Apologies, Discourse Is Buggy


  • Banned

    I've noticed that you guys are uncovering a lot of actual bugs in Discourse.

    These are, in many cases, totally legit bugs that we need to fix. For example, a few I confirmed just tonight:

    1. failure to show proper visible post count in progress bar after posting (deleted posts affect count)

    2. entering a topic via suggested topics and the /last url means the address bar never updates properly

    3. style errors on /categories

    4. failure to show the topic progress bar when the editor is visible

    5. failure to track topics when the category state is set to "tracked"

    I apologize, but we've been moving really fast on Discourse:

    • attempting to build new features
    • while servicing existing customers (yep, people pay money for this, well Alex doesn't, but ~50 companies do at the time of writing) and responding to their requests
    • while also dealing with gratis open source support ala this forum

    .. which means sometimes things fall in the cracks, and we don't fix (or find) bugs we should.

    I'm sorry about that.

    So, we're going to pause feature work next week, and just focus on fixing bugs.

    Some of the bugs may require some feature work – for example better post read tracking indicators – but we'll try to narrow down as much as we can on bugs and problems and fixes.

    I'll try to clean up a lot of the bullshit in the ostensible "bugs" topic, and I will split out feature requests to a new topic.

    Just so we're clear: bugs are things that are actually broken as designed, not "did not work as I would prefer it to" or "It really ought to work this other way" or "it could be better if you did X".

    It is completely fair to question aspects of the design, but that sort of thing should go in a separate dedicated topic.



  • @codinghorror said:

    ~50 companies do at the time of writing) and responding to their requests

    Do they expect everything they want to be implemented as a custom version of the software, because they pay?



  • @codinghorror said:

    It is completely fair to question aspects of the design, but that sort of thing should go in a separate dedicated topic.

    "Preferably a single one I can easily mute".

    The problem is, we don't know what constitutes a bug, and what is just an insane design decision. For example, you split out my thread about following links on mouseup - what, it's a feature?

    @codinghorror said:

    So, we're going to pause feature work next week, and just focus on fixing bugs.

    Congratulations, you managed to say "thank you" and "fuck you" at the same time.

    Filed under: ghhhhnnnk you



  • @codinghorror said:

    bugs are things that are actually broken as designed

    You don't seem to know what "broken as designed" actually means, although it does seem to apply to a lot of Discourse's features.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    For example, you split out my thread about following links on mouseup

    Hey, at least it's still around. Random subthreads in there appear to be being simply deleted.


  • Banned

    Well, yeah, if someone is interested in watching a person drink a 20 year old can of Crystal Pepsi and vomit, you might want to start a new topic about that, as that's not technically a Genuinely Useful Bug Report.

    Technically.



  • @codinghorror said:

    Well, yeah, if someone is interested in watching a person drink a 20 year old can of Crystal Pepsi and vomit, you might want to start a new topic about that, as that's not technically a Genuinely Useful Bug Report.

    Oh, so you're trying to remove spam and keep a thread on topic? You're new here, aren't you...


  • Banned

    Well, I can't even process that topic any more, it's so far off course. So I am trying to fix it.

    The point is that you guys are uncovering valid issues in Discourse, it's just that I can't track them between all the noise and ruminations.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    O_o


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Oh, so you're trying to remove spam and keep a thread on topic?

    Technically the stuff deleted was off topic for that thread (but not the forum), not spam.

    Technically.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @codinghorror said:

    The point is that you guys are uncovering valid issues in Discourse, it's just that I can't track them between all the noise and ruminations.

    I hope you've got a real bug database too. Actually tracking bugs in a forum would be TRWTF. (You could start a forum thread for each bug report, but it's the bug DB that holds things like what the state is.)

    Filed under: stating the f'ing obvious since the 1970's


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @PJH said:

    Technically the stuff deleted was off topic for that thread...

    Ah, I am in error. Not all of it was off topic...



  • @codinghorror said:

    I can't even process that topic any more

    You know what would've helped following subtopics in a large topic like that?

    A threaded view.


    Filled under: [Just sayin'](#tag), [For some people, following it in a flat view wasn't difficult either](#tag), [what is more difficult is doing a "quote reply" on Android when trying to quote the first line](#tag)


  • @codinghorror said:

    all the noise and ruminations.

    My brain initially processed this as "noise and urinations". Seems much more apropos of TDWTF than rumination.



  • @codinghorror said:

    Just so we're clear: bugs are things that are actually broken as designed, not "did not work as I would prefer it to" or "It really ought to work this other way" or "it could be better if you did X".

    Listen, sooner or later you're going to have to face the facts and admit that scrolling is way too slow. It took me 40 seconds to reach the bottom of this 482-post thread by holding PgDwn. And if I scrolled up "too fast" after, I only saw a white screen because the posts took half a second to render DESPITE THEM ALREADY BEING LOADED.

    When you have infinite scrolling, the content becomes your main reference for navigating a familiar thread, and I can't even see that.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dkf said:

    I hope you've got a real bug database too.

    I've been wondering this for a while. I assume you guys ( @codinghorror / @sam ) have at least something private, right? Is there anything public facing?


  • Banned

    @anonymous234 said:

    It took me 40 seconds to reach the bottom of this 482-post thread by holding PgDwn

    Why would you want to do that? Press the end key, or click the left side of the topic progress bar with the down arrow.

    @ChaosTheEternal said:

    A threaded view.

    It would be nice to have a filter that filters to the current conversation, and all quotes and replies in it. Sort of like the way we can filter a topic by user (try clicking the avatars on the left here, then the filter button).

    And we also tracked bugs on Stack Overflow on meta.stackoverflow, for the record.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @codinghorror said:

    And we also tracked bugs on Stack Overflow on meta.stackoverflow, for the record.

    I know. I thought you guys were absolutely mad. It's fine for the user-engagement parts, but actually tracking bugs that way? For anything with an even vaguely defined workflow and some kind of controlled vocabulary for classification, a database works very well indeed. And there's nothing wrong with having the URL to the thread (or meta-question, in SO terminology) in the database.

    The important part is to keep key discussions at the right level of visibility. Placement of buttons? Can be open. Handling of credential updates post-Heartbleed? Close it off to outsiders. (Ops usually have to be more concealed than Dev, because Ops have to deal with asshats.)


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @codinghorror said:

    anonymous234 said:
    It took me 40 seconds to reach the bottom of this 482-post thread by holding PgDwn

    Why would you want to do that? Press the end key, or click the left side of the topic progress bar with the down arrow.

    ANONYMOUS234: YOU ARE USING YOUR COMPUTER WRONG! Stop doing that! {whinge} STOP IT! Here, give it to me, I'll show you the right way to use it. GIMME IT!


  • Banned

    Not exactly. This is like complaining that in a 40 page paginated topic to reach the end you had to scroll to the bottom of each page, then click "next page".. 39 times.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    It took me 40 seconds to reach the bottom of this 482-post thread by holding PgDwn.

    Hit the End key, you luser.

    Also, why were you going to the end, instead of letting DC take you to where you left off?

    Superficially, your complaint sounds reasonable, but dig a little deeper, and it becomes dubious. Explain yourself immediately!



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    ANONYMOUS234: YOU ARE USING YOUR COMPUTER WRONG! Stop doing that! {whinge} STOP IT! Here, give it to me, I'll show you the right way to use it. GIMME IT!

    That's the right sarcasm in the wrong place.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dhromed said:

    Hit the End key, you luser.

    You mean the End (<kbd>End</kbd>) key?
    Pedantic dickweedery lives…


  • Banned

    I am now a little curious how many seconds it would actually take someone to navigate a 482 post topic from beginning to end with traditional pagination. Load page, scroll to bottom, move mouse to "next page" button, click it, wait for next page to load..

    Also how do I hold down the page down key on my iPad?



  • Assuming an interesting thread, clicking the Next Page link is a miniscule amount of the total time spent, so my hypo is "no difference"


  • Banned

    I mean in the specific case of @anonymous234 , where the "experimenter" is making zero attempt to actually read the topic, just going for a Quake Speed Run on it to see how fast they can reach the end while making every post visible on their screen in the process.

    I know, if it seems like an insane waste of time, that might be because it probably is.

    Science demands an answer.



  • It was just a way to "benchmark" loading times. Obviously not very scientific, but still the best I had. The question is how long it would take to load the 8-10 pages on a standard forum.



  • @codinghorror said:

    I am now a little curious how many seconds it would actually take someone to navigate a 482 post topic from beginning to end with traditional pagination. Load page, scroll to bottom, move mouse to "next page" button, click it, wait for next page to load..

    "Traditional pagination" usually has pagination control on the top of the topic too. And a "Last page" button.



  • As does Discourse.

    But that's not what the experiment was testing here.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    But that's not what the experiment was testing here.

    I'm not quite sure what the experiment was testing here. Time it takes to read the topic, as scaled to savants reading +infinity words per minute?



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    I'm not quite sure what the experiment was testing here.

    "How fast can you spin a hammer"


  • 🚽 Regular

    Filed under: Thor


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