Well, at least we get a mention in the opening post at https://objectepisodes.com/
Appears to be the brainchild of Jay Gilligan & my initial thoughts are good. Runs quick, more clutter than I like but better than most forums!
Little Paul - - Parent #
I do hope https://xkcd.com/927/ isn't relevant...
Daniel Simu - - Parent #
I also read that he wanted to unite the juggling community.. Bad idea! He should use the strengths of his friends to build a new community with a new purpose, not one that that becomes the 'new standard'...
We'll see....
^ this. I think Jay is in an excellent position to create a community of experimental jugglers. To be effective that will require excluding a lot of the non-experimental crowd.
Daniel Simu - - Parent #
I have the hope that this happens nonetheless, which is why I'm on board there.
Oh well, in 2 months we'll know more :)
Oh, at first I thought this was another RJ portal, but no.
I'm not sure I like "Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream." though. Where's the fun in that?
Hmmm, not sure I'm interested enough in talking about juggling these days to sign up. Maybe....
Although I realise that this thread is talking about talking about juggling. (Should I post this reply in Meta?)
Cedric Lackpot - - Parent #
> "Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream."
Has anyone seen my sandwich?
Little Paul - - Parent #
Was it a herring sandwich, and have you checked underneath your herring sandwich scoop?
I think the reward medals are cute
It is early days though, it will be interesting to see how it develops.
noslowerdna - - Parent #
The "Discourse" software platform that it uses looks pretty nice.
Daniel Simu - - Parent #
I was impressed by discourse too!
He mentions us but doesn't give any indication of why he thinks JugglingEdge falls short of being the place he wants to create. It seems to me that JugglingEdge does everything that ObjectEpisodes does and lot more (Events list, Clubs, Records, Practice Logs). JugglingEdge seems the closest thing we have to a replacement for IJDB.
lukeburrage - - Parent #
Juggling Edge is a great resource, but Small talk isn't exactly good forum software. I'd much prefer this same group of people but in a place with much better design and usability.
lukeburrage - - Parent #
The list of ways is too long. Just the overall approach here seems to do as much with plain text as possible. Almost all solutions to usability problems need non-lines-of-text design elements, and you obviously have no interest in doing that.
Discourse has been in the works for years by a dedicated development team, including many designers. There's just no way lines of blue link text is going to hold up against that.
Are you talking about aesthetics only? I like to have the simplest interface that does everything I want. The Discourse interface seems over-complex. For example, in the list of threads why do I need to see a list of images of the users who've posted in the thread (users column)? It takes up a lot of space and I can see that when I go to the thread.
What's top of the list?
My approach is more do as much with as *little* as possible, which mostly translates to text yes. Off the top of my head I can only think of 3 requests for non-text elements to the Edge (titles, favicon, graphs for records) all of which went straight in so I don't think it is fair to say I have no interest in non-text solutions.
Richard Loxley - - Parent #
I think of a couple of graphic elements that would aid my usability slightly:
(1) There are 2 or 3 links to mark everything as read (everything on this page, everything on the site, everything on this thread). It would be nice if they were more easily distinguishable without having to read the text. Maybe different icons next to them, or different colours, or positioning on the page (e.g. left/middle/right).
(2) It might be nice to have user icons next to posts to more easily see who is 'speaking'. Whether that works does of course depend on whether the user base is actually interested in uploading such icons :-)
But these are minor things.
I do have one usability improvement that doesn't involve graphics: the name of the poster is at the end of the post, not at the beginning. I personally find it very important to know who wrote the post before I start reading it, as that affects the context of what is written. I find that on long posts I have to scroll to the bottom of the post to find the name, then scroll back up to read it. Having the name at the top (as well or instead of at the bottom) would be useful for me.
"I do have one usability improvement that doesn't involve graphics: the name of the poster is at the end of the post, not at the beginning."
I agree with this point. It doesn't affect the minimalism of the site, but it does make it more user friendly.
Agreed, it helps put the post in some kind of "context". I usually read the author name beforehand as I'm more likely to know their style of humour, sarcasm etc when parsing their post.
I did something about this for Daniel a while ago. Go to Settings > Change site appearance input "https://jugglingedge.com/altstyles/metafirst.css" into the box at the bottom then click use my stylesheet. What do you think of that?
I think it doesn't work on my iPad. https://twitter.com/TheVoidTLMB/status/610863465633288192
Right, that will be a problem with the small collapse plugin which won't be able to cope with the css positioning. We can deal with that, hold on...
Almost works... looks a little broken on my machine (Xubuntu 15.04 Chromium Version 43.0.2357.81)
Screenshot: dev01.mrawa.com/X/edge.png
(didn't want to embed the link, avoid loading for people who aren't interested)
Richard Loxley - - Parent #
Yay! Thanks :-)
I did think about writing my own CSS to do that when you first advertised user-specific stylesheets, but then never got round to it.
Daniel Simu - - Parent #
The edge is pretty cool, but it took a while to get used to. Having the main page as index rather than stream saved my life, but when I am not logged in I feel clueless how to browse this site.
Some features that common forum software & discourse offer that is lacking here:
> Editing posts
> Topic titles
> Graphical icons to distinguish users
> Following/subscribing to threads
> Categorisation of posts or multiple sub-forums
> Private messaging
Now every feature has its pros and cons, and I don't want the edge to change. However, it seems obvious that a community that will use different software will as a result encourage a different style of communication/community building.
editing - agreed for correcting, but if edited, answers given might hang with empty reference.
topic titles - upto us users to set them.
icons - nice, but imho not "lacking".
notification of threads - there iseMail on own posts and there is threads unread, so any new post in your thread will at least show up as new answer.
categorization - search messages for cluewords ("splits", "siteswap", .. ) partly does that for me. Again its upto us users to put hashtags (else blaming no one but ourselves, maybe).
PM - maybe meet at some register-free browser-chat as guest, link here, then meet there.
browsing messages works by older messages; finding a message works by bookmarking it.
I do get what you mean by "get used to" .. I'd simply take that as it is and call it particular, individual.
None of these minor (trifles) smalltalk-only issues affect the huge functionality of the platform.
I really like Juggling Edge, but I have absolutely no interest in reading any threads about numbers juggling or siteswap and would appreciate a way of easily ignoring those threads. categorising might fix this so I like the fact that Obj Ep has categories (but notice that already threads like "Is juggling rock the biggest" are in "Object Manipulation - discussions about forms of juggling" rather than "uncategorised" category - maybe jugglers are averse to categorisation).
We, users, aswell maybe should give our posts more significant titles (there's even a preview of such titles!) and make more use of hashtags?
Quite effectively thank you.
The thread title was often a good clue rather than JE showing the first sentence (or part sentence) of the first post in the thread.
Also jugglingdb managed to have 20 threads (or thread titles) per screen/page as opposed to 10 which Juggling Edge index has, which made skimming through it for interesting threads faster - though it missed some of the functionality of JE like: Thread started by #, started on #, mark thread as read,...
Once everyone knows that the first sentence is the thread title, then that problem goes away. Change your settings for "Number of threads per page". I've set mine to 20.
Maybe I explained myself badly, I cannot fit 20 threads on the visible screen on my computer (without scrolling - I like to avoid scrolling) unless I shrink the text size to pretty much too small to read. - this is only a small niggle; the main problem, as you have identified, is people realising that they need to use the first sentence as a thread title (I am not claiming I am any better at this than other folk).
Brook Roberts - - Parent #
People realising they need to use the first sentence as a thread title is not something that will improve without changes to the site, if we get new users. If lots of users make the same mistake it's usually a sign that there isn't enough guidance. (Can be solved with strong moderation/being picky about new members, but I don't think they are good options)
Could also change the "required" in red that is present in the text box when creating a new thread to "First sentence will be used as post title". That way there's no reason anyone wouldn't know that's how it works!
lukeburrage - - Parent #
People don't read. They just type and hit "post" or "submit". You have to design the system that only correct usage works.
That's not true. You have to have a certain level of faith that users are somewhat competent. A fool proof and backwards compatible way would be to have a "title" input box where they have the option of using a title. If left blank it uses the first line of the post. Simple (assuming Orinoco is happy to do that).
Of course experienced users might get annoyed at having the main post box an extra 50 pixels lower down than their used to. Oh when will the madness end!
lukeburrage - - Parent #
Are you kidding me? You have to have NO faith in your users at all. None. You have to design a system that even if every single person is trying their best to do their worst, you still get a good outcome.
That's where you have the separation of backend business logic to the frontend UX. No matter what stupid thing the customer does on the front end the backend should always have the correct outcome (correct output when given correct input, else error). Basic principle of B2B systems. In the new era of development methods (agile/lean) it's more dependant on iterating based on the customer usage (either from feedback, analytics, tracked customer usage).
lukeburrage - - Parent #
Just not open those threads/discussions, just like every other modern forum I've used. Here? Just keep scrolling and marking as read and scrolling and marking as read.
I don't understand. If you're reading your unread posts then you see all the content as you described, but if you click Small Talk you see a list of threads, like every other forum.
lukeburrage - - Parent #
Clicking Small Talk shows me the same massive blocks of discussion as clicking the unread count, except it also shows me threads that have no unread posts.
OK, go to Settings, Small talk forum options and change Default view to Index. I do think that some of the Settings defaults should be changed.
One of the things I really like here is 'Next Unread'. It avoids a lot of scrolling in the unread posts view and I really miss it on other sites. I'll normally use that until I get to the end and then use 'Mark all as read'.
lukeburrage - - Parent #
No. That list view is so ugly it hurts my eyes. Like you I just use the "next unread" link.
Again I'm not sure if you're talking about aesthetics or usability and you don't give a reason. Surely that view is a lot better if you want to see if there are certain thread that interest you?
lukeburrage - - Parent #
I haven't given my reasons, nor my use cases. That would take way too long.
The usability of this forum is just above the level it takes for me to keep reading and participating. That's good enough for me, but only because I find the conversation interesting and I respect the people who chat here.
The aesthetics are terrible, but I understand that. It's going to stay the case when the stated aim was to keep the forum as text-based, simple and quick loading as possible from the start.
That means lots of lines of text, lots of blocks of links that each do different tasks but are similar length, colour, size and weight, and I have to read the text of each link every time. That means no gravatar integration to quickly see who is who. That means threading done by insetting in a way that is almost impossible to parse more than three replies deep. That's why text is black on different shades of grey, and super wide, waaaay wider than columns of text should be for easy reading. That also means not having names until the bottom of posts, leading me to read in a weird uncollapsed superposition of all possible authors in my mind until I'm well into a long post. That means 100% width youtube video embeds too, I guess.
I don't expect all this to change. Or any of this to change. I'm not asking Jon to change it either. It's just stuff I find annoying every time I have to read or navigate this forum, and if the same conversation could happen elsewhere I'd like that.
But the internet doesn't work that way. The software, for the most part, determines the community. This forum keeps away people who want modern, nice looking software, the type that often has features that get in the way of good conversation or encourages unhelpful behavior. This forum also attracts people who like all the things I don't like about it, or are happy with it, due to their long history of discussing things on the internet. Turns out I also want to be where that conversation is happening.
Thanks for going into more detail. mrawa has given a great reply to most of those points below. I'll just reply to your point about indentation. The 'Parent' link solves this problem. I do think that Jon will make changes if there's a consensus. He's done so in the past.
I think what you're saying is that you've issues with both UX (User Experience) and the styles.
The styling (as said above) can be changed to whatever you want. Could easily add a floating side bar for quicker navigation between threads, unread posts, or add keyboard shortcuts to navigate through posts (instead of scrolling). Can also add icons to each post instead of just using test (with a tooltip for explanations).
I have issues with the threading as well, but I did find that if you use the "parent" link it's easy to figure out the root of the tangent.
Orinoco has very much been operating under a lean/agile approach to the Edge. Much of the changes have been user driven from meta talk (which is the best method in my opinion). When you say "the internet doesn't work that way", this is completely wrong. The internet is just collection of millions of individuals many of which are invested in keeping and growing a customer/user base. There have been many times when I've submitted feedback or suggestions to sites and have seen them implemented within the month, often I'd get replies from maintainers thanking me for making the time to write them.
At the end of the day, don't fix what ain't broken. And nothing will change unless you ask. I'd be happy to contribute features when I get some time (after next BJC most likely).
lukeburrage - - Parent #
You don't understand my point about how the internet works. I'm talking about how communities on the internet work, not how websites get new features. Which is exactly what this thread is about, and what a conversation on Object Episodes about JugglingRock is also focusing on:
"How does forum or discussion software determine conversation and community?"
I was a part of a thriving forum attached to a podcast I listened to which switched from Vanilla to some kind of phpbb software. With that switch, the quality of conversation dropped markedly, and I left. I found another forum attached to another podcast I listened to, and pretty much only gave it a go because it also used the Vanilla forum software. And you know what? I still chat there, about 7 years later.
I used to love reading the comments on the Boston Globe Big Picture blog. Then they switched to Facebook for commenting, and overnight the comments devolved into "Nice picture", "Nice pic", "Good photo", etc. That previous community of commenters just disappeared.
This last weekend the ATP launched a new website, and the comments seem to be gone from their articles. Again, I really enjoyed chatting with other tennis fans there, even though in this case it was because the site used Facebook commenting. I have a feeling that small fan community is gone, or at least will be until they sort out new website teething problems.
This is how the internet works. Software choices determine community.
I agree with you regarding the switch to Facebook commenting. The use of a social media platform as a method of commenting has a fairly well documented shift in the quality of comment content. It basically shifts from the "committed community" to anyone who happens to have a Facebook/social media account. Which makes it easy for the awful comments "1st!", "nice", "+1", and "Did you know you can get XYZ sunglass for 50% off!", since the user doesn't have to create a new account for that community.
That kinda of decision is usually base on the business deciding that they don't want to manage and maintain the users, and can remove any task having to do that task and save money (or shift it to another more useful area for the business). I'm pretty sure you'll see this sort of thing with any site that is trying to make money (taking your example of Boston Globe Big Picture blog, and I saw the same with Escapist Magazine). It'd be interesting if this is the same with non-for-profit sites.
#HowNetWorksSidethreadHashtagLol I'm not sure if the root of the problems ("scrolling", "indent", in a wide sense "navigating" through Index and inside posts; small-talk functionality) is not actually "getting past unwanted posts" or "past uninteresting topics" ..
First - the easier one: "scrolling" - When I start my browser, I pull its edge those few pixels out of the monitor so as to the scrollbar being at outer right of screen (the window-frame-pixels being outside the screen) - scrolling can then be done way easier with the mouse simply going "outer right", partly blind or peripheric.
Second - sorting out the interesting from the 'unwanted': Any conversation andor discussion among real-life humans in a real room will, too, drift to same, 'unwanted' or uninteresting contributions, remarks here or there, completely off-topic side-convos taking over the participants focus until back to schedule. It might not be a software problem, but simply the nature of people discussing and different persons having different main interests to contribute. A communication issue.
In real life or in few stricly moderated forums, a moderator would have to call onto people to come back to title topic or scheduled content.
Maybe one can doubt, any software could solve this issue to get only content that an user is interested in and aswell not missing interesting content in sidethreads.
I don't see Small talk on the Edge compare to sites with design andor software favoring one-line comments or alike.
…read in a weird uncollapsed superposition of all...
not sure what you mean by this, but since a few weeks there is a greasemonkey script available that adds the option of collapsing posts!
https://jugglingedge.com/help/userscripts.php
lukeburrage - - Parent #
I am talking about having to hold a piece of writing in a quantum superposition of all possible authors. I'm thinking "If this is a convention review by LP I have to understand the event was like this, but if this is a convention review by Jon I have to understand the event like this other thing."
Only when the name appears up from the bottom of the page does the author become fixed, and the possible interpretations of what I'm reading collapse into a single option. That might be a bad example, because I've been reading convention reports from LP and Jon for over 15 years now, so can probably work it out more easily, but in general conversation this happens quite often.
This is not a feature of any discussion forum or email group or news group or any online discussion or real life discussion I've ever taken part in ever before. The only comparable thing is an audiobook I listened to with a narrator who had no distinct voices at all for the various characters, so in a conversation between three or more characters it was impossible to really understand what was being said until the narrator got to the end of a line and said "Bob said" or "Eve said."
lukeburrage - - Parent #
Every time someone offers a "fix" for any issue I've raised just confirms to me the type of person who is happy to frequent this forum. Custom css and user scripts? Right. Yeah.
Little Paul - - Parent #
I see custom css and user scripts as a way to trial features rapidly for specific users, get feedback about what works before folding that UX into the site for general users.
Unfortunately the feedback rarely happens, so neither does folding the features in.
lukeburrage - - Parent #
I get that. My point isn't that they aren't helpful for developing solutions, just they aren't the solutions for general problems of general users.
I doubt it. I think he's talking about the menu at the top, not the actual post text.
"outer appearance" .. I deeply regret the conclusion ("other place") for Orinoce & al. who made a terrific work to built this overall platform.
"Almost all solutions to usability problems need non-lines-of-text design elements, and you obviously have no interest in doing that."
Can you explain exactly what you mean by this? "non-lines-of-text" is not a term I've ever come across.
JugglingEdge is easily one of the more intuitive and customizable forums I've ever been on.
Discourse honestly looks like something I could put together in a couple of days using basic Bootstrap, and MongoDB. I honestly cannot see any advantages to using it over the Edge. If it's just a look and feel you have an issue with then we/Orinoco/you could just script up some more pleasing styles, and have it as an option in settings... just checked and the Edge already supports this!
"The list of ways is too long."
I swear this is one of the most annoying bits of non-committal feedback a designer and programmer can get. I hate when people say that they don't like something and refuse to provide constructive feedback!
This reminds me (tangentially only, I'm not digging at anyone here) of an email we got at another site:
Him: I want feature X
Us: It's already there - log in, do this.
Him: I'm not logged in.
Us: Well, it still works, but you have to do it every time. It'll be easier if you log in/stay logged in.
Him: But I'm not a site member.
Us: !!!!!
Did not type "Well **** *** then!", but was tempted.
Like I said, only tangentially.
Haha, yeah... I never said all user feedback is good, actually a small percentage rarely ever is! But on a site like this with a relatively small user base (compared to millions on corporate systems) it's more likely that everyone can have a fair say.
Little Paul - - Parent #
I've always said, all user feedback is useful - even if it's use is to remind you how moronic users can be
lukeburrage - - Parent #
I'm not interested in giving constructive feedback or design feedback in this thread. This thread is about why a juggler doesn't want to use this forum for general juggling discussion. If all the reasons aren't immediately obvious, then me giving point by point feedback isn't going to be enough. What's obvious is that, for those who are just looking in from the outside, a professionally developed and designed hosted forum solution is way more attractive than something like Small Talk.
If you honestly can't see any advantages over something like Discourse and Small Talk, then Small Talk is exactly your kind of forum software. That's exactly my point. The type of software attracts a certain type of user and engenders a certain type of conversation and interaction. I dislike most things about Small Talk, but I like the conversation and people.
lukeburrage - - Parent #
Now I want to edit that last post. And I can't. Unless that's a feature I've not spotted yet.
Nope, that's not a feature (as was mentioned before) it would cause an continuity issue in the discussion. A feature could be added (that is present on Slack and Gitter) where you can edit your last post only for the next X minutes AND another user has not already replied to the post.
"If all the reasons aren't immediately obvious, then me giving point by point feedback isn't going to be enough."
To a designer/programmer that's like saying that I didn't like your juggling routine, but I won't tell you way because it's obvious to me. Different people have different perspectives and opinions, unless we share we don't learn, iterate, and improve. Agreed, this may not be the thread for discussing what could change on the edge. But I'm sure you can understand what it's frustrating to have someone say they don't like your site/product but actively refuse to provide the reasons why.
lukeburrage - - Parent #
The reasons I don't like this site are the reasons other people do like this site. And I want to be where those people are. Hence it's not in my interest to want to change the site. That might bring more people who only want to share videos. I get that from JugglingRock, and wouldn't want it invading Small Talk.
I think I understand. It sounds like you're worried that if the site were to be made more appealing those of JugglingRock might join. So you want to preserve the community as it is.
lukeburrage - - Parent #
I have no problem with people who post on JugglingRock joining this forum. I am one of those people! My point is that because JugglingRock exists, this forum provides a different form of conversation and discussion for a different community. The Object Episodes forum might be just another place with a different style of discussion that forms a different community. It isn't a competition, and there needs to be no exclusion.
"I get that from JugglingRock, and wouldn't want it invading Small Talk."
Sorry, I was apparently mislead by your last comment. I'm guessing that it's actually nothing to do with the people but the content that they'd potentially generate.
Personally I've no issues with a continuously improving forum as it's unlikely to lose members due to improvements, and any new members would only be a natural progression of the community. Hell, I barely talk about juggling on here any more, but it's interesting seeing what other people are up to and the occasional interesting video of which I might attempt a few tricks. I think what I'm getting at is gradual change is good.
lukeburrage - - Parent #
No, it has to do with the content that is easily shareable on the forum in question, and the ease of reply and recognition that forms the feedback loop to encourage more of the same.
Juggling Rock makes it very easy to post a video. To like it is a single click. To reply is a click in a box, then a short message, and hitting enter submits the comment, so longer messages are discouraged or harder to read. Sharing is another single click. It also works perfectly on mobile. It doesn't show all the comments, just the latest handful.
Small Talk is theoretically as easy to use to share videos... But the same steps you'd have to go through just to share a tiny comment like "nice!" are the exact same needed to write a long response of five paragraphs. It's harder or impossible or pointless to make smaller actions like liking or sharing.
So juggling rock is great for volume of juggling videos (which is what I want from that) and small talk is great for long rambling conversations and discussions that sometimes include embedded videos.
The exact same set of people and content they want to share leads to two totally different experiences and communities based purely on the software.
I am pretty fond of the IJDb-like functionality on the Edge. The Edge is not simply a "forum" or a "talk-community" - it is a jugglers whole platform with database, records-listings & -graphs, logs, user profiles and many more .. well outsortable when knowing where to klick .. people just don't make use of all of them ( e.g. hashtags provide perfect search-function, but no one puts them on ((maybe due to simple search being sufficient)), e.g. contacting s.o. is possible in their ("hi"-)threads, topics can np be collected under one tagged thread, but people rather start a new thread).
I don't see objectepisodes in any way compare to the Edge.
Wow! This looks like the longest thread yet.
JE is the best web-based juggling forum ever! r.j. was, perhaps, better in it's century but it had to be filtered to be usable in later years and depended on web portals, mainly IJDb. Old r.j was better because there wasn't anything else, not even the www itself.
It's not a surprise that many people think different would be better. It's the same with juggling and it keeps the art/sport alive. Orin is the most accommodating and helpful God Emperor of a juggling site ever! (sends hug)
As no one else has styled themselves god emperor, who also runs a juggling site that isn't as great a line of praise as it first looks.
Personally I like it that I can read only the unread posts and that I can skim these pretty quickly. I find jugglingedge just as useful as Ijdb or rec.juggling and this may be because it is pretty much the same people who have posting lots of posts in all the iterations. One day I will try to work out when I first posted to rec.juggling which will take some time as I will have to work out which user name I first used, there were many.
Nigel
aka NigelR, It's Him, itshim, kester, nigelroder et al
Little Paul - - Parent #
You've just reminded me, you got a mention on an episode of "There's no such thing as a fish" (the QI podcast) the other week.
I've been meaning to remember to mention that since I listened to it, unfortunately it's been long enough that I can't remember which episode it was.
I was mentioned in a qi podcast about a year ago. Might be the same one. If you look at my Wikipedia page it says the episode. Speaking of which, if anyone wants to put any content on that page then it might stay in existence longer.
Nigel Roder
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