Forum Updates
27Since @jont is out I thought it would be a good time to make some changes around here :)
Mentioned this before in Three Generations of Forum Software: How the meh forums are the fastest forums we've ever built.
One of the things we identified when starting Mediocre Laboratories was that we wanted to have community as part of the core experience of the ecommerce experiments we were going to build. It felt like if we were going to be serious about community we needed to make our own forum.
We've got an awesome community here at Meh. We're constantly tweaking the forums to help make the community awesomer.
Anyway, long story short: small change I just made was to change the "tl;dr button" from this:
To this:
It's a small change, but I enjoy seeing how many comments are visible and hidden.
- 95 comments, 397 replies
- Comment
Yay!
I'm happy to report that I noticed this before @shawn's post.
@marklog Forgot to mention this change was rolled out to all our forums: mediocre.com, meh.com, and drone.horse
@marklog Me too, mentioned it over here.
Is there any way this feature of hiding messages could be an option? I want to see all of the messages all of the time. I actually dislike the collapsed comments feature, although this is better
@capguncowboy I think @JonT mentioned in the Periscope a while back that adjusting/disabling this setting was on their radar at least.
Can we get a old thread warning or something?
I do like that you give a number, but I almost missed it on a couple threads today cause it seems like the font is so very very small.
I would also second @capguncowboy's suggestion of having as an option. I want to see the whole thread.
Thank you for your consideration and hard work to make this place fun !
@ceagee Not only is it small, before it had a background, it looked vaguely buttonish while also still visually breaking up post vs. comments… it gets a bit lost now. Hard to scroll up super fast and stop when you see it.
@ceagee Yes I agree it is too small/doesn't jump out at you. That was an original problem when you first did this and fortunately it was changed so that it wouldn't be so easy to miss it. Please take that into consideration and in that respect don't fix that part of what wasn't broken.
@capguncowboy @ceagee Having this as an option is an interesting idea.
@shawn As a life rule, I prefer to have fewer decisions to make. Unimportant options just add to the clutter of life. Design it and give it to me. I don't want to play around with checkboxes because (the general) you (not @shawn, you) were too wish-washy to make a choice.
@JerseyFrank for you, we'll make an option for no options.
@JoiseyFrank I bet you have an iphone
I keep clicking the picture of the "show 45 more comments" link in this post.
@dave I thought it was just me. Thank you.
@dave Oh god me too! Thought something went terribly wrong!
@dave Me three. You scare us when you do that.
@dave Yep - I was looking for the big list of changes. But as @shawn then indicated, small change.
@dave Feels like when someone screenshots your desktop then hides the icons.
I like it showing the number of posts, but I liked it better with the dark background. I think the new one is harder to see.
@hallmike AGREED! They went to the dark background in the past for exactly that reason... we had that discussion back when they were first truncated.
Bravo. I do enjoy the number of posts.
@connorbush I must say. It is an adventure to find it. Perhaps it was intended to be camouflage.
I love the number of posts but the text is too similar to the rest of everything... The bubble made it pop out and scream CLICK ME IF YOU WANT TO SEE EVERYTHING now it's like the link wants to be a spot the fed competition at Defcon.
@sohmageek kept the number of posts and changed it back to the old button style.
@shawn awesome thank you very much!!!
It would really help it it were more obvious. If not purple, at least bold text? Or an icon?
I do like the count.
@KDemo Purple would be wonderful!
@Barney maybe make it fuchsia or magenta?
@Marion14505 Have you been listening in on my phone conversations?
@Barney My phone has been replaced with a text box that says "there are 17 conversations you are not hearing. To listen, click here."
I'm unsure if it was by design or a glitch, but there's another change that happened with this aesthetic & info change. Clicking sort by votes used to display the top starred comment no matter what - now you have to click "show more" to get the top comment.
@Thumperchick yeah, this isn't quite working as expected is it? I'll look into it more.
Buy will it work with my Mac?
@shawn are you guys done updating the forum software for today? I noticed that the button color changed back to gray. I wanna release an update to my unread reply extension :)
@jsh139 yes, for today.
@shawn thanks :)
@shawn, thanks for your speedy "add-back-the-shaded-background" update.1 Can't beat that Mehsponsiveness!
@RadOak +1
@shawn looks great! So... what forum programming pranks are you pulling on JonT while he's out? Change the color of the forum background? Autocorrect commin werds to umpopuler mispelings? Every post automatically tags him? Everything in Comic Sans?
Any gifs he posts automatically change to rickroll's?
@DaveInSoCal @shawn there MUST be something. Something.
We fixed the "most-votes" sort today for @thumperchick by showing the top 10 comments (sorted by most votes) and then putting the "show more comments" button below.
@shawn Thanks!
@shawn Okay, so about the "most votes" option. I never use it because it messes up the threading of sub-comments. When you're trying to read a discussion within a discussion, and all those replies are ordered by votes also, none of it makes any sense. Is there any way to order the initial, main comments by vote, but keep all the replies to those initial posts in date order?
@PurplePawprints sure. anyone else have an opinion on this?
@shawn I want a "least votes" option because I don't follow the herd and refuse to participate in something just because it's popular.
@shawn I agree with it. Assuming everyone replies to comments so that threading is intact, this really is the best of both worlds. And, if people don't properly hit reply, we can all make fun of them!
@shawn I agree that the nested comments don't need to be ordered by vote and would be more useful if left under their main comment.
@PurplePawprints
How do you sort by most votes? Not getting it here inside small brain.
(Chrome on android)
@f00l At the top right of the thread there's two links, one says "Date Created" which is the standard default, and the other is "Most Votes". If you click the "Most Votes" link it reloads the page with all the parent comments sorted by vote. The only drawback is that you lose the 'new comment' bar beside unread comments, so it may or may not be useful to you. I wouldn't use it on a thread I've never read, or a current and popular thread, but it's nice if you're going back to read some of the old, fun, and heavily commented on threads.
Fixed the "most-votes" sort for @PurplePawprints, @brhfl, and @Thumperchick so that comments are sorted by most-votes but their replies are sorted chronologically.
@shawn
@shawn Fantastic! Thanks so much!
New feature added today is hiding older replies when there's more than 10.
@shawn - I just came here to share my discovery, and there I am! I think I like this update - will take a little to get used to it.
Thanks for always improving the site.
@shawn you seem to be spoiling us... Be careful we may get used to it! ;)
@shawn I dig it.
@shawn Grrr.
Another thinking-out-loud thing. The first time users see a thread, would it make sense not to hide any comments? It does to me. I'm always going to click the tl;dr bar if I've never read the thread at all before.
@editorkid yeah, I think something like this makes sense. If you're viewing a topic for the first time you most likely want a chance to read all comments and replies. Let me think about it for a bit.
@shawn There's probably a limit, I'm realizing. If you guys sell a fuku on Friday and then people load up the forum on Monday morning and there are hundreds of posts in that thread by then, well, you're definitely doing us a favor by hiding a bunch of them. But we all trust you to come up with an answer that will make some bitch and some squee.
@editorkid Working on some things over here. Stay tuned for tomorrow's update.
It bugged me that the text of the "show more comments" button didn't match the text of the "show more replies" button. Today's update fixes that.
@shawn As an editor, I thank you for fixing the comma splice. Drives me crazy, but semicolons are dying, so I suffer in silence. Even if it was a coincidence, though, you fixed it right.
@editorkid oh you must hate reading anything I type, I do that all the time.
@editorkid Does "There's lots […]" give you the willies?
@brhfl Nope. I love colloquial writing and often edit to that standard, unless someone is paying me otherwise. I work for a B2B magazine and we try to hit an authoritative conversational tone -- how a mentor might talk to a trainee. We probably wouldn't use "There's lots" in an original sentence, but we wouldn't change it in a quote, either.
@editorkid Interesting. Informal "lots," yes, but my brain kind of freezes up any time I hear "there's [plural]."
@brhfl Well, if we're ever having dinner and I want to steal your dessert, there's lots of ways I can do that now.
@brhfl - I'm with you. I need "there are". Maybe "there'r"? ;-)
Today's update is for @editorkid who asked:
We made a change so that, in addition to the most recent 10 comments (and up to 10 of their replies), we're also showing any unread comments. This also works for any unread replies. We'll show the unread reply, its sibling replies, and its parent comment even if it doesn't belong to the most recent 10 comments.
Might sound complicated, but the easy way to think about it is: by default we're showing you all the latest stuff and anything you've missed since your last visit to the topic.
@shawn I like this.
@shawn I think this is the most meaningful update so far. This makes the forum smarter. Not the community- we're still idiots. The forum itself.
@shawn Wow, nice work. I vaguely remember that a while, I asked about an option that would show any unread posts, knowing it would be complicated, but somehow (once again) you made it look easy. (And no, it didn't even occur to me that I was asking for the same thing twice, even if in two slightly different variations.) Anyway, thanks again for so smoothly accommodating my CDO (OCD alphabetically arranged).
@shawn This is a great update. It'll keep people from missing new replies when checking up on a thread.
@shawn - Bravo!
@shawn I had been storing a request for precisely this thing. Apparently you have gained psychic skills. Thank you, and excellent addition. :-}
@shawn My favorite update, so far.
@shawn I have been wishing for this option. Can you read my mind? I might need reinforce my tin hat.
At the risk of asking for the dumbest possible forum improvement... I'd love to be able to see who has starred something when I am viewing on my phone. Being blind to the stars is one of the most frustrating things about mobile viewing. Is there already some trick I don't know about?
@christinewas I've felt that pain but honestly don't mind that much. It's almost nice having an extra special hidden feature of the desktop website.
I'll keep it in mind but don't have any improvements planned yet.
@shawn Has there been any discussion about the forum search options? It would be nice to find all of my comments and replies by searching my name (instead of only getting the two threads I've posted). This would help me catch up on stars on the rare occasions when I find myself on a desktop computer. It would also be useful for forum stalking fringe users (a step beyond lurking) for things like the mehrican exchange.
@christinewas why yes, there has been. we're running an experiment over at https://drone.horse where we said "you know who's good at search? Google."
@christinewas Putting site:meh.com/forum into google's search along with your username (and if you don't want to see mentions, add -@username) will give you links to all of your posts. It's not perfect, but it can be useful.
@PurplePawprints Wonderful. Thank you!
@shawn so that's cool that google has a perfectly acceptable method in which to search the site- why not just embed the google search action in the search bar above for streamlininess?
@marklog you're saying you like the https://drone.horse search better than the meh.com search?
@shawn yep. what I said is what you did there.
@shawn What I'm still not seeing is any search functionality at all over at beer.horse.
I would just say, 10 is an awfully small number of posts to include on the page at one time. I'd suggest 20 or 25 as a more reasonable compromise. Just my two cents, thanks.
@DJP519 Keep in mind it's 10 comments + 10 replies for each comment which could be a total of 110 posts (which seems like an awful lot). That said, 110 posts is an extreme example that we likely haven't hit. I'll have to think about ways to gauge what the appropriate numbers should be. You have any ideas?
@shawn It'd be a bummer to see performance suffer, but perhaps set the display threshold at something like 50 (or whatever) total comment/replies, whatever the combination? (Requiring another on the fly analysis loop?)
@RedOak @DJP519: One thing we tried internally that was an obvious failure was to break comments and replies apart into pages of a fix number of total comments/replies. As @PurplePawprints, @brhfl, @Thumperchick and others have pointed out it's important for a reply to have the context of the original comment and the chronological context of its sibling replies.
I have some other ideas we can try out next week.
@shawn slicing the replies off across comments would make little sense and lose context. But perhaps slicing between comments could. So count comments and replies sequentially until the limit is hit - then back off to the last full comment/replies bucket. Or is that what you do currently?
@shawn Since users exist to make developers' lives hell, and since @JonT mentioned that someday there will be account pages and preferences and all that, let me throw out the idea of a slider where each user could set his or her preference from SAVE MY DELICATE LITTLE BANDWIDTHS at the most conservative to POINT THE FIREHOSE AT MY EYEBALLS at the most liberal of post-showing options. It will suck as you design and code it, but then you enter the glorious future where you can just paste in "Look, just tinker with it until you like it" for the rest of your life.
@editorkid sure, but only if we use your names for the options :)
@shawn I open-sourced them. Go for it!
This forum engine is magic.
And instead of kludging it up with each new round of tweaks, it gets better. Your "right-sizing" minimalist methodology could be bottled and sold.
I cannot think of a forum that is cleaner or more pleasant to read and use.
Even your font size (especially on the desktop) is easy on my middle age eyes. The typeface is upbeat and appropriate for on screen reading unlike some too-self-important old school institutions who insist on paper preferred typefaces for online.
Wow. I must have been sleeping.
Linefeed/Enter/Carriage Return in replies.
Without requiring < br >.
Now works like magic.
@RedOak tell your friends.
It would be nice to get a hit on the most basic of searches. All I ever get is an accusation that I'm trying to break the search engine.
@PocketBrain what are you doing to the poor search engine?
I would assume that y'all are aware, but just in case: in the past (as recently as two days ago), every time I hit back on mobile (using Safari on iOS 8.4.1) it would show me the old screen for a split second, then go forward for another half-second, then finally go back.
It looks like you're improving this, as when I went to test this out before commenting, I didn't get the glitchy back-forward-back, but merely a one-second or so lag before I was allowed to interact with the page.
Back to the back-forward-back today. Does anyone else have this happen?
@becca I've never seen it. Can you walk me through specific reproduction steps?
@shawn @becca I've seen it on iOS also I'm running the iOS 9 Public beta, newest build. I'd love to give you steps but it appears then it goes away... I can hit back and it'll work one time the next time it will do the weird show me some random old state of a page (as if it has to do with the way safari is caching the pages) then poof update properly.
@shawn I cannot believe the Meh community let this straight line slide for so long. You're lucky you said that on the Sunday night of a long weekend, I think.
@editorkid well you see @shawn, when two people love each other very very much…
@shawn This should help.
@sohmageek @shawn I would say 75% of the time when using Meh on iOS this happens -- I exclusively use the swipe feature to go back, and not the back button, so not sure if there could be a difference there.
Today's update changes the "show more comments" and "show more replies" buttons to fix two small things.
@shawn - Thank you, thank you! TIL weasel words, I use them all the time ;)
And "are" just feels better in that context. I can worry about something else now.
@shawn It's stuff like this that makes me say you're awesome. Well, that and the fact that I want you to help our team earn points.
@shawn - And I'm back to say how much we at Team MEHcus value your integrity, knowing you will be fair to all the teams.
@shawn Although that's British English, which is often wrong over here...
But so many Americans get this wrong now (it honestly baffles me) that I only care when someone's paying me to, and even then, I could care less...
@editorkid couldn't
@shawn Whoo, I effected change!
@brhfl i believe it's supposed to be 'infected'.
@marklog hey, @editorkid could care less, he's just choosing not to.
@JonT I don't think he could. I think he quite literally could. not. care. less.
@marklog No, I could.
@editorkid The committee done decided... The team ain't (or int ) playing... I prefer vernacular. It's clear, it's concise, and it's engaging.
@OldCatLady "Ain't" was the correct English language word for a long time, even appearing in official royal documents. "Isn't" is a much more recent form, which I think can be attributed to overly zealous and misguided English teachers.
@shawn hey, I broke the forum slightly in
this post; it appears @mentions get expanded to links inside
altvalues for images.@trisk That's interesting.
I'd love to request to add a Camp mode... Where people that are looking for my contests could "camp" (subscribe) to me... that way they get pinged when I do another thread/comment... :)
@sohmageek There is a work around for that. You could have a main contest thread, ask people to subscribe to it, then, when you add a comment with a new game link, everyone would be notified, if they're subscribed.
Today's update is for @christinewas, @PurplePawprints, and others who wanted us to bring the Google search experiment over from https://drone.horse
@shawn awesome!!!
@shawn Wonderful! Thank you!
@shawn works great!
Today's update is for @editorkid who suggested we should have forum display settings.
It's currently a VMP-only preview (consider it beta quality).
If you're a VMP member you can go to your account page @ https://mediocre.com/account and select between default mode or firehose mode:
@shawn Cool, I'll give this a shot!
@shawn - Firehose Mode - Inundate me. Lol. Great customer response. Thank you.
@shawn who says we don't have enough VMP perks?
@JonT I know the answer to this one...
VMPs! That's who!
@shawn Cool. I'll take Firehose Mode. That default mode probably works well enough for the pagination folks.
@JonT interesting conundrum - you could get stuck in the twilight zone if you make a selection and then drop VMP.
@shawn it's like first I think it then you do it. In dealing with the beer fuku I have to constantly go back to those threads to reconcile shipping/receiving, etc. This solves this by firehosing. Thanks :)
@RedOak I so want to test that! I'd be curious if they can track how many of us choose which option to see what is more popular.
@shawn -
Okay, I turned on Firehose mode. Maybe now I can stop whining about finding the expansion button. Thanks again for the option.
Everyone can have their own custom forum.
@hallmike surely they can. I wonder which choice is more server (performance impacting on us) intensive - doing the calcs to hide posts or letting them all rip? I suppose if there are lots of images to resolve, the default mode would be more server-efficient.
@RedOak Looks to me like it's all happening client side, they send it all no matter what, then use js to hide it.
@shawn This makes me really happy.
@shawn I was joking (because no matter what you do, you can never make everyone happy), but by my reckoning that makes this even more awesome.
@shawn Oh, and I didn't really realize before that, as @thismyusername says, you're sending everything anyway and then the client figures out exactly what to show, which is why I thought the lite version was a bandwidth-saving mode when it's more of an I'M TOO BUSY FOR ALL THIS mode. I know it's NBD but I figured I'd throw in context for my brain fart.
Everyone seems to love the tooltip on hover of the stars that reveals the usernames. Today's update switches from native browser tooltip rendering to our own custom rendering.
@shawn and it works on mobile if I click and unclick it :)
@shawn that looks great! Please to request to highlight a self-star in a contrasting color.
@marklog @shawn OR highlight the star itself in the event of a self star!
@shawn Love it. I was just about to post about it as I hadn't seen this update until now. Great, minor, improvement.
@Ignorant we'll be disabling this in mobile until we can make it work better.
@shawn I can't wait for the drama this causes with star-based voting contests.
@darksaber99999 the popup isn't new, just the rendering.
@marklog When was the popup added? I've never seen it when starring posts.
@darksaber99999 You have to hover your mouse over the star. Been like that for months.
@shawn - Cool. Thanks, as always.
@darksaber99999 @hallmike - But it didn't always work with mobile devices, I don't think.
@KDemo and doesn't once again.
https://meh.com/forum/topics/forum-updates#55f19f29d20a1c60096f01bd
@Ignorant - Thanks. Saw that, but didn't know if he just meant the new rendering.
@Ignorant - it's working on my iPad today!
@KDemo not working on my phone :( must be the screen size of the iPad.
@Ignorant - sorry.
@KDemo it's ok. I'll find a way to work through it.
@Ignorant - Btw, I starred your post ;-)
@shawn Since you changed the look of this, it gets stuck. My cursor goes over it accidentally sometimes and then it stays there and blocks out what I am reading. I can even scroll down and it stays. I try clicking elsewhere and it stays.
Am I the only one getting stuck star names ?
@ceagee I get the same thing. If I mouse over it again a few times it goes away.
Sorry for the outage this morning. Today's update is for @christinewas (@Shrdlu, @f00l, @becca starred her comment) who really really really wanted to be able to see who has starred something on her phone.
Here's what we're trying out: in order to reveal the tooltip on your phone, tap and hold the star icon.
A single tap still stars/un-stars the post. It's a little complicated trying to figure out if you're intention is to post a new star or reveal the tooltip, but we have something reasonably working so I thought it was worth sharing at this point.
@shawn maybe it's possible to tap the number of stars to get the popup on the mobile, and just save the star for starring? My fat thumbs won't be able to tell the difference. Hmm, bad idea.
@shawn sweet! Works even on our old iPad 2 running iOS 6!
Tried simply holding to see the folks who starred - without starring it myself. And then a single tap to star your post. Both worked like a charm.
@shawn working great. Nice job.
@shawn - Working well on my iPad 2 as well. Fun fun fun. (But I had serious withdrawal overnight, thanks for the fix!).
@shawn Woohoo! Although I got a little twitchy without my meh, it was all for a good cause.
@shawn Working on Windows Phone, though IE interprets tap-hold as a right-click context menu also. That's an underlying app thing, not a programming thing.
Now only if the search dropdown would stay dropped down and the last post by would show up. That I don't know if it's because of IE, the phone's resolution, or ???
@shawn awesome, thanks! Does this work on the main page for starred topics? I don't see it then (on iPhone 5 w/ iOS8.4.1), but can see it once I click through the post.
Sorry for all the starring-and-unstarring I'll be doing now.
@narfcake on iOS the top drop downs stay dropped and won't go away if I click elsewhere, we need to find a nice middle ground.
@Ignorant Perhaps the middle ground is Android?
@shawn Beautiful! Thank you! This works perfectly for my needs.
@becca We've never had star tooltips on the https://meh.com/forum page before, but that would be a good enhancement.
Today's update fixes a regression we introduced with the fancy star tooltips.
If you're not signed in and you clicked the star icon the site acted like it saved your star (incremented the star count and changed from outlined gray to solid yellow). Problem is, if you're not signed in we don't know who you are and can't save the star.
Now, if you're not signed in and click the star icon you're prompted to sign in.
@shawn makes sense.
Today's update fixes the theme of the sign in page when you're not signed in and click the star icon. It should have meh.com branding instead of mediocre.com branding.
Before:
After:
Today's update is for @DJP519 (@Shrdlu and @f00l starred his comment, @RedOak and @editokid replied) who felt that only showing the 10 newest comments was too few.
VMP-only beta feature is "Custom Mode" that lets you specify how many comments to show, how many of their replies to show, and whether or not you want to see all unread comments and replies.
@shawn Thank you for doing all of this community update stuff. We all know that Meh is always improving. it's awesome insight for us as users to be able to see/read improvements being made.
quick somebody feed it a negative for science
@Lotsofgoats It defaulted back to 10 when I put in -1 and -10 in different combinations in both fields.
@Lotsofgoats I take that back, Show the -10 newest comments is now set. Oh god, what have I done. IT BURNS!!!! Why would you let us do that!
This is actually pretty nice, I might leave it this way. I'm assuming it defaulted to "0". And when I click on threads with new content it only shows the post and the reply I've yet to view. Very little clutter on pre-read threads (such as this one).
@shawn, actually, now that I've been living with the ability to turn off the auto-collapse (pseudo-pagination) mode, I like that feature. Screen-flick, mouse spinner (Logitech accelerator), Home-key, and title bar tap seem to get me where I want to go.
I was happy when "firehose mode" was added, but this new custom option is you going above and beyond!
@Bogie TRUST NO USER EVER
@shawn - This displays an amazing customer response, Thanks again! I'm liking the firehose setting on my pc, not so much on the iPad 2. Guess my only option is to create another account?
Downside, if I did, I would have to pay 2 VMP fees to qualify for these beta features, I think.
@KDemo and your read/unread comments wouldn't be sync'd up.
@shawn Hey, wow, I feel special! Thanks! I have been busy at work and not on the forums much, but since you're customizing it all special just for me, I feel obligated to jump in here more often now. Your evil plan is WORKING!!! Thanks.
@shawn Catching up after a few days, but this is really, really cool. Nice work and thank you for making this little home so thoroughly tweakable.
@editorkid Cool. Still working on a couple more updates. Today's update might be delayed a bit. But I've enjoyed turning this into "One Day, One Forum Update (TM)"
@shawn, (RE today's update)
(1) You're killing us with kindness.
(2) Was going to say "Do you have a secret, personal don't auto-tag-me feature for your ID? When I replied to today's update post it did not include your @shawn tag." . . . [Edit] However, it appears what happened is when I replied to your update for today's post, it jumped down to a new response to your top level original post from Aug 26th!?! Might be time to finally dump out of iOS 6 on this iPad 2. Hmmm. Clearly is not impacting others who were able to respond directly to your post immediately above.
But I could "fake" a reply to your today post by replying to a replier to your post and swapping in your ID. (Thanks @Bogie)
Today's update highlights some performance tuning we've been doing the past few days. Tweaking some database indexes and increasing some capacity in the cloud has helped. The site is running much better today.
Here's an average response time graph (showing before/after) from one of our backend services that was really struggling:
@shawn Not sure if it applies to all RDS but make sure flush out any cached execution plans.
@shawn @hallmike @DrunkCat man, I'm really really glad that I re-installed cloud-to-butt.
Yes! That graph shows my exact experience. Thank you, @shawn.
Today's update is for @becca who wanted star tooltips to work on the https://meh.com/forum page
Today's update isn't directly forum related, but worth pointing out here anyway. There's a new stat widget that we have available when there's a deal with some type of attribute selection.
I've also added it to a couple of past deals:
If you have any other old deals you'd like to see an attribute breakdown post them here and I'll try to add it.
@shawn I'd love to see it for this one! https://meh.com/deals/insteon-camera-or-eveready-compact-led-area-light
BLEAT!
@sohmageek Ah, awesome one! I remember looking at those stats internally and was amazed that they were 50/50.
@shawn Is it supposed to look more like a donut, or a CD?
@sohmageek That one is a great choice because it's video is "Lets talk with @Shawn"
@shawn Awesome! Thanks man! Also I don't know if I've said it before, but thank you for the improvements and your hard work! I really appreciate it!
@sohmageek come on now, save that for National CTO Day
Or Day of the Programmer, seems we all just missed that one :(
Happy belated Day of the Programmer to the hard working Mediocre team.
@shawn I never really took a peek at how the various stats were displayed before, but I see they're all rendered out as SVGs... that's pretty tasty!
@shawn idea: i would like to reply to an "i was tagged" email notification and instead of it dumping over to @hollboll it posts as a reply in the forum. thoughts?
@shawn I noticed around a week ago that my mouse gestures weren't working right.. I thought the extension must have broken or something.. But then just now I figured out that the problem only seems to exist on the meh forums. I think one of your updates may have made it so that chrome doesn't capture the right click gestures quite right. Just fyi...
Chrome 44.0.2403.157 (64-bit) on CentOS 7. I also use synergy to share the mouse and keyboard from my Windows 7 64-bit system.. But it was all working fine before hand, so I'm guessing it was a change here.
Mouse Gestures work fine in the forum list, but not in any specific thread. I attempted to start them in all different parts of the thread (header, over text, over an image, in white space, over a link) and nothing worked.
@shawn mouse gestures seem to be working again, but I didn't see an update about any changes. Thanks!
Today's update: pagination.
@shawn !
@shawn I can't wait for people to try it and realize how much it sucks!
@JonT I'm forcing myself to use it all day to see if there's any advantage. Trying to keep an open mind.
@shawn ewww. Pagination? I'm pretty sure no one here wants that.
@DaveInSoCal @jonT I'll have to figure a way to quickly switch between Pagination on Mobile, and not on Live... @shawn THANKS! I almost wish you could customize for mobile and not... but I don't want to make you work too hard :)
@shawn tried it. didn't like it. appreciate the effort.
@shawn @JonT
@shawn you have made the coolest pagination that I've seen. :) Keep up the good work! :)
@sohmageek I blame you, GOAT!
@sohmageek
@shawn
@shawn But srsly I like it. I think I'm more likely to use it on smaller screens than larger ones, but you designed it really nicely, including keeping the original post on all pages above the control so we can respond to that easily. Here on my desktop where Firefox occupies less than half of my sprawling display and I've got a wired connection, firehose mode works great, but on my 5" phone where I'm sharing all 4 G's with 2 million other people in the city, pagination will rawk. (Now I just have to decide whether I expire my VMP come the 3rd. Does the forum display return to the default or does my current selection stick?)
@mfladd @jaremelz you're welcome!
@shawn Pagination enabled at 30 to try...this thread was great for that.
@shawn - You seem to be trying to make all of the people happy all of the time. More power to you! (I'm still going with firehose on pc).
@shawn meh. I thought I'd like it but it turns out to be overrated. I'll stick with the default.
hmmm is differently-highlighted thread links a new thing or did I miss an update post on it?
@Lotsofgoats Just dropped in here to try to figure this one out myself. Certainly seems super-new.
@Lotsofgoats are you speaking of the highlighted thread links that I now need glasses to see? Me No Likey!
@brhfl seems like threads with no updates for you are made more transparent. useful!
Bonus update today. We changed (slightly) the way forum topics are displayed on the https://meh.com/forum page that don't have any comments or replies you haven't already read.
@shawn I noticed that threads I'm caught up are completely faded out, making the bold of the new replies/threads much more prevalent.
@Thumperchick Right, we used to do this for the topic title only. I thought it helped to do the same for the photo, byline, etc.
@shawn AWESOME! Thank you!
@shawn - This one is not my favorite. It was good to have the heading faded, but I kind of liked seeing the name of the last poster, and how long ago. It's just kind of a whim, not an issue.
Today's update is for @phatmass who complained over and over about lack of pagination and then said:
I've hardcoded his account to always use pagination mode.
@shawn yes yes YES YES YES YES YES YES EYS EYSE YSE SYE SEYSE SEYS EYSE YS
@shawn I need a better way to acknowledge this than stars.
@Thumperchick like coins
@shawn
@shawn well this sucks.
@shawn Ha ha ha ha ha
POINTS!
@shawn Love it!
@phatmass sometimes you get what you deserve. Just like @Thumperchick.
@shawn, are you going to add Android Pay as an option? The Android blog announced they're ...' giving one lucky winner plus three of their friends a VIP trip to Mexico City that includes four seats at the premiere of the thrilling new James Bond film, Spectre from Sony Pictures.' If you don't, I have to go to Panera's or Whole Foods or some other place I don't want to, once a day.
Today's update is for @thumperchick who gets a volunteer moderator badge next to her username.
More details here: https://meh.com/forum/topics/meet-thumperchick-our-first-volunteer-moderator
@shawn Yay for @Thumperchick!
@Thumperchick to the rescue!
@KDemo
Bonus update. Today we added "for 2" text to the buy it button when we do a 2-for-Tuesday to make it clear the price includes 2 items.
@shawn "So that means I get four, right?" You're welcome.
Today's update is for @DrunkCat, @thismyusername, @PurplePawprints, @pepsiwine, @ComputerMD82, @dashcloud, @SSteve, @cj0e, @JonT, @Starblind, @parodymandotcom, @ACraigL, @cengland0, @jjohns71, @phatmass who discussed over here: https://meh.com/forum/topics/fyi-forum-looks-disasterous-in-steam-browser
It's another VMP-only preview feature that allows you to put the forums into "dark mode".
A few of us have been using it internally for a few days now. It needs a bunch of little tweaks to get it working as cohesively as "light mode" but I think it's a good start. We'll keep working on some of the weird issues with badges, quote text, and lazy loaded image placeholders but wanted to offer a preview to VMP members.
@shawn oooh, fancy.
@shawn ಥ_ಥ it's beautiful
@shawn I went to switch and I think I un-VMPed myself somehow.
@shawn - Spooky. Just in time for Halloween!
@shawn Yay! What a lovely birthday present for me! I mean, that is why you released it today, right? Thanks!
@MrMark Go to https://mediocre.com/vmp and you can sign up again or contact us over at https://meh.com/support and we can help out.
@PurplePawprints
@shawn I completely missed that you implemented pagination for @phatmass. Thanks for making it optional. Dark mode is showing great promise.
I like it - even in daytime.
@shawn Holy crap, my whining actually did something.
@shawn Wow and here I thought this was my idea. Only 2-3 months late to the party.
@DrunkCat don't get used to it
@harrison
@medz ah, right. this could be useful for you as well during night time, correct?
@shawn LOVE THIS
@shawn Indeed. This'll work. Thanks.
@shawn You da real MVP.
I do want to give credit, where credit is due, who had the awful/lovely job of updating the CSS to make the dark theme work*?
*Edit: Start working... Show me the CSS and I can help to fix it, lol. github?
@shawn loving it, as others mentioned the comment box is pretty blaring white... but I found a functional issue...
quotes are pretty hard to read in the current dark color mode.
Oh and badges are pretty hard to make out as well... how will I know if I'm still mediocre if I cant see my badge?
Thanks again for dark mode!
@shawn Thanks! I mean all I did was supply a non-sequitur Spinal Tap reference, but I'll take it.
@shawn as someone who stares at a monitor or three all day, I really dig the dark theme. I will be slightly less bug eyed at the end of the day. Thank you.
@shawn I've been using it, and it's amazing! Works great.
@shawn also in addition to quotes and the reply dialog, the image placeholders are the wrong color in after dark mode... they are also white, would be cool if they were a dark grey while the pics load :)
@shawn So, the other thing Is the badges... Kickstarter badges show up great. The flasks while hard to see are awesome (maybe fill them with white liquid so that the image looks the same on white theme, but then they are a little different on dark... or don't...) Same with VMP picture, If you box it and use the white theme's color it won't change white theme but will show us who's what... I haven't seen the goat yet to see if that one is hard to see or not.
@shawn sorry I noticed the flask is full, maybe a thin line around the flask as the white background... or perhaps just like K has the white around it...
horizontal rules?! (wait I only see them on mobile, weird)
@Lotsofgoats I use them a lot. Just have to use the html brackets around hr
like so!
@sohmageek I mean on the forum main page, though. I see them in between topics but only on mobile currently.
@shawn How about [ALT]+S as a shortcut to "Say it" a la VBulletin? :D Use the ui.key.chromeAccess or whatever it's called. That would rock.
@shawn FYI - Forum email notifications have been delayed today. I just rec'd one at 11:57 am that says it was sent at 10:25 am.
Thought of two things that are probably disproportionately hellish to code for the value they provide, especially the tiny little tweak in the first case:
When I'm typing a reply, it would be cool if the "Reply" text under the original comment became "Cancel," because that's how it works at that point.
When I go to a page with a ton of new comments and replies and I see one that demands a witty retort from me and I rush to type it in and hit Say it. before someone else smarter and funnier than me says it better and the page refreshes, I lose all the gray sidebars that tell me where the new comments and replies were. It would be cool (for us, but less so for @shawn or whatever worker bee he gets to code it) if the page refresh still had the gray sidebars.
On the upside, my VMP expires Saturday, so I'll have an incentive to stop having these ideas.
@editorkid THIS.
@jsh139 Fine, I'll stop having ideas now.
@editorkid Lol, no, I meant that I too get annoyed at the loss of the bars once you post a reply.
@jsh139 @editorkid I had that happen in this thread as I was scrolling down! haha
Any idea why the middle click on my mouse wheel no longer lets me use my mouse to scroll on the page? It's how I would get back to the top of the page quickly but it doesn't work anymore. The Meh forums are the only place where it doesn't work anymore, and it happens in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
@jqubed I came in here to post the same thing!! I always use the middle button to scroll to the top. Doesn't work anymore.
@jqubed This is probably related to the same problem that broke my mouse gestures!
Weird glitch - most URL's autolink without intervention (meh.com, etc.) - however, the .horse (drone.horse) domain does not do this.
@Thumperchick do any of the new TLD's?
@Ignorant I don't think so.
@Thumperchick the TLDs it recognizes are hardcoded in the regular expression
@katylava omg i'm going to look at this regex forever now THANKS A LOT
@katylava probably easier to just add horse there and leave the other 1000 off....easier yet would be to leave it as is.
Hey VMPs! You've had some time to play with the new stuff. We'd appreciate some feedback.
Which of the VMP-only preview features are ready to roll out to all users? Which of the features should we work on some more? Which of the features should we cut? How much longer should we hardcode pagination mode for @phatmass?
@shawn can you recap? also, forever.
I can tell you that my default view is now the batman theme, and I'm on firehose mode and all looks good.
@shawn I kind of like pagination, but it doesn't seem to help with the biggest problem I have and that I'd want it for. It seems like it's a client side presentation and so giant threads with lots of pictures (say, a fuku reveal or a gifs gone wild thread) are still slow to load and scroll, unwieldy, and likely to crash my browser. It seems like it loads the whole thread and just shows it in chunks. I'm almost always on mobile. If I were on pc I probably wouldn't want pagination.
I'm not asking to redesign pagination. I'm ok with just not going to those threads once they near critical mass.
@shawn Errr, I wasn't aware of any VMP stuff? So I don't know?
@shawn Please do not take my firehose away, I prefer it over the other viewing.
@shawn I like all the updates except pagination.
@shawn Can we get a VMP Only fix that allows my mouse gestures to work? It's really frustrating when they work everywhere but the meh forums..
@shawn I am a fan of the dark-side. Uhm, mode.
@shawn Agree about the dark-side. This is very nice. I'm a bad VMP and haven't played around with the other stuff.
@shawn
I went black and I haven't gone back. Can't see quotes, but I can highlight them. I opted for firehose, no pagination. I wish the last poster name and time were still in darker font on the grayed-out forum topics.
I'm in awe over what you've built here. Thanks, as always. Really glad I eventually won't have to pay for VMP to benefit from these improvements.
@shawn to further pummel you with it--quotes and badges are difficult to see when walking on the dark-side. I am digging firehose.
@shawn customizing the new replies view and comments is awesome. I just showed that to someone last night who said she gets frustrated by the hidden comments in the forums. I'd roll that out to users and announce it.
I think light/dark mode has some quirks to work out before it's ready.
Perma-pagination for @phatmass. Limit comment count per page based on his recent comments and participation.
@shawn, I second the motion to designate @Thumperchick the official Meh member in charge of MAKING ME A SANDWICH.
@shawn Dark mode should stay as VMP-only until the other glitches are ironed out. Firehose is nice.
Maybe offer pagination, and then run the numbers on its usage rate after some time, and if people aren't using it, cut the feature.
@phatmass no problem! My specialty is knuckle.
@Thumperchick Here, use these:
@shawn I LOVE the pagination, it seems to be a little slow today. However on mobile it makes it so I can actually browse the threads with lots of images. PLEASE don't take it away :)
@dashcloud Why are you trying to take my pagination away? first the white speaker docks then the micros... now pagination? ;)
@shawn I do wish there was a setting to check browser strings and based upon mobile or not it would be able to set different versions, Pagination for mobile and desktop firehose or something like that....
@shawn Firehose all the way. Thankfully it stayed on when I cancelled VMP (temporarily of course).
Perhaps I didn't play with pagination enough, but does it allow you to set a really high comment/page count?
So for most threads you'd be in full-on firehouse mode. But for long threads like this one, you could have it sliced into 2 or 3 pages. Hybrid mode.
@phatmass you can't second your own motion. ;-)
@shawn - I feel kind of sorry for @phatmass, even though he's mean to me.
@shawn
ROLL OUT:
FINE TUNE:
UNCODE:
@shawn Have you made all of the text in the forum Georgia red for @jrwofuga? If not, I'd do that before letting @phatmass off the hook. Although that can stay open-ended too.
@editorkid purple text first!
@shawn Firehose - yes. Dark - yes. Tried the pagination, didn't like it at all.
@editorkid It's good to dream.
I love the firehose with the pagination (set to 30). I just tried the dark theme...not sure I like it but since there is a choice wth...I like that Phatmass has the pagination hard coded but if you keep that then Barney's theme should be coded at purple...
@tightwad Did someone mention purple? I'm not sure what everyone is talking about here because I am not a VMP, but sometimes when I click on a name, I'll get the dark mode. I think it's kind of cool in a weird kind of way. Anyway, more purple for everyone! Carry on.
@tightwad Why is everybody oppressing me? I have rights.
@phatmass Remember the saying "Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it?"
Also, it didn't help that your fortune has recently been reading "May you live in interesting times".
@shawn - The forum needs more Tiny Tub Mummy.
I'm currently using firehose and dark theme. Back in the beginning I wanted pagination because of my crappy internet, but lazy loading of images is a more graceful solution. Even so, I'm glad to have the pagination option for those rare occasions I access the site on mobile. Dark mode was something I desperately needed without realizing it. Even during the day, all that former white space on a moderately sized monitor was giving me eyestrain and headaches. I do agree that it needs some fine-tuning before it rolls out to everyone, but I'm glad I have access in the meantime. Thanks @shawn!
@gio @shawn I just turned on Dark theme and OMG... It's a hell of a lot easier to read, except noted below by @cengland0
@Shawn , I cannot use the dark theme because some of the quoted text is impossible to read. This is what it looks like for me:
Completely unreadable.
@cengland0 I seem to be able to read it, but it hurts my brain.
@sohmageek @cengland0 The temporary solution is to highlight it (as if to copy), which shows the quote in relief. I think it's definitely something that should get fixed before the dark theme is rolled out to the general public or we'll hear a lot of grousing.
@cengland0 No, that's my fault. I should have asked that question darker.
I broke the forum with a comment today, with a parenthesis, less than sign, dollar sign. I tried to put an indication of a price in parentheses and my comment just ended there. Could have been that the forum was expecting some kind of tag. I'll try again right here: (
@djslack use
<for<, or put backticks around anything with less-than signs in it@katylava gotcha, wasn't thinking with my brain fully on. Thanks!
@katylava this is not how you are supposed to fix this problem and you know it. /fingerwag
Not sure if it's just me or others. But the forums on mobile tonight are a bit weird. I can't use my back button at all (gesture to go back leads me to a refresh) could be my connection but I don't know.
@sohmageek what's your mobile browser?
@Thumperchick safari. I'm getting in a little but mostly not. @harrison and @hollboll will fix it in the morning. Maybe.
@sohmageek maybe with a little help from @katylava
@Thumperchick I think someone may have fixed it already. If so hats off to you and thank you. Please let me know what my oh shit report reads ;)
@sohmageek I haven't done anything other than ask you inane questions. But yay for being able to access forums again!
It would be nice if there was a create date under forum topics so I can tell if it's new or been bumped. I get easily confused when old is new again.
@heartny I think that is all part of the master plan, old content, new content, it's all content. meh. ;)
@heartny Maybe a skull instead of a star if the thread is more than a month old.
Discovered something this evening. Is it possible that a user's preference for dark theme bleeds over into their user page on the forum?
I accidentally clicked kdemo's name instead of the last post link and got this:
I'm not on dark theme. So I clicked another name and got this:
@djslack good find.
@djslack I ran into that once or twice, but never could duplicate it properly.
@djslack - Whoa, so I get to choose options for everyone??? Coool!
@djslack - And sure you clicked my name accidentally. Hahaha.
@djslack I am creeped out now.
@OldCatLady Did you feel that? I just clicked your name again. I'll be by to do it again later. Maybe when you're sleeping.
I would like an option to dismiss the broadcast stickys without clicking through to the post. If I'm not interested in the broadcast topic I would like to click a little x or something to make it go away.
@hallmike you should only have to click it the one time... ever. I can understand wanting the option to X it out if you're certain you won't be interested, though.
Speaking of the Broadcast feature - it stays stuck to the top of the recommended threads on the front page, regardless of whether or not you've read the thread. Is this by design? Or glitch?
Would it be possible to make the Specs post on product threads stay visible no matter what? It gets hidden when the comment limit is reached and I think it means more people never look/see it when they go back for information.
@shawn Hey I found a good example link that breaks the parser so I am posting here for your reference:
the link in question is here
Just auto-embed it and you will see what a I mean.
Happy turkey day!
PS even the example "link" I made is getting parsed weirdly... the actual url is:
h t t p s : / / w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t ch ? v = s 5 A 5 M b _ _ f i A
the link is adding an extra http:// space for some reason?
@thismyusername @shawn
With the link you embedded - it added http:// in front of your https://
Example here - to see if I can re-break it. So it looks like you managed to have an extra http in there. I tried to make it do it again, but the parser caught it and fixed it. Not sure quite how you got past it. ( I accidentally fixed yours while figuring this out... oops?)
When posting the direct link from youtube - it does straight up break: fiA">https://youtu.be/s5A5Mb_fiA
As does the browser link - fiA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5A5Mb_fiA
In the same way. I wonder if it's due to the double underscore?
@thismyusername @Thumperchick we suck at underscores: https://github.com/mediocre/mehdown/issues/6
Feel free to fix it and send us a pull request :)
@shawn rofl, k
@thismyusername In the meantime, I believe encoded characters work properly, and therefore one can replace any underscore in a URL with
%5F.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5A5Mb%5F%5FfiA
(Edit, guess that doesn't auto-embed, but at least the link will not break in half, and will function)
There are several threads lacking header images. Did something change? (Granted, auto images for some of them might be NSFW).
Huh. There were 4 a few moments ago, now there are 3. Is it my computer?
@KDemo Been seeing more of these myself. Also seeing three currently (why no pressure cooker, crock pot dish poll, pagination).
@brhfl - Thanks for listing them, I'm sure the specifics help.
@KDemo working on it... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34035422/google-image-search-says-api-no-longer-available
Thanks, @shawn, that's interesting. They don't make it easy, do they?
@KDemo I was thinking something was up. Good to know it's already being handled. I've been manually adding a few back in as I see them, but some of those haven't been sticking either.
@Thumperchick
Personally, I'd just blame @TaRDy
@Thumperchick - I figured you were doing that. It's kind of crazy, @shawn has everything set up and humming along, then they remove the program.
Job security, I guess.
@FroodyFrog, @KDemo, @Thumperchick, @shawn, my bad for breaking the image search API, I was trying to create the world's largest collage and I must have mis-typed something. It's hard to write code with hooves.
@KDemo, @Thumperchick, @shawn
@TaRDy isn't kidding.
@shawn I mentioned this somewhere up this long thread and no longer can find it. But it is still going on and bothering me, so I took a picture.
What happens is the thing that shows the names on on stars gets stuck. It blocks the comment underneath.
It stays that way for a long time. a few minutes an hour. Whatever. I reload it stays, I click it , it stays. I click the white part or go over another star it stays.
It makes me crazy.
Why does this do this ? Can you fix it ?
PS most of the time my curser just goes over it by accident and it pops up. Once in awhile I do look out of curiosity. Just saying' so that you don't just say: don't do that.
Thank you for this fine forum and I hope it is soon much finer << is that a word ? Well it is now.
Merry Holidays.
@ceagee
You mean this: https://meh.com/forum/topics/forum-updates#560b6ff2821e69b40a56edf7
?
Actually, i forgot what i was going to say for my second point...
@FroodyFrog No. I'm not on a phone. It was somewhere that I brought it up before on this thread. Nice try though. If you think of your second point...
@shawn
Too distracted to check if it was previously mentioned, but any particular reason why on mobile, if browser is in portrait mode it will say "last reply 'x amount of time' ago" (without specifying usernames), but in landscape it will say who posted the most recent comment?
Even if it was done intentionally like that, the grammar bugs me when I see it (poor sentence structure, and sentence starts lowercase).
Fwiw, I was looking at something online, and I zoomed the display in. When I was looking at Meh forums, I noticed the same thing happening there as on mobile...
@FroodyFrog The difference for me is in mobile view... Portrait mode = mobile view (no usernames), while landscape mode changes to desktop view, and adds usernames.
@djslack
That too.
Not sure if it's been brought up before but for threads below the fold the star count and last comment date load up, however the comment count pulls Not a Number.
@Ignorant Weird. It's doing it for me too - in Chrome.
@Ignorant good catch. deploying a fix now.
@shawn looks to be fixed. Enjoy what's left of the weekend :)
Just noticed dark mode carries over to mediocre. Love it! Thanks as always.
@Shawn - Block quotes are really difficult to read in dark mode.
@Thumperchick don't forget the polls black text!
@thismyusername Ooh, yeah - that's not a great look either.
Can you add a feature or message notifying people when they're replying to very old threads (seems to happen most when old threads get dredged up for the front page list)? It would help a lot with 3 month old+ threads getting new replies when they were already dead.
@dashcloud I'm more confused about why those old threads end up on the front page - perhaps the focus can be on why zombie threads haunt the list?
Today's update is for @thumperchick @thismyusername @shrdlu @cengland0 @gio @editorkid @sohmageek @sligett @dave
We made an update to the dark theme so that quotes are readable.
By the way... if you're not following along we've been making some changes to our profile page.
Thank you!!
@shawn Look awesome. That was one of the reasons I couldn't go to the dark theme. If I have time later, I'll check it out now that problem has been fixed.
@shawn Are we the only ones in Dark theme?
@sohmageek the light/dark theme setting is only available to VMP members right now. i'm sure there are a few more things to tweak before we release to everyone.
@shawn yes, but I can't believe that there are so few of us that are trying it out... I mean I love my pagination but :) Also... I'm getting a lot of long running script errors when I'm looking back at threads... It's taken almost 30 minutes to scroll back to "OMG meh is broken LOL" Thread
This is the best thing we've ever done.
@dave
Does it beat sliced bread?
THANK YOU JEEEEEEEBUS aka @shawn!
@sohmageek I tried it but wasn't loving it. Went back to the Republic.
@sohmageek I've been using the dark theme since the day in was first offered. I hate walls of white. This is so much easier on my eyes and I really, really appreciate that quoted text has been corrected. Thank you, @Shawn!
Can we add profile pages to the themes next? Every now and then, I accidentally click on someone's name instead of the 'latest post' link and end up blinded.
@shawn Looks great. Thanks!
@PurplePawprints - Same here. I have been loving it, now love it more. Also happy that dark theme has carried over to the mediocre forum, even though I don't spend much time there.
Thank you, @shawn.
Thank you @shawn! With all due respect @dave, I think the dark theme was a more important upgrade. Even without this improvement I was using it 24/7 (easier on vision and less likely to trigger migraines), but on some threads it was tiring to keep highlighting the quote boxes to see what was in them.
Sorry to nitpick @shawn, but that Forum Broadcast about the Fukubukuro 7 Reveal is hard to read in dark theme (black on dark grey). I suppose it isn't that important for most folks, but since I am generally one of the later ones to receive my Fuku, I spend a lot of time looking at it, taunting me there at the top of the page.
@gio good catch
@shawn and poll text.
@shawn Thanks for fixing these dark theme issues! And thanks in general for being so responsive to mehmber requests!
Dear Meh,
This is what I mean about poll text...
halp us please!!!!!
Thanks!
@thismyusername Isn't it more fun to randomly choose a poll option?
@thismyusername - Maybe if they just sold a flashlight?
Thanks for the fix... you guys are the best.
Where the fuck is the opt-out button???? I didn't sign up for such upgrades!!!!!!!!!!!!!
; )
@Pavlov
@Pavlov Go here: I don't want your stupid upgrades!
@dashcloud He clicked that this morning before he left for the airport and mumbled "Rick-rolling motherfucker" on his way out the door. You must be pretty awesome in his book; he only swears at the people he truly loves.
@MrsPavlov Happy to help out!
@Pavlov Join the camp. There are a bunch of us who don't those "upgrades". Only solution right now is close your account. open two. One to post with, one to buy with. Then at least you can keep your buying private. @hollboll told me via customer support there are no plans right now to allow us to opt out.
@dashcloud smart ass LOL
@Kidsandliz, There was an underlying seriousness to the post asking for an opt-out even though he winked - @Pavlov opened two buying accounts some time ago. One for occasional personal items to be delivered to the office and another for purchases that are specific to his business that are sent directly to the small warehouse / storage (for the business) on the Missouri side (underground storage [man-made caverns that are left after mining] is plentiful around here, and cheap - and climate controlled by mother nature!).
I can't exactly tell you why some of the features are a little off-putting, but they are - and we both wish there was a way to turn aspects of these new features off.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
@MrsPavlov I saw the underlying seriousness of that post (which is why I starred it) and my read of that post is that he was pissed off. Heck so are some of the rest of us. I posted a request about opting out on anther thread back when they first started doing this along with to customer support and was told there are no plans to let us opt out. meh's attitude about this is apparently a fuck you we will do what we want one.
In my opinion meh has now crossed a few lines and that some of their behavior is inappropriate, violated norms about what a customer can keep private, and in my opinion how they are going about this (and their response) may violate some consumer privacy laws, rules and regulations. At a minimum how they are blowing off people who have concerns about this is unethical. Sure we have the option to vote with our feet and cancel our account (which then, at least right now - but since they control that this could later change too - makes the info private), but that does not change my judgement of their current behavior, nor that they likely are in violation of several consumer privacy protections.
1) By not allowing customers to opt out of broadcasting personal information like purchasing - especially since we were not told this was going to happen when we signed up - is, in my opinion, unethical and potentially illegal. There is also a norm that they have violated by basically saying fuck you we don't care what you think we are going to do what we want, tell the world things you'd rather keep private (and have a reasonable expectation would be kept private), that nearly every other business out keeps private and off the internet for the world to see (although some do sell it to other businesses)...and we won't let you opt out - leave if you don't like having your privacy violated.
2) There are a number of laws, rules and regulations that pertain to consumer information and privacy. It is my belief, after reading a number of them, that they are in violation of several of them by doing this without an opt out option. There are also several that they may not be technically in violation of, but they are in violation of the spirit of them. In my opinion this is also unethical on their part - especially since their response to concerns is fuck you we don't care what you think and you can't opt out.
3) If they are going to continue doing this they need to, at a minimum: (a) keep all past information private because that was not the implied user agreement when people signed on (b) have an opt out for this kind of public use of future information and (c) email everyone and post a thread that stays on top of the heap notifying us of the option to opt out and how to do so. Further the default position should be opt out and not opt in for people who fail to respond. (d) any new users who sign up should have to choose opt in or opt out for broadcasting personal information. (e) Anyone should be able to opt out at any time which then makes ALL information private retroactively as well as going forward.
4) The information about making all information about posts, etc. easily available, they way they are doing now, is in more of a gray area. What we post to the internet, and specifically to this site, is public, although usually you have to work much harder to find the stuff than what the current situation is with what they have done with this information. My personal opinion, and that of some others who have posted the same thing, is that people should be able to opt out of this too.
@Kidsandliz Their attitude has ALWAYS been to do what they fucking want to. They aren't giving out your name, they aren't telling people where you live, they aren't even giving a dollar amount on your purchases. I'm sure having purchase numbers out there may make it hard for some people to claim to be poor and broke, but for most of us, it's really not a big deal. I also don't see how it's an invasion of so-called privacy. Maybe it bothers you more than it should. But yeah, if it bothers you so much, maybe it is time to vote with your feet.
@Kidsandliz What rules/laws have they actually broken? You keep saying that they have broken them, but do not state which ones and how. Like you, I am not thrilled about so much personal info out there, but if I have nothing to point to, I can't really complain about it.
@conandlibrarian I was reading about consumer protections and privacy. While most of the policies apply to banking, there are some that appear to apply to all businesses, including a reasonable expectation that private information remain private (and protected). I am not an attorney and don't play one on TV, am not being paid to research this for anyone... and am not going to. If they continue with the presumption of fuck you we are going to continue to make public what there is a reasonable assumption of what would remain private (eg number of purchases, even in a range), then I will be canceling my account because they DO NOT have my permission to make that information public. It is no one's business but mine and their cavalier attitude of we don't care that some people don't like that doesn't matter to us, in my opinion, demonstrates total disrespect towards customers.
I also am well aware they likely don't give a damn if I cancel my account or not because I am not a big spender and me going MIA is no financial loss to them whatsoever. I also recognize it is their business and they can do what they want to do, but if they had a shred of decency they would respect that many of us created accounts with no expectation that 582 days later (for me anyway) they would so totally change how they do or do not respect our privacy (purchases) and then not care that some people object. I would have handled an account here very differently had they been up front about that when I signed on. But they weren't so they need to allow us a way to opt out of that invasion of privacy without deleting our account.
@PurplePawprints - meh it is the only reason why I can even give birthday and christmas presents the past 1 and 2/3's year- $3 headlamps and stuff like that - no vacs, no monitors, no TV's, etc. and I have not bought one thing here for me except one of those cheap batteries that charge phones. I have a 6 year old flip phone and the battery dies all the time. Pain in the butt. I prefer a landline since there is no dead battery issue but am couch surfing so I can pay for health insurance (no medicaid expansion in this state and I don't yet make enough for a subsidy, getting closer though, and I had to choose between health insurance and rent. As I am on my 3rd cancer and it has no cure it was a no brainer what to choose). It is that they are making public what is normally private information, that we had every expectation to keep private, that I am objecting to. And I am not the only person who is not happy they are doing this. There are others who posted on other threads that they want to opt out.
@Kidsandliz I'm really not sure why you felt it necessary to explain all that (private) information to me, or how it's relevant to this thread, but again, they aren't giving out private information. Many places make poll results, and voters, public. They've already said they won't publicize sensitive polls. The number of orders you've placed isn't really something that would be covered under an expectation of privacy. If it was, Amazon would have gotten rid of Woot's ranges years ago. As for all the other data, every last bit of it is already public. They did people a solid by making it only the last thirty days of data anyway. I'd prefer it went back to the beginning, but I'm guessing that would be a bit unwieldy.
@Kidsandliz Your gritching about this is getting old, so I'll try to explain all of this to you in very simple terms. It's Meh's game, you play by their rules; if you don't like it, leave. I'm sure some of us would be willing to escort you to the train station and wave goodbye.
@Kidsandliz So... what you're saying is... you want them to write a poll about the changes? Then another poll about telling everyone how we voted for that poll?
@Kidsandliz Holy hell - I didn't say we were going to flounce over it, I simply said SOME of the aspects of the new forum features were a little disconcerting.
Maybe these changes are just nagging at us old folks because we've been to the "we're gonna make shit better and then end up fucking it up royally" rodeo before.
@Thumperchick no all I am saying let people opt out of having private information made public (purchases - the rest is public already).
@PurplePawprints Who is talking about polls? I'm not.
@shawn - There is one teeny thing that has been bothering me. I try to ignore it, but it haunts my dreams. That grammar(?) line under the word 'altruism' - can it go away? If not, I'll just up the meds.
@KDemo That's your browser trying to tell you that we hid the definition of "altruism" behind a tooltip
@KDemo I see what you did there... you altruist you.
@shawn - So that's Chrome trying to educate me? Cool. At the risk of exposing my technical inadequacy, how can one reveal the tips - in a different browser, or only on macs, or . . .?
Anyway, I'm all for education, Thank you.
@Kidsandliz - I considered using someone else's profile for the example, but thought that might violate their privacy.
Hey @shawn how about an update to do either of these: allow desktop version if requested on mobile/allow options like the post editor/buttons for images etc. and more importantly the change thread image on mobile?
@Shawn is the VMP logo at the top of the forums going to stay the old logo or should it be switched to the new logo like it is on the Mediocre forums?
[RESOLVED]
don't think no one noticed the "Past Deals" button. i'm on to you!
@carl669 Ah, but you seem to have missed the other, more subtle change up there.
@dave also, i didn't even tell you that i fixed a bug with the dancing logo choreography when theme songs are playing.
@carl669 @shawn I'd like to see a change to the pop up when you hover over the calendar that also includes the item that was sold that day, not just the date.
Can you upload the manuals/specs (if any) for the day's item to the Internet Archive?
That way, we're mostly guaranteed that the manual will be easily accessible years down the line, instead of having to search out some ad-infested, popup-ridden site with a copy of it because the manufacturer took it down or went out of business.
Thanks for considering this!
@Shawn
I noticed the other change which was made today ;)
Thank you.
I’m not sure how feasible this is, but I’d like to see the GUI comment editor for mobile - for main comments and replies. I end up here on my phone more and more - and the lack of simple, fast editing options means I don’t comment as often as I would otherwise. (Though, if you think I talk too much, this is to your advantage.)
@Thumperchick I’d LOVE that!!! you get more than a star /giphy fuck yeah!
@Thumperchick
Don’t most people know the formatting shortcuts by heart?
@Thumperchick just some input from a web designer, usually web UIs are cut down for mobile due to space concerns. Even on phones with 1080p displays pages are most often rendered far smaller to allow things to be larger for easier touch-interaction and once you’ve got the UI up and the phone’s own keyboard you’ve pretty much used up the entire screen and left the user limited utility for reading over what they’re replying to as they write… provided it’s short enough to interact with.
Another factor is that many means of input that are practical on the desktop are not as well suited to touch screens.
That said, meh has a small enough editor it’d probably have minimal impact, width forcing it onto multiple lines would be the biggest cause for concern.
@Thumperchick not sure what phone you use but on the iPhone 6 in landscape the big boy text boxes show up.
@Ignorant @Thumperchick
Quite a few features come up when a device is in landscape mode.
(I.e the various post formatting options, the name of the person to leave the latest comment on a thread, etc.)
@FroodyFrog @Ignorant What this means is that the site is actually responsive, there’s no ‘mobile site’ in the strictest sense. In the CSS files (CSS - Cascading Style Sheets - The things that make sites pretty instead of piles of text) they’re using things called Media Queries to enable and disable the display of certain aspects of the site or alter them depending on the horizontal resolution of the device viewing the page. In horizontal mode the page meets the minimum width to display the bar in its entirety without clipping or rolling onto a second line so it displays, in portrait this would be more problematic.
In point of fact, while testing this to ensure I wasn’t talking out of my ass I think I’ve discovered what @Thumperchick was alluding to. Main comments, as opposed to replies, do not show any editing options at low resolutions whereas replies show the entire editor and clip it under the post button. One of these behaviors is a bug, I suspect it is the replies that is behaving in an unintended manner. They currently have two editors for the commenting mode with only a single editor for the replies mode. At horizontal resolutions greater than 576px the desktop editor is displayed, 576px and below display the mobile editor.
It would be nice if @shawn & co. came up with a smaller restricted set of options for mobile portrait mode that behaved in a sensible manner and was limited to mobile-practical things. This could all be done by selectively turning off specific buttons using a class with a media query attached instead of using a whole separate form for mobile editing as they do now. I would propose keeping bold, italic, the two list options, and the emotes, hide the rest. Images and links are auto-parsed, if you’re coding from your phone you probably know the markdown anyhow, and block quote is seldom used and easy enough to internalize IMHO.
For funsies, here’s what it looks like if I override their CSS to display both editors at once.
I’m not really sure why they did it this way, it’s not DRY (stands for Don’t Repeat Yourself, coder term for rewriting the same code as little as possible, ideally none) and as such bloats the web pages unnecessarily.
Edit: Actually, considering how DRY it isn’t, this is a likely candidate for why they haven’t implemented it for replies, at least as the comment form it will only exist once per page load, for replies it would exist quite a number of times and significantly bloat things. It does exemplify a rather mediocre attempt at making the site mobile friendly though, not sure if the person who did it didn’t know how to effectively use media queries or what.
@Ignorant I do get the full editor in landscape mode. Unfortunately, a large part of why I’m on my phone is having a tiny dictator occupying most of my attention and at least one hand. Holding and commenting on my phone in landscape isn’t a good work-around for me.
@Thumperchick is this something that would work for you? This in portrait, full editor in landscape, width permitting?
Mind you, this is rough and the spacing is probably not right, I did it quickly as proof of concept. Their editor uses absolute positioning of the buttons for reasons I can’t quite fathom, would be interested in the story there. Regardless, suffice it to say it required me to move stuff around differently than I’d initially hoped and I couldn’t be arsed to calculate proper values so I eyeballed it.
@shawn if you guys like this and want to implement it I’d be happy to help out. There’re some other inefficiencies I can see and, oddly, id-level designators being applied on a class level too in places. Not sure what to make of that.
@jbartus I find the bold and italics buttons silly, as those features are easily activated with a few well placed asterisks. The main 2 features I would want are the link and quote buttons.
@jbartus @shawn @Thumperchick @medz
As I mentioned months ago, sometimes when I’m in portrait mode, my phone still gives me the options which are reserved for landscape mode and desktops/laptops/Chromebooks etc.
@FroodyFrog in the comment editor or reply editor? It’s an important distinction.
@jbartus
When it happens; both.
@Thumperchick: some type of mobile Markdown editor has come up in internal discussions recently because @harrison and @katylava have been working on a new feature where it’s going to be sorely missed (even more than it is today).
As you’ve pointed out the bold/italics syntax is pretty easy to remember but some help with other syntax could benefit mobile users. Emoji is one area I’d drop from the mockup @jbartus put together. Mobile devices have much better native support for Emoji keyboards than we’re going to provide.
@shawn @Thumperchick
I included bold and italic because I looked at it from the perspective of designing the UX to benefit the largest likely subset of individuals. Me, I don’t even touch the GUI so it’s no fuss to me, and with links and images being auto-parsed I didn’t much see the point. To me, having other functions but not bold and italic would be very very strange as those are the most likely features to get used I would imagine.
Good call on the emoji one @shawn, I’d completely blanked on the fact that mobile devices have emoji keyboards built in. I plead 4 AM insanity.
@shawn any insight on why two editors are being used for commenting instead of one?
@jbartus the link button is something I only use when hyperlinking plain text. I could do it via memory, but it’s ever-so-slightly a pain, so I don’t. I’d actually guess that the link/quote/image buttons are used more than bold or italics here.
@Thumperchick if we’re dropping the emotes from my example we have space for one more anyhow, I was just explaining the reasoning. I guess we’ll need to agree to disagree about the frequency of use of bold/italic versus link/quote/image matter as I’ve seen far too many images posted without alt text to believe people bothered to use it over posting the link in by itself and most people tend to ‘quote’ by simply using @name
To be clear my prioritization of features was based on the basics such that someone who isn’t a regular here (as you’ve noted, regulars tend to have this stuff internalized mostly) could post competently on their device as needed. At any rate, it seems like Meh is going to work on it so that’s a plus, now we just need to wait and see what they come up with.
I still want to know what the rationale behind two separate editors for desktop/mobile is
@jbartus just let me selfishly ask for a custom UI that does exactly what I want it to, regardless of the usability for everyone else.
@jbartus
The logic behind 2 different editors is a company secret from what I understand after consulting several sources familiar to the matter.
@Thumperchick well since it’s you asking…
Jokes aside, I might be able to help you out with this regardless of Meh’s official implementation. What kind of mobile device do you have and what browser do you use on it? Would you be open to using another browser and/or downloading an extension/app if it would net the desired result for you?
There are browser extensions that let you inject your own CSS for desktop, if I can find a compatible one for your phone/browser combo I would be happy to inject CSS to force an editor with your preferred set of functions to display in portrait mode.
@FroodyFrog Well I guess I’ll just have to subvert it then and spoil their master plan. That’s what happens when they won’t share their toys.
@jbartus ooh, that’s quite an offer. I have an HTC One M9, running Android 6.0, I use Chrome.
@Thumperchick yay Android. Let me look into it.
@Thumperchick are you open to using Firefox for browsing meh.com on your phone?
@Thumperchick there’s also a browser named Dolphin that supports the add-on I’m looking at right now.
@jbartus very reluctantly.
@Thumperchick I never use the buttons myself, but I do think its* kind of a wild irony that they disappear on a platform where getting to the additional characters for Markdown is a more complicated task. That said, I used to forget which order the brackets and parens went in an md hyperlink, until it occurred to me that we use parens often, and everything would become a link if that was the part for the text. Of course thats not actually how it would parse, but the thought of links everywhere helped me remember, if thats a useful mnemonic!
*Before the grammarians come, I spilled beer on my keyboard last night and dont currently have a functional quotation mark (or backslash, right bracket, plus, or backspace) key.
@brhfl you might find this useful until such time as you replace your keyboard:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/type-without-keyboard#type-without-keyboard=windows-7
Also, if you’re in an area with a BJ’s Wholesale Club they have the rather excellent for the price Logitech MK520 wireless mouse/keyboard combo on sale for $10 off normal price IIRC.
Edit: Cancel that, I think Amazon still beats their price. $34.99 at Amazon
@jbartus Thank you! Im on OS X, which has a readily-available on-screen keyboard, but Id rather just look like an idiot who doesnt know how apostrophes work for a couple of days than use my mouse that much. I have plenty of spare keyboards, just not on me. I should have a temporary solution before the weekend is up.
@brhfl As a third-generation Grammarian, I respectfully suggest you use the onscreen keyboard option for those dysfunctional keys. Thank you in advance.
@hallmike nah more fun this way oh shit there go my shift keys and cmm nd prd h sht thr g ll m vwls
@brhfl
I am so out of my depth on this entire thread that it makes me sad for some reason.
@mfladd
Something about @shawn, @katylava, and @harrison making changes to the site.
@mfladd
Okay so, pursuant to the discussions about a better editor for interacting with meh.com on mobile devices, I’ve prepared the following for @Thumperchick and anyone else who wants a better one-handed experience. This is not to say that the default experience is bad, just that it can be better, so here we go.
Here’s the deal, I’m not an Apple user. I’ve been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, and am very much a power user who is happier with the greater freedoms offered by Android. As such, I can’t guarantee any of this will work on Apple devices, sorry! I have included the best information I can, including links, for Apple users but I can’t verify it on my end so experimentation may be necessary. Sorry Apple users, YMMV here.
What you Need
Unfortunately the default browsers for most phones on the market don’t support browser extensions / add-ons and the only way to override the files at meh.com until @shawn and the team build their own mobile editor (or steal mine, that’d be okay too!) is to use an add-on like Stylish.
You will need the following to accomplish this:
Screenshot
Coded by @jbartus, Inspired by @Thumperchick
Screenshot
Buttons optimized for general use
Installation Instructions
These instructions are written for Firefox for Android, if you’re using Dolphin or iOS, these will probably be good guidelines but not provide exact instructions.
Sorry I’m not sorry! Free labor, take what you get.
Other Information, Tips, Tricks
That’s basically it. If you want to switch between the different ones to try them out you’ll want to install them both and then disable/enable them to suit your needs. Things go very badly if you have them both enabled at once, you’ve been warned.
One important tip/trick that you will probably find handy. In addition to restyling the main comment editor to suit mobile devices, I also made versions for the reply editor, however the reply editor in portrait mode defaults to a feature-light popup editor that I didn’t do anything with. If you want to have a more feature-filled editor for replies, you need to hit reply in landscape mode then rotate your phone into portrait mode. I will look into what can be done with the pop up portrait editor later… maybe…
(I tried to figure out Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey on mobile, couldn’t seem to get them working, here’s a userscript if anyone wants to try: GreasyFork page )
@jbartus thank you for putting this together. I’m thinking you should put this it its own thread, so that any resulting conversation doesn’t hijack this thread.
@Thumperchick done, pretty sure I got it all copied over.
https://meh.com/forum/topics/a-better-editor-for-meh-com-forums-on-mobile-devices