You have a superpower. You can make Yahoo! do anything you want, but the price is listening to idiot comments about fixing precisely the wrong thing FOREVER.

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Man, that's a killer disad.

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Wow, you’re famous and feared, Zawinski.

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Kickass.

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I thought a complaint somewhere in their feedback section saying they'd broken their pages IMO was in order. Especially since I didn't have any 'useful' javascript suggestions nor other non-broken news-photo sites to recommend. Not that I expected any sort of action, but I included a pointer back to your shark-jumping post in it. I do wonder how many other people shot them a complaint based on your LJ entry.

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I also sent in a bug report before I made my LJ post asking for an alternate site. I didn't really expect them to act on it, though...

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Can you un-jump the shark, or are they tainted forever?

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How many of us on the inside felt the same way you did.

Thanks for bitching. :-)

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As cool as it was to get an actual fix from this cat, it looks like he may have created an LJ account for the express purpose of notifying you. That's some refreshing customer service.

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Walter, ya know, its Smokey, so his foot slipped over the line a little, big deal.

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I think the reason nobody suggested another site is because yahoo is the ONLY free AP news photos site. I guess yahoo is the only company willing to pay AP for the rights. You can't even see the photos on AP's own site! Even though they say they're free for personal use.

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Kudos to Yahoo. No, seriously. Kudos to Yahoo. Constructive criticism on why something is a problem, and how to fix it will do a million times more good than offering up some dumbass workaround-- Greasemonkey zealots, take notice.

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I thinks you misunderstand geeks. Most geeks see a problem as an opportunity to create a solution. It's what we do. Not always the best reaction, but the one that works most often for geeks. Sorry if that offends. :-)

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Obviously fixed sites are better than worked-around broken sites, and it's good that we have that result in this instance. But Greasemonkey exists because it's so often the case that a really fucked-up site is still your only real option, because all the other options are in some way worse. If there had been a site as good as Yahoo photos but non-fucked-up, people would have suggested it. As it was, they suggested Greasemonkey as the next least-worst thing. What's so strange about that?

Yes, put pressure on site authors to fix their broken HTML. Yes, vote with your mouse where you can and it makes a difference. But when those options aren't working out, it's good to have a fallback, no?

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GREASEMONKEY IS TEH AWESOME. IT'S SO GREAT. OH LORD I'M SPURTING HERE.

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Curse all those complete strangers for helping you in not-quite-exactly the way you wanted them to!

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Too subtle. Try:

MOTHERFUCKING SHIT PISS COCKSUCKING STRANGERS !!!!! IT MAKES ME SO *MAD* WHEN THEY TRY TO HELP BY ATTEMPTING TO FIX MY ORIGINAL PROBLEM [1] BECAUSE THEY CAN'T SUGGEST A WORK-AROUND [2] !!!!!!!

Yeah, I realise I'm probably banned for posting this, but it had to be said: you're being a dickhead, JWZ. If you didn't like their offerings at the Altar of JWZ, all you had to do was ignore them. Maybe even update the post with "NO MORE GREASEMONKEY SUGGESTIONS!! (PS: I AM ANGRY AND CYNICAL!! GRRR!!!)"

I know this is your journal and all that, but... I don't know, do unto others or something. Flaming people for trying to help is tactless at best, and then crowing about it is worse. And if nothing else, surely you want to maximise the signal (original thought) to noise ("ME TOO!! I love you, JWZ.") ratio on your journal, for your own sanity...

(And why am I bothering to post this on your journal, wasting my own time (yes, I know: and yours) when I could just stop coming back if your behaviour really bothers me so much? I don't know, maybe out of some sort of community spirit. Yeah, I know: you care *so much* about my ridiculous ideals. Well, I tried.)

(Awaiting the requisite banning / deletion / rant about how you are so sick of everyone and this is why you hate people / implication that I am a Firefox weenie / "fuck you".)

[j]

[1] "the JavaScript broke Yahoo News Photos"
[2] "so I'm looking for a new! better!! Yahoo News Photos!"

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like you said: wow.

but I think your influence extends further than that, I think you have actually influenced the content of today's guardian. The pictures in the heads post are in it, including those later posted by strspn. Could be a coincidence.....

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Errrm, was that post structural irony mispelling the Grauniad's url?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

That you also used a comma I didn't notice the first time rebounds on me...

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JWZ acts surprised, but meanwhile, several of us here in the office were running a betting pool on how long it would take yahoo to at least respond, if not fix.

(for the record, I had "days" - but the person with "hours" was deemed the winner)

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Just IGNORE them. I know it's fun to some extent to taunt the geeks, but when you gaze into the void, the void gazes back into you.

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You are the Harlan Ellison of blogging :)

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Apparently, though, I somehow used the wrong words

The portion at the end of the post where you actually describe how to convert the sucky HTML\Javascript into something less offensive was an open invitation for GreaseMonkey suggestions. On the other had, thats probably what got the site fixed at the end, so thats there.

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have you considered ansking your questions i esparanto?
you could probably write a hack to ping babelfish to translate your posts to esparanto.

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Using Greasemonkey?

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Maybe I'm mistaken about Hotmail's switch to JS coinciding with the popularity of tabbed browsing ... I might just be a poorly-thought-out "feature" from a mega-company.

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bump

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That's fascinating.

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Your lazyweb is teh awesome.

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