Goodbye TDWTF Forums
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Another one bites the dust. Bit of a non-entity, so who cares really. Even on the old Forum, even though I'd been a reader since 2004 & a member since 2006, I only had about 150 posts. But it was good fun. Whereas what this is, is shit.
So I'm kind of indifferent about, well, most of the technical issues with this discourse thing. I generally agree with the whole, "if you can post, then post" thing. To be honest I don’t even mind the infinite scrolling that much. Its annoyingly slow on the mobile and juddery even on the PC, but meh, I can live with it.
I don't suppose this post will make any difference to anything, but WTF, might as well make my exit interview observations.
I'll diverge a little. My StackOverflow account, also about 5 years old I think, has only around 25-30 reputation even though I use the site for reference quite a lot (3-6 times / month roughly). And that’s because of this:
I find it for the first time via google and it provides a sound answer to my problem without the expert sex change nonsense - brilliant! I can even upvote the guy who posted the answer! ... need to make an account. Ok no problem. Now, upvote. What? WTF? I need to ask subjectively good questions or provide subjectively good answers before I’m allowed to say “thanks” to this guy for a good answer? And you will arbitrarily decide at what point I’m allowed to do that, how many fucking gold stars the teacher gives out before I can pat someone on the back for being helpful. Right, screw that.
Some time later, I read an answer to a SQL question that’s dangerous – in some circumstances it won’t behave in a manor that fixes the actual problem – Downvote! Oh. Right. Some higher arbitrary amount of fucking gold stars. Never mind – comment to warn people. What? What the fucking fuck? Another fucking stupid arbitrary limit before I can even make comments?!? So also then, I can’t even ask people to elaborate if I think I can fix their problem until … oh forget it. I’m not a moron, I don’t like to be treated like one by some cock running a FAQ site.
You get the idea. Some people seem to relish the whole Stack reputation thing (Jon Skeet, heh), I fucking hate it for the micromanaging, patronising, horrible bullshit nonsense that it is. You can’t do that yet, you need to suck a few more cocks before we’ll let you do this, teacher doesn't like you enough yet. And the e-peen waving, and bickering over rep. – someone else’s arbitrary counter! - truly dreadful.
And now it’s infected what used to be my favourite forum. Patronising yellow pop-ups telling me how to post, limits to what I can do within certain time frames because the community doesn't like/trust/whatever me enough yet (in the software author’s megalomanic opinion), maximum thresholds on how often I can do the other. Et-fucking-cetera.
Maybe I’m a dinosaur, but it’s a toxic trend, and I want nothing more to do with it. It's very sad, but I suppose, "all good things".
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Liked because you've perfectly described my experience with StackOverflow. I always get driven away by stupid crap like "Oh you don't have enough rep to ask a C++ question" so I tag it as something else and then no one sees it because of that. And then if by some miracle someone does answer it, I don't have enough reputation to mark the answer.
You need to gain reputation to actually use features. How to you gain reputation? By using the features you can't use because you don't have enough reputation.
StackOverflow would be an amazing site if it was a little more open.
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I know my words will have little to no effect on your decision to leave or stay.
I have not talked to you before, so... first of all: Hi, I am me.
Now that I have introduced myself to you I want to say that I (and afaict most of the community) can totally agree with what you said.
While the rules at this place might not be as harsh as at sites like SO I really don't get what they are doing in a community driven board. (for example I don't get why I would be allowed to change your title just because I have been posting whatever I thought every once in a while).Luckily, the toasters go away after a while, usually. And there is little to gain at higher "trust"-levels. So once you settle in at "Regular User" you have most of the normal forum-features you need. And getting there is... erm.... I dunno it's simple, just look it up in the FAQ (or ask some admin if he can lift you into it, if you are more into lurking. Pretty sure there is nothing speaking against that)
One good thing those limits did were being "interestingly" programmed so that (as you might have noticed already) a lot of people successfully pushed the boundaries of what they were supposed to do (Multiple likes, negative likes, seeing topics before they are life, etc).
Still it's always annoying to see people leave. You might have been a decent person to derail topics with and now I don't even get the chance to see you in action.
So... yeah.... I dunno what this post of mine is about, really. But if you wanna stay and have some fun with us (the community as well as breaking the forum) you are always more than welcome.
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The stupid concept of gamification that they have come up with on their sites is what annoys me most. I get the concept of making software to incentivize what you want to happen, but I think they miss the point a lot of the time. Take the example of the Lounge. I have been here two months, only one negative vote which was bullshit in my opinion, and yet I am not allowed in to the exclusive "Frequent Flyer" area because you are not eligible until you have been here 100 days. For me, that seems arbitrarily high and pointless.
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If it is of any help to you... as is the standard with these "exclusive" places in forums.... you are not missing out on much!
Filed Under: There is rarely a reason to post there because in a discussion you want people to read your content
Addendum: You are missing me apologizing to blakeyrat, though.... not that you'd care, really.
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If it is of any help to you... as is the standard with these "exclusive" places in forums.... you are not missing out on much!
I don't really care. In fact, the thought of a Lounge area seems counter-productive to developing a cohesive group. Areas like that typically end up being gossip areas.
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If it is of any help to you... as is the standard with these "exclusive" places in forums.... you are not missing out on much!
Yeah, not much goes on in The Lounge. There's like what, 4 topics?
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Afaict, your topic is pretty much the only one that has some "value" to it
Back on topic: is @WTF reading all this still?
Filed Under: This is my meager attempt to rerail a topic!
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Afaict, your topic is pretty much the only one that has some "value" to it
@PJH Any updates on the code testing subcategories that were discussed earlier? My topic would totally leave the Lounge if/when those are created and they aren't index by search engines.
Filed Under: Re-rail attempt fizzles!
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I sympathise with your concerns and your situation, especially regarding Jeff's views of what a forum should be and how it should be run. And inflicting that on us has been an interesting and trying thing for us all.
I am reminded of something I used to have in my signature on another forum.
When we unite against a common enemy that attacks our ethos, it nurtures group solidarity. Trolls are sensational, yes, but we keep everyone honest.
That's what happened here. We were all trolled by Jeff, but it brought out the best in us as a community - for whatever that means to us. We united together in finding bugs, in helping each other understand it, and commiserating over the stupidity. And like it or not it brought us together as something of a community in a way CS didn't.
I get your frustrations. But the fact you can understand why it's a problem pretty much makes you one of us in a way Jeff never could be.
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I would LOVE to know the train of thought that led Jeff to think it would be a good idea to make this a Dicsource site. There is an established user base that dislikes him and his practices, everyone had already taken the piss out of the software before it was even in use here, and lots of us had actively spoken out in opposition to what he considers to be "best practices". He either did this to annoy/troll us, or he really thought that we would do an about-face on our positions and think this POS was the best thing since sliced bread.
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We DID find a lot of bugs!
Filed Under: 'nuff said
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Three points:
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Alex picked Discourse, not Jeff. At least he (Jeff) claims to not have known about it before it was actually live.
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Most of us didn't actively dislike Jeff until we'd actually interacted with that asshole blowhard dumbshit.
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I think Discourse violates every possible best practice in software, but people here seem to disagree with me on everything, so by process of elimination that means the majority of DailyWTF readers think Discourse is high super quality excellent plus.
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I don't know. I want to say that I think Jeff made it happen because we would be all in awe - because as programmers we should understand what makes it happen under the hood. But I think we demonstrated just how wrong he was.
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I don't normally agree with you, but point 3 is pretty accurate; Discourse does violate every best practice I can think of.
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I think you missed the fact that there is no Point 3
.... and then @blakeyrat shamefully edits his post... I am not going back on this post, though. He said "Two points before and I wanted to be pedantic again T_T
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And this is why there are only two hard things in computing, cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.
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And repeating jokes :)
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Only when I think it's funny.
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TBH, while there was some conversation in two topics, you know what the only legitimate use of the lounge is/was? @mott555's topic about his MUD engine. And even that's an
abusecreative use of the fact that search engines can't reach it.
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Hey, there's quite a bit of Blakeybrilliance in the Lounge.
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Which just further shows how stupid a feature it is, that it is mostly being used for something outside of its intentions. They spent time working on that, and other useless shit (like heatmaps and "coldmaps"), instead of fixing bugs.
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This post is deleted!
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@PJH Is The Lounge a general Discourse feature, or something just set up here at TDWTF?
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Hey, there's quite a bit of Blakeybrilliance in the Lounge.
Yes, there is, and I did mention we have two active-ish topics there.
However, I don't see that as using the Lounge "as intended". Those topics might as well be in General IMHO.
Yes, I know you opened one of them, and you have the right to open them wherever you want as long as you don't
break the rulespiss in a moderator's cereal.
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It is a general feature.
https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-do-user-trust-levels-do/4924/6?u=br1
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@PJH Is The Lounge a general Discourse feature, or something just set up here at TDWTF?
Discourse feature.
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you got sniped
Filed Under: Somebody is getting a badge,I hope
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@PJH Any updates on the code testing subcategories that were discussed earlier?
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Hmm, that topic never showed in the main topic list for me. Must have been muted by default.
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What are the requirements to be included? I mean, yeah, write a pm to you and then what? Instant-acceptance? Do I need to have a pet-project?
Filed Under: asking here because I CAN'T ask over there | I am also too lazy to write you a PM right now
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There's like what, 4 topics?
Yeah, but three of them are being rude about @Intercourse and the other one is discussing if he's actually @MikeTheLiar's sockpuppet.
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So @blakeyrat started all the topics in the lounge? He gossips more than a sewing circle.
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Here is a sneakpeak (unless @PJH finds out and deletes it (and me for sharing it):
Filed Under: I am very afraid right now for giving such secret information away!
Addendum:
Even though I clearly didn't edit the screenshot AT ALL, if I did then the titles would not really match any user ....especially not @abarker
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If you're going to go, just go.
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Much as I suspected. 39 days until I can exact my revenge...
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What are the requirements to be included? I mean, yeah, write a pm to you and then what? Instant-acceptance? Do I need to have a pet-project?
No to the last question - how else do you get testers?
Not sure about criteria. I've basically already added anyone who showed an interest in the concept, and will probably accept anyone who asks if they've shown some indication that they know what they're doing.
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if they've shown some indication that they know what they're doing
The ones that don't know what they're doing are also valuable. They help to uncover a whole different class of usability issues and bugs.
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Don't worry, Keith, you are already in the group (I checked :D)
Filed Under: Oh, you meant OTHER people.... oh well
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I gave you a like of disdain.
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have a like back for the one you just lost!
Filed Under: So much derailing!
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Hey, there's quite a bit of Blakeybrilliance in the Lounge.
Can you post a couple of links? I seem to have missed them...
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This post is deleted!
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Ah yes, I remember creating this topic.
In it I mention how editing the HTML of a page prior to taking a screenshot is a much superior way of faking topic titles.
Edit: untill the list refreshes
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This is how I interpret your avatar:
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it was big and now it's small, it makes it hard to read.
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I liked the subtlety, but there: both.
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FYI:
Now, upvote. What? WTF? I need to ask subjectively good questions or provide subjectively good answers before I’m allowed to say “thanks” to this guy for a good answer? And you will arbitrarily decide at what point I’m allowed to do that, how many fucking gold stars the teacher gives out before I can pat someone on the back for being helpful. Right, screw that.
When you hit the upvote arrow without upvote privileges (or having logged in in the first place), the vote is still recorded. It doesn't change the post score or the author's reputation, but it still is used as a data point in a few places.
Some time later, I read an answer to a SQL question that’s dangerous – in some circumstances it won’t behave in a manor that fixes the actual problem – Downvote! Oh. Right. Some higher arbitrary amount of fucking gold stars. Never mind – comment to warn people. What? What the fucking fuck? Another fucking stupid arbitrary limit before I can even make comments?!? So also then, I can’t even ask people to elaborate if I think I can fix their problem until … oh forget it. I’m not a moron, I don’t like to be treated like one by some cock running a FAQ site.
If moderators aren't overtaxed by handling literally thousands of flags per day, they can convert answers to comments on other posts.
(That said, most forums since the dawn of the internet have had public post counters for all the bad reasons and tied privileges to them (want to vote on polls? you better post 50 times first!); the only novel thing SE does there is require that you write good posts. Hell, on discourse you can get normal user rights just by reading.)
