) but the cool thing is that the feed updates seems to still be working as well as the follow option. Therefore if someone like app votes an answer, I still see it in my feed which is kind of cool as it makes having a suspended Quora account slightly better than having no account at all.

The needs improvement section

Quora Owns All Your Content

WYSIWYG editor works if you're not pasting something from elsewhere but it's really primitive. I.E. you have to clear out a post to reset formatting most of the time. However, it has a very good auto-saving feature of your drafts as you're typing. Also there's no edit for comments but there's a delete button

Tyranny of the social media means old answers voted up tons of times will always remain higher than recent answers.

1 killswitch means someone can delete your answers if they are an admin (although they are friendly enough to pm you) or someone can mark and hide your post as unhelpful no matter what votes you get.


Why I think you should use this product

For the magic. Leave after if you want but there comes a time when a site like Diigo or Quora appears that just transforms the way we absorb and view and attain knowledge that it needs to be experienced even if it's just for a short while because it benefits designers, it benefits researchers, it benefits people who truly want to experience the innovation of the web and not just some like or retweet button slapped on a big community website like Twitter or Facebook.

Really it's about the whole. See, eventually as with the release of Facebook answers (although a representative claims not to compete with Quora and is buddies with many of it's founders) the model may grow old.

But this point in history. This point of where the community is right now along with where the features is right. NOW is the time to experience this.

...even if there's a chance that my phrasing will disappoint or kill the hype for you. Now is the best time to join because it's not just the model alone. It's the community really and not just friendly community. It's really the community of knowledge.

The community of seeing a quality set that may never be matched again and may possibly lose it's luster after a short while


How does it compare to similar apps

Ask MetaFilter - Still "the" site currently. More experienced. Just use this as a reference point on what to search for Quora to see what a MetaFilter representative has to say.

Ask Reddit - Still not good enough to replace Ask Reddit but the design comes very close. Plus Quora is more appealing not just from an aesthetic point but from a question discovery, question creation perspective.

Yahoo Answers - MySpace to Quora's Facebook currently.

WikiAnswers - Feels like a prototype of how Quora figure'd out a comfortable balance for their Wiki-like editing user interface.

AnswerBag - Feels like an Ajax version of AnswerBag.

Facebook Answers - Didn't try

Conclusion

One of a kind/10

A service where the important part is to join and truly experience it for yourself. Doesn't matter if you'll hate it, like it, neutral to it, unimpressed by it.

It's almost like Citizen Kane or Existenz or The Thirteenth Floor... it may not be a classic to you. It may even be boring but it just needs to be experienced even for as short as half a day.


Links to other reviews of this application

It's all over Twitter and the blogosphere because these are former Facebook employees. It's really hard to not have a link.

Here's a recent review of Quora by a Tumblr poster: http://www.jasonsilv...product-friday-quora

792

Living Room / Obama not a fan of Adam West Batman, prefers Twitter instead

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 06:02 AM »

Obama said "we may be able to finally throw away those red phones" that were designed to allow immediate contact between the Kremlin and the White House during the cold war.

Obama says Twitter may replace Kremlin red phones

from TweetSmarter

793

Living Room / Why has Microsoft seemingly stopped innovating?

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 05:49 AM »

Unfortunately, since this another Quora link, I can't share any quotes but I guarantee the answer is worth it.

If this were an article instead of an answer, I would rank it as an 8 out of 10 article indefinitely. Especially the stuff about Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. The content is worth a book.

http://www.quora.com...y-stopped-innovating

794

Living Room / (Old) Don't be evil, Craigslist

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 05:05 AM »

Don't be evil, Craigslist

Unfortunately, your story of getting blocked is an old one. Examples abound, but one that sticks out in my mind
is from 2007. Developer Ryan Sit developed a cool thumbnail gallery view of CL listings called ListPic. People loved it. But you know what happens next ...

Old but I've only found out about this. Doesn't seem to have a DonationCoder topic yet.

795

General Software Discussion / Re: Do user forums sometimes stop software from improving?

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 04:06 AM »

Although not holding the same question, I think I found the equivalent question of this problem in Quora:

http://www.quora.com...-their-own-instincts

Check it out Jibz. They may hold some extra answers to your question. (although it doesn't answer the issue of the effect of forums in general.)

796

General Software Discussion / Re: Do user forums sometimes stop software from improving?

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 01:21 AM »

not necessarily different animals, but certainly different sides of the same coin

See, this is where we definitely disagree. I did thought you meant different sides of the same coin but I just can't see how they are.

Like I said, 99% of users will probably never contact the developers of an app no matter how easy they make it to contact them (there's another thread on this somewhere on the forum)

This is a case of self-fulfilling prophecy. Right now there are many feedback systems that aren't just optimized and many of them are forms.

For every 99% of the mythical user who never contact the developers, there's a 99% chance of developers not contacting users ala this.

Not that developers should hire expensive advertisers and marketers and not that there's no risk of generating few attention but the point is...as of now...it's culture.

People especially people with little expertise generally fear sending feedback because they fear the developer isn't really interested and they have no way of replying.

I at least know the surface importance of CSS for example but when I contact a blog service provider about a theme problem that they provide and they come back with "IF you know CSS, then you can do this and that." - It makes me feel apprehensive already.

Imagine smaller developers who can't have the time to contact you all the time just to say thanks and then even more ignorant to the internet users who already feel scared with clicking any forms.

That inherent culture is just a recipe for little to no feedback.

Now i work with these people everyday.  They can email me.  They can pick up the phone and call me.  Some of them can even walk over and tap me on the shoulder.

See this is why I feel it's a different animal.

In a company setting it's a whole lot different from the software situation.

I don't have experience on that side either but if you hear stuff like 20 percent time concept then you realize, corporations or even small businesses are a different animal from feedback gathering on a blind and grasping scale.

It seems like it should be the same. It seems like it should even be the more conclusive evidence of the similarities (because as you said, these are people you work with)

...but for some reason it's not. I don't know why but...it's not.

If you throw a managerial or project management idea at a grand general group of internet users and even small FOSS groups, they fall... their just two different Voltrons

Imagine if you apply and switch the members of Vehicle Voltron into Lion Voltron....they just fall apart or they should.

Both of them are giant robots. Both of them are robots that transform by combining.

...but if you look at the specifics, Vehicle Voltron's team is organized for Land, Air and Sea while Lion Voltron's team is to guard and defend the planet.

I'm not sure if the analogy fits with this situation in general but at some point, I think it does. I think co-workers are a lot more dependent yet distant towards their company software. I even pissed a working girl once when I asked her what's the flaws of adapting OpenOffice insteaad of MS Office from her experience.

...and for some reason, you could hear in her tone that it's like I'm asking her to say something dirty and yet I'm merely asking her for her own experience and this isn't as a required job or anything. We were merely acquaintances talking.

In the end she threw out the fact that there was no seminar or introduction class and the topic ended there because she sounds so pissed off.

Can you imagine even a casual user who don't know OpenOffice on an internet forum reacting that badly towards a simple question?

It's just...I don't see the coin. I see the animals.

hehe, and i quote 'Too little and it's on the developer to make it easier to generate feedbacks.'

 

797

General Software Discussion / Re: Do user forums sometimes stop software from improving?

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 25, 2010, 12:26 AM »

A different question could be asked (not in this thread of course... Not hijacking intended) : How can a software developper make the best usage out of "user forum" to constantly improve his/her software (best and worst practices) ?

Yeah, that's why I was thinking of sharing the question via Quora.

Who else but but engineers and designers of large startups/corporations like Facebook/LinkedIn/etc have the greatest chances of experiencing and dealing with this in a unique way small developers have never even considered?

true, the only thing preventing the development process is the developer, but users can and do hinder the process by not providing feedback (ask any developer)

Well, this is a reverse issue in my opinion.

There's a difference between too much feedback overload and too little.

Too much and it's on the developer to filter it out.

Too little and it's on the developer to make it easier to generate feedbacks.

Just two different animals in my opinion.

Now the developers are aware that there is an issue, but as far as they can see, it's only affected 1 or 2 users so the incentive to act on it is much lower than it would be if all 1000 affected users contacted them about the issue.

The majority of users will probably also fall into the category of, well, users (and I'll put myself into that category in a lot of cases).  That is to say they will use the app, but they won't necessarily be terribly well educated about it, and this means that a significant proportion of posts will be about stuff that is already in the fine manual or adds nothing to the app (hey, when can I start skinning?, will you be implementing sound effects?, etc).

if nothing else this can make (high volume?) forums onerous to monitor (needles in the haystack...)

That's not to say that intelligent users don't make useful suggestions, but the fact is that people can and do use you're applications, but they almost never talk to you about it (if there's a bug, they'll tell all their friends what pos it is, and if it works well, they'll just use it and not say anything to anyone)

Finally, this is another different issue which deals with the conversational structure limits of forums as per my post here.

(Ok, I admit that thread doesn't have anything to do with this topic but I just want to get more people to reply to that.)

798

General Software Discussion / Re: Do user forums sometimes stop software from improving?

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 24, 2010, 10:50 PM »

No, it doesn't but just in case you might want to ask of this in other places that aren't forums. (I was thinking of copy pasting this thread into Quora but I was too lazy to ask you)

The only thing that can hinder software is the software developer himself.

If he's not prepared for the butt load of feedback or he feels too bothered by the negativity, that's pretty much all on him to read through what he can implement.

It's misrepresenting the passion of the users IMO to pass the problem to them.

If the community needs updating or the forum needs a new model or even if the developer can't handle the feedback anymore, he himself could alert the community or maybe give them a warning that if they can't self-police the content, he may not be able to implement the most desirable features.

Sure, he'll alienate users but in the end, isn't the point of the software or the product to release it in ways that satisfies the features he truly wants? The feedback is just there to give him ideas on how to further improve the software. This should go too for workarounds. In the end, if he can't even understand what workaround should be implemented natively and what shouldn't, then either he's out of touch with his community and he needs to work on that first...or he doesn't really want to listen to them after all and he just wants to cling to his software model without losing his customers/fans.

Let's look at the most common workaround for Linux for example. Ubuntu users will keep saying how Mint's way of not needing to install codecs by default is nothing special and it can easily be worked around by following or pushing a few buttons but if you are the Ubuntu developers, if it's really that easy of a work around, shouldn't it be obvious that it can be done by default and might help make it easier for people to switch to Linux?

There's no miracle thought that needs to go there unless it can potentially slow down the software and add bloat but it doesn't. So what's the hold up? If you're afraid of ruffling feathers why not create a separate edition with it pre-installed?

Instead Mint does the obvious and with that simple thought, Mint went from freedom to elegance. Not because that one feature changed Mint for many users or that Mint is perfect.

It did simply because it changed the culture and the expectations of what Mint is as a Linux distro and with that momentum the developer can use that pattern to hone and filter out what other problems or features may need to be improved upon to better serve the needs of it's users.

It's almost a waterfall method. That first approach of the developer will always help him in filtering out and deciding which points he will adopt from the community and which he will leave as a work around but it's all on him. On the top guy and if people aren't satisfied, well...that's his call. How will he retain his users but there shouldn't be anything blamed on the users themselves.

If someone doesn't like New Coke and they complained to you about it, that's not a risk. That's your users creating extra demand for Classic Coke. Be courageous in adopting work arounds. Go ahead and dare to ruin software by improving it. You always have the old model to get back to if things don't work out.

That said, as always, I know zero thing about programming much less software development so I'm just talking out of my a-hole.

799

General Software Discussion / Re: The Odds Are Increasing That Microsoft's Business Will Collapse

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 24, 2010, 09:08 PM »

One thing which I don't understand but I have seen numerous people be quite happy with is doing everything with smaller screens. I am surprised to see how many people are happy to watch movies on screens as small as those on an ipod touch.

It's not so much small but the age of the extremes.

People either want "big, clear, hi-def" or "small, portable, just so I can watch it"

Really the more interesting headline that no one wants to tackle but is really the only way to tackle this subject in detail is to ask: "Which fell first? Microsoft or America?"

There's too many parallels and metaphors that can be done with that subject right now but I haven't read anyone sinking their knowledge tooth into it.

800

Living Room / Re: The internet: Everything you ever need to know

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 24, 2010, 09:00 PM »

"Everything?"  

Edit: Sorry, I just recalled the Internet is for Porn song when I skimmed the article although porn was briefly mentioned.