Today, we did a fairly major restructuring of our database categories. Before, we only added one or, in rare cases, two; this time, however, we have added three new categories, and also split one up. Read one for the how and why, and also how you can help in finding misplaced stories.I ended my recent editorial on KDE vs. GNOME with the following paragraph:
“You can – I kid you not – even choose something else, besides KDE and GNOME! You can use Xfce, or if you prefer something more exotic, you can install things like E16, E17, ROX, or whatever other desktop environment.”
This made me think. On OSNews, we only had separate categories for KDE and GNOME; every other window manager or desktop environment for X and UNIX-like systems was put in the X category. This made little sense to me, and hence, we changed it around a bit.
The X category has been split up in two different categories: “X11“, which will deal with stories related to Xorg, Xfree86, Beryl, Compiz, Aiglx, and so on; all things related to the X server itself.
All other stories in that category will now be put into the new category “Window Managers“; here you will find stories on ROX, Blackbox, Enlightenment, FVWM, and so on. Basically, we split the X server from the window managers and desktop environments which run on top of these X servers.
We also “awarded” Xfce with its own database category. Seven years ago it might have made sense to share Xfce with all the other small window managers and desktop environments, but in this day and age, Xfce has proven to be a few steps ahead of all these. After KDE and GNOME, Xfce is probably the most used X environment.
Lastly, we created a category to deal specifically with OpenStep, GNUstep, and related items such as stories on NEXT. These are platforms in their own right, similar to Qt and Gtk+. We thought a proper database category would be in order.
How you can help
After such a massive restructure of the database, we usually spend days migrating stories around, finding older stories in the wrong categories, and so on. Even though Adam can do some database magic such as automatically moving all stories with “Xfce” in their titles to the Xfce category, many will still slip our attention. I am currently manually sifting through our database to fix older stories, but as you can imagine, this is a very tedious and time consuming task.
Hence, feel free to post in the comments here any stories you find that might be in the wrong category, specifically those concerning the new categories created (feel free to just post the story_id). We thank you in advance!
Hi,
so does this finally mean you can create a category for ReactOS too?
Edited 2007-03-01 16:39
Thanks a lot for the category!
If you had the option to filter categories, so that only the ones you were interested in would display.
Perhaps that would be a perk you could add for those who are paying for access
Edited 2007-03-01 16:39
If you have a hosting account and familiarity with HTML/PHP, you could probably put together a page with the desired categories embedded (using an RSS-to-html script).
I thought at first you were talking about Database categories: such as MySQL, Postgres, etc.
Then I figured out you meant _your_ database categories.
Sound like good changes, I second the motion on XFCE.
Lastly, I guess I’ll keep an eye out for the categories. I never really paid attention to them before!
Sound like good changes, I second the motion on XFCE.
And I’ll third it. It’s about time.
Your topic page still says “Mandrake, Lycoris”, shouldn’t that be ‘Mandriva’ now?
I changed the title. Hopefully that clears things up.
Beryl is a window manager. Why is it in the “X11” category?
Beryl is a window manager. Why is it in the “X11” category?
Because it and Compiz have a special relationship with Xgl and Aiglx.
When does ReactOS get its own category ?
It’s sad and unfair that many other (even minor) operating system got their own category, except ReactOS. The OSNews Team excused that adding new category means a lot of work and is a non-trivial work.
Elsewhere such (trivial) things can be done with a simple SQL query or using a function of the admin backend.
ReactOS is more often mentioned in news than most of other similar operating system projects, so it should deserve its own category as all other competitors have already.
I ReactOS icon had sent to Thom and OSNews general email address, and Thom answered back in summer 2006:
[…] I will keep your .gif in my inbox, in case we need it– if the 0.3.0 and up releases garner enough attention, you might stand a big chance. […]
ReactOS 0.3.0 was a success back in sept. 2006, and version 0.3.1 will hit the road in a few days.
Let’s hope the best, that ReactOS get what it deserves.
Edited 2007-03-01 19:56
It’s sad and unfair that many other (even minor) operating system got their own category, except ReactOS. The OSNews Team excused that adding new category means a lot of work and is a non-trivial work.
What right do you have to come barging in here placing demands on how we should run OUR website?
What would happen if I came into #reactos and demand they implement feature Xyz RIGHT NOW, just because they are adding lots of other features so it can’t be much work?
As it stands now, ReactOS will NOT be getting its own category, because I do not see what ReactOS has what MINIX, Visopsys, or whatever other smaller alternative does not have. Syllable and SkyOS got lucky, else they would NOT have had a category either.
Elsewhere such (trivial) things can be done with a simple SQL query or using a function of the admin backend.
Today’s additions was well worth a day’s work, my friend. You have NO IDEA how tedious it is to sift through our entire database, jotting down story_ids, and then manually changing the database category.
Let’s hope the best, that ReactOS get what it deserves.
I don’t know if you are part of ReactOS development crew, but if you are, you are REALLY doing ReactOS a disservice here, and I highly doubt ReactOS main devs appreciate what you are doing here.
I really don’t see how you can compare ReactOS to Minix or Visopsys. They’re alternative UNIX-based operating systems. Syllable and SkyOS are completely different architectures. SkyOS isn’t even open source. ReactOS is a Windows XP/2003 clone with more users and news then all those OSs *combined*.
Go on Google Trends and compare ReactOS with even OSes like NetBSD or OpenBSD. You’ll find that in some months, queries for ReactOS were *Above* both those 2 very well known BSD derivatives. You’ll also notice SkyOS doesn’t even get shown anymore after August 2006 (IIRC).
I’m not going to insult you or say the features weren’t added and I disagree with the way frik85 put things, but I also respectfully disagree with your decision — in the end, having 1 category will allow you to be better categorize ROS news, and since there’s almost an article a week, I think that would be a good idea.
Best regards,
Alex Ionescu
You have NO IDEA how tedious it is to sift through our entire database, jotting down story_ids, and then manually changing the database category.
Not to raise the ire of a great team, but it should have been as simple as:
Update STORY_TABLE set CAT_ID = NEWID where CAT_ID in (LIST,OF,OLD,IDS)
That assumes a certain level of normalization.
And you think finding all the correct stories happens magically?
Just doing a search for “Xfce”– about half of them are false positives. We restrict DB magic to title search only, but that is way too narrow to cover every story.
When you run a 200000+ pageviews-a-day website, you cannot afford to play around your database.
Got it. It wasn’t just a matter of consolidating categories, or switching categories. Sorry, I understand now.
[EDIT: Spellng error]
Edited 2007-03-01 21:06
I can personally attest, as the one writing the queries, that is it not that easy.
When you have to find stories about Rox file manager, remember than “LIKE ‘%rox%'” returns every match of Matrox too. And “LIKE ‘% rox %'” doesn’t capture it all, because occurances like “Rox.” don’t match.
Creating DB categories is easy. Actually populating them properly is not.
I have already searched through the OSNews Database for ReactOS news entries.
A simple script or even a short regex string would be enough to convert the news-id list into a SQL-query.
I have “attached” the news-id list for all ReactOS news-id’s to the following comment:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17399&comment_id=217713
That means for the technical point of view, no barrier prevents a “ReactOS” category, afaik.
Of course, after all, the decision if there will be a “ReactOS” category or not behooves by the OSNews.com team.
We discussed it. We have, for some time, planned on introducing a ReactOS category later, when there was a little more news in our archive. That said, we heard you, we reviewed our content, and we’re creating the category now. It’ll be available shortly. As in, now.
You do owe me a feature now, though
.
Thanks for the quick replies and doing the task!
You do owe me a feature now, though
okay
my respect to you & osnews.com staff
First, my comment was not meant to be rude or something like that.
… it was a simple question (plus some background info) which usually would deserve a neutral answer.
What right do you have to come barging in here placing demands on how we should run OUR website?
We deal with it and like constructive criticism as well as ideas and suggestions. Reactos.org offer several ways for our community to take part (forums, mailing lists, irc channels, wiki, etc.).
As it stands now, ReactOS will NOT be getting its own category, because I do not see what ReactOS has what MINIX, Visopsys, or whatever other smaller alternative does not have. Syllable and SkyOS got lucky, else they would NOT have had a category either.
As Alex Ionescu already pointed out, ReactOS is already well known around the world.
You have NO IDEA how tedious it is to sift through our entire database, jotting down story_ids, and then manually changing the database category.
Don’t get me wrong, but as a coder that know how to deal with a database, I would simply write a script and/or sql-queries (or use a proper interface) for such tasks.
The longer ReactOS don’t has its own category the longer it will take to move all entries in future.
I have saved you a lot of work, as I am forgiving I have simple done the task myself. (see below)
I don’t know if you are part of ReactOS development crew, but […]
I am one of the ReactOS devs and I am additionally admin of the ReactOS website.
But again don’t get me wrong, I only want the best for our project, ReactOS.
We had even hear people laughing about that (for us) sad fact ReactOS has not its own category on OSNews but in contrary more news entries than many others.
Hence, feel free to post in the comments here any stories you find that might be in the wrong category, specifically those concerning the new categories created (feel free to just post the story_id). We thank you in advance!
There you go …
ReactOS news on OSNews – list of all news id’s:
178
2053
2532
2711
3159
4006
4246
4396
4790
5184
5299
5469
5691
5795
6011
6118
6242
6780
6869
7175
7515
7688
8266
8830
8941
9324
10250
11627
12036
12464
12874
13073
13450
13467
13510
13750
13937
14911
14932
15175
15306
15489
15576
15644
15673
15687
16499
16534
16592
16637
16705
16716
16834
16888
17144
17146
17236
17396
Best regards,
Klemens Friedl
[edit: added fullname at the end of the comment]
Edited 2007-03-01 21:16
Hi Thom,
this is Aleksey from ReactOS project. Klemens works on RosCMS and reactos.org website. I agree that his way of writing this message, when noone owes anyone, was a bit harsh.
As for features – I’m quite used to people demanding features, it happens every day, and unfortunately can’t be stopped – it only increases from day to day.
As for ReactOS & category, well, your comparation really does not make a lot of sense (I take it that you was a bit mad at him when writing the reply
). I asked Klemens to provide a list of news-ids, so that they could be used during article recategorization, if you decide to make a category for ros.
Also, we have a developer who offered to spend a day or two with you in order to fix the situation with the database, so if help is needed – let me know. With time, since osnews.com is growing, even more stuff will be needed to put in, and having this hassle everytime would be pretty much time consuming.
Thanks,
Aleksey Bragin.
Enough, everybody and their mother can complain why their particular OS/Project/Library/Language doesn’t get its own category. Talk like that just hurts the item in question, makes it look juvenile. I’ll wager this comment wasn’t from the ReactOS team, they seem more mature than that.
{EDIT: I lost the wager!]
Edited 2007-03-01 21:08
Seriously tags are the perfect solution here, allowing articles to be in multiple categories – even allowing users to suggest them!
I know it could be a lot of work to retro-fit them, since I did with my site .. but it is well worth it, and will avoid you having to juggle things around in the future. For example if a ReactOS category were to be created in the future. (On which I have no preference either way!)
Interesting thought. OSNews 4 supports tags for news stories, but only one per story, because it will be used for logical grouping, for something like Macworld ’07 or WinHEC 08.
I’ve toyed with adding user-based tags, but not implemented it. If at some point, we feel it necessary, we can add them later.
Only one tag ? I doubt most stories fit into just one. Like the reactos code review would be “microsoft” “reactos” and “reverse engineering.”
Haiku techtalk at google could be “Haiku” “Google” “Google techtalk” ans possibly “Be” because of JLG and other former Be developers.
No, these tags are not for the organic, arbitrary tagging that apps like Gmail do. This is just for logical grouping from an editorial standpoint.
I get what you mean, but most stories won’t have a tag – think of them more as a “grouping” than a tag.
ROX isn’t a Window Manager, it’s a File Manager.