Still, I hope you can find a better job soon.
What, are you jobs-ist or something?
Still, I hope you can find a better job soon.
What, are you jobs-ist or something?
Pages are arbitrary, why does everything need to be split into 50 item chunks, why not 25 or 102?
How is "one chunk" any less arbitrary than n chunks of m items each?
Correct solution: allow the user to choose
U+1F425
Why the hell is this (and others like it) defined as a character in a language?
I guess we should be glad @ben_lubar isn't on the Unicode committee or we'd have Dwarf Fortress glyphs defined as Unicode scalars...
(the implied permalink)
This strikes me as another one of those "discoverability" faux pas: why on earth would I, with no prior information, think a glyph indicating a value indicating the time since a post was made - so it changes all the time - would a) be a time stamp of when the post was made or b) represent a (permanent) link to the post?
The problem I have with pagination is that it's a barrier to reading, and reading is fundamental.
I'm seriously curious - what do you mean by that?
I'm assuming it is coming from some sort of hypothesis that changing pages destroys reading, but have there been any kind of studies done that show this, as opposed to perhaps the hypothesis that the human brain may actually process information better in pages? After all, we use paragraphs, because if we didn't then reading would be almost impossible.
Also, isn't this a forum, where discussion is fundamental?
So replying too early is kind of an overall negative for the conversation.
This seems to be a very subjective statement....
@codinghorror @dkf: I think the issue with "discoverability" isn't so much "I can hover around and/or click a bunch of things to see what they can do" versus "if I want to do something, what is the most likely place I should click/hover?"
Why does a face with X for eyes, conventionally indicating death, represent 'astonished'? Is he astonished that he's dead?
(512mb with swap will work, barely, but it is not really suitable for use by any other human beings, whereas 1 GB can run a small discussion community with ease)
What the heck is the software doing that it needs that much memory to run "well"?
Filed under: 640k ...
The design guideline is this: remove barriers from things you want people to do. We want people to read and listen as much as possible before talking. Therefore, we remove the next page button as it is a barrier to reading.
Ok - at least now I understand the design philosophy at which you're aiming. In all honesty though I think it fundamentally doesn't work for places like TDWTF. Or places like textbooks where you want position identifiers to go find reference information - anything which needs interaction.
Note in my earlier post where I said that infinite scrolling kind of makes sense for read only information - and you specifically mentioned Slate and Ars Technica: new sites - traditionally read-only media.
At TDWTF forums, we aren't here to listen as much as possible before talking - we are here to poke fun, reply to things that piqued our interest or curiosity, in a very nonlinear manner, and as fast as possible - things for which "infinite scroll" is not well-suited, because infinite scroll is extremely linear.
On the bottom right of the composer there's a "hide preview" link.
Well, yes, but I had to take an extra step to click that link. Adding clicks to do things is A Bad Thing.
I will say, though, that at least Discourse has one thing right: when you scroll down, the very top of the screen doesn't scroll off, so you can still get to those "menu" options without having to scroll all the way back to the top.
how come you did not get too_many_usernames as your account name?
My account name is indeed the full too_many_usernames. See the rest of the discussions on the foolish reasons why the display name is truncated. So I guess my whole name will show up again when they remove that silly 15-character restriction.
Also: changing pages is fast. Scrolling is slow - especially when trying to relocate previous information. Computers are supposed to free us from physical constraints like having to pass through all points between two others - scrolling eliminates that "I can go from item 1 to item 9 million without having to pass through all the other ones in between" advantage.
Curiously, Wikipedia only lists two instances that interpret "-a^b" as the negative sign having higher precedence than exponentiation: Excel and some language called bc. And that's in the section "Gaps in the standard."
Anyone know of any other places that do this, for posterity's sake?
I would personally probably do something evil like
<type> status_codes[] = {status.MissingAccount , status.Positive, status.MissingAccount, ... };
return status_codes[ (isUserInDb(user)) | (isUserAccountInOrder(user)<<1) | (isUserAccountNegativeBalance<<2) ];
No branching at all! (And only slightly dangerous by assuming the isUserX() functions return 0 or 1).
@boomzilla said:
The slippery slope fallacy is bullshit.
Yes, I can see how that would be slippery. Even better is the fact that it may be dried and crusty so not seem slippery. Then something gets it wet and then everyone is at the bottom of the pile covered in sludge wondering WTF just happened.
Wait, what? On a whim I decided to check back in today to see what happened to the forums and was like, "Oh look! Discourse is gone! Maybe I'll come back..."
So this is just a temporary thing?
It would violate the Geneva Helvetica Convention.
My kingdom for a serif!
EDIT: Ooh fun! font changes don't carry across quotes. I'm sure I just repeated something others have already noted...
Convert the value 25 into an 8-bit binary number. Show your working.
This is a poorly defined question:
Edit: added more pedantry! (And I missed locallunatic's observation....)
Although not really related to this site, I was pleased to find that my vanity of choice was available. My new car proudly declares
NSTAAFL
Although, sadly, I'm sure that a statistically irrelevant number of people that see it on the road will understand it (and even fewer will appreciate it).
@Ben L. said:
Apparently my dwarves have discovered the secret of making roasts out of four minced non-minceable non-roastable ingredients.
You can most definitely roast flour, with heat and/or insults, as preference dictates.
@Ben L. said:
What's the problem there? It sorts all the solid bits out perfectly!
What the heck is with the restriction in number of characters on the "short" username?
Also, since the box says I should criticize ideas: I criticize the idea of Discourse.
(I'm going nuts with everything I type being echoed in that second box off to the right... stupid "preview" window...)
@Lorne_Kates said:
It only shows "hours/days" ago
This also adds useless computational complexity to the whole thing, because some computer somewhere has to continuously do all that complex subtraction math and imposes a need to refresh the view. Simply showing the post time & date avoids that nonsense.
But, then again, I am a simplicity advocate...
@dhromed said:
Cost of living varies wildly.
I make very little compared to the numbers I sometimes read here, but the company that is My Life still turns a steady profit.
Indeed - the intangibles. I
think a lot of people don't factor that in like drhomed does...
Also, the better way to measure salary is "Multiples of rent + commuting cost + basic food and stuff", not "Local currency units". The simplest way is to just say "multiples of <single more or less non-fungible commodity>"
I don't agree that CS is "fully usable", but it's inarguably 7 years old. Next year, it will be 8. Then 9. At what point is it too old?
Only in computers does "old" seem to be taken as "inferior." Moreso than in any other industry (even automobiles), for some reason people (esp. OSS people) seem to think that change for the sake of change is good - rather than just keeping what works and refining it. But no! Now I have yet another stupid UI to deal with (and on top of it, I forgot to disable auto updates on Firefox at work... so now my title bar is gone. sob).
In my mind, UI changes should be done only if they reduce the number of steps to perform some task and/or make getting desired information faster. Discourse doesn't pass those tests, so changing just for style's sake is at best neutral, and more likely is a negative.
That said - the text editor is better, but still has its quirks...
In that case, entering at the end of the topic should work
Except that if we only go to the end, we miss out on things about which to poke fun... as I said: nonlinear.
Edit: Hah I got bit by the "couldn't select the initial 'i' in a quote" thing...
More linear than pages? Does this concept of "linear" even apply?
I guess when I see something at the bottom of a forum page like [1 2 3 4 5] I see that as nonlinear: I can, in one very small mouse motion or click, jump between discontinuous sections of content and - most importantly - visualize a large number of those sections simultaneously. I see pages as an array, which is multidimensional.
From reading the responses in this forum, I don't think I'm unique in this view that there is something more "random access" about pages that is appealing than is available through the "infinite scroll" concept - even if you start adding in things like "go to post X".
The metrics used for post relevance in topic summaries:
Those are mostly metrics of popularity, not relevance.
(Edit: added "mostly", because generalizations and all that...)
Is there anything less "random access" about a keyboard shortcut that lets you jump to an arbitrary post number at will? Because that's what's on the table.
I agree that a "goto post" shortcut is very random access, but it requires knowing to what post you want to go. The page links which you dislike group pages, so you only have to be "close" (and you can remember position in the array, rather than the number - which you can't do if you have to remember a post number). Also - keyboard shortcuts aren't discoverable, but page links are.
So it's not just about the "random access" - it's also about some aspects of the implementation of how that is achieved. "Next page" links provide spatial navigation - which is very powerful.
Some kind of random bug happening for me this morning: if I keep my mouse clicked on the browser (FF uh... where the heck is the "about" dialog box now, dammit!? Ah there it is... 29.0.1) scroll bar and drag slowly down, at times the thread will jump down some large number of posts, and I have to manually scroll back up and guess where I was in the discussion. Because I don't keep my eyes glued to the X of Y widget. I suspect this has to do with the fact that the scrollbar doesn't represent progress through the posts, but something random.
Ah, for @sam and @codinghorror: just had a suggestion for that: rather than the browser scrollbar position representing pixel extent, why not just have it represent topic extent. That is, if there are 245 replies in a thread, then the scrollbar has 245 positions. If new replies get added, the scrollbar adjusts... This avoids the whole "have to render all the content first" nonsense. (By the way - I can't believe I actually just used the @name format.... * shudder *)
The site costs about $2,000/month to run
I'm curious here, because I've never tried to run a website - but what drives this cost? Surely electricity and the net connection aren't anywhere close to that are they? Or is someone being paid to monitor the server(s) or something?
The only time a "language" irritates me with order of operations is Excel.
Excel considers
=5++5
=5--5
=5+-5
=5+-5^2
etc. as valid syntax. I realize this is perhaps "natural" for finance people, but as an engineer it drives me mad.
@tdb said:
what's wrong with those? The first one uses an unary plus operator (which is a no-op), and parses as 5+(+5). Second one is 5-(-5), etc.
There's nothing wrong with them; they are just "unnatural" if you're used to writing lots of equations by hand. When writing by hand, I don't know anyone that puts two operators side-by-side as opposed to using parentheses. Of course I admit that might be dependent on the particular math culture in which one is raised; I happen to be in one that doesn't use unary signs without parentheses (except for a single value where it is natural).
Part of the Excel problem is the single element:
= -5^2
Traditional math rules say the result should be -25 (exponentiation before multiplication, which is what unary signs do), but Excel treats that as (-5)^2 so gives you 25.
@Sutherlands said:
In fact, I find your statement really odd. What is the result of the expression "-5"? If it's a "unary operation" on 5, then what's the result? It's a number.
As I said originally, I think it's a matter of personal style and the way I perceive notational consistency. It bothers me that in Excel
=-5^2
has a different result than
=0-5^2
When basic arithmetic says they should be the same thing. I know that it has to do with the way Excel parses expressions, but I find it annoying.
@boomzilla said:
No, it doesn't say that at all. Ambiguity in how we parse expressions (either in our heads or our software) is not the same as "basic arithmetic." Really, as was pointed out to you, this is just a problem with using the same symbol for the subtraction operator and to express a negative number.
Fair enough, I should have said "Arithmetic that I'm used to" instead of "basic arithmetic." I agree that it is a difference in parsing, no more, no less.
@TheCPUWizard said:
Your "reasoning" is completely WRONG. If that were true, then you would get the same result for:
=2-7^2
And clearly that is something complely different [-47]
I'm not sure what you mean here. Excel says
=2-7^2 --> -47
=-7^2 +2 --> 51
As a human, I'd expect those to evaluate to the same thing, because (as has been said many times) I do not overload the sign and subtraction operator the way that Excel does. It's not *wrong* it's just *different* and it annoys me because it requires a different parsing method depending on the location of substring "-7^2".
NEGATION is not the same as SUBTRACTION
I'm not sure what you mean. Negation of a number can be defined by the equation
-x = 0-x
which is inherently subtraction (it's also inherently multiplication by negative one).
Ok people, I have realized that I have not been communicating well. Here's an attempt to resolve that. Forget about the fact that the single minus sign is in front of a string literal and put in a variable instead:
In cell a1 type = 3+2
In cell a2 type = -a1^2.
Excel spits out 25.
In this case, it's not a minus sign in front of a number which may be confused with just treating it as a negative value.
I don't know what math you folks learn, but the expression
=-x^2
should be a negative number for all real nonzero values of x, and Excel doesn't do this.