Calling All Bugs

February 16, 2005 11:32 PM

This is the Ask MetaFilter is totally broken bucket. Please leave all refuse here, and I'll do my best to fix it in the next 24 hours. I just made the new posting page live and will try and get everything up and running before I got to sleep in a couple hours, but I'm sure I'll miss a lot. Help me here.
posted by mathowie (staff) to Bugs at 11:32 PM (31 comments total)

- new posting page has a title area, a new extended area for more inside, tags, and a category picker. Not all those things work on the published website end of things yet.

- ask mefi rss feed is now title aware and shows the extended section in the feed
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:33 PM on February 16, 2005

I am trying to ask a question, when I go to preview, it comes up with:

Attribute validation error for tag cfoutput. The value of the attribute query, which is currently "categories", is invalid.

Please try the following:

* Enable Robust Exception Information to provide greater detail about the source of errors. In the Administrator, click Debugging & Logging > Debugging Settings, and select the Robust Exception Information option.
* Check the ColdFusion documentation to verify that you are using the correct syntax.
* Search the Knowledge Base to find a solution to your problem.
posted by Quartermass at 11:45 PM on February 16, 2005

- tags work now
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:54 PM on February 16, 2005

Quartermass, you forgot to pick a category. I need to put some error checking into that, but if you select one, it will work.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:56 PM on February 16, 2005

Ahh, merci beaucoup! Didn't even notice it.
posted by Quartermass at 12:06 AM on February 17, 2005

- error checking added, requring a title, a category, and some tags applied before the post button will appear.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:10 AM on February 17, 2005

(this is freaking awesome Matt!!)
posted by Quartermass at 12:16 AM on February 17, 2005

Is there a time-delay on the tags page? Because I tagged my posts, but they're not showing up on the all-tags page, though clicking on the tag name in the post itself works okay.

Thanks, Matt. This is great stuff.
posted by Asparagirl at 12:25 AM on February 17, 2005

That is, new tags (like Japan or webdevelopment) aren't showing up on the all-tags page. Existing tags are okay, I think.
posted by Asparagirl at 12:28 AM on February 17, 2005

- categories work on thread pages, will be added to the front page once all the questions on the page have a category assigned.

Tomorrow I'll add tags to the category pages, and make all the categories available on the main archives, and use tags on the archives page as well.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:32 AM on February 17, 2005

the tag listings are only generated once an hour, so they're not instant. I'll change that to like 10-15 minutes or so.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:33 AM on February 17, 2005

new posting page has a title area, a new extended area for more inside, tags, and a category picker

Thanks for the late Valentine's Day presents!

MeFi <3 Matt
posted by grouse at 1:46 AM on February 17, 2005

Just as a note to the Ask MeFi RSS feed users at xqse.com/feeds/askmefi.php that you will have to use the feed at http://ask.metafilter.com/rss.xml instead now. Since Matt has improved the feed so much you no longer need mine. I asked bloglines to change it at their side so the 70-odd subscribers there should automagically switch over.

If you have no idea what I just said please ignore me, plenty of people do that with great success.
posted by sebas at 2:43 AM on February 17, 2005

Argh, I posted a question too recently, so I can't even see the new post form. This isn't a thread for praise, but I'm doing it anyways: Thanks for all your work this last week or two, Matt. It sounds like it's been tedious and dangerous, but it's much appreciated!
posted by Plutor at 4:36 AM on February 17, 2005

Ah, right. More inside is added automatically now. But doesn't show on preview or explicitly mention the fact on the new post page.

After viewing the preview, I went back and added a "more inside", posted, and now post reads along the lines of reads:

Question in brief [more inside] [more inside]

Of course, now I've asked a question, I'll have to wait a week to confirm that there's no mention of this on the posting page, but its certainly the case with the preview page.
posted by davehat at 4:58 AM on February 17, 2005

Looking at the paged view for AskMe questions you answered, looking at next page for results just pastes the next 50 on the bottom instead of only showing the next 50. The improvements look great by the way. Thanks Matt.
posted by ALongDecember at 5:02 AM on February 17, 2005

I may be missing something here, but how does one post anonymously via the new post form? If I remember correctly it was a radiobutton option on the old post form.
posted by killdevil at 6:11 AM on February 17, 2005

I'd change the auto-added [more inside] text to the shorthand [+] and include something on the posting page to let people know how it's going to show up until such a time as people are used to how it works.
posted by jessamyn at 6:17 AM on February 17, 2005

I haven't been able to login to Ask Metafilter for two days. I can get into MeFi and MeTa no problem. AskMe just takes me back to its front page when I try to login. Tried logging off, emptying my cache and deleting cookies, still no go. Firefox 1.0 (Works OK in IE)
posted by marxchivist at 6:36 AM on February 17, 2005

So many nice new ponies as of late. Thanks Matt.
posted by caddis at 6:40 AM on February 17, 2005

I'd like to report a bug on my part. I mis-tagged one of my (two) questions; i.e. I gave it the same tags as my other question. They are completely unrelated.

There's no way for me to fix it as of now. Will there be a way for us to re-tag our questions if we screw up?

Also, thanks Matt!
posted by schustafa at 6:43 AM on February 17, 2005

My DVD+R tag is broken. I know why it's broken, and I realise that the best to make tags with + sign to work is to add stuff appearing on each side of the + to the tag list too. I guess if you add a R to the tag list for the question, it'll work.
posted by riffola at 6:49 AM on February 17, 2005

I can't wait until the legendary "Categories/Keywords" fakeout link actually connects to something.
posted by smackfu at 6:56 AM on February 17, 2005

When I put the RSS feed into my aggregator (Sharpreader), it tells me "Error parsing RSS XML: Not a valid xml document: The XML declaration is unexpected. Line 2, position 3." Then it points me to validate the feed here.

Is my aggregator too picky?
posted by bDiddy at 7:43 AM on February 17, 2005

Jessamyn said:

I'd change the auto-added [more inside] text to the shorthand [+]


Please don't! [More inside...] is so much easier to understand and I've already been totally frightened by the profusion of ticks appearing, which supposedly indicates when a question has been answered but is a little confusing to the uninitiated.

The simple, humble words "More inside..." explain perfectly well what is going on, whereas a little plus symbol just adds to the baffling iconography. Thanks!
posted by skylar at 8:20 AM on February 17, 2005

IMO, AskMe titles would be better if phrased in the form of a question. And not jokey.
posted by smackfu at 8:20 AM on February 17, 2005

Question about a new hard drive in a PowerBook is categorized under "health"?
posted by Dean King at 8:30 AM on February 17, 2005

Three of the last five questions posted on AskMe indicate that users don't yet understand they don't have to include their own [+] or (more). Maybe change the wording on the AskMe a Question page to make it more obvious?
posted by cactus at 10:34 AM on February 17, 2005

I have some questions that were put under "health" that aren't, and I didn't do it.
Ditto, on a question asked a long time ago.
posted by rhapsodie at 11:59 AM on February 17, 2005

Double Ditto.
posted by sciurus at 1:20 PM on February 17, 2005

health

Me too. Seems like all my old AskMe Questions are listed as Health.
posted by anastasiav at 1:27 PM on February 17, 2005