There's a meta question if ever I saw one



  • Continuing the discussion from Odd IE behavior losing focus:

    @ChaosTheEternal said:

    ...which you would see if you scrolled up, or read the whole topic before you closed it?

    Piss-taking aside... is reading the whole (short) topic not the way Discourse is supposed to work?

    The stated aim was 'civilised discourse'. To me that kind of indicates many much shorter topics than the kinds of topics we have here because reading even a few posts seems to be problematic.

    @codinghorror This one's for you: you want to improve the quality of conversations but don't read all of the conversations at the time. This isn't the first time you've been called on this one, but it is getting irritating.

    In fact, I'm surprised by it. Infiniscroll is the perfect venue for reading an entire topic end to end. Your entire product is built around this paradigm and yet you don't seem to actually use it - and then berate us for not using it properly.

    Please explain to me how this works. It's almost like you're not actually using the software the way even you designed it.


  • Banned

    Yes, I sometimes read things and do not read them correctly.

    Filed under: This is because I am a human being



  • Either you're a world class troll by claiming you don't read things properly, to get out of defending an accusation levelled at you about something else entirely, or you're preaching one thing and doing something else.

    I'm not sure which it is but you'd get a shitload more respect for people by not acting like a jerkwad to them.


  • Banned

    @Arantor said:

    you'd get a shitload more respect for people by not acting like a jerkwad to them

    On these forums? Unlikely. Also, I am not trying to be a jerkward to anyone, for the record, I'm just following the implicit tone that I already see here, to wit:

    http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/vote-of-no-confidence/270/95?u=codinghorror

    Snark? Sure, that's what you guys do here. Personal attacks or disrespect? nope.



  • It used to be snark, which was reasonably well appreciated. Then it degenerated into being a jerkwad, which wasn't.



  • What you're failing at, significantly, is realizing this community it made up of people with vastly different communication styles. You haven't been around long enough to associate the correct level of response to your target.

    Talking to @morbiuswilters requires a special level of snark,

    Talking to @Matches when he's reported a bug to you requires normal human being communication

    Talking to @cartman82 requires loving backhanded compliments due to his severe case of discourse syndrome.

    When you mix and match these styles, you get negative reactions from all. On this forum, we accept jerks. We like jerks. We like sarcasm. We don't like lolcats when we're trying to have a serious topic about issues we've had with your software.

    You have a unique position, you've come to our community after your software was installed. As such, our take on you is generally as software owner first, community member second. When you fail to respond appropriately to topics about your software, and in general topics about random things involving the community, it leads to an overabundance of rejection of who you are and what you represent.



  • @Arantor said:

    reading the whole (short) topic

    Bringing the discussion to another topic, and trying to be civil, the topic was closed based on a point made in post #5, a SO link talking about the problem happening in IE9 (which I assume was the newest or most used version at the time of asking), when in post #4 I had stated that it also affected IE10 (and I'll check again when I can, but I thought it also affected IE11 on Win 7).

    I know in cases of multi hundred post topics, things will be overlooked, but a dozen?



  • That's kind of what I'm getting at... Jeff has, more than once, ignored most of the topic and acted upon the bits he did read. And it's happened enough times to be irritating.



  • @Matches said:

    What you're failing at, significantly, is realizing this community it all communities are made up of people with vastly different communication styles.

    FTFY.

    I'm not generally an ass. I'll be as civil as I can be if someone else is civil (e.g. @sam), but if the vibe I get from someone is "asshole", I got no problem going down to that level.


  • Banned

    @ChaosTheEternal said:

    I know in cases of multi hundred post topics, things will be overlooked, but a dozen?

    Here are my read stats for this forum, from my admin page:

    Posts Read 13228
    Read Time 3d (78 hours)
    Days Visited 35
    Topics Viewed 640
    

    So yes, it is entirely possible in reading 13,228 posts in 640 topics across 35 days of visiting, I might have missed a few things. It's likely in fact.



  • I know, and considering his other posts, that's why my tone in what you quoted was the way it was.



  • Do you have filters on 'time spent reading posts' so things that are multi thousand post topic aren't going to your read counter as you're fast scrolling through the topic?

    Legitimate question about what your software does.


  • Banned

    Yep, there is a javascript timer counting every second every post is visible on your screen, and it's stored per post. That's been in Discourse since launch in Feb 2013.



  • @codinghorror said:

    Here are my read stats for this forum, from my admin page:

    Posts Read 13228
    Read Time 3d (78 hours)
    Days Visited 35
    Topics Viewed 640

    So yes, it is entirely possible in reading 13,228 posts in 640 topics across 35 days of visiting, I might have missed a few things. It's likely in fact.

    Wait, it doesn't show you a mention count?


  • Banned

    @DrakeSmith said:

    Wait, it doesn't show you a mention count?

    Unfortunately we were counting them with Int64 and ran out of space, so omitted from the numbers above.



  • I call shenanigans. There's no way Jeff accrued Int64 mentions, unsigned or otherwise. I know the community is upset but we're not THAT upset.


  • Banned

    I am just going to have to call Double Face Palm on my Joke then



  • It's worse than that, Jim.


  • BINNED

    You forgot some people:
    Talking to @blakeyrat takes some abuse and an ALL CAPS PLUG-IN
    Talking to @Nagesh takes a special Indian-English to English dictionary
    Talking to @codinghorror takes a blog and an ivory tower


  • Banned



  • 'Filed under' is not content. This is rather what people mean - Your responces tend to be flippant remarks, sometimes in image form, that add nothing to the conversation taking place and imply that you are simply disregarding what is being said to you.


    Filed under: Not content


  • Banned

    It is content: to mansplain the joke, what I'm saying is that one person's ideal vision of the future, e.g. infinite scroll and the death of "click this next page button for more" when reading, can be another person's personal vision of hell.

    Or to go back even further to the original MLK reference I was making, maybe someone is actually a racist and believes the world MLK dreamed of where people of color have the same rights and respect and privileges as everyone else should not exist. Being a racist is not exactly popular these days, but it is not illegal to hold an opinion, either.

    And this idea, that one person's dream, no matter how noble or well intentioned, can be someone else's nightmare that they strongly oppose, is fundamentally irreconcilable.

    Filed under: explaining the joke



  • @codinghorror said:

    On these forums? Unlikely.

    It's possible!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Time out for a second...

    Are you guys serious with your reaction to Jeff? I personally think that him and Sam have done a great job of integrating with the community. Jeff and Sam have both participated in some top notch trolling (which has been hilarious) and I applaud it. They haven't done anything that is any worse than what other people do here. There is nothing wrong with that, it's one of the things that we all come here for right?

    They are going above and beyond to dogfood our forum in the same way that we use it. I've never known a situation where the software authors have come and actively participated, and provided such a high level of support (and even provided entertainment at the same time).

    Seriously, we're pretty lucky that these guys are bending over backwards to help us.


    Filed under: I guess people will complain about anything, You can't make everyone happy


  • @DoctorJones said:

    Are you guys serious with your reaction to Jeff?

    I think they just like to feel offended by everything Jeff says because they personally never liked him from the start and therefore everthing he says is filterd through shit-coloured glasses.

    I don't wear those glasses myself, so eh.



  • As much as I appreciate hearing a different opinion, a few things are worth correcting:
    @DoctorJones said:

    They are going above and beyond to dogfood [b]our[/b] forum in the same way that we use it.

    This is not our forum because it is not our software. It is their forum in that it is their company that has developed the forum software.

    Neither was it the community's decision to use the software in the first place.

    @DoctorJones said:

    I've never known a situation where the software authors ... provided such a high level of support

    You are a bit mistaken here, I'm afraid. It is us who provide the support. Discourse is beta software, and this community provides plenty of beta testers. Bugs get detected by the truck load and reported, the more adventurous try to break the software every which way they can, and all that for nothing.

    Yes, Discourse is OS, but there is still a company behind it that probably wants to earn its money around Discourse.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @trithne said:

    'Filed under' is not content.

    Actually, it is. It was not uncommon for CS to have a quote plus some tags. But that was living dangerously, because you never knew when @apapadimoulis was going to have to delete all of the tags again. Using fake tags like that is definitely accepted.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dhromed said:

    It's possible!

    @sam seems to manage alright....


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @faoileag said:

    a few things are worth correcting:

    @faoileag said:

    This is not our forum because it is not our software. It is their forum in that it is their company that has developed the forum software.

    Forgive me, I wasn't clear enough.

    By our forum I meant this place and these people, not the software. This is, and forever will be, our forum regardless of what platform it is on.

    @faoileag said:

    Discourse is beta software, and this community provides plenty of beta testers.

    Agreed, yes it does, and we're fucking good at it. I don't think that we should be doing it, it'd be nice to have a stable platform where discussion of bugs and the platform itself doesn't dominate proceedings (but that's a different discussion).

    On the whole though, I do like Discourse, and as it evolves I think we'll be onto a winner.



  • @codinghorror said:

    It is content: to mansplain the joke, what I'm saying is that one person's ideal vision of the future, e.g. infinite scroll and the death of "click this next page button for more" when reading, can be another person's personal vision of hell.

    Or to go back even further to the original MLK reference I was making, maybe someone is actually a racist and believes the world MLK dreamed of where people of color have the same rights and respect and privileges as everyone else should not exist. Being a racist is not exactly popular these days, but it is not illegal to hold an opinion, either.

    Oh, so now if you don't agree with @codinghorror's views on infinite scrolling, you're a racist. I stand by my earlier realization that @codinghorror is @obama

    Filed Under: Still need sarcasm tags, and cornify capabilities, and paging options, and...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @DoctorJones said:

    By our forum I meant this place and these people, not the software.

    I think, to borrow a word from some defunct software, the word you're grasping for is "Community."


  • Banned


  • :belt_onion:

    @DoctorJones said:

    I personally think that him and Sam have done a great job of integrating with the community. Jeff and Sam have both participated in some top notch trolling (which has been hilarious) and I applaud it.

    Sure, they've integrated perfectly fine as members of the community. But not as owners of the software running the community. @sam came around after a few days, but @codinghorror has taken a lot longer.

    I think it was something to do with all the "you're doing it wrong" - [thread closed] in the earlier days. Lately it has been better.



  • @DoctorJones said:

    Are you guys serious with your reaction to Jeff?

    Considering he has moved items to separate topics for bug and feature request reporting purposes, and closes said topics when they are "fixed", I don't see him here as a community member, but as "the developer", and at this point, no level of effort will undo that for me.

    Then, being here as "the developer", I would expect to see a level of professionalism that shows you at least somewhat care, even if you can't implement a feature that is asked for or have a good answer for why a specific bug is present. That is something Sam has done (albeit with a few hiccups), but Jeff hasn't. He has come in with a this is a community of trolls attitude, and levies it at us most of the time, and, well, "assholes beget assholes".

    Yes, "this community" can be rough on products, and you can say some here threw the first punch, but those some aren't all the same people he's being an ass to now, which is why some people (like me) dislike him now.

    @dhromed said:

    because they personally never liked him from the start

    Before all of this, I had no opinion either way.


  • :belt_onion:

    @ChaosTheEternal said:

    @dhromed said:
    because they personally never liked him from the start

    Before all of this, I had no opinion either way.

    I had a pretty high opinion of Jeff prior to this exposure, I've previously enjoyed his blog and StackOverflow/StackExchange. It was kind of disappointing at first to have him turn out to be your average 4chan 30-something troll, but now I am coming back around on him because trolls are people too.



  • I liked Jeff to start, until he continually posted images with no content with the sole intent to be a dbag to several people who complained about his original image.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @darkmatter said:

    trolls are people too

    This would make an awesome TV awareness appeal.


    Filed under: Do it for the trolls, Think of the trolls, The trolls shall inherit the earth.

  • BINNED

    @DoctorJones said:

    Filed under: Do it for the trolls, Think of the trolls, The trolls shall inherit the earth.

    Would somebody please think of the trolls ⁉


  • BINNED

    Maybe we can hire the britney cry baby to do an add titled Leave the trolls alone.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Matches said:

    I liked Jeff to start, until he continually posted images with no content with the sole intent to be a dbag to several people who complained about his original image.

    To be fair, I don't have a problem with that. I avoided using images a lot on CS because it was painful to use them, especially when using Chrome as a browser…


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dkf said:

    it was painful to use them, especially when using Chrome as a browser

    I hear that, it's much easier to compose messages on DC, especially on mobile. Hand crafting html on a mobile device is a special kind of torture.



  • @codinghorror said:

    explaining the joke

    And you totally missed what @trithne was saying.


    @DoctorJones said:

    Are you guys serious with your reaction to Jeff?

    Yes, take @Matches' complaint about the format of the 404 error page. When I actually tried to help by explaining my interpretation of what I thought @Matches was saying (later confirmed), I got an off topic video from Jeff, and then he proceeded to ignore the comments I provided. Not only that, but he tried to tie in a "joke" that only he thought was funny, which only served to piss everyone else off more. And when I tried to suggest that he should treat it more like a business environment, because he's getting a lot of benefit out of us, and we're helping him for free, he just got pissy and said that it isn't a business environment, because Discourse is open source. So what if it's open source? It's his project and we're helping him at no cost? Treat it like it is a business, whether you make any money or not!


  • Banned

    This is not a business environment because we don't get paid for Discourse on TDWTF in any way; this site uses the open source Discourse software for 100% free, like any of the other 2k public Discourse instances that we know about (we get pinged for version information).

    I don't know how you'd characterize that as "pissy", it's a simple fact.

    The 404 page feedback just wasn't particularly useful versus bikesheddy; you can read my citations and explanations over there if you like. Click my avatar to filter the topic to just my replies, or use the summarize button to taste.

    Has there been other useful feedback? Sure. That's why I am here. If I'm being too honest with my evaluation of the feedback, I'm sorry about that.



  • It may not be a business environment but you're not here as part of the community. You're here as a representative of Discourse which is, notionally, a business venture. Which means acting like one of us in this community is sub-optimal for your business venture.

    You'd have gotten so much better a response by rising above the trolling rather than trying to engage in it.


  • Banned

    Ah, but where's the fun in that?



  • Touché.



  • @codinghorror said:

    This is not a business environment because we don't get paid for Discourse on TDWTF in any way; this site uses the open source Discourse software for 100% free, like any of the other 2k public Discourse instances that we know about (we get pinged for version information).

    I already explained to you why you should treat TDWTF as a business environment. And again to @Sam here. I'm not doing it again.

    tl;dr: You aren't getting paid money: you're getting paid in free QA, so this is a business relationship for you.


    @codinghorror said:

    The 404 page feedback just wasn't particularly useful versus bikesheddy; you can read my citations and explanations over there if you like. Click my avatar to filter the topic to just my replies, or use the summarize button to taste.

    I gave you a very useful breakdown of what @Matches was trying to say, and it lead to what @Sam ended up implementing for us, even though we weren't asking for it to be done right away. So don't say the feedback wasn't useful. You just chose to ignore it, or you weren't reading carefully. I know you saw my post, because you replied to me with some idiotic YT video.


    @codinghorror said:

    If I'm being too honest with my evaluation of the feedback, I'm sorry about that.

    Part of the problem is that you aren't telling us why certain features are being rejected, or closing bugs without reading through the issue. That's why this topic was started: to talk about what amounts to you closing a bug related to IE10 as WONT FIX in IE9.


  • Banned

    @abarker said:

    you're getting paid in free QA, so this is a business relationship for you.

    Kind of a weird argument. In comparison, you are getting paid with the use of millions of dollars worth of open source software for free. (Just counting the actual development time, lines of code, and schedule.)

    On top of that, whatever improvements we do implement based on the feedback go out to everyone else in the world that will use Discourse, for free, forever, without paying us or anyone else a dime. So anything you contribute ultimately makes the Internet better for everyone who likes discussion -- to argue that you're "lining our pockets with your free QA work" is a strange and rather limited way of looking at it.



  • @codinghorror said:

    Kind of a weird argument. In comparison, you are getting paid with the use of millions of dollars worth of open source software for free. (Just counting the actual development time, lines of code, and schedule.)

    Doesn't really count, as it's software most of us don't want. It only counts as payment if it's something you want. You (should) want QA for your software. We don't want Discourse, but are being forced to use it for our community. Therefore, you are being paid, and we are not.

    In any case, your counter argument is like saying that a contractor doing a remodeling job can treat the house as his own, since both parties are getting something out of the (contractor gets money, homeowner gets a remodel). That doesn't even make sense. It's the contractor's job to be professional, and work in the provided environment. (In case you missed it, in this scenario, the TDWTF community is the homeowner, you are the contractor.)



  • Well, is Discourse the heart of a business venture or not?

    If it's not, and it's solely an open source project for you, then it is a strange way of looking at it, though we're still free QA for what was otherwise supposedly almost-production ready.

    If it is, though, then it absolutely is payment in kind for your services.


Log in to reply