Poll: Infinite Scrolling


  • Considered Harmful

    [poll]

    • Paged view should be the only option
    • Infinite scrolling should be the only option
    • Make it a preference; I would use the paged view
    • Make it a preference; I would use infinite scrolling
      [/poll]

  • :belt_onion:

    Missing option: Make it a preference; it doesn't matter what I would use. You should be able to use what you want.

    Filed under: Idealism



  • @heterodox said:

    Missing option: Make it a preference; I don't use forums but I hear they're nice.

    Filed under: I'm a poll, not a cop



  • Missing option: I don't care, I can't read anyway



  • I want my laptop to advance to the next post when I scream at it. Probably should add that in too.



  • I kind of doubt that they will change this, though, given that the infinite scrolling appears to be the core reason d'etre for this site.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    One time, @codinghorror said something about writing a plug-in. I haven't looked at the code for discourse, but since there's already paging in there, if someone took this cause up, they wouldn't be starting from scratch.

    I'm not motivated enough to do this, and the infinite scrolling is still novel enough that I'm willing to keep using it. Right now, my biggest problem is when I get the Loading spinner at the bottom that never goes away. I don't know what's going wrong there, as a page refresh seems to be the only way to fix it.



  • @boomzilla said:

    when I get the Loading spinner at the bottom that never goes away. I don't know what's going wrong there

    http hiccup?

    It happens. Poor routing hardware or bad ISP or whatever.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Yes, I assume something like that. But seems less likely with full page refreshes. At least there's a spinner there, so I know it at least thought it was doing something.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Yes, I assume something like that. But seems less likely with full page refreshes

    Statistical bias? You onyl do a full page refresh when it happens, and a hiccup is extremely unlikely to happen twice in a row.


  • Banned

    Filed under: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dhromed said:

    Statistical bias? You onyl do a full page refresh when it happens, and a hiccup is extremely unlikely to happen twice in a row.

    The problem is that I think I end up with more ajax reloads with infinite scrolling than full page loads with paging. Or going to a new thread.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    You read my mind. I was literally about to start the same poll. It's like you know me better than I know myself. I'm only beautiful because you love me. You've touched my heart and colon. Marry me and my pet hybrid giraffe/Land Shark.

    But if I find you've been infinite scrolling behind my back, I'll be crushed.


  • Considered Harmful

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    But if I find you've been infinite scrolling behind my back, I'll be crushed.


  • 🚽 Regular

    Allow me to cross link to my post in another thropic:
    @Zecc said:

    Trying to appease both sides, while possibly gathering hate from both instead: how about infinite scrolling of pages?

    I mean, besides having "42 of 404" (and assuming 20 posts per page), you'd have also have "(page 3 of 21)" on the progress not-a-scrollbar.

    Clicking on the center of the progress not-a-scrollbar would pop up a list of the pages, with the current page clearly highlighted.

    Clicking on eg. page 14 would load posts 261 to 280, plus a few posts from the end of page 13.
    You feel like it, go nuts with a fast animation of the new page sliding in from below (or equivalently, the viewport scrolling down).

    Scrolling would seamlessly load posts as before, but the divider between posts of different pages would be differentiated in a subtle but noticeable way, like a slight thicker horizontal line.

    What do you guys think?


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @zecc: So in other words-- pagination.

    Basically, does it make the scroll bar behave properly within its own page? ie: load the page. The scrollbar corresponds 1:1 with the height of the page given the posts, and doesn't jump around or alter in any way while browsing the page, and is a proper indicator of your position in that page of posts?

    Because if so, fuck, that's fucking pagination. Why are we reinventing the wheel?


  • :belt_onion:

    @Zecc said:

    thropic

    I prefer objets d'iscourse.


  • Considered Harmful

    So, it's too early to call still, but at this point the results are almost exactly what I expected.

    • No one wants only the paged view (I put that one in just to balance it out into a 2x2 matrix).
    • Precisely two people (who I presume are named Jeff and Sam) think infinite scrolling is the only way to go.
    • A majority of users want paging, but are willing to accept that it doesn't work for everyone.
    • A large minority would keep the infinite scrolling but are similarly willing to accept that it is not the one true way.

    Jeff:
    How do you justify denying a feature that 54% of the user-base would use (and 94% thinks should be available)?
    How much data do you need to convince you that your way is not the only way?
    You were the one talking about us coexisting, but so far it seems like you are the one unwilling to compromise here.


    Filed Under: [If you want to know what your users want, just tell them.](#tag), [Oh great, links aren't working again.](#tag)


  • @heterodox said:

    I prefer objets d'iscourse.

    Mis-en-thropic



  • @error said:

    So, it's too early to call still, but at this point the results are almost exactly what I expected.

    • No one wants only the paged view (I put that one in just to balance it out into a 2x2 matrix).
    • Precisely two people (who I presume are named Jeff and Sam) think infinite scrolling is the only way to go.
    • A majority of users want paging, but are willing to accept that it doesn't work for everyone.
    • A large minority would keep the infinite scrolling but are similarly willing to accept that it is not the one true way.

    Jeff:
    How do you justify denying a feature that 54% of the user-base would use (and 94% thinks should be available)?
    How much data do you need to convince you that your way is not the only way?
    You were the one talking about us coexisting, but so far it seems like you are the one unwilling to compromise here.

    <hr>Filed Under: If you want to know what your users want, just tell them., Oh great, links aren't working again.

    Tagging @sam and @codinghorror to increase the odds that they'll see this.

    Edit: Hey look, @error's tags are working!

    Edit: Hmmm, "expanding" the quote above is making it shorter ... bug!



  • “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
    — Henry Ford (probably not a real quote though)


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @awesomerobot said:

    “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”— Henry Ford (probably not a real quote though)

    "If someone wants a car with a feature, they can fuck off."

    • Jeff " @codinghorror " Attwood (more real of a quote than Ford)


  • @awesomerobot said:

    “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
    — Henry Ford (probably not a real quote though)

    Sure, users may not always see that their interests will be better served by a revolutionary change than by the incremental improvement they are asking for. As devs, many of the users here have been in the position of trying to induce clients to think outside the box.

    However, we have not only thought outside the box, we've seen what's outside the box, and tried it. Most of us have found it wanting.

    Perhaps one day the car (infiniscroll) will prove better than the horse (pages). I think it remains to be seen whether inifiscroll is going in the direction of the Model T (i.e., good perceived quality and widespread acceptance), or following in the footsteps of the Stanley Steamer.



  • Poor whatever, but with "plain old" websites I can just hit F5 again, with fancy AJAX sites I'm left there staring at the loading spinner like an idiot.

    The software should be smart enough to do it for myself in any case. I don't know why so many default timeouts are set to crazy values like 2 minutes.

    I had to use a wifi connection that dropped packets like crazy for a few months, it was horrible. Web sites would start loading, then stop after the downloading the page headings, and you could either refresh and start over again or wait and hope for the best. Steam would keep trying to connect, but fail to download whatever it's downloading, and just stay there. I had to disable wifi to force it to get in offline mode. Why is software so terrible at dealing with lost packets?

    On some occasions my browser would download the main html file but not show it until the rest of elements were downloaded, for some mysterious reason. I had to view page source to read the text.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    Why is software so terrible at dealing with lost packets?

    Web programmers aren't used to it and don't code for it. Lots of software handles lost packets fine. The problem is, a lot of AJAX software doesn't elegantly handle a "Oh shit, the server never responded" case.



  • @awesomerobot said:

    “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
    — Henry Ford (probably not a real quote though)

    "Not me, I'd have asked for an Infinite Sex Volcano."
    --Morbius Wilters (definitely not a real quote)



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    "Not me, I'd have asked for an Infinite Sex Volcano."--Morbius Wilters (definitely not a real quote)

    My brain just segfaulted trying to make sense of that.



  • You don't want an infinite sex volcano?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    "Not me, I'd have asked for an Infinite Sex Volcano."
    --Morbius Wilters (definitely not a real quote)

    It is now.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    You don't want an infinite sex volcano?

    Those two words do not seem to belong together.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @HardwareGeek said:

    Perhaps one day the car (infiniscroll) will prove better than the horse (pages).

    It's more like this:

    "If I asked my users what they wanted, they would have said a larger ledger."

    • Whoever the fuck invented Excel. Linda Lovelace, I think?

    Discourse is not to forums what cars were to horses. There is no way-- uhg. Fuck. NO. (Not mad at you, just mad at even the thought that this is being taken seriously by @codinghorror)

    Remember, the quote is:

    "But part of caring means that if you really want a truck, I need to gently guide you off the car lot and point you to the nearest truck dealership." - Jeff " @codinghorror " Atwood, in response to everyone who already drives a truck and needs a new one but he believes he is the only car dealership in town.

    So more accurately:
    "My users need a horse to plow their field, be a companion, and be affordable. I told them I'm still working on a car, and they could take my model for a test drive, but it has to be on a very specially paved road, and will cost them more than they make in a year. When they asked again for a horse I made fun of their beliefs and my friend told them to go fuck off because cars are rainbows and horses are godawful abominations." - Henry " @codinghorror " Ford.



  • Open source is teh future of everything. Please keep this in mind.



  • @Nagesh said:

    Open source is teh future of everything. Please keep this in mind.

    I love you, Nagesh.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I love you, Nagesh.

    Careful. Remember, his sarcasm detector is unreliable. He might take you seriously and show up on your doorstep one morning.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    Careful. Remember, his sarcasm detector is unreliable. He might take you seriously and show up on your doorstep one morning.

    I'm 99% sure Nagesh is a Westerner trolling us.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I'm 99% sure Nagesh is a Westerner trolling us.

    If so, he is being very good at it. He is fooling me. Nevertheless, if this were usenet, he'd be in my killfile. He's very annoying.



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    "But part of caring means that if you really want a truck, I need to gently guide you off the car lot and point you to the nearest truck dealership." - Jeff " @codinghorror " Atwood, in response to everyone who already drives a truck and needs a new one but he believes he is the only car dealership in town.

    I read that a little differently (but that was before a lot of the acrimonious back-and-forth): "I see my product doesn't meet your needs, but that dealer has one that might be better suited for you." Unfortunately, in this case he is the only dealer in town, because @apapadimoulis is 110% committed to @codinghorror's product, for reasons I don't understand. That leaves us with only a few options:

    • Persuade @codinghorror to change his product to meet our needs. This, of course, would be the ideal. He seems quite willing to fix a lot of little issues and put band-aids on the big ones, but not to change the core feature of his product that we most dislike.
    • Fork Discourse and make it what we want, but @apapadimoulis doesn't want to do that, for perfectly valid reasons.
    • Fix his product with plug-ins, if that turns out to be possible. Everybody pretty happy.
    • Buy his car, put up with its shortcomings, and bitch about them like we do with CS now.
    • Rage-quit. Leave our broken-down truck parked in front of his car dealership and walk home.

    I don't like the last option at all (although it would be the best one for my work productivity ;D). Since getting @codinghorror to build us a real truck appears unlikely, the next best thing seems to me is to get the most truck-like car he's willing to build us, do our best to turn it into a real truck with plug-ins, bitch about the stuff that still doesn't work right, and have fun trying to break our new toy.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @HardwareGeek said:

    That leaves us with only a few options:
    Persuade @codinghorror to change his product to meet our needs. This, of course, would be the ideal. He seems quite willing to fix a lot of little issues and put band-aids on the big ones, but not to change the core feature of his product that we most dislike.
    Fork Discourse and make it what we want, but @apapadimoulis doesn't want to do that, for perfectly valid reasons.
    Fix his product with plug-ins, if that turns out to be possible. Everybody pretty happy.
    Buy his car, put up with its shortcomings, and bitch about them like we do with CS now.
    Rage-quit. Leave our broken-down truck parked in front of his car dealership and walk home.
    I don't like the last option at all (although it would be the best one for my work productivity ;D). Since getting @codinghorror to build us a real truck appears unlikely, the next best thing seems to me is to get the most truck-like car he's willing to build us, do our best to turn it into a real truck with plug-ins, bitch about the stuff that still doesn't work right, and have fun trying to break our new toy.

    Oh look, Discourse doesn't quote UL either.

    1. I've written off @codinghorror from ever making and useful changes.
    2. Perfectly valid to not want to run an unsupported fork of a product that that is barely over a year old, and "way old" versions are so vastly different you better not read a developer's guide for it or your face will melt.
    3. Right now bitching about his product has monopolized all the time the community has, and it sucks. If this becomes "The Hourly What The Fuck Is Wrong With Discourse (and nothing else)", fuck it.
    4. I might (might) have been willing to write plugins to fix this piece of shit. That was before the utter disdain and hostility the very developers of the product put out. Now? Fuck them and fuck their product. I have way too many creative projects and fun things to do with my spare time. I don't need to waste it pouring effort into fixing somoene else's broken ass shit just to bring it MAYBE up to almost acceptable standards, only to probably have it ignored at best or broken at worse in one month when the new version comes out and the May 2014 branch is "way too old!". And even if I did have the time to do it, I'll refer you to "fuck their product". From a moral standpoint, there is no way I'm pouring my time and energy and work and value into something that benefits them. Fuck it.
      Which leaves me with:
    5. I'm logging out of the forum for the weekend so it won't be rage, but yeah. I don't want to, but I can't abide by this shit. It's bad software, written by bad people, and adopting it is a bad, bad idea. I have enough computer aggravation on my life. I refuse to voluntarily add onto it by struggling to use someone's halfbaked beta version of a reinvented wheel.

    So yeah, I'm really, really angry and upset about this. Compounded by the fact that these fears were vocalized months ago, and ignored-- explained in extreme and scientific and rational detail now and ignored-- and having the software creator himself tell me to fuck off and I don't matter-- fuck it. More than I'm willing to take, even if this is (was) my favorite place on the Internet.

    Have y'all a nice long weekend.



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    1)
    2)
    4)
    3)
    5)

    Oh no, Discourse put your list in the wrong order!

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    and having the software creator himself tell me to fuck off and I don't matter-- fuck it.

    Where did he say that? I'm sorry, but you and Blakey have blown a fuse. For one, by the standards of this forum, @sam and @codinghorror have been polite.

    Two, you guys are acting like this software is something they intentionally did to harm you. Please get a grip. I'm serious. It may not be my favorite thing, but I guarantee you there was no secret meeting in a smoky room among men in dark suits to do this to you guys.

    Three, if you absolutely have to be angry at someone, shouldn't you be angry at Alex? I get that you are, but you seem to be taking this all out on Sam and Jeff, as if they broke into the server and installed Discourse without Alex knowing.

    All of that out of the way, I hope you don't leave, but you and a few others are blowing this way out of proportion. The forums are important to me, but this isn't like I came home to find my wife in bed with another dude. It's software. Software gets replaced, updated, and so-on.

    Sometimes the replacement takes some getting used to, and sometimes it doesn't do everything as good as what it replaced. That's something common in this industry, unfortunately. But this is forum software. You're not an air traffic controller who is being forced to use some system that he knows is going to get people killed. We're here to talk, and, amazingly, we've still been able to do that. In fact, you've managed to have several rather large, intense conversations already.

    Also, I feel some of you are not being honest about Community Server. It did a lot of shit wrong, too. You got used to it, but if somebody had come in and dropped Community Server on you, you probably would have been upset, too.


  • Considered Harmful

    The irony* here is that I think all parties here want the same thing: for The Daily WTF forums to be a better place. @Lorne_Kates is too militant for my tastes, but he wants to make sure we don't get something worse than we had. @blakeyrat is, well, Blakeyrat, but he's also fighting the good fight against bad software. And @apapadimoulis, I have nothing but respect for - he built this place with his own money and time and really never asked anything in return.

    I've been trying to make the case for improvement of this software in as civil a manner as I can, because I don't think vitriol is going to solve anything. I'd even get my hands dirty in the code if there was any clear way to do so (got to say, Alex is missing a great chance to dogfood Buildmaster).

    @codinghorror and @sam came in, and seemed to adopt our culture of sarcasm and mudslinging, and I was genuinely impressed when they fixed some critical bugs within hours of them being reported. The problem was they came not just with new software but with a new ideology (@codinghorror used the term religion here). They came as outsiders and told us that what we like is bad and what we don't is good.

    Our side shot first, some insults were hurled. Such is our way. They were responded to with derision; perhaps a natural response - but a public relations blunder. We are a community, perhaps one defined by our swarthy ways, but they are representatives - brand ambassadors - and should be professional, rational, and dispassionate.

    Our concerns and issues with this product are real, and they should be treated as valid and addressed. It doesn't have to be immediate, but you shouldn't dismiss your users out of hand. This is my real problem. I can deal with infinite scrolling, I'll choke it down, but I won't be marginalized on my own home turf.

    * Pedants: FOAD



  • @error said:

    * Pedants: FOAD



  • @ben_lubar said:

    (Discourse's mangling of quoted text is a real PITA. That's got to be one of the highest priority fixes, right behind any security issues. I'm getting pretty tired of fixing their HTML escaping so the quotes make sense.)

    @ben_lubar, he wasn't talking to you. You're not a pedantic dickweed, just an ordinary dickweed.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Please get a grip. I'm serious.

    i'm so confused. Morb???

    @morbiuswilters said:

    if you absolutely have to be angry at someone, shouldn't you be angry at Alex? I get that you are, but you seem to be taking this all out on Sam and Jeff, as if they broke into the server and installed Discourse without Alex knowing.

    This. I really don't get it. It was my call to use Discourse. I could have done a better job of explaining why and what the "big plans" are, but hopefully ya'll get it now.

    To go back to the vehicle analogy, I've not only put a huge down payment on the truck but I've altered the garage and even bought those truck balls to hang from the tow hitch. Or was it car that was for sale? Well, whatever. You get the point.

    I didn't ignore the feedback in the Changes at TDWTF: Goodbye Community Server thread, I just read it differently than you remember writing it. There was some complaints, but honestly it seemed there was more positive than negative feedback.

    Like I said before, let's make this work for us. Actually, I'm going to throw the new front page code up on GitHub soon, so maybe we can put some plug-ins and other Discourse stuff in there too.



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    I don't want to, but I can't abide by this shit. It's bad software, written by bad people, and adopting it is a bad, bad idea. I have enough computer aggravation on my life. I refuse to voluntarily add onto it by struggling to use someone's halfbaked beta version of a reinvented wheel.

    I can totally agree with that.

    Oddly enough, I only came back here after the new software sent me an email - I've been "off" the daily wtf for a long time, after an "incident" with Alex, which resulted in me leaving on a matter of principle**. It's a shame, because there were a lot of people here that I liked and respected; although many of them are no longer here it appears that the major contributors are still the kind of people I like and respect. My kind of community, as it were.

    What I've seen since coming back has not convinced me that Alex has any more clue than he did before. He had a choice of numerous free, stable, and largely bug-free forum platforms, which could have been relatively painlessly implemented, and reduced his hosting costs - instead he's gone 110% with a beta-release developed by a friend that tries to entirely reinvent not only the wheel, but the entire concept of wheeled vehicles, using only triangular parts. As for Jeff? He's in dire need of some intensive cluebat "reprogramming".

    In short, it's been - brief. But I still don't have time for this. Good luck to those who stay.

    @Jeff Atwood, in 2007, said:

    Reprogramming WTF code isn't enough. We need to reprogram the developers producing the WTF code. With my guest article, I was trying to inspire readers to take on the burden of reprogramming bad developers, rather than passively waiting for the bad developers to come to their senses on their own. That strategy never works.

    ** Can't provide a backlink to CS, as it appears to be down right now, but it came down to Alex telling me to turn off my adblocker or fuck off, and my choice was made somewhat easier by the overall shittiness of CS - there's not enough time in the day to spend it fighting bad software.



  • @error said:

    I've been trying to make the case for improvement of this software in as civil a manner as I can, because I don't think vitriol is going to solve anything.

    Agreed. This isn't an argument over politics or whatever. This is something we actually have the opportunity to influence. I think it's important for the community for everyone to be as reasonable as possible.

    @error said:

    Our concerns and issues with this product are real, and they should be treated as valid and addressed. It doesn't have to be immediate, but you shouldn't dismiss your users out of hand. This is my real problem. I can deal with infinite scrolling, I'll choke it down, but I won't be marginalized on my own home turf.

    See, I just don't see it as them trying to be insulting. I think they're trying to make the case that their way is better. I don't agree that it is, but I'm willing to listen.

    As for the dismissiveness and the image macros, it seems like it's more an attempt to break the ice and use humour to defuse the rampant hostility.

    They're brand ambassadors, but they're also guests here. I engaged in the flaming before they got here, but once they started posting I reeled it back in. Realistically, what is calling Jeff and Sam names to their faces going to accomplish? I'd rather show them a community they want to help than a raging wall of anger which can only say "No."



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    They're brand ambassadors, but they're also guests here

    They're "tailors".

    From Wikipedia...

    A vain Emperor who cares about nothing except wearing and displaying clothes hires two swindlers who promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "hopelessly stupid". The Emperor's ministers cannot see the clothing themselves, but pretend that they can for fear of appearing unfit for their positions and the Emperor does the same. Finally the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor marches in procession before his subjects. The townsfolk play along with the pretense, not wanting to appear unfit for their positions or stupid. Then a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but continues the procession.



  • @tufty said:

    I've been "off" the daily wtf for a long time

    I honestly don't remember you at all. Was your avatar different? That's usually how I identify people.

    @tufty said:

    it came down to Alex telling me to turn off my adblocker or fuck off

    See, that's the heart and soul of the forums--terrifyingly intense flamewars over adblockers. We can still have those kind of fights right here!



  • @tufty said:

    A vain Emperor who cares about nothing except wearing and displaying clothes hires two swindlers who promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "hopelessly stupid". The Emperor's ministers cannot see the clothing themselves, but pretend that they can for fear of appearing unfit for their positions and the Emperor does the same. Finally the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor marches in procession before his subjects. The townsfolk play along with the pretense, not wanting to appear unfit for their positions or stupid. Then a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but continues the procession.

    That's fuckin' hawt.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I honestly don't remember you at all. Was your avatar different? That's usually how I identify people.

    Yeah, I'd guess so. Might have been clarus, or maybe a squirrel holding a flower, or something like that. I forget, and generally don't even bother with avatars, given that I usually adblock them :)



  • I wouldn't be opposed to continuous scrolling if:

    • it loaded everything from the beginning of the topic up to the point I'm reading
    • it didn't unload stuff while I'm scrolling around

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