Nice things in nodeBB



  • @Nagesh I like to edit my topic titles too. You never know how things fall if you are in a hurry. They may not read right. I'm always motivated to making something read better.



  • @loopback0 Except it's a BUSINESS that makes MONEY off the product. Just like Discourse was.

    I don't volunteer at a Ford dealership selling Fords. Why would I volunteer to help these guys?



  • @RaceProUK said:

    Because in certain people's reality, closed source is perfect and godlike, with no bugs whatsoever;

    All software is buggy and crappy.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @loopback0 Except it's a BUSINESS that makes MONEY off the product. Just like Discourse was.

    I don't volunteer at a Ford dealership selling Fords. Why would I volunteer to help these guys?

    Helping others will make you feel better inside. It is this feeling that humanity is thriving on. Selling fords is not same thing. that is driving by commissions.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @RaceProUK said:

    Because in certain people's reality, closed source is perfect and godlike, with no bugs whatsoever;

    All software is buggy and crappy.

    AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    Except it's a BUSINESS that makes MONEY off the product. Just like Discourse was.

    So fucking what?

    Open source can make money also. In their case, you can also just download the code and use it yourself without paying them anything. The least we can do is give them some bug reports, that will get shit fixed, and make our lives around here easier. It is very much win-win.



  • @kt_ I turned on this fancy "pagination" thing.

    Filed under: However, the default of 20 items per page is WAY too low



  • @Polygeekery said:

    It is very much win-win.

    We're gonna fix bugs in the software we're using anyway (or at least pay someone to do it), so the real question is "do you give the fixes back to the original developers"

    Downsides:

    • Jeff Atwood

    Upsides:

    • we make the software better
    • which means more people will want to use it
    • which means more people submit bug reports and patches
    • which means we just hired a bunch of employees we don't have to pay

  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    I don't volunteer at a Ford dealership selling Fords. Why would I volunteer to help these guys?

    Goddamn. People are volunteering because they get direct benefits from it. And they aren't total assholes about it just because someone else derives a benefit, too.



  • @powerlord said:

    Filed under: However, the default of 20 items per page is WAY too low

    I changed the setting in the admin panel to 50.



  • @PleegWat said:

    I like the 'unread' page. It combines the 'new' and 'unread' pages in discourse (which didn't make much sense to me separate), and refreshing it refreshes the whole list, not just adding new/unread posts, but also removing those you have read.

    I don't like that. "Unread" was for catching up on conversations I've already partially read, "new" for when I wanted some really new stuff to read.

    I don't see a difference between already-read-but-has-some-unread-posts topics and topics that I didn't touch previously.

    I'm on mobile (tablet in portrait orientation, so plenty of space to display semantic information about topics), haven't checked the new forum on desktop yet.


  • Dupa

    @powerlord Well, I kinda like infiniscroll, so I'm staying with it for now. I'm not posting a lot on mobile, so I don't get thrown around threads too much (opening the compose view on mobile causes unexpected stupid fucking rowing my NodeBoat up and down the river.)

    However, things are getting fixed very quickly and I'm really happy with the move. I like things being fixed, I like getting this warm fuzzy feeling, that the software we use will continue to be updated and that we won't get stuck with old bugs forever.

    And yeah, now Jeff, anywhere. No thinking about Jeff, much less talking about Jeff and most of all: not leaving in the fucking Jeffland where everybody has to adapt their workflows to the way Jeff intended.

    So HELL YEAH! Thanks @ben_lubar and @julianlam! I'm stoked! :)



  • @Polygeekery I don't see a crowd of people coming to my workplace and trying to give us free labor. Why should I go to theirs?



  • @blakeyrat This is the reason Not Sharing Knowledge is why India got screwed from the zinc oxide removal process.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    @Polygeekery I don't see a crowd of people coming to my workplace and trying to give us free labor. Why should I go to theirs?

    You are such a cockhole.



  • @Polygeekery Maybe but the point is valid.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat No. The point is idiotic and not applicable.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @asdf said:

    No Jeff

    This is an essential feature for EVERYTHING


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Sentenryu said:

    did he really start moving other peoples posts here?

    He had administrator access by dint of the fact that he was... well - dunno exactly why he got admin access. Except perhaps as one of the devs; a few of them got admin.

    Anyway, not knowing how this community worked, it was supposed to be with the understanding that he use it only for investigative reasons, and not actually start moderating stuff. Because we had moderators already.

    He started moderating.

    When told to back off (numerous times,) he ignored it.

    That's when I sent a pre-resignation letter to Alex. It was in that message that "nail-festooned mod-bat" got used.

    To expound a bit:

    @PJH said:

    @izzion said:

    On the other hand, it can be kind of off putting to potential new members to run into the Wild West attitude toward moderation (especially if one of the first places they encounter it is somewhere that the attitude intersects with anti-Jeff warfare).

    I've tried to keep (my own) moderation activities in the spirit of what went on when we were on CS, i.e. do as little as possible/necessary. Which on there was 99% dealing with spammers. Most of the rest was tweaking formatting or messing with posts with XKCD cartoons.

    Moderation is a chore and the less of it that needs doing, the happier I am.

    Over on CS it was hardly noticable who the mods were, to the point where when occasional mods were made they were assigned to the fictional @shadowmod.

    When we moved to DC, it came with an external moderator who, unfamiliar with our ways and mores, went around threads with a nail festooned modbat and pissed off a large section of the community.

    Who the mods were then became an issue.

    We're closer now, regarding moderation, to what we were like an the old boards with the exceptions that I'm more recognised as a mod here (I wasn't, really, then) and parts of the community here takes an interest in who else has which TL...


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @PJH said:

    @Sentenryu said:

    did he really start moving other peoples posts here?

    Zounds but I hate the lack of post attribution.

    Sentenryu said this in Post 93 of this thread for those curious.


  • FoxDev

    @PJH I was around during the CS days, but I don't recall a @shadowmod; that explains the name of the Discobot :)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @RaceProUK said:

    @PJH I was around during the CS days, but I don't recall a @shadowmod; that explains the name of the Discobot :)

    It was a pseudo-user, as in there wasn't actually an account with that name (hence the 'shadow' part;) it was just what whichever mod signed the modification reason with (if they even indicated that they'd made an edit) if they didn't use their real name. e.g.:

    https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/9071/if-you-ever-wondered-whether-or-not-quot-ai-quot-is-actually-quot-bs-quot/30


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    I don't see a crowd of people coming to my workplace and trying to give us free labor. Why should I go to theirs?

    What are you giving away? Start giving away your code, and I bet people would start coming to contribute to it.

    You are comparing apples to cockholes. Just because you cannot see a reason beyond monetary reasons to contribute to things, does not mean that others cannot. I give my time freely, to lots of causes, without any thought to how I will be paid back. Just because you are a complete fucking asshole, does not mean that others have to be also. FFS, stop being such a fucking prolapsed asshole about open source. You don't want to contribute, that's fine. The rest of us want to make the world a better place. Just shut the fuck up and leave us be and enjoy the better world. Your bitching takes more effort than just shutting the fuck up and letting other people be. So just shut the fuck up about it, you distended asshole.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @PleegWat said:

    Since we've run into a lot of annoyances with the recent switch to nodebb, both minor and major, let's also take a moment to reflect on the things that are actually way better than in discourse.

    The performance is actually pretty amazing, when coming from Discourse. Like...astonishing. Yeah, they have not duplicated all of the functionality, but it is way ahead of Discourse that was shitting all over our users. It was not all bots and @PJH 's SQL either. Even compared to other Discourse forums that I am a member of it is worlds ahead. No comparison.


  • Garbage Person

    @Polygeekery @blakeyrat has a viewpoint. It is not the popular viewpoint amongst software developers at the present time, but it is no less valid.

    To an extent, I agree with him. If I fix commercial-supported opensource software at work, I will be ever more resentful of that commercial support - I certainly don't consider it a good thing*. On the other hand, if we're being cheap stingy bastards and not paying for support and I fix it, I'd think about contributing it back where possible (it's never possible because it's always awful LOB hackery - actual bugs go totally unfixed) because hey, payment.

    On the gripping hand, far more often I find myself working around blatant bugs in closed source software that we pay good money for with no recourse whatsoever.

    That said, this is GPL software sitting on the public internet. It's going to get fixed one way or another because this is a production installation, and those changes are obligated to be made publicly available. The easy way is to shoot them back up to core and avoid running a fork when possible. Licenses. How do they fuckin' work!?

    *Has anyone ever noticed that if you actually pay for support, you are vastly more unlikely to ever actually update the fucking thing ever again? Or is that just at WtfCorp?


  • :belt_onion:

    @Weng Yeah, he does.

    It's not one that I agree with, nor is it one that I think benefits much of anything, but it is a valid viewpoint.

    What I (and likely @Polygeekery as well) do not like is Blakey's apparent need to go around and harass anyone who disagrees with that viewpoint. It's fine that he doesn't see any personal benefit, we all get that loud and clear, and there's definitely no need to tell everyone about it all the freaking time!

    I personally enjoy working on open source software, even if it's just reporting bugs and making minor fixes. I feel like it's my way to give back to the software community. I truly feel sorry for you if the only value you see in your work is the value that gets you money - I do software development not just because I'm good at it (or at least I think I am...) but because I enjoy it.

    To be clear - I don't disagree with what he's saying, and he's not necessarily wrong - I just think there's a bigger picture.



  • This post is deleted!

  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Weng said:

    @blakeyrat has a viewpoint. It is not the popular viewpoint amongst software developers at the present time, but it is no less valid.

    Meh. What criteria are we using for validity? If he doesn't want to contribute, so be it. No worries. But to fucking bitch about others who actually do want to contribute, and do so out of the kindness of their heart and the love for improving software? He can fuck right off.

    If he wants to bitch at people for contributing to open source, he is being a prolapsed asshole. We all know he hates everything open source. Others like the movement. He shouldn't be an asshole to them.



  • @RaceProUK said:

    pretty much from day one I believe

    Actually, I think it may have been two or three days before he started wielding his mod powers, whereupon we said, "That's not how our community works," and he proceeded to ignore our community standards. The weird thing, though, is that our community gradually adopted the practice of moving (some) off-topic posts, so Jeff actually won. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....



  • @Nagesh said:

    Helping others will make you feel better inside.

    @blakeyrat????? :rofl:



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    The weird thing, though, is that our community gradually adopted the practice of moving (some) off-topic posts, so Jeff actually won. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....

    IIRC, most of that started because a certain rat started complaining about topic drift in "his" topics and in certain long running theme topics. Things were bound to go downhill from there.


  • BINNED

    @abarker Eh, we also got some long rolling threads like the status thread going, and it made sense to split stuff off at times. As an example off the top of my head (that I remember only because it involved me, the ego is strong in this one and all), the initial idea for servercooties was something I just said in the status thread. If we didn't split that it would either die or shit on the status thread. So, sometimes, it was a good thing.


  • FoxDev

    @abarker In other words, someone kept shouting, and the mods caved



  • @RaceProUK said:

    @abarker In other words, someone kept shouting, and the mods caved

    There were cases when some people kept shouting over nothing and even the mods got annoyed enough by that to jeff it.
    🛬



  • I honestly thought this was an off the shelf product and ben did the migration. Nice work!


  • BINNED

    @lucas1 something off the shelf that can interact with Discourse's "stable API" reliability?

    :rofl:



  • @Onyx said:

    @lucas1 something off the shelf that can interact with Discourse's "stable API" reliability?

    :rofl:

    I thought you guys did some database migration script or something.


  • BINNED

    @lucas1 Yes, but have you seen the Discourse database?

    Also, there's Community Server stuff too, so...



  • @lucas1 said:
    I honestly thought this was an off the shelf product and ben did the migration. Nice work!

    NodeBB is off-the-shelf but ben is working his ass off adding plugins and customizing everything for this community.



  • @LB_ said:

    @lucas1 said:
    I honestly thought this was an off the shelf product and ben did the migration. Nice work!

    NodeBB is off-the-shelf but ben is working his ass off adding plugins and customizing everything for this community.

    Incidentally, @ben_lubar, are you getting any compensation for all the work you put in?




  • :belt_onion:

    @lucas1 said:

    I thought you guys did some database migration script or something.

    Yep. Ben made it ;)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Onyx said:

    @lucas1 Yes, but have you seen the Discourse database?

    Even I haven't looked too deeply into all of it. And I was doing bespoke queries off it...



  • @PJH said:

    Even I haven't looked too deeply into all of it.

    Obviously not; you're not sitting catatonically in the corner, drooling on yourself.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    I don't see a crowd of people coming to my workplace and trying to give us free labor. Why should I go to theirs?

    You're too worried about doing something where someone else gets some benefit. The stuff I do around here is because I like making it better for me. And I can work on things that are priorities to me.

    Why should it bother me that helping myself helps someone else? Is it harming me?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @RaceProUK said:

    In other words, someone kept shouting, and the mods caved

    Sort of. But also, habits changed on discourse from CS. It was very rare to have topics go over 200 posts, IIRC, on CS. Posting took a lot more time and just seeing new posts and reading them was more laborious and difficult.

    So our splitting of topics changed. But Jeff was also deleting posts. And some of the stuff he deleted was just bizarre.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @PJH said:

    Even I haven't looked too deeply into all of it. And I was doing bespoke queries off it...

    When you looked at posts and stuff...you could see, like, the edit history. Not as a series of linked rows, but often crap baked into a giant blob of text that got parsed or whatever in ruby. Yuck.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Sentenryu said:

    Was he ever welcome here?

    @RaceProUK said:

    He was until he started interfering with the day-to-day running of the forum

    And afterwards, it turned out he was doing the same thing on Stack OverExchange. Anyone who didn't hold discussions in his preferred way got edited. IIRC he even took it upon himself to threaten to ban a mod on a math forum. That guy would cheerfully ban Einstein from a physics forum.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ben_lubar said:

    Upsides:

    You forgot--I'd say @blakeyrat did too, except he thrives on spite, so it's not "forgetting"--that it makes our day-to-day experience here better.

    I do really hate to make that potshot here, but to misquote Margaret Thatcher, Blakey'd rather suffer and let others suffer with bad software than help make it better.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ben_lubar said:

    I changed the setting in the admin panel to 50.

    Having to reload the page so often is kind of tiring. Can you set it to 500?


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