Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Policy & Help >

Posting suggestion

bobotheanticlown

04:18 / 17.06.05

I think that we should have the forum so that if you look at a topic, you not only see the name of the topics starter, but also that of the alst person to post under it

paranoidwriter waves hello

04:33 / 17.06.05

I think it's a good idea (sincerely). That way everyone will finally see there's a new, undisputed "Thread Killer" in town. Including this post, I reckon I'm on at least five at the moment, and in some of them I've even finished with a few questions. Know what I mean? Are am I confusing things again?

But seriously, on the plus side as one person may appear to be becoming the new all powerful thread killer, any other contenders might see this and could step in and intervene, diminishing the thread-loss, or fueling a weird ego-competition. Also, come to think of it, this could be a bit too much info, etc. e.g. it could make it easier and quicker for anybody to follow any of us around the board....

09:08 / 17.06.05

Why not just look at the threads in question?

10:40 / 17.06.05

i get rsi if i click on too many links.

11:05 / 17.06.05

It's just as easy to remember the time of your last visit to a thread as it is the name of the last person to post to a thread, isn't it?

I don't understand the request, really - how is displaying the name of the last member to post going to help you to remember whether or not you've already contributed to the thread? Unless you're aiming to kill every topic that you post to, it isn't.

And if you honestly can't remember if you've been involved in a thread, then that'd seem to suggest a fairly major problem with your memory, rather than a failing of the board, and is possibly best discussed with your GP. Either that or you might want to consider making your posts more memorable.

All Acting Regiment

11:36 / 17.06.05

Barbelith can seem to be lacking in information you're used to from other message boards, but there's usually a reason. In this case it's to get you to open the thread and read through it in the hope it might stimulate a new idea in you.

This might not happen if you're capable of passing it over because you know who the last poster was. Thus, the parts of the board that may seem under explained are often there to make you think more.

13:20 / 17.06.05

It's just as easy to remember the time of your last visit to a thread as it is the name of the last person to post to a thread, isn't it?

Well, no, not really. If I've been following a thread I can often remember who last posted on it, because I've read their post. I don't pay much attention to *when* I read it. It's also handy if you were the last person to post, and you want to know if somebody has replied.

If you only visit occasionally, go through all the threads you're interested in, then go and do something else, it's not particularly useful. If you have the board open all the time and flick between it and your work, it is. I use the feature all the time on other boards, that and "show new posts".

rising and revolving

15:13 / 17.06.05

This might not happen if you're capable of passing it over because you know who the last poster was. Thus, the parts of the board that may seem under explained are often there to make you think more.

This is both hilarious and a bit of a fib.

Honestly, I'm all for the process of driving usage of a board through the technological implementation. However, there are all sorts of things about Barbelith that are actively user hostile. People frequently mention them. Then other people say "It's not a bug, it's a feature," or "Is your memory so poor that you cannot recall which threads you're participating in?" or something else which demonstrates they haven't seen a message board since 1995.

However, the ultimate answer is the same. Tom has no time and does not wish for other people to be involved with the board mechanics. Discussion about anything that requires changes to technology is futile.

15:34 / 17.06.05

"Is your memory so poor that you cannot recall which threads you're participating in?" or something else which demonstrates they haven't seen a message board since 1995.

Not at all. bobo's request simply makes no sense - I can't understand how being able to view the name of the last person to post to a thread will help you remember whether or not you've also posted to that thread. Not unless nobody else has contributed to it since you.

What would help hir in finding those topics to which ze's posted would be something along the lines of a 'subscribe to thread' or 'mark thread' option. Most boards that I'm a member of will only let me find all posts by username, where the username is mine, when I'm logged out. Otherwise, clicking on my username takes me to my control panel or similar.

rising and revolving

16:00 / 17.06.05

Spatula, I would suggest you don't actually know how to use all the functions of the other message boards you're a member of. Generally you have (at the very least) the option to subscribe to threads, and you should have a "all threads by this user" button on the control panel you go to. All of the popular board software packages default to having the ability to track your threads *somewhere* - which is not to say that someone may not have intentionally turned it off. However, it seems unlikely.

And I have no debate as to whether Bobos suggestion makes sense. All I was taking issue with was your indication that inability to recall which threads you're involved in is a failing on the part of the user, as opposed to the software.

As I said, the software figured this out 10 years ago. Blaming this sort of thing on the users (as opposed to a simple "That's how it is, and it's not changing - you have to work around it") is the kind of childish approach to interface design that ruled the early days of the 'net, but which has thankfully faded into obscurity in recent years.

Except, of course, for here. Where you're a loud proponent of prehistory, bless ya.

rising and revolving

16:07 / 17.06.05

Not at all. Most boards that I'm a member of will only let me find all posts by username, where the username is mine, when I'm logged out. Otherwise, clicking on my username takes me to my control panel or similar.

Further, if that really is how the other boards you're on work, then they're broken. It's beyond simple bad UI, it's just broken.

So, your arguement that we're only somewhat less functional than a broken message board holds not a great deal of water, I fear.

16:44 / 17.06.05

And I have no debate as to whether Bobos suggestion makes sense.

Which was the entire point of my original post and simply suggests that you're now making something out of nothing.

All Acting Regiment

19:23 / 17.06.05

Whatever, I still vote that Barbelith gets kept clear of all the dinky little gimmicks you see on other message boards. Maybe by doing that we end up a bit less user-friendly, but there you go.

22:39 / 17.06.05

If I remember rightly, there was a conscious decision (on Tom and Cal's part; can't recall whether or not it was up for discussion) to avoid several of these features on the grounds that they facilitated/encouraged dogging/stalking ie. following individual posters around the board rather than contributing to threads on the basis of subject matter.

12:35 / 18.06.05

maybe i missed an edit...
bobo only asked for the name of the last poster to be visble.
did he say why before?
while little use for reminding you if you had posted, it would be a good way to see if a discussion had progressed.

12:40 / 18.06.05

It's in the abstract, toks.

17:22 / 19.06.05

If I remember rightly, there was a conscious decision (on Tom and Cal's part; can't recall whether or not it was up for discussion) to avoid several of these features

Yes, as far as I recall too - I think it was a design decision as well.

I don't agree with them, though, and the lack of certain information resources means that I use Barbelith a lot less than I otherwise would. The RSS feeds are there, which is good, but they don't really integrate particularly well yet with a browser-based environment. (On Safari they're cool but I don't use Safari at work.) The harder it is to find out which areas are actually active and when a discussion I'm involved in has been added to, the less likely I am to bother.

I don't want to make a fuss about this, like I've got some sort of intrinsic right to have Barbelith how I want it - just stating what happens.

All Acting Regiment

19:50 / 19.06.05

Why not have a "Reply Number" on the side of each post within a thread, perhaps just under the username? Then you can look at that when you've posted it, and remember it. Then, when you look at the number of replies (before you open the thread) you see if the number's higher than your Reply Number, and that tells you if someone's replied since you did. It also only adds a small set of digits to the board design.

22:59 / 19.06.05

Yeah, but then why not just click back to the forum front page once you've replied? There you'll see the number of that reply, plus the time you made it. (The date and time of the last post is the most obvious way of seeing how recently a thread's been posted to, isn't it?) I don't understand how listing the last username or numbering posts in-thread would be an improvement on what we've got.

07:42 / 20.06.05

surely you mean you dont see how it would be enough of an improvement to bother? it's clearly going to make it easier to see if it has advanced, removing the need to remember post numbers.

08:19 / 20.06.05

Having to remember post numbers would be the same as having to remember times.

The simplest and least obtrusive thing would be just to have, say, the thread title appear in bold if somebody had posted on it since you last looked at it, or a nice little icon appear beside it or something.

I'm not particularly hung up on "last poster", it's just one method of achieving something - although it could be useful in terms of knowing when somebody has replied to a question you've asked. (Not very, though, since they could have posted and then somebody else posted directly after them while you weren't looking.)

10:54 / 20.06.05

Think the main problem with any of these suggestions is that they need someone to code them and Cal is not currently doing development work for Barbelith. Tom can do a lot of stuff but he's not a hard core programmer.

Could we use the Lazyweb if we had some carrots to offer budding young programming hotshots? Of course if we had a way to tempt a bunch of programming types onto Barbelith they would probably do it for free.

11:26 / 20.06.05

There are at least a couple of PHP programmers already on the site, including myself, who've mentioned being willing to help (I don't PHP professionally but I can certainly make minor changes and write functions to be plugged in).

14:06 / 20.06.05

Sorry dude I'd forgotten about you, who else is there out there?

14:16 / 20.06.05

uh, I've forgotten

I'm sure at least one other person mentioned it on a thread somewhere in Policy, though.

rising and revolving

16:17 / 20.06.05

Which was the entire point of my original post and simply suggests that you're now making something out of nothing.

Rubbish. I was responding to the part of your post where you suggested that people who couldn't remember which posts they'd participated in had a medical disorder. Now, that may not have been "the entire point" of your original post, but it was certainly one of the points you made along the way. And it was completely seperate to the suggestion made by Bobo, and indicated you thought there was no problem, nor any reason to consider solutions. With which position I disagree - I'm in this weird place where I feel software should actually make the user experience more pleasant, you know?

Personally, I'd like the bolding of threads that have had action since you were last here. But again, I'm not holding my breath.

20:46 / 20.06.05

The software would clearly allow us to have knacky little avatars, teentastic signatures, smart little quote boxes, and whole parades of dancing bananas but I don't think we need them here just because there's software that can do it. Hell, there's probably software that would write my posts for me.

Some of these functions we have had in the past, in other incarnations of the board, before we graduated to our current prehistoric [sic] stage. I can't think of any that I miss, although there will no doubt be other versions of the Lith down the line that will incorporate new functionality. There's usually a pretty full to and fro here in the Policy when Tom has major change under way.

rising and revolving

23:25 / 20.06.05

Wow. We're at the point where people are flaming my spelling. Honestly, that's the sort of thing I'd think would be more likely to happen on the sorts of avatar laden sig filled boards of which you speak. Or, you know, anywhere 14 year olds gather.

When I say software should improve the user experience, I mean exactly that. Usability is a good thing, and in no way synonymous with avatars and teenagers.

I'm not quite sure why you're opposed to more usability. If it's merely the common-or-garden arrogance that considers "If I don't use this function, it can have no use at all," then that's one thing. However, if you actually have some point and wish to engage with the content of my post, feel free. I'll be sure and slip a few mispelled words in for you to prevent you from straining yourself by so doing, though.

23:39 / 20.06.05

Well, "usability" is a subjective thing, isn't it? I remember the early days of the Nexus/Barbelith, when Tom used off-the-peg software, and experimented periodically with different functions, many of which have been namechecked here (Most Recent Posts By X, highlighting threads with new contributions), etc., etc. Personally speaking, I think my own "user experience" was enhanced when things were simplified - but I probably count as one of those happy dinosaurs.

Perhaps you would be better off emailing your ideas/objections direct to Tom.

rising and revolving

23:56 / 20.06.05

True enough - and I'd do that, except (and I think I raised this upthread) there's not really time for new features in Toms schedule at the moment. And I don't feel "find new posts" is a huge priority.

But gosh, it would be nice.

Honestly, while usability is somewhat subjective, it's much like design in this regard. There are solid principles that drive good design, and good usability. With rare exceptions, bad usability is simply bad usability.

Now, what we have at the moment works. So it's "good enough" - and we're not getting changes, so it's easily dealt with. I just get frustrated when I see people treating this as an optimal situation (or one that we collectively chose to be in) rather than simply the place we're stuck.

No offense to Tom, but this iteration of the board would have benefitted from some more post implementation dev cycles, as would every software project since the dawn of time, for that matter. It didn't get them, which is why people often raise their heads and suggest things to make life a little easier - generally without realising why that's not likely.

Personally, I think it's a shame that as an experiment in evolving board technology driving it's community (and vice versa) Barbelith has been stagnant for so long. Fortunately, there's much left when you take that framework away.

06:10 / 21.06.05

I didn't flame your spelling, Sylph. I was poking fun at your hyperbole.

I disagree with you and was expressing my opinion. It's allowed.

rising and revolving

12:18 / 21.06.05

Ooops.

Well, that's paranoia for ya.