Thanks Waleed. We owe the beautiful

Thanks Waleed.

We owe the beautiful new design to our wonderful designer Alan of http://www.qreate.it . His talents and a few of my own ideas have combined to make a very elegant looking site.

You will notice that we are allowing + and - voting now. No more bury option. And unlike digg we will show you the sum of all votes negative and positive. So if a story has 10 positive votes and 3 negative votes you will see the total of 7. Once the a configurable threshold is met the story will be promoted from the upcoming queue to the homepage and if it is then voted down past another threshold it will drop off the homepage.

A new feature automatically awards highly active members of the community with abuse and spam moderating privileges. So spam will disappear faster especially while I am asleep.

But the best feature is that it is based of Drupal and Tony Mobily's Drigg and Simple karma modules (all GPLed software) so any programmers out there in our readship can help improve the site by bug testing and fixing and by adding features.

This is the first and only site to be driven by drigg which is a new and better democratic CMS than pligg.

All I can say is I'm very excited.

*sigh* No matter what you do,

*sigh*

No matter what you do, someone will always complain. While I am interested in constructive criticism, your negativity has turned me off. I don't work long hours for scraps just to be kicked by someone who wants to be my master. Change your attitude or prepare to be ignored.

First of all: I said very clearly in the blurb "It's not done yet"!!! This is a SNEAK PEEK!!!

"Can we stop with the silly names that rhythm[sic] with digg."

No. The word "Drigg" is a combination of the CMS called Drupal (Dr) and the features made famous on Digg (igg). Hence: Drigg. It's only the name of a module not the site. So get over it.

"Advertising..."

Blah blah blah. If you want this site to exist without paid membership there WILL be advertising. You obviously do not work in the industry or you would know like we do that other models don't work for websites of our scale. We've tried getting everything including donations in the past and they don't work. FSM (which currently has twice FSD's traffic) gets a $5 donation once a (let's be generous) month. Not that we at FSM don't appreciate every single cent that is donated, but that wouldn't even pay for a dial-up net connection so I could work on the site.

The more money we can make from advertising: a) the better hosting we can afford; b) the better features we can afford to add; c) the better graphic design we can afford to implement.

If you want a site with no advertising either use adblocker or go make your own site. I already changed the colour of the ads on the left so they would not get confused with the content. The content is specifically on the different coloured back ground to give it focus. I'm not going to discuss ads any further. They are staying.

I won't bother replying to the rest of your highly subjective and negatively worded/phrased opinions except to say:

If you accidentally vote something up or down you can currently reverse your vote. You can't currently take back/neutralise your vote yet but you can swap your vote from a + to a -. In the screen shot you will see greyed out voting buttons. They are the ones that have been selected already. The other button is still coloured because you can still select it. We are working on a better way of showing what you have voted for but we are trying to get more of the functionality working than the looks because the looks are pointless if it doesn't work.

As for "scoops" and "made famous": they are default terms Tony put in because FSDaily is not the only site that will be using Drigg. I was planning on changing "scoops" to "stories" which is why the submit button says "Submit a story" but I think I'll leave "made famous" just because _I_feel_like_it_.

Do you have anything positive to say about all our hard work? Tony worked tirelessly for over a month building a free software implementation of the basic digg feature set; that's not including the work he did building Simple Karma in the first place which drigg is based upon. We have just spent the past week working long hours to get it looking nice and we're still not done and the only positive thing you can say is that we now have up and down voting. Well Thanks.

Just for future reference: negative people giving opinionated criticism won't get very far with me. If you have any constructive criticism that you wish to phrase positively, or if you wish to lend an actual hand, send me an email (dave@ this site's domain name). Otherwise I will just use my vote to mod you down.

*sigh* Can we stop with the

*sigh*

Can we stop with the silly names that rhythm with digg. Pligg, and now Drigg? O__O I know there is a module in Drupal called User points, perhaps this can be Points, Post Points, or Node Points..... How how about *kidding* Tnd... Tnd's not Digg ;)

I also have some other issues :D

Advertising shouldn't appear on the left, or above the articles. Left is more important than right, top more important than bottom, and with this placement it's doing both. Which tells me, these ads are more important than the stories. Seriously I hope this isn't the view of those running the site.

Switching the contrast for the most important stories, deemphasis the top stories too much. Furthermore they move too far down the page, and could be grouped with tabs.

Submit a story is 'Way too emphasized". More stories come with more users, not more emphasized placement. If anything should be more emphasized it's comments.

These postings are not 'Created' by the users. We're not deities, and often not even writers of the story submitted.

Each post takes up too much vertical space, and not enough story titles can fit on a page. 2 articles? Seriously? Also Made famous? Famous? Seriously? When there are about 100 times the number of visitors maybe will it be famous. How about "Published". The mark as links can merge into a menu? The user photo can get smaller, the focus is on the story.

The number of votes is important, but NOT as important as it's been made. The most important information is in this order; the title of the article, the description, then the votes, and comments, person submitted, reads. Category is only important on the homepage/landing page. Tags are not important until the detail page, and even then they are mainly just useful for searching, or if there is another means of navigating.

The voting buttons should be further apart as to avoid possible accidental clicks, or else offer a way of correcting a mistake if made.

Published Scoops? Scoops? How about "Published News", "Published Posts", "Published Articles". What's with the slang? Also "upcoming", and "archive" are too hidden this should be made more important, almost equal to "published"

Furthermore the whole gradient look is arbitrary, as are the colors. These dynamic bright areas of color; Dark green, Light green, yellow, and red. It this a bag of assorted bell peppers? Small highlights of color can give more meaning. Color coded categories for example. The color green for plus and red for negative voting is good. It makes sense. Green in the menu, and background do not. Free software isn't "green", it's all colors.

The logo for Free Software daily isn't interesting. There are a billion logos with swooshy circles.

The addition of functionality to add and subtract to votes to the story is a good one. We're still absent a language for these values though... Points, mods, weight, energy, power, votes, peeps, hands... whats common these days? votes is too democratic...

Also, advertising on this site isn't ideal... It's going be be impossible to avoid non-free software advertising with it, it's also supporting Google, and Adsense, which isn't free software. What's the challenge with running this on the same model as Wikipedia? or maybe a new model...

Oh really braydon?!? Just looking

Oh really braydon?!? Just looking at your submissions so far, it's not like you have your own agenda. Submit much of your own work? Of course you do. 5 for 5. So are you here to help this site/community out or just drive traffic to your site? The latter me thinks.

And looking at your site: http://www.interfce.com I am forced to reply with: WHAT A POS!

What were you thinking? You came on to this site and said: "Left is more important than right" but on YOUR SITE there is nothing but gray space from the left edge to way past the middle of the screen when viewed on my widescreen using FF. So if the most important stuff is on the left, and on your site the left is just gray space... what does that say about your site? Nothing important? And there was really nothing interesting about the content on the right either.

People who build s**t websites shouldn't throw flames!

Wow! Talk about an effing moron. LMAO

Well you can actually go right

Well you can actually go right now and look at http://www.drigg.org and have a little look and a play around. It is a default installation of Drupal + Simple Karma + Drigg.

As for resource hogging it is hard for me to say as I am in Nicaragua and have a dubious connection. Tony says it runs fast for him and he's in Australia. So YMMV. :)

Any timeframe? I can't wait!

Any timeframe? I can't wait!

Jimbob, you have contradicted

Jimbob,
you have contradicted yourself. You say there is nothing that interesting with the content of http://interfce.com, yet you have voted for the following published stories:
http://www.fsdaily.com/Philosophy/The_philosophy_of_Gnu_puts_users_in_th...
http://www.fsdaily.com/Philosophy/What_makes_a_software_campaign_good/
http://www.fsdaily.com/Legal/Audio_Richard_Stallman_Copyright_vs_Communi...

even one of the unpublished ones:
http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/GIMP_Alterative_Interaction_User_Interfac...

Greengrass,
The thought has come to my mind. However I wouldn't want to create a free software digg style site. Merging is often more important than branching, branching has to be able to happen for that to happen though. A free culture site, which would include free software, seems of interest. This could range to music, video, art, etc. I have not found one of those that has a voting system. Furthermore the design of digg, a site this site, Drigg, and Pligg, are based on is designed in a non-free software world, where sharing of the software isn't encouraged. It's very possible that that same design might not work as well in a free software environment. What's the point of having user pages, etc, if each user can have their own version of the site?

Dave,
You have also contridicted yourself.

Here you claim the site design is "elegant":
"We owe the beautiful new design to our wonderful designer Alan of http://www.qreate.it . His talents and a few of my own ideas have combined to make a very elegant looking site."

Here you state that functionality has been primary concern and not design:
"We are working on a better way of showing what you have voted for but we are trying to get more of the functionality working than the looks because the looks are pointless if it doesn't work."

Here you claim that the site's design is not good:
"The more money we can make from advertising: a) the better hosting we can afford; b) the better features we can afford to add; c) the better graphic design we can afford to implement."

As for the advertising sponsor Adsense:

It would be better to have 100% free software advertising than to support non-free software service such as Adsense.

Here you agree you would prefer free software advertising:
"Nobody, AFAIK, offers a non-proprietary ad service or ad filter. If Google offered it, I would go for it."
(http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/FSDaily_supports_community/)

And you admit that there is a problem with Google Adsense:
"I would have said we say no to proprietary ads but then I would have to get someone just to answer all of the emails reporting proprietary ads AND I would run out of filters in Adsense in days, if not, hours. They only let you block a certain number of competitors domain names. So... I drew the line at MS ads... easy to identify only a few domains to block and makes the ads look so much less offensive not seeing anti-Linux and OOo ads there. The other thing is the "We say no to MS" is a reaction to all those sites that don't... like digg."
(http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/FSDaily_supports_community/)

I don't know any services that offer this kind of control over advertising. I'm not sure what the solution is. It would require some deeper analysis, and experience with advertising. Perhaps the community can raise some examples of possible users of a free software advertising service, and or other sites that have interesting models. And or to provide detailed list negative aspects of Google Adsense.

The placement of the advertising on Free Software Daily is different than the common placements on other like websites. Digg.com, Reddit, and Slashdot, all have a standard and similar advertising placements. The advertising system perhaps should be different on Free Software Daily, but the placement shouldn't. These other websites have come to an agreement, and for good reasons. They have placed to be important, but not too important.

No I didn't. You must be smoking

No I didn't. You must be smoking something. On your bike troll

We are aiming for only a few days.

We are aiming for only a few days. But problems occur, I've been around long enough to know that. :) Definitely in the next couple of weeks.

Should be an early xmas present.

Hold it! I was so distracted there

Hold it! I was so distracted there by braydon's braying that I forgot to express my delight in the site's new look.

I can see it is still not quite there from the shot: you have testing tags shown in the first story, you have what appear to be admin only spam reporting links beneath the stories. There are some inconsistencies (eg. scoops vs stories), but I can see where you are headed.

I really like the color scheme! I loathe these very light color schemes that all the web 2.0 sites have been using, so this will be a welcome relief. I like the gradients and the styles of buttons and bars you are using.

And I am looking forward to being able to make my buries count - it has been annoying not being able to bury the spam that appears here and there.

I am very excited too.

Thank you all so much for your

Thank you all so much for your positive feedback. I'm glad to have so many positive responses.

Jimbob: yes we are still tying up loose ends at the moment. There are some issues with drigg itself that Tony and our good friend Anthony Taylor are seeing to as well.

Not long to go [fingers crossed]

Simply an awsome job

Compared to pligg which i am using at the moment drigg looks to be what i required all along, pligg is very limited feature wise with very limited to no modules or forum integration available. Drupal on the other hand is a massive CMS system with lots of available addon's and contributors that will fit my sites requirements perfectly.

I had previously tried to use drupal with the vote up down mod but it was not what i required foricung me to use pligg to begin with. I also read that drigg will allow importing of my exisiting pligg site which is really neat.

fsdaily.com works beautifully and seems a pretty speedy, pligg can be a resource hog most of the time. The theme you guys have made is pretty cool also.

All round a big thankyou for this great site and also the work you put into drigg, i cannot wait to move my pligg site for testing and hopefully to a live enviroment usng drigg.

Keep up the good work guys

hmm

I can't seem to get the new site to remember to keep me logged in half the time