Topic not found doesn't match expected post style



  • No, it's not a community about trolling. That's what Reddit and /b/ are for. This is a community of trolls, but it's not about trolls.

    It's a group of people that deal with WTFs in real life and like to be around people who understand. People who don't have to have explanations to understand why you feel the way you do in response to WTFs.

    Just using that one quote as justification to piss over user complaints is trying to troll people that didn't really want to use your software but when pushed into it, we tried it. However badly we show it, we do actually care enough to try to help you fix the issues we perceive - and you're shitting on us while we try to do so.

    In this situation, you are TRWTF.


  • Banned

    That's really not fair though

    @abarker said:

    There's your problem. You're expecting sanity from discourse. Forget all expectations and just use the software. It's much safer that way.

    Not everyone can be all philosophical about as usual the software you are building makes no sense inserted randomly into a topic.

    There is clear mutual goading going on here.



  • Of course there is mutual goading. Mostly because the first waves of complaints were ignored and dismissed, meaning people believe things aren't going to get better. So instead of trying to be helpful, goading occurs.



  • This is what a 404 page should feel like:

    Loading program


  • I'd like to point out that @abarker 's response was to this post, to me at an attempt to comfort my woes:

    http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/topic-not-found-doesnt-match-expected-post-style/1144/7?u=matches


  • Banned

    @abarker said:

    this awful thing:

    Which is a direct joke reference to another topic @Matches, the author of this topic, created earlier -- starting here.

    You know, tee hee, remember that time we made that joke together and bonded as angry white male programmers? Good times. Good times.

    @Arantor said:

    However badly we show it, we do actually care enough to try to help you fix the issues we perceive

    I appreciate that, and that is why I am here.

    @Arantor said:

    you're shitting on us while we try to do so

    It is not my intention to "shit" on any other human beings. I was going for site-standard snark, but if it is coming across as that, I apologize.

    And to be honest, this particular request is just not a good idea, and does not jibe with any of the research I've done about how 404 pages work, what they are for, and what role they fill. If I think your feedback sucks, I'm gonna tell you that. If I think your feedback is great, I will tell you that too. Because you are my angry white male programming peers and I believe you can handle that level of honesty, and I am damn sure you would tell me my stuff sucks if you thought it did.

    There's been a mix of feedback here and generally more useful stuff than not.

    Filed under: group hug?



  • @sam said:

    That's really not fair though

    Not everyone can be all philosophical about as usual the software you are building makes no sense inserted randomly into a topic.

    There is clear mutual goading going on here.

    I'll admit, there is some goading there. However, as I pointed out to Jeff: for you guys, this is a business environment. If you want us to keep helping you, you need to treat TDWTF that way. For us, this is a place to kick up our feet, relax, and vent about WTFs.

    This is not a balanced relationship. We were forced into using Discourse. We are giving bugs and feature requests to try and make this forum easier for us to use. You guys are getting the benefit of those bug reports. For many of us, no matter how many bugs are fixed, we will always being using Discourse because we have to. You guys are getting huge benefits out of this (primarily, free QA which should be costing you probably hundreds of thousands USD). We are not getting huge benefits. In fact, we are only getting minimal benefits as Discourse is made more usable.

    For tl;dr: We have something you want. You don't really have anything we want, but we are willing to offer what we have. You guys should be nice to us.



  • @codinghorror said:

    And to be honest, this particular request is just not a good idea, and does not jibe with any of the research I've done about how 404 pages work, what they are for, and what role they fill. If I think your feedback sucks, I'm gonna tell you that. If I think your feedback is great, I will tell you that too. Because I think you are peers and you can handle that level of honesty, and I am damn sure you would tell me my stuff sucks if you thought it did.

    There's been a mix of feedback here and generally more useful stuff than not.

    You have a lot of experience with a certain topic. Someone is asking about their opinion on a topic. You say it's wrong. You do not explain why. You do not give them the knowledge that would make them a better developer.

    This is what confounds me.


  • Banned

    @chubertdev said:

    You have a lot of experience with a certain topic. Someone is asking about their opinion on a topic. You say it's wrong. You do not explain why. You do not give them the knowledge that would make them a better developer.

    This is what confounds me.


    Absolutely 100% untrue, filter my posts in this topic (click my avatar). I even linked to a blog post. What else is required? Do you want me to drive to your house and have a rap session about 404 page philosophy?



  • @codinghorror said:

    Which is a direct joke reference to another topic @Matches, the author of this topic, created earlier -- starting here.

    Yeah, a joke reference that only you found funny. Everyone else was complaining about that blurry monstrosity.

    Also, I'm pretty sure that @nagesh, at least, isn't white.


  • Banned

    @nagesh isn't even real. Come on.



  • @codinghorror said:

    @nagesh isn't even real. Come on.

    You sure about that?



  • I think we'd have had more respect for you if you had just been yourself rather than trying to live up to a mythical standard. The site standard is jaded bitterness from dealing with WTFs and you simply can't imitate it. Either you feel the hate within you, or you don't.

    On the subject of being a dick, I pointed out an image that was actively giving me trouble and I kind of hoped you would edit it out (like some other people do around here if an image has gone over a line), but no, you took it one step further in a complete round of 'fuck you'. That's not site standard snark, that's lashing out.


    On the original subject... 404 pages are an interesting beast. In modern applications they almost never seem to occur with mistyped URLs because, frankly, I don't know anyone who types a full URL in any more. Copy/paste and Google remove that need.

    In which case, a 404 is almost certainly content that has gone away, either through software change -> dead link, or the content was simply removed for whatever reason. Presenting the list of things that are current seems incongruous for either of these things, since nothing on the 404 page reflects what the user asked for.

    It's literally: "we couldn't find what you asked for, but hey, how about one of these wonderful things instead"

    Perhaps instead, if a topic title was indicated in the URL, offer to do a search on topic titles?

    Or simply do what Github does and offer a search function. Not because Github does it - but because what the user was asking for cannot be found, and perhaps they want to try an alternative method to get there. Popular or recent topics are unlikely to match up with that since if the link is dead, chances are it's not either popular or recent.



  • @codinghorror said:

    Absolutely 100% untrue, filter my posts in this topic (click my avatar). I even linked to a blog post. What else is required? Do you want me to drive to your house and have a rap session about 404 page philosophy?

    Here are a few points on that:

    • It doesn't count when you bury your link that way.
    • Many people in this forum have expressed a strong aversion to reading your blog to get your argument.
    • You didn't even bring that up until after the argument started getting heated.
    • If you are going to cite a source in an argument, it's usually preferable to summarize the relevant points from that source. You did not do this. What makes you think anyone will blindly follow your link?


  • Maybe you misunderstood my reaction. So let me clarify. I fucking [b]hate[/b] that image, and am actually offended by that whole series of responses and by bringing here it really pisses me off.


  • Banned

    @Arantor said:

    Perhaps instead, if a topic title was indicated in the URL, offer to do a search on topic titles?

    The bottom of the dialog offers to do exactly that, as shown in the picture:

    filed under: who's not reading now?



  • Which probably would have been easier to notice, had you not tried to bring in the damn blurry shit from the PM topic.

    Not an issue of not reading, simply that that small search feature was overwhelmed by the massive, ugly, blurry shit.



  • Here, we say 'your feedback sucks because' to which we can take it or leave it, but @abarker nailed my underlying complaint, you're 404 page was middle of the road. His response is above.



  • @codinghorror said:

    Absolutely 100% untrue, filter my posts in this topic (click my avatar). I even linked to a blog post. What else is required? Do you want me to drive to your house and have a rap session about 404 page philosophy?

    The useful bit:

    @codinghorror said:

    404 pages should be simple and minimalistic. They mean "oops, nothing is here", not "look at this thing that is indistinguishable from our front page." If you implement the entire website on a 404 page, you're kind of doing it wrong. Feel free to take a journey through many other sites' 404 pages. I have blog entries I can point to where I've done this kind of research before.

    Was drowned out by your other thousand posts berating users.

    Holy hell, that was a PITA to navigate between posts.



  • Also: "a blog post I wrote" isn't research.



  • @Arantor said:

    Also: "a blog post I wrote" isn't research.

    "I never said that."
    -- Albert Einstein


  • Banned

    @chubertdev said:

    your other thousand posts berating users

    I've told you a million times to stop exaggerating. Unless thousand = 10/71. Ok now 11/72.

    (just click my avatar to see how many times I posted in this topic)

    @Arantor said:

    "a blog post I wrote" isn't research.

    It is when you do research as a part of writing the blog post.



  • @codinghorror said:

    @Arantor said:
    "a blog post I wrote" isn't research.

    It is when you do research as a part of writing the blog post.

    Hmmm, that blog post doesn't have any sources cited. How are we supposed to check on your research?

    Translation:

    @Arantor said:

    "a blog post I wrote" isn't research.



  • @codinghorror said:

    I've told you a million times to stop exaggerating. Unless thousand = 10/71. Ok now 11/72.

    Yes, hyperbole is literally the worst thing that's happened to humanity. 😬



  • And of course, because you've negated one point I made (which actually supported what it turns out you have done), you get to ignore the other commentary?

    I contend that there is no reason to display the lists of topics on the 404 page.



  • @Arantor said:

    And of course, because you've negated one point I made (which actually supported what it turns out you have done), you get to ignore the other commentary?

    I contend that there is no reason to display the lists of topics on the 404 page.

    A list of possibly related topics would be brillant there.

    Source (one of these):


  • Banned

    @abarker said:

    that blog post doesn't have any sources cited. How are we supposed to check on your research?

    Try following the links in the post. Consider them "citations". I mean the post has this right smack dab in the middle of it:

    I found that Jakob Nielsen, A List Apart, and 404 Research Lab also had good advice on making 404 pages potentially user friendly instead of the geeky, incomprehensible dead end signs they usually are.

    Not hard to see the resources and underlying research there, is it?

    @Arantor said:

    I contend that there is no reason to display the lists of topics on the 404 page.

    OK, so say someone randomly clicks a link to a Discourse forum topic somewhere on the Internet. Anywhere on the Internet, it's open source, who knows where it will end up.

    But it's an old link. So the topic was deleted or otherwise got munged beyond the ability of our 404 page to handle it (experiment: try deleting the topic / post numbers and see what happens, or inserting incorrect slug values).

    So people clicking that 404 link will arrive on a page that says.. what?

    1. page wasn't found
    2. here's some topics, this is what we do here, discuss this stuff
    3. would you like to search?

    If you remove #2, you are not explaining to this new user what this random site they ended up on even is. And what's the best way to "explain" a discussion site? By showing a simple flat list of what's being discussed, both right now, and all time best.



  • @chubertdev said:

    A list of possible related topics would be brilliant there.

    You mean like their "Your topic is similar to..." list of topics that are almost, but not quite, entirely dissimilar? Yeah, that would be brillant.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    You mean like their "Your topic is similar to..." list of topics that are almost, but not quite, entirely dissimilar? Yeah, that would be brillant.

    Just found it. Guideline 16.
    Offer customized "Page Not Found" error pages



  • @chubertdev said:

    Offer customized "Page Not Found" error pages

    I don't disagree with that. I was just expressing distrust in Discurse's ability to give useful suggestions of related topics.



  • Option 2 would be fine if option 2 were actually anything useful to the user.

    You're saying 'hey, you wanted a donut, we don't have any, would you like a cookie instead?'

    If the user wants a cookie, that's fine. Odds are they came to the link because they wanted a donut and trying to sell them a donut under any circumstances isn't going to work.

    If the list were related topics to the content supplied (assuming anything useful was supplied), I'd agree, but what you're saying is not how users work. Users do not randomly end up at a link and think... actually, you know what, maybe I'll just see what's here regardless.


  • Banned

    If I click on a link titled

    Look at this picture of my beautiful pony!

    It is presumably because I am interested in ponies, right?

    Let's say I get a 404 from that link.

    If I get a 404 that includes recent and top topics about beautiful ponies, because hey, this must be a pony discussion site, the likelihood of getting something useful out of that otherwise useless 404 interaction is much higher.

    Substitute "Android" or "Kites" or "Bicycles" or whatever topic you're into to taste.



  • Oh Jeff. If only real forums worked the way you believe they do.

    People follow the link, agreed. But just because one topic on a site is about a particular thing does not mean the entire site is about that same topic, and it certainly doesn't mean that the list of recent or popular topics is about the specific subset of that overall topic that you're interested in.

    "Look at a picture of my beautiful motorbike" might well be a link, but it does not automatically mean the entire forum destination is about motorbikes. Even if it was all about motorbikes, the odds of it actually being the right brand or model of motorbike to the one you're interested in is slim at best.



  • @sam said:

    I guess my skin is just way thicker.

    It probably has something to do with you living in nopeland.



  • As an addon to this, if I stumble in through a hot link, if that link is dead I immediately leave, always.

    If I'm Google searching, I've probably found related links from the same site.

    Also, I'd appreciate you at least acknowledging that your pictures aren't OK, and I provided a reason why I'm so annoyed when talking to you.

    If I hadn't been driving home, I would have corrected arantor about the search, because I did see it there. But your search is search Google, not the site according to the button.


  • Banned

    @Arantor said:

    But just because one topic on a site is about a particular thing does not mean the entire site is about that same topic, and it certainly doesn't mean that the list of recent or popular topics is about the specific subset of that overall topic that you're interested in.

    Sure, here the topic title usually has zero to do with the contents of the topic, but that's because this place is.. special.

    Across all the other Discourse instances I monitor, they are quite topical. Shared, specialty interests are the glue that bind discussion communities together. If you wanted "everything" you'd just go to The Facebooks, like the rest of humanity does.



  • @codinghorror said:

    this place is.. special.



  • @codinghorror said:

    Sure, here the topic title usually has zero to do with the contents of the topic, but that's because this place is.. special.

    Across all the other Discourse instances I monitor, they are quite topical. Shared, specialty interests are the glue that bind discussion communities together. If you wanted "everything" you'd just go to The Facebooks, like the rest of humanity does.

    It needs to find the delta. If someone here is searching for "database WTF", that doesn't really narrow it down. But if their search includes "dual", you'll probably want to lean heavily on The I-Hate-Oracle category threads. The trick is to figuring out how to make the connection.



  • If only I were referring to here. Which I wasn't. I am well aware of the unique characteristics of thread drift inside TDWTF.

    I'm talking as someone that has been visiting forums for years, following dead links for years and I don't ever EVER go... hmmm, I was looking for <specific piece of knowledge> and this site doesn't have it any more but it does have other topics about vaguely the same thing. No, I don't do that. Neither do any of the users I've ever watched. I introduced a number of people to the internet over the years and watched how they interacted with websites - and they do not operate the way you think they do. Maybe that's how you operate but you're not the same as anyone else, neither am I, neither are they.

    It all depends on the context of where you're coming from. I'm coming at it from an external site, e.g. Google, .e.g. Wikipedia, linking to a specific but now defunct topic. These people will not suddenly stay, they will go elsewhere. Getting them to use the site-specific search is a best case scenario, compared to them going elsewhere immediately.

    If, however, you're talking about a dead link from existing within the community, e.g. a topic referenced and then deleted... you're still stuffed because they are already, by definition, there and don't need to be reminded of the fluffy pink bunny love they could be experiencing.

    But it seems clear to me that you're already in total denial to anything that doesn't fit your research because we're all clearly using the internet wrong.



  • Only Al Gore knows the internets true purpose.



  • But whether we use it for its true purpose or not, according to Jeff we're all using it wrong.



  • @Arantor said:

    the fluffy pink bunny love they could be experiencing

    Yes, we have some peopleusers here who can supply that.



  • I'd ask if any of them are named Colin, after a dog, but I fear it's a meta joke so obscure no-one but me would get it.



  • @Arantor said:

    I'd ask if any of them are named Colin, after a dog, but I fear it's a meta joke so obscure no-one but me would get it.

    I know that line, I just can't remember where from.



  • Mostly Harmless ;)



  • On an unrelated note, the topic title is not matching the expected post style, which I feel still applies to what we've been talking about. So ultimately I win.



  • I'd say it's not about who's winning or losing but how you play the game, but we've seen players resort to all kinds of WTFery by now so take every win you can get.



  • You think this is a game?





  • You still ignored my other points. Plus, you don't even apply that to the 404 here.

    3 is best. It doesn'the tell the user what to be interested in, but let's them find it on their own.


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