New option for post display

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Orinoco -

New option for post display

Go to Settings > Post display. Your new choices are: 'Show post content first' or 'Show meta info first'. While this is wrong & marks the decline of the Edge it will play nice with the various post collapsing options.

#newfeature

I've deliberately kept out of the big discussion that is going on but I've been keeping a very close track of what is being said. I think it's good that people are venting frustrations, I think the fact that people are passionate enough to care is a good thing. I really appreciate all the feedback both good & bad, & I thank everyone for all the compliments too.

I think a number of people think Luke is attacking the Edge but I really don't think this is the case. Luke is saying he likes the content but doesn't like the presentation, but he understands that the content is a product of the presentation. A frustration that I can sympathise with. I have a similar relationship with Facebook. I find using Facebook almost physically painful, but I use it because it is the only way I can communicate with some of my friends.

When I closed down Big talk I thought very hard for a long time about renaming Small talk to simply 'forum'. The word forum is still generally understood to mean a public place for people to gather & communicate that we've had since the Roman empire. However, through use on the internet it has come to mean PHPBB (& clones). Which I think is a great shame because there is so much experimentation that could be done with forum software but this is stifled by overwhelming preconceptions of what a forum should be. I still think of Small talk as a permanent chatroom. There is a definite split between people who 'get' what that means & people who don't. I try my best to accomodate those who don't get it because there really is no viable alternative (Although perhaps Object Episodes will be that alternative?), but I'm doing so without adversely affecting the Edge's emphasis on content above all else.

I hope people understand that the Edge is a tiny niche site. I'm trying to win attention from behemoth attention grabbing sites like Facebook, Twitter & Reddit. There have been many juggling related PHPBB variant forums that have been & gone (you'd think we'd learn from that :P) so I believe I have no choice but to be different. Following the herd is simply not an option for me. There is very little about the Edge that is not present or absent by design. I spent over 2 hours deliberating over simply changing 'lost password' to 'reset password' for example. Putting the meta information last was a very deliberate decision made very early on that I believe has many positive effects which I've talked about before. I've added this latest option because it is the one stand out feature from the Object Episodes thread that seems to be causing the most friction but if quality dips this option is coming straight back out again!

There will be other changes coming but slowly & very carefully. I think it is obvious to all now that the Edge has grown to a stage where making any change will delight someone & anger another.

Despite everything that has been said, from my experience of running the Edge I don't believe forum software is anywhere near as important as people think. Object Episodes is the first new juggling website that I've felt 'threatened' by, but certainly not because of Discourse.

JackJuggles - - Parent

Thanks for keeping us updated. But I haven't been on the edge for too long, so may I ask what big talk was?

Daniel Simu - - Parent

Another forum page, but only for serious deep discussions. So deep, that if you wanted to post, you were forced to give yourself 24h to rethink your message :). It was an interesting concept, but didn't really add much..

barnesy - - Parent

As I first understood it, Big was for the weightier discussion with fuller more thought out posts, while Small was more in the style of b3ta etc: somewhere where it's not so important to read everything - Small posts would be shorter, more conversational, more contemporaneous, but still less transient than a chat format while Big would be the place where it would have been seemed important to keep track of everything. The puzzle of how to get people to use Big talk in a different way was never really answered, which is why it is no more.

But that was when the IJDb was still running and the Edge was another place, not the lifeboat it became. The Edge caught a lot of people looking for an IJDb replacement, which in a way is of course a Good Thing, but I think it's also caused confusion somewhere between the site's intended direction and the users' perceived/desired intended direction. Though now I've said all that, I don't think I have a clear idea what that direction should be!

barnesy - - Parent

And I just used the post button which is currently at the top of my posts. Wrong. I'll be setting that back to how it was!

lukeburrage - - Parent

I too changed to the new setting for about 20 seconds before switching back.

Jon, this new "feature" of having a setting to change the position of a line of text and links from one place to another is a perfect example of why I haven't given feedback like this in the past. You put in work to change it, added options and stuff, but the solution was never going to be anything to do with moving or adding to a line of text and links with more text and links. Asking users to make choices between their least un-favourite non-functionality isn't a design solution, it's the opposite of a design solution.

The Void - - Parent

Ooh, can I play?

*bangs Orin's head against a wall*

This is fun!

Little Paul - - Parent

What's Thom done to deserve that?

lukeburrage - - Parent

No it isn't fun. That's my point. Which is why I didn't want to tell someone with a totally different design sensibility than mine that I think most of his choices are ugly. And why I also said the site is holding up fine as it is now for those who use it, and big changes aren't needed. I don't want half hearted changes, I want a consistent and unified vision of the site, even if those design choices don't align with mine, because at least then I can put on a different brain when using the site and it all makes sense. Falling half way between what Jon wants and what I want leads to compromises like what he just implemented, which is ends up being just shit.

lukeburrage - - Parent

And in case anyone thinks I'm being too harsh, Jon agrees with me. He said up in that first post:

"While this is wrong & marks the decline of the Edge..."

I'm just agreeing with Jon. Him making changes based on my feedback is wrong and marks a decline.

mrawa - - Parent

"Him making changes based on my feedback is wrong and marks a decline."
Jon is this true? I always thought you welcomed feedback.

I honestly don't see how it's a decline. Making iterative changes based on user feedback is a staple of Lean Software Development which is becoming more widely adopted at startups and have been proven to be quite successful in the industry.

peterbone - - Parent

I think that changing a few things based on user feedback is fine, but adding new features or options based on a few users is not always good because it leads to feature creep and over-complexity.

mrawa - - Parent

I'll agree with feature creep. I've enough issues with that at work where we have features all over the place, most configurable, but barely documented... and then over 28 different permutations for our various customers! As long as it's managed sensibly it's fine... but in a company where legacy code is rampant, it's a nightmare :(

Orinoco - - Parent

No, I was being facetious. A fact Luke may have missed due to this forum's lack of graphical smiley support. I have found some truly awful looking images & will be working on that tonight.

I do always welcome feedback & I made this change based on feedback from Daniel, who explicitly asked for this feature a number of weeks ago (& he certainly wasn't the first), plus Richard who also explicitly asked for it, then Dee, Chris & yourself who all voiced agreement with it. This represents a sizeable proportion of the active contributors to this site which tells me it is worth offering the option. I have not changed anything for all the lurkers who vastly outnumber members because I want the majority of people to view this site how I want them to see it. Luke has not requested or said anything other than he doesn't like the format.

There are lots of features I have refused & can't see myself ever implementing - avatars, signatures, thread titles, categorisation of threads, editing posts for example, all of which will fundamentally change the dynamic of the site. There are many more. There are lots of features on the Edge that I don't personally like but have implemented but only really because I've been able to do so in a way that doesn't adversely affect the essence of the Edge. These features are notably the index view (which is absolutely the wrong way to use this site!), timed toss juggling records, the WYSIWYG & Markdown post composition methods, allowing contact details to be optional in the clubs & events sections. There may or may not have been features on this site that I have implemented purely to prove that they won't work. This may be one of them, who knows?!

Daniel Simu - - Parent

I myself use the 'parent on top' version, that has the rest of the metadata below. I do want to know who wrote something, posts just don't make much sense to me without that context, but I like the reply button underneath ;)

Dee - - Parent

Ooh, that sounds exactly what I'd like.... do you have a link to the style sheet needed for that?

Thanks

peterbone - - Parent

I've switched to showing meta data first and probably won't switch back. Thanks.

mrawa - - Parent

I'm trying to understand exactly what your talking about. Though you're right it's not design, it's UX.

Richard Loxley - - Parent

"Putting the meta information last was a very deliberate decision made very early on that I believe has many positive effects which I've talked about before"

I think I missed that discussion (or forgot it) - can you direct me to it, or briefly summarise?

I like having the poster name first. I'm not so bothered about the rest of the meta data - which probably actually makes more sense at the end of the post - is that the reasoning?

Orinoco - - Parent

Briefly, I believe what is said is more important than who says it. Having names & avatars encourages people to pick out & only read posts from their friends or internet celebrities. It doesn't encourage you to get to know new people or challenge your preconceived ideas. Only picking out the people you want to read is like only watching Fox news. Skipping over new people or people you don't know is simply disrespectful which doesn't lead to a cohesive community. Without having any initial information of who wrote what you are forced to make an initial judgement based on the content rather than the author.

mrawa - - Parent

That's a good point, of which I never even considered people do! Personally since I have a hard time understanding what people write I find it helps to know who wrote it first so I can get load their quirks before parsing (I think similar to what Luke said about reading various peoples convention reviews).

emilyw - - Parent

I think the anonymous-ish system can break down at scale, when you start to attract people who are trollish or generally engaging in undesirable behaviour that needs discouraging.

The idea that everyone's contributions are equally valuable, presented in good faith and should be read as such makes a lot of sense in a small community, but it tends to break down in a larger one, because bad actors take advantage of it. At that scale, having stronger identity (even if pseudonymous) places a premium on reputation, which discourages assholery and makes it easier to detect trolls when they show up.

Luckily, not a problem we have here right now, thank goodness for that.

^Tom_ - - Parent

But when you scale even further (eg /. and reddit's largest subs), then you no longer have much chance at judging based on usernames.
The "community" is then so big, that users might as well be anonymous.

It's no surprise that both systems mentioned have some sort of user "moderation", where moderation is less about editing or removing content, but rather helping to filter signal above noise, or to remove noise from signal (where "noise" is usually trollish or unpopular viewpoint, and "signal" is usually some joke or funny picture).

emilyw - - Parent

Reddit is an absolutely fascinating example of community failure at large scale, I think! It also has an even larger scale problem, in that you can discuss whether an individual sub is a well functioning community according to that sub's own set of "values", but then there's the issue of whether that's functioning well as a part of the whole. I.e. /r/creepshots or whatever it was, you could say that was well functioning on its own terms, but extremely harmful to Reddit as a whole.

Luckily the actual physical juggling community is small enough that I don't think it's possible to scale up that many orders of magnitude.

^Tom_ - - Parent

I agree - I was just making the point that small to medium sized community transitions might need to do one thing, but medium to large will almost certainly have different problems and different solutions.

I was also thinking more of reddit as a platform - designed to work with communities of a certain size, rather than the community itself.

emilyw - - Parent

I think the design choices of Reddit greatly inform the nature of the communities that end up there, like water takes on the shape of the container you put it in. (yes I know, not all subreddits, etc etc).

So there's some interesting commonalities and emergent behaviour caused by the design, and I think that does very much give Reddit a personality as a whole, and that personality is repulsive, despite the odd mostly pleasant corner.

I think it's particularly interesting that the early-internet-days emphasis on the technological paradise of "freedom of speech" has shaped a lot of early communities into places where you have the opposite of freedom of speech, because it turns out that nasty fuckers (and also karma trolls) shout the loudest and drown out everyone else. It's like aiming for this goal can literally cause the opposite thing to happen. The emergent behaviours of the internet are fascinating.

Cedric Lackpot - - Parent

I bet you wish you hadn't started this thread now ...

I'm gonna chip in a contrarian opinion here, but first a disclaimer: I've never much liked The Edge's layout and that has contributed to me using it rather less than I ever did rec.juggling, so I'm not actually a refusenik but it's fair to say it has never sat particularly well with me.

Now, to the beef:-

Why on earth are you trying to engineer/influence the style of discourse? Why do you not possess the confidence to allow the established community here to develop their own preferred ways of communicating here? I really don't understand why you feel the need to nudge the membership this way and that. I don't see why you should suppress, for instance, the hypothetical desire of users to scan posts by looking at avatars? I hate avatars btw, but I acknowledge the right of other people to choose to use them, and that is also true of how I feel about attempts to engineer the way people use things.

The Edge is already the most verbose, most considered, and - dare I say it - most British forum don'cha know, what what? I can't think of a membership less in need of social engineering.

I understand your aspirations for the way The Edge works; I don't understand why that entails implicitly stifling other emergent behaviours. Personally I would prefer it done the way the Dutch make footpaths - build the infrastructure, leave people to beat down their preferred route, then build the paths - they are called 'desire lines' or 'desire paths' I believe.

I'm having a vaguely similar argument in another place, and my feeling there is also that it's okay to encourage behaviour, but not to require it - if you want a mature community then trust your participants.

Disclaimer 2: I think you've done a great job here and I'm grateful for it. There are good reasons why it's not entirely my cup of tea and I'm completely comfortable with that, as I'm sure you are with what I hope is another dollop of constructive criticism to throw on the pile.

Thanks for reading.



emilyw - - Parent

I think shaping discourse on sites like this is 100% vital. Design decisions make all the difference between somewhere that you can have a decent discussion, somewhere that you go to post cat pictures and LOL, and somewhere that you go to engage in vicious snark and piss all over everyone else.

To put it another way, the discourse is shaped by the site design whether you like it or not, and ignoring that fact is just absolving responsibility for the results.

As an example, Orin has done a remarkable job of discouraging spammers and drive by trolls, and it's a direct result of these efforts that we can have this discussion now. The desire lines of the internet lead directly to penis enlargement adverts. Sorry.

Orinoco - - Parent

My thoughts exactly. It's not just design either, it's the content I post & when I post it, it's responding to users quickly, it's handling all the people who ignore the big red warning message when they use the contact form, it's tracking down & getting information from people who hide within Facebook for people who can't get hold of them & considerably more besides.

Clackers, what sites do you use that you think don't influence discourse through design? What do you think the difference is between my efforts to influence discussion through design & your work as a moderator at r/juggling?

Thank you both for appreciating my efforts.

Cedric Lackpot - - Parent

Forgive me if I make a few points in no particular order :-

1. /r/juggling

I'm a lazy fecker and I've always tried to keep /r/juggling down to a minimum of effort for me. Although we have a small mod team, in practice I do the greater share of the trifling amount of mod work. And to be honest it represents a tiny amount of effort, mostly assigning link flair, and approving the majority of spam messages (of which there are typically single digits each month) which prove to be falsely flagged. I've always tried to draw a clear line between moderation and curation, and in my time as a mod there I have not had to deal with any issue I would regard as more than trifling.

The small community there has formed itself, with little input from me other than the occasional appeal to users not to report stuff they simply don't like - lookin' atchoo Norbi, with your circus shorts - and instead exercise a bit of self-moderation. I think it's a reddit-type place which appeals to a certain kind of conversation which might not readily translate to other sites, but it really is pleasantly surprising how well it regulates itself and manages to achieve a high s/n ratio.

In short I have tried to prevent things which are unequivocally out of order, but otherwise take a very laissez-faire approach and allow the sub to develop its own character. Thus far it seems to have worked after a fashion - it's not exciting or controversial or high-traffic, but it rubs along nicely.

2. The Edge

In the case of The Edge you have explained your careful thinking about what general behaviours you wish to encourage, for example in the way that people should be nudged towards reading deeply before seeking a reply button, yet we have examples of users who find that a minor frustration. Consequently there is a dissonance there - you trying to promote thoughtful perusal vs. users with their own aspirations. It implies that the corpus of users does not entirely share your vision, even if they approve of the general intent. But please be aware that these criticisms are very gentle, The Edge is not on its last legs or anything.

3. The effect of design

I cannot provide an example of a truly neutral environment and I regard it as pretty much a given that site design will influence the way users interact, and therefore the kind of users who choose to do so, but in my opinion that doesn't mean that a forum should actively set out to shape the discourse. As far as possible it is preferable to subtract only that which is plainly out of scope, but not necessarily to guide the thing in a particular direction.

rec.juggling is/was a great example - newsreaders were just too bloody difficult for many people to wrap their heads around until the IJDb came along and made it accessible. It turned out that r.j the forum was actually really good, but r.j the newsgroup interface not so much. In neither case, USENET being USENET, was there any guidance exerted over the direction of the group other than by its users, and the design differences of the two interfaces were thrown into stark relief when r.j withered the moment the IJDb keeled over. And even so the r.j example suggests that design had more of an effect on usability than on use.

And Big Talk was another example. You invited users to behave in a certain way, they tried it for a while but it didn't really work out, it got pulled and we all moved on. To my mind that was an excellent piece of evolution in which a space was created for a purpose but it proved not to be effective enough because of members' failure to occupy the Big Talk space.

Emily also strongly supports the guiding hand of design but I find her rather bleak outlook unfamiliar unless you make a point of visiting /b/, stormfront, /r/gonewild, rotten.com, YouTube comment threads, or no end of phpBB rant groups, it's just not my experience of lightly regulated special interest groups.

I guess the key difference is that I find it very difficult to justify imposing an ethos, while you find it a little difficult not to; you have a vision of what The Edge should strive to be, whereas I worry about what you might unwittingly be stifling.

4. Factoids!

Did you know that I read very little of what goes into /r/juggling? It turns out I'm much more mod than user, because I find it more interesting that way I guess. Did you also know that I at least skim pretty much every post on The Edge? Granted it is very often the most perfunctory skimming - bad Clackpot, naughty Clackpot! - yet it still attracts my eye far more than the place I oversee.

Did you know that /r/juggling is going backwards fast right now? Neither did I until I went and looked at the traffic stats while writing this post. It was bumbling along nicely for a good while and then for some reason pageviews and uniques have dipped very markedly since the turn of the year, like on the order of 50%. I have no idea why, and to be honest I don't much care - I'd much rather think that it was a small community relevant to its few users (which I believe it is) than a large one full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. My impression is that The Edge is similar, we can both leave the dick-waving to Juggling Rock and so on :-P

These factoids are not intended to lead to any conclusion.

5. Crikey

Um, that was a long post. Please share/subscribe/like/+1/upvote if you have read this far!

I've not strayed into the territory of making my own suggestions for The Edge - but markdown and editable posts would be a fucking godsend - and I've really enjoyed the opportunity to thrash out my own ideas into a semi-coherent form. That's a win by Edge standards innit? I'd x-post this to /r/juggling but I'm really not sure I can see the point.

Over and out.

Orinoco - - Parent

A well thought out & interesting post with lots to think about, a definite win in my book. Thank you for taking the time.

Couple of minor points:

The idea that rec.juggling died with the IJDb came up on Object Episodes too, but rec.juggling was declining in popularity a few years before the IJDb closed down.

Markdown is already an available option, see under Settings > Post composition.

Colin E. - - Parent

I must admit that when I put the IJDb together there was much less competition, I'm pretty sure that the only active discussion forum was rec.juggling with people using dedicated usenet news software to access it. I only had two real choices for how to bring discussion to the IJDb website, (1) create my own phpBB backed forum, or (2) try to bring rec.juggling to the web.

As I was already an active member of r.j. (2) was the only decent option. This required writing a lot of code, which was an added bonus ;-)

The fact that I was building on top of USENET news very much shaped the interface I created. Discussions had to be threaded, and tree-like. People were used to being able to mark articles as read, etc ...

Things are very different now, we have a much better understanding of user experience and how to design effective web interfaces. Furthermore, you don't have to build nearly as much from scratch these days. There are some really great forum solutions (discourse is one of them), you no longer have to build your own authentication solutions, technologies like bootstrap allow you to tame CSS, ...

While it is easier to build basic websites these days, user expectations are much greater, thanks to the likes of Facebook.

Anyhow, I'm rambling a little now.

I think comparing Small Talk to Discourse and Jay's new site is a little unfair. From what I understand Orinoco has quite different design principles, and a number of the Small Talk users agree. This is very much a personal thing.

I do however think that the usability of this forum could be improved, without compromising its minimalist approach. A better site to compare this forum to is Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9736446

I think one general area where Small Talk falls down a little is conventions. Users are inherently lazy, we like familiarity and patterns. It's much better if your forum follows a user's mental model of how forums work, rather than them having to learn the way your forum system works.

A few quick points ...

+ When someone has read a forum message and wants to perform some form of action, what is this most likely to be? reply! Currently you display "Parent, Reply, Bookmark, Mark as unread" in that order.
+ I rarely want to know the exact date and time that a message has been posted, rather, just how recent it is. Interfaces that display 'posted just now', '1 hour ago', '3 days ago' are much easier to comprehend (time calculations are hard to do in your head!)
+ I'm not convinced that tree-like forum structures are the best. As discussions fragment it can be much harder to navigate the various leaves.

I'd be happy to provide some more suggestions.

Anyhow, great job, keep it up!

mrawa - - Parent

I've not seen Hacker News before. Initially the layout is great, however they commit the heinous crime of using a character that is usually associated with being able to "rollup"/"hide"/"accordion"/"fold" posts, which would aid in making their theading more readable. This is a major feature of the edge that really helps reading long content when being dyslexic.

Agreed about the time. Especially when we have people all over the world using the Edge, it's nice to have a "lazy" time display at least for a day or two. There are loads of JS libraries that would do it simply.

Orinoco - - Parent

When someone has read a forum message and wants to perform some form of action, what is this most likely to be? reply! Currently you display "Parent, Reply, Bookmark, Mark as unread" in that order.

I've recorded what links get clicked & you would be completely wrong!

The most used links by far are the 'Next unread' when available followed by 'Mark as read' (or the user double clicks the bottom right quadrant of the message).

Most users tend to hover their mouse over the main navigation of a web page but because I don't really have much (another conscious design choice), because most people are right handed, because most (all?) browsers put their scroll bars on the right & because post content often forms an 'F' shape leaving a blank space ripe for double/long clicking in the bottom right hand corner of each post Edge users tend to hover their pointer on the right hand side of the screen. Phone/tablet users hold their device in their left hand & perform gestures with their dominant right hand, or they hold their phone in their right hand & have to reach from the right hand side with their thumb. So having the most important links last & therefore closer to the right turns out to be more efficient for mouse users & means touch device users don't have to cover the screen with their hand when they reach over to the left of the screen. I should have that line of text right aligned but because of the changing nature of what links can appear a left aligned paragraph results in more consistent positioning.

Positioning important links first is not always optimal, for further evidence of this hands up everyone who has only recently discovered the existence of the 'Parent' link!

Through common use I believe these two links are used on autopilot. Although the 'Previous read' & 'Mark thread as read' links are rarely used they are positioned with these links by association of function.

The next most popular links are 'Parent' (in spite of its apparent inconspicuousness) then 'Reply'. These two actions are comparatively rare, so by the time the user has decided to make one of these actions they have already snapped out of autopilot & are looking for the controls to perform the new action. When looking for something new you generally start from the beginning which is why these two links are first & second after the permalink, name & timestamp (which are first by convention).

Eagle eyed Edgenaughts may have noticed that the Parent & Reply links have swapped places a few times over the lifetime of the Edge!

The 'Bookmark' link is by far the least important link which is why it is in the least important position in the middle. People often remember the first & last act in a show, the same principal applies to controls.

Even if there is a more optimal configuration though it is too late to change because users have become accustomed to the positions of these links, & any change to the meta info causes a lot of turmoil.


It's interesting you mention the importance of the timestamps. I never use them unless I'm debugging myself. I can easily judge the freshness by the fact that it is new so it will have been posted in the last 24 hours, but I can see how for less regular visitors wouldn't have this feel for the conversation. Do you perceive messages posted 'just now' differently from those posted an hour ago? If so how & why?


On your last point as time goes on I strangely find myself agreeing. When I first started the vast majority of the audience I wanted to attract had long been championing fully threaded discussion as the best format so it was the only choice. This is very unlikely to ever change though because it would fundamentally alter the dynamic of the site.

lukeburrage - - Parent

This is what fascinates me about this discussion. You have this data about your line of text links, and it's impossible to argue against your conclusions if we all start with the premise that the best form of presenting a set of possible actions to a reader is by a line of text links following on from the post metadata, and that readers are now used to that order. Your case is flawless.

First, the order is not known to me, and I have to search each time I want to click anything. I guess "next unread" is always the last thing on the list, but when it isn't there, I read each link in order, left to right, to find what I want to do. When I am hitting next unread a number of times, I stop reading the last link and keep clicking, which means at the last unread post I hit "previous unread" without thinking, and go up the page. If I'm tired I get stuck in a loop with the last two unread posts.

Second, the order, or at least the place on the screen, is not constant at all. As the threads get thinner, all the links move to the right on the screen. On my phone the screen is narrow enough that there is a line break, and then the right-most link is typically "bookmark". But that can change due to something as undetermined as the user name of the author.

Third, due to the line break on a smaller screen, and tapping with my finger, and the reduced text size, and the fact that now the links are clustered one above the other, it's super annoying to tap the link I want rather than something else.

Fourth, that some links are there sometimes and not others means that my brain has to keep up with what state the post is in to instinctively move a finger or mouse pointer to the right position... which I don't do. I just read the links in order.


My main concern is that you seem to think that the best reference point for where a text link in a line of text links appears on the page is relative to the line of text links itself (yet the number of links change), and the position of the line of text links is determined by the width of the post and the number of characters in the username.

To be helpful, here are some ideas for a solution:



The maximum number of links will be six, so have ALL six options displayed each time, but grey out the options that are not available for each post. This way a user never has to remember the state of the post to be able to work out which options are available, they will be unambiguously clear at the first glance, with no searching for an option that isn't there.

By greying out the unavailable options, the position of each link will always be exactly relative to the other links.

Next, have the links on a different line than the post metadata. This means that relative to the post itself, the links will always be in the same position, not sometimes floating further to the right depending on user name length.

Separating the links and the metadata also means you can have a sensible fix to the metadata at the top of the post problem. I want the name (and date/time since the post was made) at the top, but my biggest problem was that the obvious and only place for the links is at the bottom. If you want both at the bottom, great, but for me (and it seems many others) we want the metadata at the top, but the links should stay at the bottom.

Next, instead of separating by a comma, separate by white space more than two very narrow characters wide. This makes them way easier and distinguishable touch targets.

Lastly, make six identically wide divs, each one sixth of the width of the bottom of each post. Put one link in each div, and make the entire div a link/touch target. The divs can still all be white, and the possible links blue, so it fits the overall style of the website, but make the div background change colour on mouse-over along with underlining the blue text to indicate the link does something.

On a smaller screen, allow text wrapping WITHIN the div, don't wrap the links to another line. This will make the link divs two text lines high, but on a small screen this is a good thing, as it presents bigger touch targets, rather than bunching two different touch targets on top of each other.


All this means that users won't have to read the links at all. They will truly be able to make actions on the post purely by the position of each link. To get to the next unread post, they never have to move their mouse left or right at all! They just keep clicking the right-most bottom sixth of each post until that option is greyed out and doesn't work any more. Clicking the left-most sixth of the bottom of the post will always take them to the parent. If there is no parent, clicking the left-most link won't do anything.

So something like this:

# by Orinoco, 2015-06-19 00:06 Parent, Reply, Bookmark, Mark as read, Previous unread, Next unread

Becomes something like this (on a wide screen and though ignore the dots, they are only included because the code html thing isn't keeping multiple spaces or tabs):

Orinoco or longer name .Two hours ago . . . . . Post permalink
Parent . . . . . . . . .Reply . . . . . . . . . Bookmark . . . . . . . .Mark as read . . . . . .Previous unread . . . . Next unread . . . . .


I hope this explains what I'm getting at when I say solutions don't have to be based around lines of comma separated text links.

Orinoco - - Parent

Now, see that's useful feedback, thank you. I'll have a play with it tonight.

Now I just need to work out whether you want me to implement that or not...

lukeburrage - - Parent

Go for it. Any one or combination of the ideas should work. Take it as far as you want to go while it still fits with your mental model of the site.

Orinoco - - Parent

After about an hour of tinkering & several hours of staring at the screen:

(dead link)

None of the double/long click, collapsible thread, highlighted siteswaps or inline reply options will work there yet.

I've tried to make the buttons inconspicuous but useable, but I'm looking at this new layout & thinking, "welcome to the Edge, the place where you can look at hundreds of bloody buttons!" For long posts it is not that much of a problem, but I think it ruins one liners eg. (dead link) which I'm not sure what to do about.

On the plus side though I found having lots of disabled next/previous unread buttons within unread messages didn't make sense so I rewrote the whole system, now you can jump to unread messages from anywhere which is pretty nice. The enabling/disabling of these buttons now updates when marking messages as read/unread via ajax calls too which is also a big improvement. Interestingly working out the approximate time elapsed since a message was posted is considerably faster than converting a timestamp to a user's timezone. I had no idea converting between timezones was so expensive. On pages with hundreds of posts this can cut page processing time in half.

Julius - - Parent

I like the changes! Although the buttons are way too prominent and distract from the content;
i experimented a little with my user-css plugin and made a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/FOdq1kl.png

trebuchet - - Parent

This looks good.

Orinoco - - Parent

Yes, my problem exactly. Your example is very similar to what I came up with for myself too!

lukeburrage - - Parent

This also looks good.

But why why why why is there still a "#" floating around at the top? It's the single ugliest character on the keyboard, and you're making everyone look at it all the time. It was bad enough before, when it was in front of every name, but now it is at the top of every post. It stands out way too much for its current job. And hashes have other jobs too, like hash tags, so it's confusing anyway. Google to see what other symbols or icons sites use to show permanent links.

While you're at it, change the comma between the user name and the time to a space dot space as well. And grey out the time a bit so it's not as heavy as the name. And another space dot space between the time and the permanent link too.

Between us we can make this forum nicer to look at and easier to use :)

lukeburrage - - Parent

That's a good start. It's already

Now make them not-buttons. Set the link borders to zero so they just appear as text, not as buttons. Also set the margins between the links to zero, so there is no no-man's-land between them. Make the link text justified to the right, so the "parent" link text lines up with the user name and the post text.

If you want to keep the full target area of the link visible, you can always make them slightly darker grey than the background. This will be way more subtle than thin black outlines.

Are you going to make the approximate time show the exact time with a mouseover? I find that handy on other forums, but I understand if you think it's not worth it due to performance hits.

lukeburrage - - Parent

It's already way better, I was going to say. A way to edit a post up to a certain time, even 5 minutes or until someone replies, would be super handy too.

trebuchet - - Parent

I completely agree.

emilyw - - Parent

Another forum I frequent lets you edit for five minutes after posting, but the edit form has a big warning saying that edits are only allowed for typos. If you edit for content, moderators shout at you.

lukeburrage - - Parent

Harsh! I use a forum that allows a 30 minute editing window, and there have been zero issues so far. That's not threaded, but because this forum is threaded you can deny edits after someone clicks the "reply" link.

I just want to edit for times like that where I don't finish a sentence or something else goes a bit wrong but I only spot it once I hit the post button and it's already submitting the post.

Orinoco - - Parent

Well, following that to the letter we get this (dead link) or this (dead link), which demonstrate why I went with borders & centred text.

I think the only thing we can take away from this branch is that disabling inapplicable links is better than not displaying them.

Which takes us onto Julius' branch.

I did Google permalink characters & the most commonly used symbol is #. Other common symbols are pilcrows ¶ which will make anyone involved in print design ragequit & never come back, infinity signs ∞ which has the same effect on mathematicians & needs to be rendered in a much bigger font than the rest of the message to be legible, or the section symbol § which has the same font size problem. I quite like the idea of ⚓ for the connotation of permanence but it is not supported in Webkit browsers. All 3 alternatives have font dependency issues too so I can't guarantee they will be displayed.

Verson 5 (dead link) has the controls back to text links, I've changed comma separator to a dash (the interpunct or middot that I believe Julius is using makes me think of scalar products), hovering over a disabled link now displays the less jarring default cursor. This version uses the time text as the permalink like Twitter. I really don't like this because every other link on Small talk tells you where you will go or what it will do, but clicking on '2 days ago' doesn't take you back in time.

Will deal with editing posts later.

The Void - - Parent

Will probably offend someone's sensibilities, and perhaps have scalability issues, but what about something like https://patternry.com/static/images/chain.png for permalink?

The Void - - Parent

...not that I have any problem with the # anyway.

lukeburrage - - Parent

That's why I wrote "Google to see what other symbols or icons sites use to show permanent links" which I hoped would bring up something like that example.

mrawa - - Parent

Or why not just use the word "permalink" as the rest of the action links are descriptions of their use. I wasn't actually sure what the # was used for until I got to this thread. (Sorry, I'm pretty lazy at looking at the anchor text and I don't think I can on a mobile device.)

Mïark - - Parent

Is onmouseover still a thing or has tablet killed that function?

Could the # have "permalink" appear when you mouse over it and maybe Parent have "Show which post this is replying to" (if that is not too long) to help those who are not sure what they mean (assuming they think to mouse over them).

trebuchet - - Parent

If not sure, gather some courage and make the click.

lukeburrage - - Parent

I think the time shouldn't be the link to the post. Just add another link in the row at the bottom that says "Permalink".

Julius - - Parent

I like Verson 5 and I vote for keeping the #. It is the best option and it looks great.

Owen Greenaway - - Parent

I also like version 5

Orinoco - - Parent

Me too, & a number of people have voted via email as well. I've tweaked a few more things, updated all the small collapse options to work with the new layout & folded the changes back in to the main branch (if you have any problems clearing cache will probably fix it).

That's it, no more posts about the design of the site (outside of Meta talk) until July. Because let's face it everyone is bored of it.

(Or does that count as stifling the community?)

Al_Bee - - Parent

I've been watching and wondering why people cared so much. It works fine and is easy. But now the "go to next unread" link has gone and I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. Please ignore my 3rd sentence as clear nonsense except the bit about that really useful link vanishing. PS thanks for doing a useful site.

Orinoco - - Parent

Channel your anger into clearing your cache. The links will come back!

lukeburrage - - Parent

like

Mike Moore - - Parent

This is beautiful. I partiuclarly like the greater availability of next unread, which is how I got here.

Scott Seltzer - - Parent

Definite improvements. Two thumbs up from me.

Dee - - Parent

Thanks so much for implementing these changes :)

I now have the name of the person at the top of the post so I can put what is written into context immediately, and actions below the post, encouraging (at least some) reading before replying.

Go raibh maith agat.

Little Paul - - Parent

It's going to take a little time for me to retrain my "I've got to the end of the post, who was it by again?" reflex, but on the whole I like the new layout.

Mïark - - Parent

We could each write our name at the end of our posts, to solve that problem.

Mïark

mrawa - - Parent

That's madness

Mïark

mrawa - - Parent

Wait... damnit

Mïark - - Parent

Wait for what? mrawa

mrawa - - Parent

Keep waiting....

^Tom_ - - Parent

For what it's worth, I would prefer it if you didn't give in on the subject of editing messages. People deal with systems all the time which don't allow editing, whether it be emails to your boss, or whatever - if people want to care about whether something is right, then people should either take the time and effort to check what they write, or use the preview function (see my meta post for my view that preview in quick reply could be improved).
The only problem at present is when someone encounters a bug, or other unexpected behaviour due to their HTML or markdown input settings (e.g. my recent experience with greater than / less than symbols).

I doubt I'm the only person who doesn't want posts to be editable*

*beyond that by squirrels, which, whilst dangerous, is currently done with a reasonable level of discretion.

The Void - - Parent

Agree.

lukeburrage - - Parent

As for the time stamp, I don't mind if it shows a date and time or something like "3 hours ago".

I prefer a specific time but only if the post was made today. Then I only want the time, not the date. If it was posted yesterday, I want really want something saying "8am yesterday". And if it was posted more than two days ago I want the date only, not the time.

The best forums I've used have variations of this. Both Vanilla and Discourse forums show the full time and date in a standard form when hovering the mouse pointer over whatever more colloquial time is displayed.

emilyw - - Parent

I agree about the tree thing. It almost encourages little cliquey side discussions rather than engaging with the original point.

Although, in a non tree shaped discussion, it's very easy for a "take on all comers" kind of person to have a minor disagreement about something irrelevant that ends up consuming a thread and drowning the original topic.

lukeburrage - - Parent

I like discussions presented as trees. My only problem with the way they are presented on this site is that there are two indications of depth, and neither is very clear. Post backgrounds get greyer as they go deeper, and also indent to the right. I think? Maybe? I know they indent slightly, but as there is no clear left edge to the page (there is always a white border to the left), once the first message in the thread is off the top of the page, there's no way to know how deep you are except by just eyballing it.

Then, on my phone, the posts get narrower and narrower until they only take up half the screen, which then feels weirdly cramped as the other half is just empty white space.

Just checking, and it turns out the deepening grey isn't an indication of tree depth, but I'm not sure why there are three different shades of grey. Then new posts are all green anyway, and that's mostly where I focus my attention. It turns out the grey background colour isn't a good indication of anything if every post I'm actively reading has a green background anyway!

peterbone - - Parent

I only see 2 shades of grey. I think they just alternate to make the different posts stand out more. However, as you say there's only 1 shade of green.

For making it easier to follow the tree, perhaps there could be an option of showing vertical indent lines to the left of the posts, although now that I know about the Parent link I don't think I'd need it.

^Tom_ - - Parent

It sounds like you mean something like Daniel's mockup that is posted on meta.

As for indents, there are several approaches that work. This one is clean, though could be clearer. Reddit & Slashdot both work alright, in slashdot each post is in the box of its parent. Both Slashdot and reddit also frequently have missing comments - which is a problem that we don't have to deal with here.
Of course, one common case of indentation is when coding, and I sometimes use the the "vim-indent-guides" plugin in my editor (with alternating background indent colours, though dotted lines are also options).
Post numbering systems is also something I think I mentioned before (I.e. first reply is 1, second reply is 2, first reply to the first reply is 1.1, etc).

Maybe I'll write a new CSS file when I've got some time - I also don't think that the curved borders help with messages at different levels.

lukeburrage - - Parent

I really don't want lines or different colours for showing indentation. I certainly don't want boxes within boxes. I think I'd be happy with a way to know where the left edge of the top-most post in a thread was once it leaves the top of the visible page. That's it!

At the moment white space is used to show levels of indentation, with the reference point for your eye being? The white margin down the left side of the screen. And separating this white indentation space from the white margin? Nothing. Or maybe something white. One kind of white space and another kind of white space, both doing different jobs, are VERY hard to tell apart.

The Hacker News site is as ugly as hell, way worse than this site, but it does at least use beige and white to show the difference between what is "post" and what is "margin".

I hate beige as a background colour for posts though. Grey is slightly better, but I'd still prefer white. Green (unread posts on Small Talk) isn't great, but at least the green means something! I'm still unsure what the different grey backgrounds for Small Talk posts mean. If they are just to distinguish one post from the next, the boxes with small white space in between (and sometimes different indenting) works fine for me.

lukeburrage - - Parent

Sometimes there are three messages in order with three decreasing shades of grey. I'm not sure what the last darkest grey colour means.

^Tom_ - - Parent

If you follow a link to a particular post, it will have a darker grey background.

Brook Roberts - - Parent

Hacker News is a good example of a popular site with similarish design aims to this one actually, and a good example of a site that fulfils its purpose and gets out of your way.

 

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