When I use the Random Node feature, more often than not I arrive at a node which I don't have privileges to view. Whilst this is not a big issue, I suspect it comes from people in pmdev having access to all these prohibited nodes and not seeing the issue.

Either I'm rather unlucky with the random nodes I get served or there are a lot of prohibited nodes in the Monastery.

I've noticed an increasing number of spam users over the past few weeks: new accounts which don't post any nodes but put a link on their home node to their external site for SEO benefit. I wonder if a threshold for this facility should not be put in place such that it is unavailable to initiates? Either disallowing links in the Bio or just disallowing the Bio entirely would work.

Or maybe the spam links aren't considered that much of an issue, I don't know. Any thoughts?

In several places I have mentioned my surprise at how archaic this site looks and feels - I know that for those of us who value the content, the connection with other Perl people and the discussion, the look and feel is worth the effort. But what about those outside The Monastery? Perl is considered old-fashioned, irrelevant and redundant to many people...right or wrong that is the way it is. Having one of the primary recourses for the language looking outdated does nothing to promote Perl's rightful place as a meaningful part of today's technology.

In no way do I mean to question the amazing work that has been done bringing this community into being or the fabulous contributions that continue to be made.

In another thread marto suggested it was more than trivial to convert the site to being mobile friendly - IMHO, the first stage of converting a legacy website to something more modern. So I thought I'd take a look at what was really needed to make a change...for a bit of fun and to, perhaps, generate some useful discussion.

I went back a decade to a node, sv_upgrade error that was being discussed in November 2010 for no other reason than 10 years is a nice round number! I copied the HTML source, changed the existing image and script paths from relative to absolute, added a little CSS and a little Javascript and produced a quick and dirty mockup which is pretty much identical on desktop but behaves marginally better on mobile. Note that it's not a truly responsive page as it doesn't properly transition from narrow to wide screen width unless it is reloaded.

I made the minimum changes I could which involved:

• Adding a viewport meta tag
• Converting a couple of deprecated HTML attributes (width mainly) to CSS
• Adding a block of CSS and a single Javascript function
• Adding a table cell containing a hamburger menu image to use on mobile

Clearly this is just a conceptual idea - as The Monastery is built on a framework I have no idea what is involved in changing the source code that framework spits out and it would need much more then just a quick fix. However, from the comments I have seen scattered around, I'm not the only one who feels that this site no longer showcases Perl in the best way and any change in the right direction is probably a good thing.

If there is a move towards creating a responsive site, I am happy to contribute where I can although I am very much aware that my coding skills are very inferior to many others here. But I am eager to learn and to help.

I've just encountered an odd problem whereby the nodelets stopped part-way through. Looking at https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=11122359 the Nodelets only included the XP nodelet and the first half of the Approval Nodelet - it stopped just after the "moderation history" link. The rest of the nodelets were absent as was the page footer ("PerlMonks lovingly hand-crafted by Tim Vroom.", etc.). I had not been logged out, according to the rest of the page. To see if it was reproducible I opened the same page in a fresh tab and the nodelets all appeared as they usually do and the footer had returned.

Both requests would have probably been made at 13:27 BST (UTC +1) or so today.

I've never seen this before but it might, if related, shed more light on the intermittent 500s. HTH, either way.

Resepcted Monks,

Since past few days, I am not able to upvote any answers here at PerlMonks. I was able to upvote up until a few days ago, but it's been about 2 weeks, and I've checked at different times, upvote radio buttons do not show.

Many of the answers to the questions I asked were absolutely fantastic and the least I can do is upvote them. I've been referring to books and writing code, but the help offered here is far beyond imagination. It has been an eye opener to say the least and then it really feels bad that I cannot upvote. Please help me.

Today I am consistently seeing a Server Error message in Nodes To Consider where the keep/edit/reap/nada radio buttons would ordinarily be. LanX reports seeing the same.

The error reads like this:

Server Error (Error ID 4080294c3022)

An error has occurred. The site administrators have been notified of the problem and will likely soon fix it. We thank you, for you're patients.

but with the span also having style="color: #cc0000" being applied, so that line of text is in red. It is consistent - it appears to happen every time when visiting that page (although the Error ID changes each time). If I view the node under consideration itself then the radio buttons appear in the Approval Nodelet as usual.

<center> elements are being used in the divs with the class reputation. <center> has been rendered obsolete, deprecated in HTML 4 and XHTML 1.

Obsolete

This feature is obsolete. Although it may still work in some browsers, its use is discouraged since it could be removed at any time. Try to avoid using it.

- <center>: The Centered Text element (obsolete) on MDN web docs

Please remove the <center> elements in favor of using the CSS property text-align: center?

Edit: It is easier to restyle text-align: then to style the <center> tag.

I played around with some new code for the top bar and the menu. I removed the tables and used flex. It isn't perfect, but it might be a slight improvement.

Note:This, or something close to it, is what I originally posted. The code in the first one is different.

https://github.com/perlorg/www.pm.org/wiki/The-Meetings-Page

I propose that this be added to the links at the top of Perl News for 2 reason:

1. It's a living resource and a chance for more interaction virtually
2. To encourage its use so that it better accomplishes the its purpose described in #1

Further more, making the linked text clearly indicate the benefit of clicking the link (for PM organizers and virtual lurkers alike) would help. I have no suggestion for the wording.

Thank you.

I’m looking at the Best Nodes page. Sections for Best Nodes of the Day, Month, and Year have 10, 10, and 20 entries, respectively, as expected. But Best Nodes of the Week shows only 6 entries, numbered 5 to 10. Looks like something has gone wrong somewhere.

Thanks for looking,

Just thought you would like to know that the last hour of cb has not updated since Aug 05, 2020 at 12:55 EDT.

Reading Re^10: XS.c: loadable library and perl binaries are mismatched (got handshake key 0xc100000, needed 0xc180000) I was encouraged to confirm what rgren925 reported. I constructed a reply with about 120kB in it and used the Preview button to check it. All of it was rendered and there was no warning (that I could see) that it was over the size limit for posting. When it was subsequently submitted it still rendered fine and it was only on a further navigation to the same node that it did truncate to ~64kB as I expected.

This is not great from a UX perspective. The preview should either warn about the size or truncate it like the final submission would do or (ideally IMHO) both. The full text could still be retained in the textarea for ease of editing.

Davorg has posted a piece on LinkedIn (sorry, don't know how to link to it!) saying "Almost 7,800 unanswered 'perl' questions on StackOverflow. Can you help to answer some of them?" and giving the link https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/perl?tab=Unanswered. I am not surprised, as I have never found SO to be a helpful community. If we wish to drive Perl traffic to this site - I assume we do - might it be worth posting answers here & putting a link to the relevant node on SO?

Regards,

John Davies