Topic: Little things that bug you/me about the forum - page 2. (Read 2658 times)

I don't think I've mentioned it in this topic yet, but a "split quote" button would be great. On a keyboard, I type "[/quote]....[quote]" in less than 2 seconds, but on mobile, it takes about 2 days of clicking through the different keyboards.

No problem. (I think the previous suggestion has run its course, anyway; I'll either implement it in a way that doesn't affect desktop users, or, more likely, put it behind a new setting.)

I saw. It's a nice suggestion.

I'm a desktop user, so it's not always easy for me to appreciate how much more difficult certain things must be for mobile users. But, it's easy for me to imagine that trimming quotes must be a real pain in the ass.

I'll think carefully about your idea. Thanks for sharing it.

(The below thoughts aren't directed at you, they're just me thinking about your suggestion, and ranting at nobody in particular.)

I'd like to do something about this (assisted quote-trimming), but I'm not sure what...

The thing is, Bitcointalk is really awkward (for me) to work on. I don't have any privileges that an ordinary user wouldn't have: I don't have special access to code, theymos, or anything else. I'm literally just a dude with this download.

When a suggestion like this comes up, I (against my better judgment, because it's normally a waste of time) tend to think of the problem first in terms of what I'm capable of doing (that is, without regard for outside constraints): in this case, I think the direction I'd head in, at least initially, is probably a selection-aware quote button that can unparse the selected HTML back into BBCode (and if I couldn't get the unparsing to work well, then I'd probably explore client-side parsing the quotefast BBCode to create some kind of BBCode <-> HTML mapping, and if I couldn't get that to work well, then I'd change the server-side BBCode parser to emit and embed the mapping data).

A from-scratch BBCode (un)parser might seem like way too much work, but it doesn't even register on my pain scale (I mean, on projects where I'm the lead and can control things; for Bitcointalk, where I'm programming mostly in the dark, I wouldn't even attempt it). In fact, it's the kind of work that I really miss having a reason to do: I hate solving problems by reaching for someone else's work or stitching together incompletely understood dependencies (and, more and more, I see modern programmers that couldn't code their way out of a paper bag without pulling in 10 dependencies; ask them to do something like write a C99 program to calculate the image histogram of a PNG file, and most will quickly find their way to a solution, but ask them to repeat that same exercise, only this time using just what's provided by the standard library, and once you get past the why-reinvent-the-wheel stuff, you'll see the blood drain from their face as they realize that they're going to have to admit that they can't even try, at least not in front of you, because without the dependencies/packages they've been relying on, they actually have no idea where to even begin. If you have the good fortune to bump into a programmer that, with the right documentation in front of them, doesn't struggle with the task and is quick to point out that even the standard library can be avoided, then pay them well and keep them close: people that have explored their craft to that extent are rare and the work they're capable of doing basically can't be done by the other types).

Anyway, I'm rambling, the point is that after I've thought about how I would like to solve a problem, I then have to basically throw the full-strength solution out of the window, and instead come up with some kind of tortured compromise that somehow possesses both the property that it doesn't depend sensitively on the surrounding code and the rest of the system (which I can't clearly see), and also the property that it should be small/tidy enough for theymos to be willing to actually set aside the time to review and merge it. Unfortunately, the best that I can do, given those constraints, is often just to find some kind of semi-solution that, all things considered, actually works fairly well, but not perfectly. (And, in those situations, where I've managed to thread the needle just so, it's more than a little annoying when someone who isn't operating under the same constraints that I am, points out that it's not a perfect solution.)

My apologies for not allowing the previous suggestion...cool down before bringing another one up .
I created a thread thread yesterday about having an additional quote button to quote just the poster comment within a pyramid or multiple quote post. this should reduce pyramid quote as most creating pyramid quote only reply the last comment on the hierarchy of pyramid:multiple posts, this shouldn't affect the way users want to quote other they can decide to quote everything or just only the comment of a post and if there's no additional quote / if there's a multiple quote with each quote having a comment below by the poster then  both quote button quote should work the same i.e quote all  (or if you have a better way to implement this), the  second quote should only take effect when there's one or more quote following each other within a post .This is my little contribution i don't know if it will workout...

 

Left-handed people are not going to like it, that's the equivalent of pressing "L" while my right hand is on my mouse.

Good point: there's nothing permanent on Ignoring a user. It will replace having to unignore maybe one in a thousand by having to confirm ignoring someone a thousand times.

Would it be possible to create an option in the user's profile for this "pop-up" to appear or not?
Whoever activates the option would receive this alert. Those who preferred not to have an alert, continued without an alert.

I thought about this in order to please both sides, and perhaps to avoid creating so much complexity in this whole process. Although it would probably require recording more information in the database, which may not be recommended.

I don't like this suggestion also.
Person who was accidently clicking ignore button would now be getting popups more often, and honestly that would annoy me much more than few ignored members.
Only good reason to have confirmation pop-up is when I am permanently deleting/changing something or closing my account.
Having to click confirm often would suck big time for 99.9% of forum members.

I haven't really thought about it (much). What I had in mind when I suggested that was actually treating the "s" key like a modifier (s for "skip"). You mentioned some other confirmation dialogs that you wish weren't there, so it got me thinking about the potential usefulness of a new idiom for that (as in, it would be neat if all the links/buttons on Bitcointalk that lead to confirmation dialogs could be "s-clicked" by the people who don't appreciate hand-holding).

But, thinking just about the original issue: This whole problem only substantially manifests on touch devices, so perhaps the smartest way for me to handle it would be to use an event listener to watch for touch events and then only enable the confirmation dialog when it detects some. (The logic being that with a mouse, there's no real argument to be made that mistakes are happening at a rate that's worth doing anything about.)

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Hmm... I like it, but, I also have some reservations about that idea (which I don't think are worth me getting into right now). I'll keep thinking about it.

In that rare case, you'll see his quotes by other people and can unignore him.

The only downside is that we wouldn't know when a crap poster turned into a really good one if we ignored their profile for too long. It does not always happen, but it happens. I'm not a fan of "Ignore" button

Isn't it obvious? I don't want to waste my time reading their posts.

Like shift-click? Isn't that browser dependent?

No, I'm not sure about that (normally I'm careful to avoid speaking in absolutes, and that sentence could definitely use a "probably").

I mean, my (badly expressed) point wasn't about clicks-per-link across the entire user base, it was more about the fact that I can easily imagine people (like merit sources) getting legitimately annoyed about the merit-sending interaction getting gummed up with a confirmation dialog. But, I struggle to see the same for the ignore-user interaction. Like I said at the end of that point: I'm open to learning about users that feel that this change would make their lives more difficult in a concrete way (that is, how this change will genuinely affect their honestly-considered, realistic forum habits; not abstract arguments about not liking this change in principle).

Yup, I know.

Though, if you read Foxpup's post carefully, you'll see that she's trying to add people in bulk, and is avoiding one-by-one ignoring them using the link we're talking about:


(I mean, that doesn't speak to the other people with thousands of users on their ignore lists, but, it's interesting.)

Haha, yeah. Though, the part I've bolded is actually the problem here. People getting ignored for no reason.

How about this as a (non-funny) compromise: I'll make it so that if you're holding down a certain key when you click the link, the confirmation will be skipped. (And maybe I can add that in a few other spots, too.)

You're welcome. 


What do you think of this?:


Can't we take someone's choice from that checkbox and save it as a cookie so that the browser remembers it just like how the browser keeps us logged in forever after we mark the "Always stay logged in" checkbox when we are logging in to the forum? If it's possible, it will probably be easier and will require less hassle than adding a new setting for letting users disable the dialog box.


Do you guys ignore every shitposter? Why? I don't think it's necessary to ignore every single shitposter in the forum because there are too many, and it's almost an unending road, you ignore 100 and there will be 200 more in the next week.

The best way is to ignore such users the way how you ignore people or things in real life, pass by them, and behave and react like they don't exist. Just don't give them attention, don't read their posts, just have a look and move in. You don't need to read the whole post to understand whether it is going to be good or not, having a general view of it or maybe reading a sentence or two would give you an idea and then you can move on.

The ignore button should be used for absolutely annoying users, those that you know are unbearable to see or watch roaming around in every thread in the forum.

Are you sure about that? I've seen enough posts from people who can no longer view their Ignore list, because it's too long doesn't load before it times out. Most users haven't sent that many sMerits, and I can only hope people use the Ignore list when they read crap. I know there are many more posts that aren't worth reading than there are good posts, so it would make sense to use the Ignore button a lot.
If anything, it may be undervalued. We're now going from the suggestion to bring back the glowing-hot Ignore button (to make it easier to recognize and ignore shitposters), to making it harder to ignore someone.

Okay, here's one: the "delete" button has such a confirmation popup. I'd love to see that removed! I now use my middle-mouse button on the delete button (this deletes the post without popup while opening a new tab which I can click away). I think I've done that accidentally only twice. I'd be totally fine to never see any confirmation popup ever again.

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As a compromise, how about a popup to Unignore someone? Something like: "You ignored this user for a reason. Think about it, think about why you're doing this to yourself again. You don't want to read these posts, don't do it. Are you sure?". Then, charge a fee to unignore the user. Make it more expensive each time you unignore someone

You don't necessarily have to be a traditional pop-up. It could be a prompt question. Basically it is a message that appears in the browser, which must be confirmed. Using this type of command even avoids using javascript. As it only occurs in situations where the user himself intervenes, I don't see a big problem.

That suggestion makes good sense to me. (Thanks for using this thread, BTW.)

I see Loyce isn't happy, so I'll explain why I think this suggestion tracks:

(*) My impression, after digesting many posts going back a long time, is that there really is some kind of ergonomic/usability issue with people accidentally tapping on things from the left-hand-side of their screens as they're scrolling (accidentally ignored users, and accidentally locked topics).

(*) While it's true that confirmation dialogs tend to be ignored out of habit after a while, in this case that's perfect: When you mean to actually ignore someone, then you'll expect to see the dialog and can quickly click-through without stopping to think about anything. But when you're not trying to ignore someone, and accidentally hit the link while scrolling, then that dialog will be completely unexpected, and will make you stop and think "Huh? No, I don't want to ignore so-and-so."

(*) Ignoring someone isn't as frequent of an action as (let's say) sending merit. If someone can make the case that they ignore people at a rate that would be meaningfully impacted by a confirmation dialog, then I'd be curious to hear it. (And in that case, what I'll do is add a new setting to let people disable the new dialog, but I really don't think that additional complication is worth it: having to persist a new setting turns this from a very simple change into something that theymos will have to review much more carefully.)

It's a nice thought experiment to imagine any given change as already being present, and then try to think about how a proposal to remove that thing would look/feel. There's a difference between things that were carefully designed and should be left alone, and things that people are just used to. I'm pretty certain that if the SMF mod that (I think) the user-ignore feature is based on had included a confirmation dialog from the start, then any proposal to now get rid of that would probably be met with "What are you doing? Leave it alone!"

So you are saying that 99.999% of other members should agree with this change of moving ignore button and getting used to it because of one member reported this issue?
In all my years in bitcointalk forum I never before heard that anyone else accidently clicked ignore button multiple times.
This is not the work for PowerGlove.

I don't use the feature actually but I do experience the refresh of a particular page but I  just take it as a normal refresh especially when I'm still at the top part of the page.
I don't think I was the only one  that's experiencing this, it happens so fast that you might not notice and mabe it's the way I scroll but it's more like a normal scrolling to me when I'm just looking for main ideas  of a thread, for example what made me created the thread was that I ignored  ABCbits  , I saw it yesterday and I was like what's happened (I know this might have happened when I was going through his comments on my post I think) then I checked the link dropped on my last thread to check the list of ignored users and I saw 2 more , I said it earlier I don't use the feature.

The idea by Alone055 seems to be a good one

But they are useful.   If used properly, of course.

The ones that you see on websites that are covered mostly by ads are annoying, no doubt.

Edit: Something just clicked in my mind. For people like you, who find popups annoying or don't want such a feature, we can add a checkbox in the popup that would say "Remember my choice" and then you can mark the checkbox and then click on "Yes" so that next time when you click on "Ignore", you are not asked for confirmation unless you clear cookies or something. I'm sure it's possible.  

Popups are annoying, that's why

As much as I respect your opinion, I think there is no harm in having a small addition that could be useful for every user since it would provide more convenience and fewer chances of unintentional things happening. The guy I mentioned is a mere reference, the feature can be useful for the forum as a whole, in my opinion.


You are not wrong about that, but perhaps mistakes and unintentional occurrences are things too, and if there is something we can do to avoid actions being performed that are triggered unintentionally, why not?