@katylava That is good enough reason for me, but if I had to justify my reasoning with a boss, this would not fly. And actually, being in charge of usability for my company's intranet, I am curious to understand the reasoning. Like, fo' real fo' real.
How about a feature where you click a button on the side that jumps you to the latest reply or comment you haven't read yet? That way you can jump vast amounts of space without have to scroll scroll scroll...
@BillLehecka I asked for that too in the Site Enhancements thread. I wouldn't think it would be too hard to implement. Maybe they'll surprise us today with it!
Ok, if no pagination, can you at least set image heights in the html? It's super annoying to try to read posts on a long topic, only to have the page jump every time an image finishes loading.
@phatmass I hope someone sees this. There's a problem here that needs to be solved. I get why pagination is evil on Slate and Buzzfeed, but this forum is neither and there seem to be usability issues if you treat it as if it is.
@shawn Try getting whomever is against pagination to read the fuku 2 thread using something nice and slow to load that page… (then duck for cover). That might change a few minds. Even making a new page after 300 or so comments would help.
@phatmass I'm curious how this would work if the images are hotlinked? How would the code know what an external image height was before it was rendered in the browser? I mean, unless all image heights were just set to some arbitrary value, but that would make them look wonky.
@jsh139 we'd look them up and cache the sizes at the time the post is made. would work most of the time, at least until the size of the hotlinked image is changed at the original source. long term solution is to upload all the images to our CDN.
@Kidsandliz yeah, i agree the fuku topics have gotten so popular that we need to do something. it's easy to say "pagination" is a solution, but there may be others.
@shawn A temp solution might be a moderator step in, start a new thread, refer people to the new one at the bottom of the old one (and insert it at the top of the old one too) - that worked this time referring people to the new one - use some sort of name add on that makes sense like part 1, part 2 - with only a few new comments added in the old one once the new link was up… Manual but effective. Maybe do it when you hit whatever number of posts (as the number of photos, etc. may affect that) that makes it slow to load?
@Ignorant No because someone would be starting a new thread and just manually putting in the link you'd have to click on, to send them over rather than having it happen automatically. Then all the other stuff they have going on that they said they would lose like marking unread comments would still work. This would be new thread and linking by a clickable url (like what was done with the two fuku 2 threads). Not pages in the same thread.
@shawn Did you folks already implement this? I just opened the Fuku 2 thread to read about the safe, and it flew open to the right spot all the way down the bottom... and stayed there. Maybe stuff was still cached from the last time I opened that page.
On the index page, is at the top of the page, so I clicked the "a minute ago" link to see the new comment and it dumped me into the Ukrainian comments from yesterday afternoon. Not evil, but not nice either.
@harrison It's summer. You can kick back. Let the minions maim each other. Take a few notes. Then unleash a few plagues on us once we've stopped watching again.
I vote emphatic no for pagination. For God's sake, next you'll be wanting them to switch to phpBB. A "next unread" button that floats at the top on the left or right would be plenty cool, though.
I mean, that little outburst, that's really not like me, but holy crap, the Fuku 2 thread... I opened it in a background thread and thought to myself that I'll just catch up elsewhere here while that settled down... finished some other new comments, went back to the Fuku 2 thread, started to read... and the moment I reached for PgDn, yeah, you know it. It had the comic timing of a comic with really good timing, except I couldn't appreciate it because I was running in here with my little outburst. Sigh.
Before we roll this out on meh.com we're going to do a bit of testing on our less trafficked forum over at mediocre.com. We're still tweaking a few parameters, but in a nutshell here's how this works:
When a topic starts getting a lot of activity we put the topic in "tl;dr mode" which hides some of the older content to make room for the younger content. We've added a little button you can click to show all the old comments and replies.
We have to make a few exceptions to tl;dr mode (like when you open a permalink to an old comment or a reply) but we think it should help bring some relief to these fukubukuro topics with comment and reply counts approaching 1000+.
@shawn This one worked well. It didn't have many photos in it though which, in my experience, is one thing that causes the page to jump all over the place while it slowly loads. I 'd like to test it in the fuku 2 thread once that one is less active. That would be the real test - approaching 900 posts and a ton of photos.
@shawn the button that you have there telling people to see all responses click there perhaps make the background color a bit darker so it stands out more? Or make it black with white type? Skimming quickly I basically overlooked it at first glance.
@shawn How is "old" defined? In a Fuku thread, there will be a lot of images grouped in a fairly short amount of time. Would that bring back periodic loading problems?
@shawn This looks great. I agree that it'll be good to see it in action on a photo-filled post, but I really appreciate the effort so far and have high hopes for both the idea and the execution. Kudos -- have one of @snapster's cigars (or octopuses) and take the rest of the day off.
@shawn It looks great on the fuku 2 page, and the way new comments vibrate is very cool in a Mediocre way. I'm not going to look a gift goat in the mouth, but one thought is that maybe along with the "View All" option, maybe there could be a "I just missed a day" option. Or maybe, since the back end knows when we last visited anyway, hide everything up to that last visit. But that's all thinking out loud and just the existence of this makes me think you'll find a cool way to do something like that.
@Thumperchick Yes that worked well there too and it had more photos. But again I was skimming looking for the button and didn't see it the first time as it doesn't stand out much. I would imagine that once a thread is longer and people have read the beginning they are going to do what I did which is skim looking for the button.
@Thumperchick Yeah I think the solution is make the button black and the print in it white then it will jump out at you. Unless, of course, they can make it in color then make it green or red or yellow or something nice and bright… Yeah purple - hardly anything posted is purple (of course now that I say this a bunch of purple will bleed into this thread LOL)
I vote for uploading the images, because I miss 50+% of them anyway--and who the hell knows if I'll see any particular image, because gods know where it might have come from that my network admins hate. And having to go back and half catch up on the threads I read while goofing off at work is a major pain in the ass.
I appreciate that the https://meh.com/forum/topics/fuku-2-unboxing-boogaloo thread got VERRY large and the statement, “This topic's getting long, we hid some things.” Was true. But, Now how am I going to find out what happened to @Wilstev and his safe cracking skills? The really long threads are a problem but how do we find the things you hid? @ shawn Is this what you mean by “Introducing the public beta of "tl;dr” (BTW what is T L D R?) My problem is I don’t see any buttons with my screen reader. It has them labled as frames? If I manage to get a “frame” activated what is supposed to happen? Should they load in a new window? What browser do you all recommend to view the site? And I really hope you are not going to say chrome. I can’t use it at all!
@silverqueen I'm going to try and make this feature more screenreader friendly. Give me a couple hours. There's going to be a link on the page you can click on that says "This topic's getting long, we hid some things. VIEW ALL COMMENTS AND REPLIES."
@shawn On today's product thread the button doesn't work either (the test ones did so it is the button not me). Also I think it would be wise to place the button below the product information and not cut that off. People will be ticked to have to load the entire thread just to see that. And if they button is broken, like this one is, they won't get to see any of that at all
@Kidsandliz one thing that helps is that we don't enable tl;dr mode if it's the first time you've read the topic. On deal topics that means you have to read the crappy specs at least once.
@shawn will ALL unread comments be visible without clicking the button (because when you click the button the unread comments get "marked" as read whether or not you have read them yet (the same as if you reply - then unread comments lose the unread markings which is a pain if you reply to a comment before you have read all the unread ones..., or the same as if you refresh the page then they go away too)?
@JonT woops - didn't see this before I posted about the broken button - my comment on placement of it - shawn alert on that one - is still relevant though.
@shawn@JonT @everybodyelseatmeh If there was a beer.meh.com, I'd buy y'all a round for this one. It's a great idea and you folks are really throwing down to iron out the kinks. In the meantime, buy yourselves a round and thank me for it... it's just like the real thing except for the cost.
@JonT I apologize for this ahead of time, I usually can ignore it, but I just can't help myself. I was sorry I wasn't part of this thread, but if you have to be bare, that's okay, I'm gone.
@shawn@jont Thank you!! That is very awesome! I appreciate your help :-) I can be patient. At least for little while ha ha I am just ever so curious! All of you guys are just so very funny!😊
@jont@shawn now the button is working on today's speaker HOWEVER you have a new problem. It came up when I clicked the button to test it but also had unread comment(s). When I clicked on the button it made the new comment markers on the right go away and I hadn't read them yet. While I know the solution is to read the unread comments first and then click on the button, I doubt some will do that for fear there are new comments that are hidden. Will there be unread comments hidden or is the button such that all unread comments will be visible without clicking? Also thanks for moving the button to after the product information.
And another one, but this is absolutely no dealbreaker. Mobile Safari won't let me reply or edit a message. when trying to use the Editing requires deletion. A window pops up are you sure?. No big deal just thought I'd say so. By the way what does the acronym mean?
Thank you for the enlightenment! Now I'm kind of getting in the loop. Ha ha.@editorkid and a thanks to the new goat @thumperchick for stopping @editorkid ! ☺️😀
@curtise That's something we considered but if you're like me and really need to see every single post for now the solution is to just click off tl;dr mode. This could be implemented in the future though.
@JonT But most of us aren't like you. Most of us want to see all of the unread replies without clicking off. I find it counter intuitive to manage a feature for 1% instead of 99% when all are using it.
Couldn't it wait until there are 40 or 50 comments before truncation? It's a great idea, but it seems like too much is missing. Feels like a too-short haircut.
@shawn Or maybe make the TL;DR threshold something user-selectable in the account preferences? I may only want to be TL;DRed after 100 posts, while someone else might want it after 10. Just a thought...
Also, I'm not really sure that's it's making a difference with the load times. I was in one of the Fuku threads and it took about 10 seconds or so to fully load. Then I clicked the button and and the rest of the thread popped in fully loaded. So, is it still loading the whole thread, just hiding it unless we actually ask to see it?
@PurplePawprints there's been some improvements, but we still have some performance optimizations to make once we've finally decided this is the direction we're going.
pagination is horrible. we hates it.
@katylava PgDn is also horrible and we also hates it.
@katylava Maybe if you sell some of these, we can keep reading down to the bottom of these pages...
@editorkid "Hey, Miss Doesn't-find-me-attractive-sexually-anymore, I just tripled my productivity!"
@katylava That is good enough reason for me, but if I had to justify my reasoning with a boss, this would not fly. And actually, being in charge of usability for my company's intranet, I am curious to understand the reasoning. Like, fo' real fo' real.
@phatmass we'd have to change the way we determine which comments/replies are unread... likely with a huge impact on performance.
@katylava Why? Hate it enough to not even make it an option?
pagination sounds like a dirty word and i'll not have it on this pristine website.
How about a feature where you click a button on the side that jumps you to the latest reply or comment you haven't read yet? That way you can jump vast amounts of space without have to scroll scroll scroll...
@BillLehecka I asked for that too in the Site Enhancements thread. I wouldn't think it would be too hard to implement. Maybe they'll surprise us today with it!
@jsh139 and maybe the sky will rain money...
@Kidsandliz if we get to choose, I prefer your suggestion
@BillLehecka You can already do that from the main forum page. Click where it says how long ago a comment was made.
@jqubed I think he then wants to jump to the other unread comments in the same thread...not just the last comment.
@snapster Can this be one of the VMP enhancements?
@DaveInSoCal Guess you don't wanna use my browser extension? :( It does exactly this.
@jsh139 Does it work on mobile? 90% of the time that's how I'm checking this site.
@DaveInSoCal Unfortunately, no. Desktop only for now :(
@DaveInSoCal I should clarify, at least not on iOS. Not sure if the Chrome web store works for Android or not?
@jsh139 I'm android and I thought I just saw something about chrome crossing that line now. I'll look into it.
@DaveInSoCal Cool, check it out and let me know. I'll be psyched if it works on mobile. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unofficial-mehcom-forum-u/klpmjcpadmaanbiehibhppmehkpcalbl?hl=en-US
@jsh139 It offers to save it for the next time I login on a desktop.
@hamjudo Which mobile device? My iPhone says the same thing.
@jsh139 Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 with the default Chrome browser.
@hamjudo Boo. Well, I guess it only works on Desktop, then.
Ok, if no pagination, can you at least set image heights in the html? It's super annoying to try to read posts on a long topic, only to have the page jump every time an image finishes loading.
@phatmass I hope someone sees this. There's a problem here that needs to be solved. I get why pagination is evil on Slate and Buzzfeed, but this forum is neither and there seem to be usability issues if you treat it as if it is.
@phatmass THIS PLEASE
@shawn @katylava and whatever other coders I'm forgetting because it's Monday, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO THIS
@phatmass yeah, i think this sounds like a reasonable idea. has a couple negative side effects but still probably worth it. we'll look into it.
@shawn Try getting whomever is against pagination to read the fuku 2 thread using something nice and slow to load that page… (then duck for cover). That might change a few minds. Even making a new page after 300 or so comments would help.
@phatmass I'm curious how this would work if the images are hotlinked? How would the code know what an external image height was before it was rendered in the browser? I mean, unless all image heights were just set to some arbitrary value, but that would make them look wonky.
@jsh139 we'd look them up and cache the sizes at the time the post is made. would work most of the time, at least until the size of the hotlinked image is changed at the original source. long term solution is to upload all the images to our CDN.
@Kidsandliz yeah, i agree the fuku topics have gotten so popular that we need to do something. it's easy to say "pagination" is a solution, but there may be others.
@shawn A temp solution might be a moderator step in, start a new thread, refer people to the new one at the bottom of the old one (and insert it at the top of the old one too) - that worked this time referring people to the new one - use some sort of name add on that makes sense like part 1, part 2 - with only a few new comments added in the old one once the new link was up… Manual but effective. Maybe do it when you hit whatever number of posts (as the number of photos, etc. may affect that) that makes it slow to load?
@shawn Thanks. That makes sense. I was wondering how you would do with on-the-fly. Storing the dimensions makes sense.
@Kidsandliz isn't this the same as having pages?
@Ignorant No because someone would be starting a new thread and just manually putting in the link you'd have to click on, to send them over rather than having it happen automatically. Then all the other stuff they have going on that they said they would lose like marking unread comments would still work. This would be new thread and linking by a clickable url (like what was done with the two fuku 2 threads). Not pages in the same thread.
@shawn Did you folks already implement this? I just opened the Fuku 2 thread to read about the safe, and it flew open to the right spot all the way down the bottom... and stayed there. Maybe stuff was still cached from the last time I opened that page.
@editorkid yeah, works great once you've loaded the images in a previous page load
On the index page,
is at the top of the page, so I clicked the "a minute ago" link to see the new comment and it dumped me into the Ukrainian comments from yesterday afternoon. Not evil, but not nice either.
@editorkid not evil? Dang, I'm off my game.
@harrison It's summer. You can kick back. Let the minions maim each other. Take a few notes. Then unleash a few plagues on us once we've stopped watching again.
I vote emphatic no for pagination. For God's sake, next you'll be wanting them to switch to phpBB. A "next unread" button that floats at the top on the left or right would be plenty cool, though.
I bet you folks against pagination were pissed when books started replacing scrolls.
@phatmass wadda ya mean scrolls…? Is that a new technology? I am still using the stone tablets.
I mean, that little outburst, that's really not like me, but holy crap, the Fuku 2 thread... I opened it in a background thread and thought to myself that I'll just catch up elsewhere here while that settled down... finished some other new comments, went back to the Fuku 2 thread, started to read... and the moment I reached for PgDn, yeah, you know it. It had the comic timing of a comic with really good timing, except I couldn't appreciate it because I was running in here with my little outburst. Sigh.
Introducing the public beta of "tl;dr mode"
Before we roll this out on meh.com we're going to do a bit of testing on our less trafficked forum over at mediocre.com. We're still tweaking a few parameters, but in a nutshell here's how this works:
When a topic starts getting a lot of activity we put the topic in "tl;dr mode" which hides some of the older content to make room for the younger content. We've added a little button you can click to show all the old comments and replies.
We have to make a few exceptions to tl;dr mode (like when you open a permalink to an old comment or a reply) but we think it should help bring some relief to these fukubukuro topics with comment and reply counts approaching 1000+.
A good topic to try this out on is VMP: https://mediocre.com/forum/topics/vmp
People who might be interested in trying it out would include @editorkid, @kidsandliz, @phatmass, @ssteve, @ignorant, @jsh139, @daveinsocal, @hamjudo, @carl669, @billlehecka, @jqubed, @kleineheh
@shawn very cool! I love how the community here has an active part in shaping the site.
@shawn would this be because we have "big mouths"? LOL
Thanks @shawn and crew.
@Ignorant @shawn Yes. Thank you. This will really help!
@shawn This one worked well. It didn't have many photos in it though which, in my experience, is one thing that causes the page to jump all over the place while it slowly loads. I 'd like to test it in the fuku 2 thread once that one is less active. That would be the real test - approaching 900 posts and a ton of photos.
@shawn the button that you have there telling people to see all responses click there perhaps make the background color a bit darker so it stands out more? Or make it black with white type? Skimming quickly I basically overlooked it at first glance.
@shawn fucking awesome. I loves it. Once I've clicked to see everything is there a way to bring tl;dr back?
@DaveInSoCal I wondered that too... F5 does it.
@shawn How is "old" defined? In a Fuku thread, there will be a lot of images grouped in a fairly short amount of time. Would that bring back periodic loading problems?
@shawn I approve. Works on my Nexus 5.
@shawn i'm a fan. i also echo @DaveInSoCal's comment about making it stand out more. i also passed right by during my first scroll through.
@shawn This looks great. I agree that it'll be good to see it in action on a photo-filled post, but I really appreciate the effort so far and have high hopes for both the idea and the execution. Kudos -- have one of @snapster's cigars (or octopuses) and take the rest of the day off.
@shawn It looks great on the fuku 2 page, and the way new comments vibrate is very cool in a Mediocre way. I'm not going to look a gift goat in the mouth, but one thought is that maybe along with the "View All" option, maybe there could be a "I just missed a day" option. Or maybe, since the back end knows when we last visited anyway, hide everything up to that last visit. But that's all thinking out loud and just the existence of this makes me think you'll find a cool way to do something like that.
Another thread that greatly benefited from TL:DR:
https://mediocre.com/forum/topics/the-end-of-seligman-pics-stats-and-a-wrap-up
(I still think of @marklog when I read TL:DR)
@Thumperchick Yes that worked well there too and it had more photos. But again I was skimming looking for the button and didn't see it the first time as it doesn't stand out much. I would imagine that once a thread is longer and people have read the beginning they are going to do what I did which is skim looking for the button.
@Kidsandliz I missed the button too, I had to go look for it, because the main post was long.
@Thumperchick Yeah I think the solution is make the button black and the print in it white then it will jump out at you. Unless, of course, they can make it in color then make it green or red or yellow or something nice and bright… Yeah purple - hardly anything posted is purple (of course now that I say this a bunch of purple will bleed into this thread LOL)
@Kidsandliz
So uh, I guess you're testing this here on meh?
@Thumperchick yep I'm seeing it too. Fuku threads still take a while to load due to all the pics, but better than loading the entire thing.
Also noticing the shaking comments.
I vote for uploading the images, because I miss 50+% of them anyway--and who the hell knows if I'll see any particular image, because gods know where it might have come from that my network admins hate. And having to go back and half catch up on the threads I read while goofing off at work is a major pain in the ass.
I appreciate that the https://meh.com/forum/topics/fuku-2-unboxing-boogaloo thread got VERRY large and the statement, “This topic's getting long, we hid some things.” Was true. But, Now how am I going to find out what happened to @Wilstev and his safe cracking skills?
The really long threads are a problem but how do we find the things you hid?
@ shawn Is this what you mean by “Introducing the public beta of "tl;dr” (BTW what is T L D R?)
My problem is I don’t see any buttons with my screen reader. It has them labled as frames? If I manage to get a “frame” activated what is supposed to happen? Should they load in a new window?
What browser do you all recommend to view the site? And I really hope you are not going to say chrome. I can’t use it at all!
And the button doesn't work for me. Clicking it does nothing.
@silverqueen I'm going to try and make this feature more screenreader friendly. Give me a couple hours. There's going to be a link on the page you can click on that says "This topic's getting long, we hid some things. VIEW ALL COMMENTS AND REPLIES."
@shawn On today's product thread the button doesn't work either (the test ones did so it is the button not me). Also I think it would be wise to place the button below the product information and not cut that off. People will be ticked to have to load the entire thread just to see that. And if they button is broken, like this one is, they won't get to see any of that at all
@Kidsandliz one thing that helps is that we don't enable tl;dr mode if it's the first time you've read the topic. On deal topics that means you have to read the crappy specs at least once.
@shawn will ALL unread comments be visible without clicking the button (because when you click the button the unread comments get "marked" as read whether or not you have read them yet (the same as if you reply - then unread comments lose the unread markings which is a pain if you reply to a comment before you have read all the unread ones..., or the same as if you refresh the page then they go away too)?
@silverqueen @Thumperchick @hallmike @errybodyelseinthisthread
We're working out some kinks with the new tl;dr mode that we hope to have fixed by later tonight, so bare with us for a bit.
@JonT woops - didn't see this before I posted about the broken button - my comment on placement of it - shawn alert on that one - is still relevant though.
@shawn @JonT @everybodyelseatmeh If there was a beer.meh.com, I'd buy y'all a round for this one. It's a great idea and you folks are really throwing down to iron out the kinks. In the meantime, buy yourselves a round and thank me for it... it's just like the real thing except for the cost.
@JonT does tl dr mode warrant an inside joke special icon of sorts?
@JonT I apologize for this ahead of time, I usually can ignore it, but I just can't help myself. I was sorry I wasn't part of this thread, but if you have to be bare, that's okay, I'm gone.
@JonT "bare with us"???? I've heard of dress down Fridays, but no clothes Wednesday is new to me.
@marklog I prefer ifmd as an inside meh joke for tl;dr
@shawn @jont Thank you!! That is very awesome! I appreciate your help :-) I can be patient. At least for little while ha ha I am just ever so curious! All of you guys are just so very funny!😊
@jont @shawn now the button is working on today's speaker HOWEVER you have a new problem. It came up when I clicked the button to test it but also had unread comment(s). When I clicked on the button it made the new comment markers on the right go away and I hadn't read them yet. While I know the solution is to read the unread comments first and then click on the button, I doubt some will do that for fear there are new comments that are hidden. Will there be unread comments hidden or is the button such that all unread comments will be visible without clicking? Also thanks for moving the button to after the product information.
And another one, but this is absolutely no dealbreaker. Mobile Safari won't let me reply or edit a message. when trying to use the Editing requires deletion. A window pops up are you sure?. No big deal just thought I'd say so. By the way what does the acronym mean?
@silverqueen TL;DR is Too Long; Didn't Read. I wish I'd been able to come up with some soul-crushing fake, but @thumperchick stopped me.
@editorkid Sorry about that.
@editorkid I thought it was troll letter, don't read! It's a warning.
Thank you for the enlightenment! Now I'm kind of getting in the loop. Ha ha.@editorkid and a thanks to the new goat @thumperchick for stopping @editorkid ! ☺️😀
I am personally of the opinion that bits of threads that I haven't yet read should never be hidden by the magic we hid some things message.
@curtise That's something we considered but if you're like me and really need to see every single post for now the solution is to just click off tl;dr mode. This could be implemented in the future though.
@JonT Yes please :)
@JonT But most of us aren't like you. Most of us want to see all of the unread replies without clicking off. I find it counter intuitive to manage a feature for 1% instead of 99% when all are using it.
@Thumperchick LIKE. 2 thumbs up. YES YES YES
@Kidsandliz Agree
Couldn't it wait until there are 40 or 50 comments before truncation? It's a great idea, but it seems like too much is missing. Feels like a too-short haircut.
@KDemo yeah, I could see that. we're going to bump up the tl;dr threshold to 50 comments
@shawn -See how you are? That's just another reason why I love you guys.
@shawn Or maybe make the TL;DR threshold something user-selectable in the account preferences? I may only want to be TL;DRed after 100 posts, while someone else might want it after 10. Just a thought...
For what it's worth, I'm not having the issue where clicking the button unmarks all the unread posts.
Also, I'm not really sure that's it's making a difference with the load times. I was in one of the Fuku threads and it took about 10 seconds or so to fully load. Then I clicked the button and and the rest of the thread popped in fully loaded. So, is it still loading the whole thread, just hiding it unless we actually ask to see it?
@PurplePawprints there's been some improvements, but we still have some performance optimizations to make once we've finally decided this is the direction we're going.
@PurplePawprints Maybe they fixed that then?
@Kidsandliz Maybe, but for me anyway, it's been working correctly since they first implemented it.
@PurplePawprints Hmm I use a mac using safari. Maybe that is part of the issue...
@Kidsandliz Problem with skimming posts, not reading them. I thought you said "I use a magic marker" and I'm thinking WTF? lol