Discourse and our reaction to it


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @codinghorror said:

    Totally agree, we absorbed that with the editor which is open source from Stack Exchange

    If it was a known bug... and you implemented it anyways... sigh...

    @codinghorror said:

    want to reiterate that we are completely open to better "jump to arbitrary post" navigation, though it will probably need to be a keyboard shortcut.

    Okay, here's a design idea to avoid keyboard shortcuts, since you NEED a GUI to make it discoverable (or at least in addition to keyboard shortcuts)

    1. Define an arbitrary number. Let's say 50, but it could be user definable. Don't fall trap to "more choice = less choice" and restrict it to sane numbers. 10, 25, 50 sounds good.

    2. Since the database knows how many messages are in the thread, it knows what number each message is. Take that number from #1 and do a MOD-like operation on the post index number. This will divide the entire thread of up into a set number of "chunks", each with a unique, sequential number starting at 1.

    3. For the GUI, display those chunk IDs in a sequential manner. Possibly at both the top and bottom of each post "chunk". Have 1 to indicate the first chunk, and show all the numbers up to x, where x is the highest chunk total. Each of these numbers will be a hyperlink that will jump the user to that chunk of replies in the thread. Like, if my slice number is 10, and I click on chunk 2, it'll show me posts 11 up to 20.

    4. If there are too many chunks, it's safe to put in some ... in there somewhere. Like 1, 2 ... 7, 8. Maybe put the middle few in also for threads with very large chunks. 1, 2 .... 87, 88, 89.... 201, 202.

    5. For ease of navigation, let the user sidestep between chunks, either relatively (back one chunk, forward one chunk), or absolutely by position (first chunk in thread, last chunk in thread).

    6. You can do some sort of input box, restricted to the range of chunk numbers, so users can easily hyper-sidestep to a specific chunk... this could be a drop down list, too.

    7. Make sure the querystring can handle this. If someone passes in a chunk number in the query string, start in that chunk. Alternatively, if a user is instead using querystring to sidestep to a specific post, precalculate which chunk that post belongs to, and show that entire chunk (scrolling the specific post, of course).

    8. Once chunks are enabled, only load and show that one chunk. Don't load chunks before or after the requested chunk via navigation (like scrolling to top of first post in chunk, or bottom of post in last chunk)-- the page will only fetch fresh chunks when the user interacts with one of the GUI elements described above.

    Tah dah! Easy solution.



  • @codinghorror said:

    I truly don't, though! I like this community. Angry programmers is my bread and butter. This is my people, man. You are my people.

    Yes but what you're not getting is I can't just go out and buy a truck, because what I want to see is the content, not the blog software. The software is the medium, not the message. But I can't choose the medium, it's a package deal.

    So you're in that terrible position where your software is being used by people who didn't choose the software they have to use. That puts you in the same bucket as, for me, Git. Or Python or any of those broken open source pieces of shit with broken tools that don't fucking work. That means you start out with -10 hatepoints right off the bat, there's nothing much you can do about that but accept it. I get that. But you're not helping reduce the number of hatepoints by coming in here and teasing that there's a truck dealership when you know there's not and there won't ever be.

    I just wish in some way you'd acknowledge that this forum is a buggy piece of crap. (Which isn't to say Community Server wasn't.) And maybe, just maybe, make some kind of commitment to doing something to fix it.

    But you won't, because the cause of those bugs is your religion and asking you to remove that "feature" is like asking Tom Cruise to stop jumping around on the couch and admit he's gay-- it can't be done. It's against his religion.

    (Oh BTW, a new bug for this post: either the checkbox to stop sending emails when active on the forums doesn't turn off, or the activity "sensor" is waaay off, because I have that checkbox off and I got like 4 emails while composing this post.)



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    you NEED a GUI to make it discoverable

    As someone currently posting from a mobile device, I agree with this general sentiment. You don't have access to any keyboard shortcuts when you only have access to a keyboard in sections where said shortcuts don't work.


  • Banned

    @blakeyrat said:

    I just wish in some way you'd acknowledge that this forum is a buggy piece of crap.

    Wait, how would that achieve anything.

    @blakeyrat said:

    And maybe, just maybe, make some kind of commitment to doing something to fix it.

    Yes we are 100% committed to making stuff work better. Fixing particular issues and so on.



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    Tah dah! Easy solution.

    Hmmm... it's so simple. Why hasn't anyone tried it before? It's kind of like... the pages of a book... I know! We'll call it booking!


  • Banned



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    NEED a GUI to make it discoverable

    As I said above, that floaty green box at the lower right can be the GUI element. It's already there; just add some functionality to it.



  • @sam said:

    Yes we are 100% committed to making stuff work better. Fixing particular issues and so on.

    Right; but you're not willing to unsink the Titanic, you're only willing to rearrange deck chairs.

    EDIT: I guess once you turn emails on you get emails until the end of time. There's no way to turn them back off. Lovely. Not really a new bug, just a continuation of the last one.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Although there are some "grow your own marijuana" forums I belong to which run on phpBB. Good people.

    Eww, farming?



  • @moderator said:

    I am going to start working on importing the CS posts across, but I think my script has a bug where all your posts get dropped...

    Ok, two questions:

    1. How many people are you keeping in your basement to retype all those posts?
    2. How big is the database dump Alex gave you?

    Filed under: a big dump



  • @ben_lubar said:

    How many people are you keeping in your basement to retype all those posts?

    All of them.

    @ben_lubar said:

    How big is the database dump Alex gave you?

    4 gigs, but that's just the tags.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    Bah, last brief thing I'll say today, because bed: pagination is the #1 stumbling block you're encountering here, and will encounter anywhere you try to switch over from forums. It's too big a UX gap, and you need that bridge. Period. Will explain more in depth tomorrow instead of doing work.





  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    Tah dah! Easy solution.

    That actually sounds like a lot of work. Wouldn't it be easier to just implement paging?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    That actually sounds like a lot of work. Wouldn't it be easier to just implement paging?

    They already implemented paging. They just improved it by bolting a shit-ton of AJAX on top of it.



  • Oh, kind of like how George Lucas went back and "improved" the Original Trilogy using technology.


    Filed under: He took a big, steaming "improvement" all over our faces.



  • Something I find annoying is the repetition of replies. The fact that someone's post may show "3 Replies", you click on that and expand to see them. Then you continue scrolling and reading, you end up re-reading a lot of the same posts; because they are repeated further down.

    The attached screenshot illustrates this... well, not it doesn't because new users can't upload images. So here it is instead.

    You start to read someone's reply to realise (either instantly, or a sentence or two in to it), that you've already read that further up the page.

    Is this something that can be configured?


  • Banned

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    Will explain more in depth tomorrow instead of doing work.

    So basically the forums are achieving their intended purpose.

    Free at Last- Martin Luther King, Jr – 00:07
    — Alexandria248



  • @diego said:

    The fact that someone's post may show "3 Replies", you click on that and expand to see them. Then you continue scrolling and reading, you end up re-reading a lot of the same posts; because they are repeated further down.

    So don't click the expand button. You only see each reply once. Problem solved.



  • So what's the point of having the expand button? In fact, I like the expand button because I'm looking at replied to a particular post, and they are all grouped together? I prefer that to having to scroll down and see individual replies that may, or may not, be replies to a post further up. The grouping is a better way of doing it.


  • Banned

    You should think of expand replies as a "sneak preview" button.

    As in "wow this response is so amazing I can't wait to read the responses below so I want to see them now".

    (You can also expand upwards, e.g. click on "hardwaregeek" in your post above.)



  • @diego said:

    I like the expand button because I'm looking at replied to a particular post, and they are all grouped together

    To each his own. I always read the old forums in flat mode (I probably discovered that it had a threaded mode at some point, but never enabled it, and promptly forgot that it existed), so reading in strict chronological order here seems perfectly natural. I can see why, if you are accustomed to threaded conversations, you'd prefer to expand the replies, but I don't think there's any way to not get the chronological sequence, too.



  • I see. But I see the Replies button as a way of seeing the replies to a particular post right under it. Now, if the button said "Sneak Preview" ;)

    Must be just my habit and modus operandi when I read the posts, that I like things being together in close proximity to what they are referencing.



  • Agree, to each their own. I remember when Friendfeed first came out, man I loved their threaded conversations, compared to Twitter (especially back then).



  • @diego said:

    that I like things being together in close proximity to what they are referencing.

    You're gonna hate TDWTF, then.



  • Well, I don't necessarily hate it (that's a strong word). :) My point was more of the two options being there, hence repetition. But, all's well. I can live with it, if it is what it is.



  • Even if I scroll through all replies on a topic -- and the scrollbar seems to indicate there is a tonne of content on the page -- the browser's Find (CMD+F) feature doesn't work as expected?


  • Banned

    No, because only the currently visible items are loaded in the DOM. We stream items in and out as you scroll through the stream.

    Use the search function at the upper right:



  • Thought so, I guess it's just (again) what one is used to... and maybe Discourse is such a change that it needs to drag people (like me) (kicking and screaming?) in to a different way to use forum apps. Searching



  • These are minor observations. I am all for Discourse as the future. phpBB must die!



  • @diego said:

    drag people (like me) (kicking and screaming?)

    Certainly much kicking and screaming going on around here. Most of the complaints are valid, but some of the vitriol seems a bit over-dramatic.



  • @diego said:

    phpBB must die!

    I need this on a bumper sticker.



  • @moderator said:

    I need this on a bumper sticker.

    But your shopping cart is already plastered with idealistic bumper stickers.


    Filed under:



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    One thing I want to point out here: blakeyrat and I are agreeing on UX here.

    Not just you and blakey...
    #What has this forum done?!#



  • There is only one change that can reasonably be made to make this system acceptable.

    Uninstall it.

    Yes, it really is that bad. It's a festering pile of shit. It's unusable unless its the only site you ever access with your browser (given the way it shits all over your history), and it's hardly secure - I have a few potential exploits for it after poking at it for an hour or so, and it appears I'm not the only one. However, given the following quote from here : http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/less-than-24-hours-and-i-already-created-an-xss-exploit-for-intercourse/285/22 where Jeff Atwood, developer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^war criminal responsible for this fucking monstrosity said :

    Alex and I are friends from way back

    ... I'm not holding my breath.

    It's amusing (but not entirely surprising) that a site dedicated to ripping the living shit out of bad software should decide to run on something that makes the Paula Bean look functional.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @moderator said:

    I will say this again, because for some reason morbs and I have to be the reasonable ones, while @ender curses up a storm and @Lorne_Kates sharpens his knives

    I find it interesting how this is causing such extreme feelings in the forum user-base. My personal take on this is that infinite scrolling is taking a bit of getting used to, but I can live with it. I've never seen an infinite scrolling implementation that I like, but this is by far the best one I've seen. I'll be interested to see how they improve it over time. Remember, this isn't even version 1 software yet.

    One thing I really like is the huge surge in forum activity, seriously we've had a lot of high quality stuff over the past few days. We should change forum software more frequently if this is going to keep happening.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @moderator said:

    I am going to start working on importing the CS posts across

    I find it hard to tell when you're being serious, I'm not sure I've ever seen it before for reference. ;-)

    Are you actually working on an import? PM me if you could use a hand.

    Edit: @codinghorror, @sam why is this showing up as a reply to a post that I haven't quoted? Is there any way to change the post that this is in reply to?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @diego said:

    Something I find annoying is the repetition of replies. The fact that someone's post may show "3 Replies", you click on that and expand to see them.

    Yes, I run into this one too. I'll expand the replies when I read a post (because it's easier to read them inline rather than try to keep the context in your head). It'd be nice if those replies didn't show up later if I've already seen them. I understand this might be difficult to implement, but it'd be nice.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    Why isn't post count in the user widget?

    Because.

    https://meta.discourse.org/t/show-post-count-of-users/10858/2?u=pjh



  • @codinghorror said:

    light grey, the scarlet letter

    LIGHT GREY ISN'T SCARLET RED, YOU COLOR-BLIND OAF.



  • @codinghorror said:

    we are completely open to better "jump to arbitrary post" navigation,

    Funny, just now I wanted to reply in a long thread that was not a reply to a specific post, so I hit End and replied with the dark blue Reply button, but then I had the problem of getting back up.

    So I grabbed the scrollbar and, without letting go, swooped up in grand motions, then down and up until I had narrowed where I was, and then I let go and continued reading.

    Consider this your user-interaction data of the day.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Then I post a thread genuinely trying to point out at least a small fraction of the bugs that need fixed and people fill it full of barf videos.

    Definitely +1 on this. Anyone who is serious about trying to fix the horrors on this site really needs to be able to tell the difference between taking the piss and trying to improve the situation.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @skotl said:

    Definitely +1 on this. Anyone who is serious about trying to fix the horrors on this site really needs to be able to tell the difference between taking the piss and trying to improve the situation.

    Agreed, but you're going to struggle to convey that here.



  • Fucking scrollbar.



  • @codinghorror said:

    If you open with "my religion exists so that yours may be destroyed", there's not a lot of room for coexistence.

    WTF? Infinite scrolling is your fucking religion? Until now I had given you the credit of considering it a technically fun idea that you were seriously interested in exploring, not something you actually truly were intending to evangelize at any cost.

    Seriously, dude, you're dealing with a user base here of whom 90%+ just don't like infinite scrolling. It's not a matter of religion. It's a matter of personal preference in UI. And personally I am sick to death of having my personal UI preferences made unavailable to me by designers with the absolute arrogance to assume - nay, insist - that what they have done is so great that I will love it if I just give it a chance.

    Sorry. No. Dealing with the Discourse UI is like listening to the kind of music that's much more fun for the performers than for the audience.

    I've developed things. I get where you're coming from. When a strong idea takes hold, the natural tendency is to push it as hard as you can so that you can express it in its fullness before even beginning to consider whether or not it was a good idea.

    And I'm old enough to be able to look back on a lot of the development lines I've pursued that I was convinced at the time were absolutely unquestionably the Right Way, and realize that no, in fact all I did was cost my employer time and money that really shouldn't have needed to be spent.

    Discourse is a Cambrian Explosion of UI features. It's completely fucking overwhelming. If it looks intuitive to you, that can only possibly be because you thought of it.

    But that wouldn't matter if the problems you've tried to solve with the Discourse infinite-scrolling UI were actual problems that affected actual users. They're not. They're problems you have had maybe once or twice while participating in some forum where a thread has grown more than a few hundred pages long, and you've looked at that and said "there must be a better way".

    And here's the thing: maybe there is a better way to handle that edge case. But completely ripping out an underlying pagination mechanism that serves perfectly adequately for the other 99% of cases, at the cost of forcing every user to come to grips with all the resulting weirdness for no discernable benefit, is not it.

    By the way, what is the point of a non-wysisyg text entry box that breaks my browser's spelling checker?



  • @codinghorror said:

    I truly don't, though! I like this community. Angry programmers is my bread and butter. This is my people, man. You are my people.

    You're like that guy who goes dining in the busy meadhall with a large group of rowdy vikings and you're all I CAN BE ROWDY LOL and you smash your mug on the table with a big goofy grin, and then the room goes quiet and one of the biggest, roughest vikings is like "Why the fuck did you break that mug?" and another one is like "Yeah, that was a good mug." and others chime in like "Fucking wasting perfectly good mead"
    "Fuck, he's so disrespectful."
    "Uncivilized bastard"



  • Totally agree, we absorbed that with the editor which is open source from Stack Exchange

    And who, exactly, is responsible for StackExchange?



  • Christ. Have you even read any of the posts on this site?

    Telling us to "get with the times, man" doesn't fucking help.

    Blakey was wrong; MikeTheLiar isn't the worst - you are.



  • @codinghorror said:

    we measure how long every post is open on everyone's screen

    Now that is just fucking creepy. Is there a setting I can use to turn that behavior off?



  • @codinghorror said:

    I want to reiterate that we are completely open to better "jump to arbitrary post" navigation, though it will probably need to be a keyboard shortcut.

    I just fucking realized that the "jump 5/10/30 seconds" in video players === paging, and you can implement that in a widget which indicates the "page" you're on, and go for keyboard shortcuts, and let users set their own jump size c.q. page size.

    I use such keys all the time when scrolling in music and videos.

    I believe with this we can satisfy the Infiniscrollers and the Paginators in one fell thrust.


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