Closed Poll: How do you feel about Discourse on TDWTF?



  • So, about a week after introducing us to Discourse on TDWTF, Alex had this to say:

    @apapadimoulis said:

    Please, let’s try Discourse. Just give it a few weeks. Actively use the software. Learn how to work around the quirks, the bugs. Seems a lot of us have already done that. In the mean time, I’ll send comments from a couple front-page articles as a test, and maybe stream the sidebar from both CS and here. CS will stick around, and we can review it from there.

    Now that it's been about 3 weeks since we started using Discourse, I thought we should see how those of us who stuck around feel about Discourse.

    • I love it! I want to have babies with Discourse!
    • I like it. It's a lot better than CS.
    • It's ok. I wouldn't mind it sticking around.
    • I don't care either way.
    • I'm not fond of it. I'd rather it were gone.
    • I really don't like. Let's go back to CS while we look for something better.
    • I hate Discourse! Burn it with fire!

    Also, comment below so we can see what it is people do and don't like about Discourse.


  • Banned

    For the record, I am not voting on this, so if you see "I want to have babies with Discourse" it's not me.



  • TL; DR:

    It's okay. Some of my feathers are ruffled but no big deal.


    I actually don't have particularly strong feelings about Discourse: The Software. As noted elsewhere, it's just a shift of platform and it will take some time to adjust. I'm okay with that. I do kinda miss some of the CS fuckery that we had, but ultimately that was just abuse of a broken tool - we just found a way to make it (mildly) entertaining.

    The fact that the Discourse team showed up to engage us and occasionally acquiesce to our demands was a nice touch... but I don't think they handled everything perfectly. I'm probably about 50/50 on some of their interactions with the community.

    And I get it. We're a coarse and thorny bunch. If you're not used to it, we can come across as a bunch of assholes and trolls. And we are - but if you've been around for a while, it's mostly in good fun. Hitting the right balance when you're new to a group of people is tricky, especially when they're throwing insults back and forth at each and 'Liking' them in equal measure.

    But new blood is new blood. And sweeping in like "I'm Jeff Motherfucking Atwood, you're a bunch of tools, fuck you you're doing it wrong, my way is best way"... well, let me put it this way. I can call someone a fucking asshole, depending on if I've known them for 10 years or 10 minutes, that statement could be taken in a lot of different ways.

    We're not a terribly unreasonable group. It just might take some time to figure out when we're joking and when we're not - and with some of us you can never tell.


    Filed under: some of my best friends



  • @sam said:

    For the record, I am not voting on this, so if you see "I want to have babies with Discourse" it's not me.

    No need for the disclaimer, we all know that's @ben_lubar.



  • @sam said:

    For the record, I am not voting on this, so if you see "I want to have babies with Discourse" it's not me.

    Good to know. I pretty much just added the extremes for laughs. I know that you and @codinghorror have a lot more you guys want to do with Discourse before you're ready for that level of commitment. 😉 And I expect those who would have chosen the last option have already rage quit.



  • For me, several of those statements are true. I found it rather tough to pick just one. There are some things about it I rather like; there are some that should be burned with fire, and a lot are somewhere in between.


  • Banned

    on the upside I do plan to give you a clean way to disable "shitting all over my history", that only leaves pagination imo.



  • @abarker said:

    It's OK. I wouldn't mind it sticking around.

    I'm reasonably happy with Discourse. I don't have a problem with infinite scrolling, I like 'Likes' and the notifications are good if a bit inaccurate.

    The worst thing for me is the way we're meant to feel that there's a right way to use forum software and we'd have a better time if we used it properly.



  • @RTapeLoadingError said:

    The worst thing for me is the way we're meant to feel that there's a right way to use forum software and we'd have a better time if we used it properly.

    I like that devs come on here and fix real bugs. I dislike that devs come on here with an attitude that there's a rightone true way to use forum software and we're all doing it wrong.



  • @mikeTheLiar said:

    And sweeping in like "I'm Jeff Motherfucking Atwood, you're a bunch of tools, fuck you you're doing it wrong, my way is best way"

    The problem is that Discourse isn't configurable where it should be. When it comes to whether or not to show post counts directly next to a post, Jeff shouldn't preach that this is a bad idea. That's up to the forum admin. If you have a respectable community, they won't abuse it. If it's a community like this one, it'd only encourage spamming. But for Jeff to think that there's a single answer to all situations is just plain wrong.

    Sorry, but you don't know better than every forum admin what's best for their forum. They usually know better than you. It's your job to give them the tools to allow them to put themselves in the best position possible, and Discourse fails on that account.


  • BINNED

    @HardwareGeek said:

    I dislike that devs come on here with an attitude that there's a rightone true way to use forum software and we're all doing it wrong.

    Which is why I voted to go back to CS until we find something better. I'm really OK with Discourse, but not at the cost of the loose cannon mod that came with it. What's worse, @apapadimoulis hasn't said anything, so I can only assume he agrees with what Mr. Atwood is doing.

    Someone asked about a dailywtf subreddit. The idea seemed too much like mutiny to me, but there are cases where mutiny is justified. Barring Alex showing up and issuing a public cease and desist order to @codinghorror, that time seems to be at hand. I can set up the subreddit but I'll need help with CSS as I'm mostly a database guy.


  • Banned

    @antiquarian said:

    I'm really OK with Discourse, but not at the cost of the loose cannon mod that came with it.

    This is not a Discourse issue, this is a community issue. @apapadimoulis has the keys to the castle. He can strip @codinghorror of admin if he wishes.

    If @apapadimoulis @pjh @dhromed want to decree that @codinghorror shall never split topics going forward or delete a post going forward or edit another's post going forward, they can and he will oblige. We still have access to all the traditional tools of the forum, we can flag posts and so on. This is your community, we are just ensuring the software works right.

    Personally, I am tending towards just moving back bugs to http://meta.discourse.org where they belong and just inserting links into conversations to the actual bug. Then you can can discuss what you will on whatever topic you will without the constant worry of quicksand.

    Can we talk about kittens now?



  • @antiquarian said:

    Someone asked about a dailywtf subreddit.

    Might as well just set up a whole new forum if you're going to do that, it costs all of $0 to do after all and you wouldn't have reddit cross-contamination.

    I think it's still a bit hasty though. Maybe if Alex comes out and says 'me and Jeff are taking this community in another, more "civilised" direction', it'd be time to revolt, but Discourse alone can be fixed. We just need to write some plugins, is all. I was under the impression Jeff was only here to fix any bugs he might agree are bugs.

    (And they did, aside from the lack of pagination and the horrible lag it's nearly usable now, so they've come a way in the last few weeks)



  • @mikeTheLiar said:

    > sam said:
    if you see "I want to have babies with Discourse" it's not me.

    we all know that's @ben_lubar.


    We all know Discourse is a cat???


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @antiquarian said:

    I'm really OK with Discourse, but not at the cost of the loose cannon mod that came with it. What's worse, @apapadimoulis hasn't said anything, so I can only assume he agrees with what Mr. Atwood is doing.

    I'm on board with the "split meta posts" thing. TDWTF threads are more like a stream of constantly woven fabric on a 7th-dimensional brane. That's part of the fun of course. While there'd be no point in splitting out CS meta discussion (b/c, really, nothing can be done about it), but with Discourse... it's one of the few things that can be changed. Moving these rare bits out really helps keep these discussions manageable.

    Not saying every meta discussion should always be split, but at least while we're still in this "try to improve Discourse" period. Makes it possible to actually follow.



  • @apapadimoulis said:

    I'm on board with the "split meta posts" thing. TDWTF threads are more like a stream of constantly woven fabric on a 7th-dimensional brane. That's part of the fun of course. While there'd be no point in splitting out CS meta discussion (b/c, really, nothing can be done about it), but with Discourse... it's one of the few things that can be changed. Moving these rare bits out really helps keep these discussions manageable.

    Not saying every meta discussion should always be split, but at least while we're still in this "try to improve Discourse" period. Makes it possible to actually follow.

    Wait, are you saying that @codinghorror is dogfooding his product on this site?


  • Considered Harmful

    @chubertdev said:

    Wait, are you saying that @codinghorror is dogfooding his product on this site?

    Well, I can certainly see the comparison of Discourse to dog food.


    Filed under: Discourse hatred == free likes, Perverse incentive




  • Banned

    And sweeping in like "I'm Jeff Motherfucking Atwood, you're a bunch of tools, fuck you you're doing it wrong, my way is best way"... well, let me put it this way. I can call someone a fucking asshole, depending on if I've known them for 1 day

    At no point did I say anything like that. The dialog has been more like this:

    these design decisions are crazy! Why would you design it this way!

    I explain the rationale, and because I get tired of repeating myself, I cite blog posts I've written with the research and deeper explanations.

    so you are saying we are doing it wrong and you are right, that is bullshit

    No, you asked me to explain the rationale and I did. Who knows, maybe Discourse will be a dead project in a year. The proof is in the survival of the project and its adoption by the greater web.

    who are you to make those decisions?

    The primary sponsor and founder of the project? People seem pretty happy with my previous project, Stack Overflow, and the goals are similar: a better web. In this case, for social discussion vs. directed technical Q&A. And it is 100% open source so everyone benefits.

    I work on Discourse because I love online discussion and I do not want to see a world where hideous shambling abominations like PHPbb are considered "good enough", a software ecosystem so inbred and incompetent that Facebook eventually wins and dominates all human discussions forever.

    there are a lot of bugs, this sucks

    You are right, there are too many bugs in Discourse. And you guys are indeed excellent at finding bugs. We will work on fixing them, but this requires a sane set of meta discussions for me to work with.

    how dare you split meta topics and/or move my cheese

    I am only moving cheese in the meta category insofar as it is necessary to fix the bugs and make Discourse better based on your feedback. I can't follow feedback that's too buried in random digressions.

    Arguably the most important thing I learned from Stack Overflow is this: meta is the heart of all community governance. It matters deeply. I am tending that part of the garden here because a) it is literally my job and b) because I care about it, and I think it matters profoundly to the health of your community and in fact all online communities.

    yeah well fuck you and your blog

    OK.

    I wish it worked like X

    While I cannot transform a car into a truck, it depends on the nature of the request. Discuss it in a meta topic. We've literally introduced a dozen features based on your feedback since launch. (But to be fair some of those were egregiously broken things that we fixed) And honestly the feedback here has been some of the best we have gotten in terms of us getting over the last mile to V1.0.

    So thank you for that. Discourse is better for everyone on the web because of your patience and feedback.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @chubertdev said:

    That's up to the forum admin.

    But, but, but....


    @sam said:

    If @apapadimoulis @pjh @dhromed want to decree that @codinghorror shall never split topics going forward or delete a post going forward or edit another's post going forward, they can and he will oblige.

    Thing is, on the old board, I got the strong impression the mods were self-regulating; I only got mod initially because I kept reporting spam quickly after it was posted during a particularly prolific time and the mods at the time got sick of it and gave me access to remove the spam rather than report it to make their job easier.

    Mods rarely (if ever - I can't remember an instance) criticised each other - privately or publicly - we knew largely by osmosis, and by being experienced members of the forums, what was expected of us.

    Our input, as mods, on the old board was largely removing spam. Otherwise, rarely would we (seriously) mess with the flow of conversation or otherwise abuse mod privileges, unless it was for comedic effect - see XKCD/Rosie - or to correct some formatting problems some newbie experienced.

    And, by and large, that's all the current (old) mods are doing on here at the moment.

    I can't speak for the new mods that have been introduced, without input from us, who have little experience with our little community.


    @apapadimoulis said:

    Not saying every meta discussion should always be split, but at least while we're still in this "try to improve Discourse" period. Makes it possible to actually follow.

    It's not just splitting posts in Meta though.

    It's the editing of posts that aren't even in Meta.

    And the deletion of perfectly respectable posts that regular members of the community have spent their time composing, the only 'crime' being committed being that they're off-topic for the topic title.

    Like most threads have been in our community for years.



  • I personally find it easier to treat Discourse as a semi-broken mailing list than a (broken) web forum, and nowadays I only visit to write replies (I'd even reply by e-mail if that worked, but it doesn't).


  • BINNED

    @sam said:

    on the upside I do plan to give you a clean way to disable "shitting all over my history", that only leaves pagination imo.

    I never played with history API, but can't you do a replaceState that modifies the history without forcing a reload? In that case couldn't you:

    • look at the top of the history stack
    • check if it's reffering to the same topic
    • if it is, pop/replace that entry with current URL

    So, you keep the last post user read in history not breaking the back button and you keep one history entry per topic.

    @sam said:

    Personally, I am tending towards just moving back bugs to http://meta.discourse.org a public bug tracker where they belong and just inserting links into conversations to the actual bug.

    Finally, we're in agreement!



  • So can I paraphrase the above comments?

    I went with "I really don't like. Let's go back to CS..." I would upgrade that rating to "I don't care either way" if @codinghorror stopped posting completely and had his mod privs revoked.
    He does nothing except add fuel to the fire.

    His statement about being "creator of the platform" is typically pointless. The creator of CS, as far as I can recall wasn't a member of TDWTF and sure as hell wasn't a mod. I wouldn't let the creator of phpbb be a member of my forum.

    I didn't have a lot of time for @sam at the start, but I've come round to him, in the same way that he has come round to a lot of us. I do think there is benefit to Sam being here, but Jeff is just destructive.
    Right now, he is the worst part of TDWTF on Discourse for me.


  • Banned

    For some reason I can't fully articulate, I feel like I have arrived.

    Filed under: I am become WTF


  • Banned

    @PJH said:

    or to correct some formatting problems some newbie experienced.

    @PJH said:

    It's the editing of posts that aren't even in Meta.

    The post you cited was edited for the very reason you stated, a formatting problem. But don't take my word for it, view the public revision history, a standard feature of Discourse designed to encourage mod transparency, and see for yourself.

    @PJH said:

    the deletion of perfectly respectable posts that regular members of the community have spent their time composing

    In the 500+ post gargantuan, who can even read this, bug topic that @blakeyrat was nice enough to set up, before it went completely off the rails. And I announced in advance I would be cleaning that particular meta topic up, so that we would have some hope of processing the feedback there.

    For the record, cleaning that topic up and making sure I had read all the actual bug reports -- that were not discussions of Crystal Pepsi vomit -- took a solid two hours. It was real work. I was happy to do it, because it was genuine well intentioned feedback (for the love of FSM, it had the word Genuine in the title!) and a lot of it touched on real bugs in Discourse that we should have fixed already.

    Even Blakeyrat was complaining that the topic was derailed from its original intent:

    http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/genuinely-useful-bug-reports/296/177

    This forum has been promoted to the worst, everybody who's posted in it except the few people actually posting bugs have been promoted to the worst of the worst, and you know what? Fuck all of this.

    I agreed with this criticism.


  • Banned

    Personally I think out little bugs category here has served its purpose (it was 100% my mistake and I am sorry I created it), I have been going through and moving stuff to meta where it belongs and flagging so @PJH and other mods can close if they see fit. .

    No reason for our team to track stuff here, we can keep stuff on meta.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @codinghorror said:

    The post you cited was edited for the very reason you stated, a formatting problem.

    No.

    It fucking wasn't.

    There was no difference in the output.

    Or should that be "no".

    Or "[b]no[/b]".

    Which do you demand we use Jeff? Will you edit this post to remove the ones you don't like?

    The formatting problems I was alluding to was converting, say, a whole post of a brick-wall of text into the paragraphs the OP intended, in order to make it easier for everyone else to read.

    Changing BB code to markdown as you did with the post I cited (a [quote] block to a line-starting > in this case) (or the ol numbering in the other post of mine you decided to OCD-edit but with which I had problems finding) where there is no discernible or substantive difference in what is displayed does not count as "newbie formatting problems," and to claim otherwise, is to be extremely condescending.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @sam said:

    it was 100% my mistake and I am sorry I created it

    There was nothing wrong with the concept, and once people realised it was there they started using it as intended.

    What people are objecting to is their stuff being shifted there, instead of - say - someone using "Reply as new topic" on a post mentioning a bug if that's where bugs need to be collected.


  • Banned

    @PJH said:

    Changing BB code to markdown as you did with the post I cited (a quote block to a line-starting > in this case) (or the ol numbering in the other post of mine you decided to OCD-edit but with which I had problems finding) where there is no discernible or substantive difference in what is displayed does not count as "newbie formatting problems," and to claim otherwise, is to be extremely condescending.

    There is in fact a discernible difference, to wit:

    this is a bbcode quote

    And

    this is a markdown quote

    I didn't say "newbie", I said formatting problem. And that is what I meant.

    I see that you are angry because I touched your post. I am sorry and I will never touch your posts again.

    Filed under: lighten up, Francis


  • Banned

    I think there is an additional conceptual problem with it, it is intrusive for us to step in to a community and say ... hey ... we OWN this category, let's run it by our rules.

    Additionally, I think its just impractical for tiny team to track bugs across 2 different systems, it just does not scale ... keeping stuff on Discourse meta is a much saner workflow. I was the biggest proponent of shutting down GitHub issues cause we has severe issues with the fragmentation... and here I am creating another fragmented system.


  • Banned

    It is just as intrusive to demand that they go to meta.discourse.org and abide by our rules there -- the idea that we will ignore all feedback which is not left directly on our doorstep, packaged in exactly the way we wanted it.

    I think the idea is that we meet halfway -- we fully engage and process the feedback in a particular category, so that we are not asking others to do work that is rightly ours... but it can't be interspersed with 20+ reply digressions.



  • I'm missing the tongue-in-cheek option that slashdot usually offers as the last option; for TDWTF that could be something like "Whatever Alex decides is fine with me!"


  • Banned

    In no way do I want them to demand "GO TO META" we not listen here.

    But for me, I am going to always prefer opening a new meta bug (and linking there) over creating a TDWTF meta/bug. It just scales better. Gives me a tiny bit more work but the end result is more positive. I feel this experiment is causing fragmentation.

    I think its only a marginal extra amount of work for me to create a topic on meta over, reply as new topic here.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @codinghorror said:

    There is in fact a discernible difference

    Two quote blocks. One which looks subtly different from another. That looks more like an issue/bug with the presentation layer after the fact rather that the code used to generate a "quote block" before the fact.

    i.e. why is one an blockquote wrapped in an aside and the other a naked blockquote when they should both be the same.

    Now onto my "substantive difference point...."? Ah - there is none.

    @codinghorror said:

    I see that you are angry because I touched your post.

    No. That's not it. It gets briefly near it, but that's not it.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @faoileag said:

    for TDWTF that could be something like "Whatever Alex decides is fine with me!"

    I'm sorry, but that's reserved for agreeing with Morbs.

    Actually, what we need for this community is Winter Bash style “hats” that our avatars can wear. Except that they can be things like a speech bubble saying “I agree with whatever Morbs just said” (which would be earned for liking Morbs's posts a lot, perhaps?).


  • Banned

    Possibly, but the number of communities we have with this high a level of engagement on Discourse is very small. And very few of them have the same technical skill and testing (and frankly, the justified hatred and suspicion of bad software that WTF implies) backgrounds necessary to dig out pernicious, long term bugs in Discourse.

    (it is weird the Ember.js community was not better at this with their Discourse instance.)

    I am sure over time as we iron issues out there will be less need (or even desire) to be fully engaged on wtf, but I for one think the TDWTF community has done more to improve Discourse than anything since boing boing. This deserves our attention because a) they have uncovered a ton of very legit bugs and b) I want to demonstrate that we are really serious about fixing them.

    Also c) this is exactly the kick in the ass we need on the run-up to shipping V1.



  • @codinghorror said:

    For some reason I can't fully articulate, I feel like I have arrived.

    @dkf said:
    @antiquarian said:
    You haven't quite managed to alienate everyone here yet, but keep at it. You'll get there.

    And once he's done that, he'll fit right in!

    Ah. That's why I couldn't post. I can't let those quotes just stand as they are. I have to provide text myself.

    A bit like talking Akismet into accepting links he considers to be spam.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @faoileag said:

    I can't let those quotes just stand as they are. I have to provide text myself.

      tends to work if you don't want to add any commentary to self-explanatory quotes.



  • @PJH said:

      tends to work if you don't want to add any commentary to self-explanatory quotes.

    True; but then I couldn't have dragged @Akismet in :-)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Retain for future reference then....


  • Banned

    I needed to see which part of the post was causing the error in the quote format, and along the way make the post look better. I figured another moderator would be OK with this, and understand the edit, for exactly that reason: moderators sometimes make edits to fix formatting errors in posts, as you yourself noted -- and edits are part of the public record, with notifications, so they can be teaching moments as well.

    Apologies if I figured wrong.



  • @skotl said:

    but Jeff is just destructive. Right now, he is the worst part of TDWTF on Discourse for me.

    I would have agreed yesterday, but right now...

    @codinghorror said:

    Possibly, but the number of communities we have with this high a level of engagement on Discourse is very small. And very few of them have the same technical skill and testing (and frankly, the justified hatred and suspicion of bad software that WTF implies) backgrounds necessary to dig out pernicious, long term bugs in Discourse.
    ...
    but I for one think the TDWTF community has done more to improve Discourse than anything since boing boing. ... they have uncovered a ton of very legit bugs

    Hey folks, he's actually praising us!


  • Banned

    There is a reason I am here.

    And good news @skotl, once we get all the major bugs and issues worked out, there will no longer be a reason for me to be here. That could take up to two months though, realistically, you guys are awfully good at uncovering problems in software. Maybe a little too good?

    Filed under: other than trolling you



  • If there are valid threads about Discourse issues then I see no problem with Jeff cutting and pasting posts into paper cranes as he sees fit, given that that discussion is excplicitly supposed to help him and cohorts improve the software.

    Other than that,
    Dear @codinghorror and @sam, you got admin privs in a support capacity, like a helpdesk employee getting remote desktop access to the user's computer to see what's going on and fix things. Not to actually moderate the forums.

    @sam said:

    I am going to always prefer opening a new meta bug (and linking there) over creating a TDWTF meta/bug. It just scales better. Gives me a tiny bit more work but the end result is more positive. I feel this experiment is causing fragmentation.

    I believe these are words of wisdom!
    Keep your formal bugs in your own bugboard forumtracker.



  • @codinghorror said:

    @PJH said:
    It's the editing of posts that aren't even in Meta.

    The post you cited was edited for the very reason you stated, a formatting problem. But don't take my word for it, view the public revision history, a standard feature of Discourse designed to encourage mod transparency, and see for yourself.

    @PJH said:

    the deletion of perfectly respectable posts that regular members of the community have spent their time composing

    In the 500+ post gargantuan, who can even read this, bug topic that @blakeyrat was nice enough to set up, before it went completely off the rails. And I announced in advance I would be cleaning that particular meta topic up, so that we would have some hope of processing the feedback there.

    For the record, cleaning that topic up and making sure I had read all the actual bug reports -- that were not discussions of Crystal Pepsi vomit -- took a solid two hours. It was real work. I was happy to do it, because it was genuine well intentioned feedback (for the love of FSM, it had the word Genuine in the title!) and a lot of it touched on real bugs in Discourse that we should have fixed already.

    While I don't think you're using the right tool for the job here (Discourse as bug tracker), I at least feel there are compelling arguments to perform this kind of move - there's also compelling arguments that Reply as new Topic is the right workflow.

    What I don't feel compelling is the "no portion of any meta discussion shall be allowed to exist as part of another topic ever" decree. I think maybe this misunderstanding between you and the community has much to do with semantics - we view topics as conversation threads which, by their very nature, are conversational and will wander. You are viewing them as "the topic of conversation is declared X, discuss!" which is not how this community operates. If you feel the conversation needs to be branched Use Reply as new Topic since that is what it seems to be there for. I don't care how you want to reply to something, I care when you decide that we are doing something wrong that clearly has no right or wrong way to do it and take it upon yourself to fix it.

    For me it feels like you're that manager who shows up one day and decides that functions can't be longer than 5 lines and spends a month editing everyone's work to fit an arbitrary "standard" while yelling at people "you're doing it wrong". And the whole point of this is because he wants to be able to review committed functions on his phone while he's on travel without scrolling.

    Edit: added an is


    Filed under it depends on what your definition of is is



  • @rad131304 said:

    For me it feels like you're that manager who shows up one day and decides that functions can't be longer than 5 lines and spends a month editing everyone's work to fit an arbitrary "standard" while yelling at people "<b>you're doing it wrong</b>".

    I had a manager like that once and let me tell you, it was no laughing matter!



  • @dhromed said:

    Other than that,Dear @codinghorror and @sam, you got admin privs in a support capacity, like a helpdesk employee getting remote desktop access to the user's computer to see what's going on and fix things. Not to actually moderate the forums.

    Yup - that.

    Still, two months till we either bin discourse and/or Jeff stops posting. That's a lot of disk space to churn through in the meantime...



  • @codinghorror said:

    this is a bbcode quote

    And

    this is a markdown quote

    That seems more like an issue with how Discourse displays the two than with the actual quoting mechanism. I agree wtih @pjh on this. There is no real, effective change to be gained when by switching from bbcode to markup. If you want to fix the look, change the way Discourse renders the bbcode instead of editing the post.

    TWO BUG BONUS!!

    Bug 1: bbcode and markdown quotes render differently.
    Expected: Since both are technically supported by Discourse, they should render identically.

    Bug 2: markdown quotes don't display properly when quoted from a post.
    Expected: markdown quotes should always display as intended, just like bbcode quotes.



  • @sam said:

    I think there is an additional conceptual problem with it, it is intrusive for us to step in to a community and say ... hey ... we OWN this category, let's run it by our rules.

    Additionally, I think its just impractical for tiny team to track bugs across 2 different systems, it just does not scale ... keeping stuff on Discourse meta is a much saner workflow. I was the biggest proponent of shutting down GitHub issues cause we has severe issues with the fragmentation... and here I am creating another fragmented system.

    @codinghorror said:

    It is just as intrusive to demand that they go to meta.discourse.org and abide by our rules there -- the idea that we will ignore all feedback which is not left directly on our doorstep, packaged in exactly the way we wanted it.

    I think the idea is that we meet halfway -- we fully engage and process the feedback in a particular category, so that we are not asking others to do work that is rightly ours... but it can't be interspersed with 20+ reply digressions.

    These are the kind of things that lead many teams to use independent bug tracking software. I know, this has been discussed elsewhere, but you guys brought it up.


    @faoileag said:

    I'm missing the tongue-in-cheek option that slashdot usually offers as the last option

    I was trying to make the poll at least somewhat meaningful for Alex, while keeping the options semi-entertaining. To do both, I had to draw a line somewhere.


  • BINNED

    Adding a qualifier:

    It's ok. I wouldn't mind it sticking around, but there's still a lot stuff that needs to be fixed in order for Discourse to be completely usable.


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