I'm A Grumpy Cat: An open letter to Alex

dkf

conversation density

That's easy round here. Think neutronium that had to be kept back in kindergarten a few decades.

Lorne Kates

But I'm a visual person. I find this to be easier to understand.

Then you're wrong, and the way you read is wrong, and you as a person are wrong. STOP DOING THINGS THE WRONG WAY DO THEM MY WAY! {bursts into tears} Make him stop doing this wrong!!!!

end

@bulb and @M_Adams your requested feature is now present:

Zecc

Great! It was one of my requests too.

abarker

@codinghorror said:

@bulb and @M_Adams your requested feature is now present:

It's great that you added the bookmarks link in the user menu. However, there is a problem with implementation: you made the option only visible when you have a bookmark. This causes two issues that I can think of:

Discoverability. A new user comes in, starts poking around to find where everything is at. Since they don't have bookmarks, they don't see the menu option. He/she/it later creates a bookmark and moves on. Since they previously couldn't see the bookmarks option in the menu, they now have to search for it again in order to see the list of their bookmarks.
Usability. Start with a user who knows about the behavior of the bookmark option. He/she/it opens a new [to them] topic, let's say it's 50 posts at this point. They browse through the topic and bookmark a few posts that they want to review after finishing the topic. At the end of the topic, the user has to either refresh the page or navigate to another topic in order to get the Bookmarks option to show up, because it doesn't happen automatically.

I would say that the Bookmarks option should be always visible. If the user doesn't have any bookmarks, then take them to the empty bookmarks page on their profile. Your other option is to remove the option from the menu and just have the user navigate there through the profile.

Keith

@abarker said:

I would say that the Bookmarks option should be always visible. If the user doesn't have any bookmarks, then take them to the empty bookmarks page on their profile.

Even better, in that instance, put a helpful note saying "To add bookmarks to this page, click the (icon image here) icon next to a reply."

ChaosTheEternal

@abarker said:

the user has to either refresh the page or navigate to another topic

It takes a full page refresh for the menu item to show. Navigating anywhere else otherwise doesn't affect the menu.

@abarker said:

I would say that the Bookmarks option should be always visible.

+1

Filed under: [It's why I thought that menu option had been implemented in their master but not rolled out yet.](#tag)

abarker

@ChaosTheEternal said:

It takes a full page refresh for the menu item to show. Navigating anywhere else otherwise doesn't affect the menu.

Ah, I was guessing on the navigate option. I didn't actually try it.

abarker

@codinghorror: The Bookmarks page should be available in the profile no matter what as well. For the same reasons mentioned in my earlier post about the menu option.

@abarker said:

1. Discoverability. A new user comes in, starts poking around to find where everything is at. Since they don't have bookmarks, they don't see the menu option. He/she/it later creates a bookmark and moves on. Since they previously couldn't see the bookmarks option in the menu, they now have to search for it again in order to see the list of their bookmarks.
2. Usability. Start with a user who knows about the behavior of the bookmark option. He/she/it opens a new [to them] topic, let's say it's 50 posts at this point. They browse through the topic and bookmark a few posts that they want to review after finishing the topic. At the end of the topic, the user has to either refresh the page or navigate to another topic in order to get the Bookmarks option to show up, because it doesn't happen automatically.

sam

I agree with that, I don't think there is really any point hiding this from logged on users.

Though I would much prefer if I could browse my "bookmarks" same way as I browse my "starred" stuff, actually I would prefer if we junked the starred concept and just introduce a "bookmarks" top level menu item.

M_Adams

@codinghorror said:

@bulb and @M_Adams your requested feature is now present:

Thanks! This will be useful… other than the notes by @abarker here and @Keith here the only other thing I could say is:

In my head, other than the usual scary stuff , it was a "fly out" looking something like this (pretend the icons are flush right to the hamburger icon):

But what you did is STILL helpful—Thanks.

Zecc

@sam said:

I agree with that, I don't think there is really any point hiding this from logged on users.

Though I would much prefer if I could browse my "bookmarks" same way as I browse my "starred" stuff, actually I would prefer if we junked the starred concept and just introduce a "bookmarks" top level menu item.

Please don't lump starred and bookmarked into the same thing.

In fact I was just thinking about this: some times I want to star posts because I enjoyed them so much I want to keep them forever for further reference; some other times I want to bookmark posts because they seem interesting but they're long so I need to queue them for later reading.

It's all about short vs long lifetime.

It's not that big a deal if you kill one of the concepts though. Just my ⅕ dime.

dkf

@Zecc said:

Please don't lump starred and bookmarked into the same thing.

Actually, please do lump them together. Having two independent methods of marking a post for later reference would be far more confusing. Software can't know why you want to remember things; sometimes I don't even know why I save stuff so what chance has the computer got?

Zecc

@dkf said:

Software can't know why you want to remember things; sometimes I don't even know why I save stuff so what chance has the computer got?

That why I suggested a way for you to tell it the difference.

But your post has 4 posts vs zero on mine, so the people have spoken. In any case, like I said it's not a big deal. Just a convenience.

tufty

I think we'd need more than two ways anyway. There are, after all, many use cases. You've covered these two:

Keep around for reading and rereading - "Star"
Might get around to fully rereading this later - "Bookmark"

But these might be useful as well...

Mark as having useful information you might want to come back to
So ridiculous that it needs to be kept around as a baseline for "wtfiness"
Posts by @codinghorror that you know you're going to be able to throw back in his face
…

Obviously, the obvious way of doing this would be to refactor "bookmarks", "stars", "likes" and other "flag variable" attributes as "tags", and then design a sensible UI around that.

The way Jeff will actually implement this is to add another range of fading icons to every post and model them all as booleans. Or do it "properly" but forget to escape html in the tags, enabling posts to be tagged as <script>Window.alert("Discourse sucks");</script>

dkf

@tufty said:

Or do it "properly" but forget to escape html in the tags, enabling posts to be tagged as <script>Window.alert("Discourse sucks");</script>

That would be more likely to be @apapadimoulis to be fair. ;) I've seen some of the things that were wrong with the main WTF site commenting system; does anyone remember the failure to sanitise the titles of comments submitted (including those submitted anonymously) from a few years back?

Filed under:

tufty

Oh yes. Do you remember the same failure discovered here yesterday?

dkf

No. I was too busy working (dealing with an application written in about 4 different programming languages where all the pieces need to move in perfect synchrony to work at all) when that was going on. By the time I had time for here, the problem was fixed. ;)

subscript_error

@dkf said:

By the time I had time for here, the problem was fixed.

Don't worry, we'll make sure you're around for the next one. The best way to squish XSS vulnerabilities is one at a time, as end users point them out - that's what I always say.

Filed under: [Heaven forbid we spam <script>alert('test');</script> into every field during QA, Heaven forbid we hire QAers]()

dkf

@subscript_error said:

Heaven forbid we spam <script>alert('test');</script> into every field during QA

Be nice! Spam the name of the field in that alert() as well…

abarker

@sam said:

Though I would much prefer if I could browse my "bookmarks" same way as I browse my "starred" stuff, actually I would prefer if we junked the starred concept and just introduce a "bookmarks" top level menu item.

@dkf said:

Actually, please do lump them together. Having two independent methods of marking a post for later reference would be far more confusing. Software can't know why you want to remember things; sometimes I don't even know why I save stuff so what chance has the computer got?

Except they aren't both for posts, AFAICT. Starring is for topics, and bookmarking is for posts. So they are two different functions. Keep both, unless you plan to expand one to include both capabilities.

dhromed

Bookmarks should probbly disappear when you've continued reading from them.

Starred/favourited posts should never disappear, and I feel it's like a special exalted version of Like.

So these three things seem superficually the same, but are different

@tufty said:

Obviously, the obvious way of doing this would be to refactor "bookmarks", "stars", "likes" and other "flag variable" attributes as "tags", and then design a sensible UI around that.

This is not an unsensible interpretation, but I think it's premature abstraction, kind of like knowing that a forum thread and comments on a blog post are abtractly the same, but you wouldn't want to use a forum for comments on a blog...

oh wait

dkf

@dhromed said:

Bookmarks should probbly disappear when you've continued reading from them.

That's assuming that the only reason that you've bookmarked them is because you want to start reading from there again. Which is in fact what I don't use them for.

dhromed

@dkf said:

That's assuming that the only reason that you've bookmarked them is because you want to start reading from there again. Which is in fact what I don't use them for.

Then what are you using them for? You want stars/favourites!

dkf

Ugh, imperfect explanation ahoy! I bookmark something because I want to return to that particular message later, not because I want to return to the conversation that contains it. (Perhaps it contains an interesting link…)

xaade

@Lorne_Kates said:

Then you're wrong, and the way you read is wrong, and you as a person are wrong. STOP DOING THINGS THE WRONG WAY DO THEM MY WAY! {bursts into tears} Make him stop doing this wrong!!!!

I'm so sorry for you.
I mean, it's a big world out there, and there are many people in it.
And none of them agree with you...

error

@xaade said:

I'm so sorry for you.
I mean, it's a big world out there, and there are many people in it.
And none of them agree with you...

Look, there's no easy way to say this. It's looks like a broken sarcasm detector, sir. Yeah, it's real bad. Damn shame, too. A damn shame.

PJH

US Secret Service seeks Twitter sarcasm detector

Jun 6, 2014

Wanted: a US state-sponsored sarcasm detector

The US government is searching for a social media monitoring system that can detect sarcasm. What exactly are they worried about?

"Americans don't do cynicism, sarcasm or negativity generally," the journalist Max Davidson wrote, advising Brits how to make it big in the US. "There is an innocence in their outlook that you either love or hate, and if you hate it, you won't get past first base."

So news that the US government is looking for a sarcasm detector has already generated cries of: "Yeah right! Good luck with that."

Frank

There is already an app for that.

Filed under: Nip Alert

PJH

Think I prefer the other meter I've seen a lot of on certain blogs:

dhromed

@dkf said:

I bookmark something because I want to return to that particular message later, not because I want to return to the conversation that contains it.

#I SAID, YOU WANT STARS/FAVOURITES

boomzilla

And if you're looking at this forum from the control perspective:

abarker

@dhromed said:

@dkf said:
I bookmark something because I want to return to that particular message later, not because I want to return to the conversation that contains it.

#I SAID, YOU WANT STARS/FAVOURITES

No, he doesn't. He wants to bookmark a post, not an entire topic. Stars/favorites are for the topic. Bookmarks are for posts.

dhromed

@abarker said:

He wants to bookmark a post, not an entire topic. Stars/favorites are for the topic. Bookmarks are for posts.

This conversation is starting make slightly more sense now that I finally noticed the star next to thread titles.

So anyway, dkf can clearly bookmark posts, and what we want is stars for posts, which are then saved in some tab on the profile page, for eternal future reference.

As an aside, the term "bookmark" is kind of a misnomer in the way browsers use them. IE's name "Favourites" makes more sense. I wish browsers had a real bookmark feature for very long pages.

dhromed

@boomzilla said:

And if you're looking at this forum from the control perspective:

#WHAT?

Onyx

@dhromed said:

I wish browsers had a real bookmark feature for very long pages.

DTFY

Filed under: Discoursed that for you, Beating a dead horse

Kuro

If only there was a checkbox with the label
[code][X] Don't update URL while scrolling through topics[/code]
at the bottom of those added checkboxes in your preferences! Oh whatever would I give for that one feature... oh wait

Filed Under: Maybe you just disabled it to post that screenshot, though. In that case carry on! | Maybe you just didn't screenshot the bookmark-section on accident, though

Arantor

Or maybe there's an issue around discoverability and a lack of sane defaults?

tufty

Or maybe using that checkbox breaks back button functionality.

More.

dkf

I love those dB-calibrated meters!

Onyx

Or maybe I'm a masochistic bastard who doesn't use history that much anyway.

Filed under: And even then, I use the search

sam

@tufty said:

Or maybe using that checkbox breaks back button functionality.

More.

I may add a new thingy into it that does one more "replaceState" for good time sakes when you navigate away, it will lead to slightly more history entries.

xaade

Wha.... OMG,

Is there a cure?

I need help!

cries

xaade

???
Does that mean the Brits think they are more sarcastic than Americans? Which I'm inclined to agree.

But honestly, it's the internet. Safe bet is to treat everything as sarcastic unless proven otherwise.

Arantor

We do irony better (unlike Alanis Morrisette, we do understand what irony means), and sarcasm is usually more finely honed. Trouble is on a forum, it can be so finely honed that it's indistinguishable from sincerity.

The mark of great satire is that it can't easily be distinguished from what it's satirising, and all that.

chubertdev

@Arantor said:

We do irony better (unlike Alanis Morrisette, we do understand what irony means), and sarcasm is usually more finely honed. Trouble is on a forum, it can be so finely honed that it's indistinguishable from sincerity.

The mark of great satire is that it can't easily be distinguished from what it's satirising, and all that.

I'm listening the BBC Radio 4 News Quiz right now, does that make my humour more refined?

Arantor

Have you ever listened to "I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue"? (Btw, I have actually been to Mornington Crescent)

chubertdev

@Arantor said:

Have you ever listened to "I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue"? (Btw, I have actually been to Mornington Crescent)

Nope, never heard of it. I use an Android app to download a bunch of podcasts like Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

So if it's not in that app, I probably don't listen to it.

Arantor

That's a shame. You should go find it. Sadly, one of the people who really made it great - Humphrey Lyttleton - is no longer with us

dkf

@Arantor said:

Have you ever listened to "I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue"? (Btw, I have actually been to Mornington Crescent)

Speaking of which, Shepherd's Bush Market.

And yes, we're using the Lyttleton Memorial Rules, as amended by the Muir Manoeuvre.