Սարեանը համակարգչային ուղղուածութեամբ յղումների համախմբման եւ քննարկման համայնք է։
Սարեանը աշխատում է Lobsters համայնքի
ծրագրի հիման վրայ եւ ելատեքստը (code֊ը)
գտնւում է GitHub֊ում։
Սարեանի համահիմնադիրներն են ցանցառները, իսկ
CEO֊ն վարչապետն է Անդրանիկ
Վարդանեանը։
Առողջ համայնք խրախուսելու համար Սարեանը (ինչպէս նաեւ Lobsters֊ը) ունի հետեւեալ առանձնայատկութիւնները՝
Յղումներ կամ պատմութիւններ գրառելիս պէտք է անպայման պիտակաւորել։ Գոյութիւն ունեն նախասահմանուած պիտակներ։
Օգտատէրերը կարող են օգտագործել զտիչը՝ կայքում գրառումները պիտակներով զտուած ընթերցելու համար կամ հետեւել համապատասխան պիտակաւորուած գրառումներին՝ հոսքով (օր՝ անվտանգութիւն.rss ; տես RSS հոսքեր), նոյնիսկ հնարաւոր է հետեւել պիտակների համադրութիւնով (օր՝ ios,mac.rss)։
Բոլոր օգտատէրերը լռելեան տեսնում են բոլոր գրառումները։
Պիտակաւորման համակարգը ունի երեք նպատակ.
Պիտակները ապահովում էն կայքի ցանկալի բովանդակութիւնը՝ թոյլ տալով միայն նախապէս սահմանուած պիտակների ցանկ։ Նախասահամանուած պիտակները ներկայացնում են այն, ինչ կայքի օգտատէրերի մեծ մասը ցանկանում են կարդալ։ Ուստի այն բովանդակութիւնը, որը չի համապատասխանում պիտակներին, ամենայն հաւանականութեամբ չպէտք է գրառուի Սարեանում։
Պիտակները նպաստում են քննարկման։ Առանձին ֆորումներում JavaScript ծրագրաւորողը հաւանաբար կը բաժանորդագրուի JavaScript ֆորումներին եւ երբէք չի տեսնի Python֊ի մասին գրառումներ, ինչպէս նաեւ Python ծրագրաւորողը չի իմանայ JavaScript֊ի նորութիւնները, չնայած նրանք կարող են իրար օգտակար բան ասել դրա մասին։ Գուցէ գրառումը մի Python֊ի գրադարանի մասին է, որն անում է նոյնը, ինչ այդ JavaScript ծրագրաւորողի ստեղծած գրադարանը։ Սարեանում, սակայն, այդ գրառումը կը պիտակաւորուի python֊ով եւ կերեւայ բոլորին՝ խրախուսելով JavaScript ծրագրաւորողին կարդալ եւ մեկաբանել։ Իհարկէ, եթէ JavaScript ծրագրաւորողին բնաւ դուր չի եկել Python֊ը, ապա այն հնարաւոր է զտել։
Պիտակները համախմբում են համայնքը։ Յաճախ գրառումները պարունակում են քննարկումներ մէկից աւել թեմայի շուրջ, սակայն երեւում են մէկ դասի/ֆորումի մէջ՝ սահմանափակելով բացայայտումը։ Այսպիսով քննարկումները մնում են առանձին եւ օգտուողները հազուադէպ են շփւում իրար հետ։ Սարեանում, սակայն, գրառումները կարող են ունենալ մի քանի պիտակ եւ բոլոր օգտուողները կը տեսնեն պատմութեան մասին քննարկումները մէկ վայրում։
Creating new tags and retiring old tags is done by the community by submitting, discussing, and voting on meta-tagged requests about them, and these events are logged (since 2018-04). To propose a tag, post a meta thread with the name and description. Explain the scope, list existing stories that should have been tagged, make a case for why people would want to specifically filter it out, and justify the increased complexity for submitters and mods.
Lobsters is focused pretty narrowly on computing; tags like art don't imply every piece of art is on-topic. Some rules of thumb for great stories to submit: Will this improve the reader's next program? Will it deepen their understanding of their last program? Will it be more interesting in five or ten years?
Some things that are off-topic here but popular on larger, similar sites: entrepreneurship, management, news about companies that employ a lot of programmers, investing, world events, anthropology, self-help, personal productivity systems, last-resort customer service requests via public shaming, "I wanted to see what this site's amazing users think about this off-topic thing", and defining the single morally correct economic and political system for the entire world when we can't even settle tabs vs. spaces.
The full user tree is public and each user's profile shows who invited them. This provides some degree of accountability and helps identify voting rings.
Invitations are used as a mechanism for spam-control, to slow registrations to a pace we can acculturate (more below) and to encourage users to be nice, not to make the Lobsters userbase an elite club. Users are considered "new" for their first 0 days, and their usernames appear in green. New users can't send invites, submit links to domains we haven't seen submitted before, flag stories and comments, suggest edits to story titles and tags, resubmit links that have been seen before, or
The quickest way to receive an invitation is to talk to someone you recognize from the site. If you wrote a link that was posted, please reach out in chat, we'd love to have you join the discussion. Finally, if you can't find anyone you know in the invitation tree and didn't author something posted to the site, you can request an invite.
There's no limit on how many invitations a user can send (though we might at some point, to manage growth). There's also no official vetting process for new users, each user is responsible for inviting people they believe will contribute positively to Lobsters. When accounts are banned for spam, sockpuppeting, or other abuse, moderators will consider disabling their inviter's ability to send invitations or, rarely, also ban them.
All story and comment ranking on this site comes from user activity. All users have equal votes, with no special priorities or penalties for specific users or domains. Moderators have no ability to raise or lower the rankings of stories or comments (besides voting like any user). Per-tag hotness modifiers affect all stories with those tags, but these modifiers (and changes to them) are public. Domains used for marketing analytics are banned and tracking parameters are removed from links (look for TRACKING_DOMAINS and utm_ in story.rb).
Users can flag stories and comments when there's a serious problem that needs moderator attention; two flags are needed to add the story or comment to the moderation queue. Users must reach 50 karma to flag. To guide usage and head off distracting meta conversations ("Why was this flagged!?", etc), flagging requires selecting from a preset list of reasons.
For stories, these are: "Off-topic" for stories that are not about computing; "Already Posted" for duplicate submissions and links that elaborate on or responses to a thread that's less than a week old (see merging); and "Broken Link" for links that 404, 500, or present a paywall; "Spam" for links that promote a commercial service.
For comments, these are: "Off-topic" for drifting into meta or topics that aren't related to the story; "Me-too" when a comment doesn't add new information, typically a single sentence of appreciation, agreement, or humor; "Troll" for derailing conversations into classic arguments, well-intentioned or not; "Unkind" when uncharitable, insulting, or dismissive; and "Spam" for promoting commercial services.
Less than 1% of stories or comments get flagged, and users are not automatically punished by flags. Users whose stories or comments are getting flagged significantly more often are strongly encouraged to talk to mods about what's not working. (Please don't use flagging to try to push down topics or people you don't like; click "hide" on the story and move on rather than clutter up the mod dashboard with false alarms.)
All moderator actions on this site are visible to everyone and the identities of those moderators are public. While the individual actions of a moderator may cause debate, there should be no question about if an action happened or who is responsible.
If users are disruptive enough to warrant banning, they will be banned absolutely, given notice of their banning, and their disabled user profile will indicate which moderator banned them and why. There will be no shadow banning or other secret moderation actions.
The source code to this site and its provisioning and deployment are made available under a 3-clause BSD license for viewing, auditing, forking, or contributing to. The codebase is used to run a dozen or so sister sites (that we know of) and we keep a list; please get in touch if you've launched one.
The Lobsters community is in a sweet spot that it's large enough to be worth asking questions about and small enough the answers make sense. We have some basic stats available, and Peter is happy to run queries against the database and Rails/MySQL/nginx logs (but not write them for you), as long as they don't reveal personal info like IPs, browsing, and voting or create “worst-of” leaderboards celebrating most-flagged users/comments/stories. If you're an academic researcher, please be like MIT, not like UChicago secretly experimenting on maintainers without IRB review.
If you dislike the content or moderation policies here, you may prefer Y Combinator News, r/programming, Slashdot, Tilde News, or comp.*. Or you could use our codebase to start your own site.
Mailing list mode can be enabled per-user to receive all new stories (including their plain-text content as fetched and extracted by Diffbot) and user comments as e-mails, mirroring discussion threads offline. This makes it easy and efficient to read new stories as well as keep track of new comments on old threads or stories, just like technical mailing lists or Usenet of yore. Each user is assigned a private mailing list address at this domain which allows them to reply to stories or comments directly in their e-mail client. These e-mails are then converted and submitted to the website as comments, just as if the comment was posted through a web browser.
Private messaging enables users to communicate privately without having to publicly disclose an e-mail address, and users can receive e-mail and Pushover notifications of new private messages.
Responsive design enhances functionality on smaller screens such as phones and tablets without having to use a separate URL, 3rd party (often read-only) websites, or mobile apps.
Integrated search engine covers all submitted stories and comments, including full-text caches of all submitted story contents. Searching for a keyword will often bring up relevant stories that don't even mention that keyword in the URL or title.
Story merging collects comments on a topic that would otherwise fragment across multiple stories. This keeps the front page from being overwhelmed by a single topic and the discussion together for those interested (or so disinterested they'd prefer to hide it). Moderators merge stories on the same topic submitted within a week. Here's a small and large example.
Fuzzy-matching of submitted story URLs to avoid duplicate submissions of similar URLs that differ only in http vs. https, trailing slashes, useless analytics parameters, etc. When using the story submission bookmarklet, story URLs are automatically converted to use the page's canonical URL (if available) to present the best URL to represent the story, as defined by the story's author or publisher.
User-suggested titles and tags can be automatically applied to a story when a quorum of users agrees on a new title (such as removing a site's name, or appending the story's year of publication) or set of tags, without any moderator action required. (Log)
Hats are a more formal process of allowing users to post comments while "wearing such and such hat" to give their words more authority (such as an employee speaking for the company, or an open source developer speaking for the project).
Per-tag, multi-tag and site-wide RSS feeds are available to the public and logged-in users have private RSS feeds that filter out each user's filtered tags.
Official Twitter mirror posts all stories that have reached the front page to the @lobsters account on Twitter for easy following, retweeting/sharing, or archiving.
Stickers will be available again when someone finds a service that will print and ship 2" square vinyl stickers with a bleed <= 1/16" (preferably full-bleed) directly to people who want them.
Lobsters is hosted on three VPSs at DigitalOcean: a s-4vcpu-8gb for the web server, a s-2vcpu-4gb for the mariadb server, and a s-1vcpu-1gb for the IRC bot. Our domain name is registered with CRI Domains, who donated our first year of registration. DNS is provided by DNSimple and we use Tarsnap for backups, both of which pushcx pays for. Lobsters is cheap to run, so we don't take donations.
Sponsor of the lobster emoji: In February 2018, Lobsters held a fundraiser to officially adopt the new lobster emoji in support of the Unicode Foundation.
The name "Lobste.rs" is a cute domain hack without any deeper meaning. It has nothing to do with self-help guru Jordan Peterson, whose fans started to call themselves "lobsters" about six years after we started.
We have a backup domain lobsters.dev in case of issues with our primary domain.
If you prefer the article links or comment links to open a new tab instead of navigating in your current tab you can add a client-side script to do so. (Discussion)