Awesome!
posted by kbanas at 2:59 PM on March 3 [2 favorites]

This is a big milestone, thanks kirkaracha!
posted by phunniemee at 3:17 PM on March 3 [7 favorites]

lorem ipsum
posted by HearHere at 3:26 PM on March 3 [3 favorites]

Thanks for all your hard work getting us to this point and for what's to come, you rock kirkaracha!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 3:32 PM on March 3 [7 favorites]

I totally wanted to say what Brandon said! So I will!

Thanks for all your hard work getting us to this point and for what's to come, you rock kirkaracha!

Thank you, kirkaracha!
posted by kristi at 3:46 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

This is awesome! Thanks for bringing it to life!

I have a question, I guess, about reply behavior. I get that the "reply" button makes a reply appear at the end of the comments, which is fine, but it's also a bit confusing in practice, now that I'm playing with it a bit in the beta. Should the reply also maybe quote the comment it is replying to, or reference it somehow? I know we don't want threaded comment sections, but as of now, it seems like "comment" and "reply" are identical, behaviorally, unless I'm missing something (which is highly likely!).

Can you elaborate on what the visible behavior of a "reply" to a comment should be? Thanks!
posted by pdb at 3:55 PM on March 3

We could do something like this:

kirkaracha replied to pdb at 4:15 PM on March 3

Or maybe "replied to pdb's comment..."

And possibly have an HTML details tag under the original comment that links to replies.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 4:16 PM on March 3 [2 favorites]

The signup process asks for an URL, but does not recognize a URL. I had to leave it blank.

Logging out goes to a 404 page.
posted by zompist at 4:30 PM on March 3 [3 favorites]

Yay!! I love trying to break things. :)
posted by brook horse at 4:31 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

Not sure if this is in the category of "features that are not implemented yet," but the permalinks to comments don't work (as in they don't take you to the comment).
posted by brook horse at 4:33 PM on March 3

Please use the bug report form to report bugs. Sifting through MetaTalk threads and comments is not going to be an efficient way to track them.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 4:35 PM on March 3 [13 favorites]

"We could do something like this:

kirkaracha replied to pdb at 4:15 PM on March 3

Or maybe "replied to pdb's comment..."

I like the latter, but I'm open to anything that makes it more clear that a comment is a reply. And I put all that here because it's not strictly a bug, but I'm happy to migrate this to the bug log or elaborate in another more trackable medium if you'd rather - let me know what works best.
posted by pdb at 4:51 PM on March 3

WHERE'S MY DARK MODE?

Actually, what I meant to say was, thank you very much, this totally awesome!
posted by ashbury at 5:11 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

Haven't played around with it at all but I think you really nailed the look! It looks ever so slightly modernized without triggering a jarring oh-no-it's-different feeling.
posted by dusty potato at 5:11 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

I plan to review all the models and migrations sometime soon (probably this upcoming weekend) because i have Very Strong Opinions about database normalization and i've already spotted a couple things that i think need to be fixed. kirkaracha, it'd be super nice to have access to the slack -- you tried to give me access via Slack Connect, but unfortunately i don't belong to any paid Slack plans that can use the Connect invitation.
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:33 PM on March 3 [3 favorites]

I haven't played with it any, but yeah, I think you nailed the look. Nice work.
posted by Gorgik at 5:33 PM on March 3

I changed my password today because I forgot the old one and the login for the beta page won't accept the new password. Is this because it doesn't support logins yet?

But it do look nice.
posted by schade at 5:39 PM on March 3

Ran through Signup and the rest of the stuff outlined in the OP, and everything seemed to work as intended.
Just one thing I noticed is that the pop-in box to add or remove flag does not hide unless you hit the cancel button; though it does change the title from `Flag this app\models\comment` to `Remove flag`.
Site responsiveness is pretty decent. However, I feel it would be much better if you moved some of the horizontal items to a vertical layout much earlier than it currently does; say about when the window reaches 400px in width.

Kudo, though. I like this new design.
posted by schade at 5:56 PM on March 3

Looks great!
posted by Diskeater at 5:56 PM on March 3

Schade- I believe the new site is complete dummy- the exisiting users haven't been added.
posted by freethefeet at 6:11 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the notes!

i have Very Strong Opinions about database normalization and i've already spotted a couple things that i think need to be fixed

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I feel it would be much better if you moved some of the horizontal items to a vertical layout much earlier than it currently does; say about when the window reaches 400px in width.

schade, could you maybe do a mockup? 400px seems really narrow.

WHERE'S MY DARK MODE?

I CAN'T GET THE DANG SCRIPT TO WORK! yet.

It looks ever so slightly modernized without triggering a jarring oh-no-it's-different feeling.

Thanks! That's exactly what I was shooting for.

I believe the new site is complete dummy- the exisiting users haven't been added.

That is correct.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 6:31 PM on March 3 [5 favorites]

I put all that here because it's not strictly a bug

I think that's fine, because I agree it's not a bug.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 6:33 PM on March 3

I've started collecting my feedback here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l46fbCHNv08NFz4euFegV3UI-ImsVGXFuVn5rJ8DRuU/edit?usp=sharing

(doc's set to commenter for anyone who views the link, so kirkaracha feel free to poke at anything to ask for clarification!)

I could only do a few minutes tonight but will get at it in more depth tomorrow. this sort of functional testing is a well-used skill of mine so I'm more than happy to apply it as heavily here as will be helpful!
posted by Kybard at 6:42 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I love that the original look is being retained. No shade on 'plain view' users, but it just wouldn't be the same for me. Given everything goes around in circles anyway and everything old is new again, we can call this look Web 3.0!
posted by dg at 6:51 PM on March 3

When I tried to enter a URL for that part of the process, I entered a "short" URL, without https:// at the front, and it asked me to enter a URL. (If I had left it blank, would it have worked? It's supposed to be optional.)
posted by JHarris at 7:28 PM on March 3

I've started collecting my feedback

Wow, good stuff!

I love that the original look is being retained. No shade on 'plain view' users, but it just wouldn't be the same for me.

As a wise man once said, "if you notice a feature from the current site is missing, please assume it’s because it hasn’t been programmed yet." We can still have a plain view or OG site. (But TBH I would prefer someone else do the CSS needed.)

When I tried to enter a URL for that part of the process, I entered a "short" URL, without https:// at the front, and it asked me to enter a URL. (If I had left it blank, would it have worked? It's supposed to be optional.)

It's set to require secure URLs, so it rejects links that don't start with https.

If I had left it blank, would it have worked? It's supposed to be optional.

Yes, it would pass if it were empty.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 7:39 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

Brandon, could Kybard's excellent document be clearly labeled and easily linked in the banner?

It seems like it might be easiest for Kirkaracha, who should be congratulated for doing such a good job.
posted by Violet Blue at 7:56 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

It's set to require secure URLs, so it rejects links that don't start with https.

Fix that on the server, don’t make a human do it.

Also, don’t require secure URLs, not everyone serves https.
posted by bowbeacon at 7:58 PM on March 3 [3 favorites]

Looks good. I started to read one of the test posts out loud, but it summoned an indescribably hideous and evil demon from another dimension who is currently rampaging through our world.

Is that a feature of the new site?
posted by Wordshore at 8:14 PM on March 3 [13 favorites]

Shhhh Wordshore, that's the process for electing the new board.
posted by phunniemee at 8:15 PM on March 3 [11 favorites]

I started to read one of the test posts out loud, but it summoned an indescribably hideous and evil demon from another dimension who is currently rampaging through our world.

Is that a feature of the new site?

Yes. I am a feature of the new site.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:19 PM on March 3 [10 favorites]

kirkaracha: i can handle some CSS for you, although i'm likely to go ham on your markup as well (i don't think you pass WCAG AA, among other things.)

Please do figure out how to give me access to the Slack, though?
posted by adrienneleigh at 9:19 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

Fix that on the server, don’t make a human do it.
Also, don’t require secure URLs, not everyone serves https.

Copy that. How about checking the URL to see if it's available via HTTPS and swapping HTTP for HTTPS if it is?

i can handle some CSS for you, although i'm likely to go ham on your markup as well (i don't think you pass WCAG AA, among other things.

I tried for WCAG AA but haven't tested. I'd appreciate any improvements.

Please do figure out how to give me access to the Slack, though?

OK
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 9:46 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

*kneels*
posted by lucidium at 10:13 PM on March 3

I have been here long enough that I am clinging to the old traditional background. Will that be an option as it is now?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:28 PM on March 3 [7 favorites]

Two data points:

It looks terrible/is unusable on DuckDuckGo browser on a smartphone
It's slightly better but not great on Firefox

The sign-up mail went straight to spam (gmail)

But big ups for getting this underway
posted by chavenet at 1:46 AM on March 4

This is great, thank you so much.

Can we please up to font size, given that there's less contrast and at this point, the median age of users on this site is about 112. (I say this with love as I too am now 112.)

Also can we please (have the massive fight we're inevitably going to have about) normalize the logo? There is no reason for "community weblog" to not be the same width as "MetaFilter" and "community weblog" looks strangely and unnecessarily squished.

Also, again, thank you.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:37 AM on March 4

The new site is significantly slower for me.

I measured it with Firefox's performance profiler. Going from MetaFilter home page→ AskMetaFilter is between 600 and 750ms on the old website and between 1.3 and 2s on the new website. I'm happy to send the profiles for further debugging. I am using Firefox 135.0.1 (aarch64) (latest as of today).
posted by ftrtts at 2:40 AM on March 4 [1 favorite]

meanwhile, I just logged in on a desktop and it looks fabulous.
posted by chavenet at 2:51 AM on March 4

Get down sir!
*dives in front of a barrage of px adjustments*
posted by lucidium at 3:16 AM on March 4

Note that if you supply an email address on the bug report form, it will be made public on the Google spreadsheet.
posted by Klipspringer at 3:30 AM on March 4

Could Dark mode have a CSS option using @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
so that it automatically switches on at dusk?
posted by Lanark at 4:49 AM on March 4

I measured it with Firefox's performance profiler. Going from MetaFilter home page→ AskMetaFilter is between 600 and 750ms on the old website and between 1.3 and 2s on the new website. I'm happy to send the profiles for further debugging. I am using Firefox 135.0.1 (aarch64) (latest as of today).


There's a reason that an old developer adage is "premature optimization is the roof of all evil." This is early code, not yet close to complete, and probably running on much weaker - cheaper - hardware than the production site is. If this were one of the software products I manage, I'd be unconcerned about performance at this stage. Optimization can come later.
posted by Tomorrowful at 5:08 AM on March 4 [11 favorites]

This is an incredible milestone, thank you so much for all the hard work that has gone into this already!

When you click on a post title it takes you to the post's page, right at the top. But when you click on the comments icon it loads the first comment at the top of the page and you have to scroll up to see the body of the post. This is different behavior than current metafilter, but I don't know if it's a bug or a new feature (deliberate or otherwise). Should I dump all these kinds of observations into the bug report, or do you want to keep it more concrete at this point?
posted by grog at 5:22 AM on March 4 [1 favorite]

I've submitted the things I found that I would consider actual bugs via bug report, and organized the google doc I provided into better categories and added more concrete thoughts.

please please do not hesitate to reach out if you have questions or want more detail. I love this stuff.

(in general I want to echo the congrats and excitement! this is looking very good so far!)
posted by Kybard at 5:30 AM on March 4

🎉🎉🎉
posted by warriorqueen at 6:13 AM on March 4

it'd be super nice to have access to the slack
Just sent you an invite as a single channel guest.
posted by loup (staff) at 7:00 AM on March 4

It looks very nice. Thank you, kirkaracha, for all the hard work you have done so far and all the hard work you will do!
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 7:05 AM on March 4 [1 favorite]

There's a reason that an old developer adage is "premature optimization is the roof of all evil." This is early code, not yet close to complete, and probably running on much weaker - cheaper - hardware than the production site is. If this were one of the software products I manage, I'd be unconcerned about performance at this stage. Optimization can come later.

I don't understand why you're getting so defensive. I didn't say anything about how to prioritise work. I'm just giving more data for kirkaracha to work with.

I do think 1s of latency is more than just an "optimisation." An optimisation is when something works but you want to make it better. A 1s slowdown is noticeably worse. If a website you regularly visited became 1s slower, you would notice. Now, maybe it's a regression they already know about and plan to get around to fixing. We don't know, but I agree that would be fine. It's still worth tracking.
posted by ftrtts at 7:21 AM on March 4 [2 favorites]

I have been here long enough that I am clinging to the old traditional background. Will that be an option as it is now?

We can still have a plain view style or traditional site style. (But TBH I would prefer someone else do the CSS needed.)

I started to read one of the test posts out loud, but it summoned an indescribably hideous and evil demon from another dimension who is currently rampaging through our world.

That's just one of the many delights!

It looks terrible/is unusable on DuckDuckGo browser on a smartphone/It's slightly better but not great on Firefox

The layout is responsive and flexbox-based, but as I mentioned I haven't done a lot of work on mobile other than spot checks in Responsinator.

A great mobile experience is important and I know more people use mobile than desktop, but so far I've been focused on functionality. We'll do a development round focused on mobile.

In the meantime I think it may be helpful to provide examples of other sites that have great experience on mobile so we can steal from them.

Can we please up to font size, given that there's less contrast and at this point

The font size looks the same to me. The font sizes are based on rem units, so they should scale if you change the font size.

The contrast is tricky because the original color palette has some contrast issues and I didn't want to change too much. I kept the original main colors and standardized the color variants. The contrast in the navigation should be better, especially on rollover states.

The new site is significantly slower for me.

Thanks for pointing that out. I haven't done much optimization yet. Google PageSpeed shows 97/100 for performance on desktop and 89/100 on mobile, but I haven't addressed the issues they report yet.

The test site is on a VPS at Dreamhost, so performance should be better on a production server, but it's definitely something to improve.

Could Dark mode have a CSS option using @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
so that it automatically switches on at dusk?

Sure!

Note that if you supply an email address on the bug report form, it will be made public on the Google spreadsheet.

Sorry about that. I deleted the field from the form and deleted the column with email addresses.

When you click on a post title it takes you to the post's page, right at the top. But when you click on the comments icon it loads the first comment at the top of the page and you have to scroll up to see the body of the post.

That feels like the expected behavior to me, even if it's not the same as the current site. I think that if the comments on the list page are a link, they should go to the comments.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 8:08 AM on March 4 [5 favorites]

Here are the font sizes:

CSS Variable

Size (REMs)

Size (pixels)

font-size-minus-3

0.625rem

10px

font-size-minus-2

0.75rem

12px

font-size-minus-1

0.875rem

14px

font-size-normal

1rem

16px

font-size-plus-1

1.125rem

18px

font-size-plus-2

1.25rem

20px

font-size-plus-3

1.5rem

24px

font-size-plus-4

1.75rem

28px

font-size-plus-5

2rem

32px

The base font size is 16 pixels, which is the browser default. The current site is 17 pixels.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 8:19 AM on March 4 [1 favorite]

The sign-up mail went straight to spam (gmail)

Probably because it's from an unknown domain. It should work fine once we're sending from metafilter.com
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 8:37 AM on March 4 [2 favorites]

Milestone! Cool!
posted by clew at 9:27 AM on March 4

i have Very Strong Opinions about database normalization

AI just analyzed my database table setup and said "The migrations created various tables for what appears to be a MetaFilter-like application..." The code is coming from inside the house.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 10:03 AM on March 4 [3 favorites]

I like most of it and the parts that I don't like I will get used to in due time. In short, cool update, hope it helps with admin and response, and look forward to using it.
posted by bacalao_y_betun at 12:30 PM on March 4 [1 favorite]

There's an admin backend using Filament (vendor demo), which is pretty great. Admins should be able to quickly and easily make changes in the new site they aren't able to in the old site.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 12:42 PM on March 4 [3 favorites]

Or maybe "replied to pdb's comment..."

The convention we've established over the life of the site has been that replies quote the comment they are replying to. I don't think it makes sense to change that at this point and certainly not without community discussion on that particular point.

Just indicating a comment is a reply to some other comment in the thread that someone could click to go read doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of unthreaded comments (are you then going to scroll back down to the find the reply you were originally reading?).

We've long had an ethos that the discussion is about ideas, not about who said what. Marking the replies with the original commenter's name but not what they said makes it personal, rather than about the ideas — and that is likely to lead to more back and forth bickering and less interesting discussion. So I think we should stick with the convention we've established and maybe provide a tool to make doing that quoting easier.

Otherwise, we're trying to implement sort-of threaded comments without really implementing threaded comments and that's just a recipe for neither here nor there solutions that don't really work.
posted by ssg at 1:01 PM on March 4 [3 favorites]

The site is currently down (500 error), BTW. Also, the list of bugs linked in the post is not viewable by the public (Google sharing settings need to be changed).
posted by ssg at 1:03 PM on March 4 [1 favorite]

I don't think it makes sense to change that at this point and certainly not without community discussion on that particular point.

Again, this is a work in progress and just because something hasn't been coded yet doesn't mean we're leaving it out. Also, I do not intend to make any unilateral changes. It's not my site, it's our site.

I think we should stick with the convention we've established and maybe provide a tool to make doing that quoting easier.

I'm working on code that will populate the reply field with text you select in the original comment. At least the error page is pretty.

The site is currently down (500 error), BTW.

Nice. It was up 10 minutes ago and I haven't pushed any code changes. I said the site "is on a VPS at Dreamhost." I should've said POS. I might switch hosts but then there'd be a DNS change.

the list of bugs linked in the post is not viewable by the public (Google sharing settings need to be changed)

Oops, I changed sharing to "Anyone on the internet with the link can view." (Which I thought I'd done before.)
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 2:21 PM on March 4 [6 favorites]

I'm working on code that will populate the reply field with text you select in the original comment.

That's hot! Something we've always needed.
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:33 PM on March 4 [6 favorites]

Yes, that sounds great!
posted by ssg at 2:43 PM on March 4

Site's back up.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 4:42 PM on March 4 [1 favorite]

In the new post workflow, I couldn't switch between the tabs manually. Is the Edit button just going to allow posters to cycle through the three tabs again?
posted by emelenjr at 9:31 PM on March 4

I meant the tabs as more of a "you are here," but if that's not working we can change it.

The Edit button would go to an edit form in the same layout, which would have Cancel and Update buttons.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 9:50 PM on March 4

I meant the tabs as more of a "you are here," but if that's not working we can change it.

I don't know what a UI designer would say, but when I see tabs I read them as metaphorical index tabs ... things I can select. This tripped me up in the signup flow, or at least caused a moment's friction when I tried to look ahead at payment methods (because some sites have limited ones with choices I can't/wont use).
posted by A forgotten .plan file at 10:27 PM on March 4 [4 favorites]

Well, as a designer, I'm a very good developer. Happy to make any UI improvements.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 10:41 PM on March 4 [5 favorites]

I also thought the sign up "tabs" indicated that I could switch back and forth between the different sections, fwiw.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:01 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]

A couple of requests:

First, I notice that the site retains current Metafilter's inability to change usernames. In the past, haven't there been people who have deleted their accounts because they've transitioned and they consider their account name to be deadnaming them? Could it be made possible to do account renames in occasional circumstances?

Second, one barrier to new users is Metafilter's insistence on using HTML when entering posts and comments. Is it possible to implement Markdown, BBcode or something of the like for post editing?
posted by JHarris at 6:06 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]

Second, one barrier to new users is Metafilter's insistence on using HTML when entering posts and comments. Is it possible to implement Markdown, BBcode or something of the like for post editing?

I don't care if y:all add something in addition to HTML if it indeed makes the site more accessible, but please don't take my HTML away!
posted by kbanas at 6:28 AM on March 5 [3 favorites]

I don't care if y:all add something in addition to HTML if it indeed makes the site more accessible, but please don't take my HTML away!

Markdown is a superset of HTML, so you could keep it.
posted by bowbeacon at 6:36 AM on March 5

I notice that the site retains current Metafilter's inability to change usernames.

As mentioned above this is early beta testing of a site that is a work in progress focused on the core member tasks of logging in, posts, and comments. Specifically, "If you notice a feature from the current site is missing, please assume it’s because it hasn’t been programmed yet, not that it’s being discontinued."

I also said, "I do not intend to make any unilateral changes. It's not my site, it's our site." I've committed in several previous site updates to either recreate or (hopefully) improve the existing site's features. It's not my place to remove anything unless it's a community decision.

one barrier to new users is Metafilter's insistence on using HTML when entering posts and comments. Is it possible to implement Markdown, BBcode or something of the like for post editing?

Same note as above, plus I'm looking for an open source WYSIWYG editor that supports Markdown. CKEditor looks promising, but I need to test the self-hosted version to see if it supports the Markdown plugin.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 8:08 AM on March 5 [2 favorites]

I recognize that features are in development and may change, I only brought it up because that was explicitly mentioned on the New User form. And I can understand if there's reasons why they still don't want people to change user names. I was just thinking it'd be nice?

On removing HTML, yeah I'd also rather you didn't, I have the muscle memory for writing <a href=" down solidly now, and I always forget the order of the text and the link when making bracket links (which isn't helped by the fact that everything2 had them in the opposite order). But new users might appreciate Markdown editing!
posted by JHarris at 8:33 AM on March 5

I can understand if there's reasons why they still don't want people to change user names.

I don't know whether that's the case or not. I'm working on my experience with the site and looking at the site when I 'm working on something. There isn't a functional spec or anything I know of that documents the site's features. (I'll be writing a spec.)

On removing HTML, yeah I'd also rather you didn't

CKEditor and most WYSIWYG editors let you click a button to write HTML.

My did-not-do-my-own-research guess is that most people would:

Just type into the editor (~50%?)
Use Markdown (~45%?)
Write HTML (~5%?)
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 8:46 AM on March 5

In the past, haven't there been people who have deleted their accounts because they've transitioned and they consider their account name to be deadnaming them? Could it be made possible to do account renames in occasional circumstances?

I don't remember when it was mentioned, but that did come up in a MeTa at one point and Jessamyn* said that people who transition are one of the rare times usernames are allowed to be changed. As in changed, changed so all their comment history was still there.

*90% sure it was Jessamyn while she was owner. If it wasn't her, it was definitely a mod.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 8:49 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]

(jessamyn did say it and the FAQ still has a note about trans people:

"We will change the username attached to an existing account in some situations: MeFites being stalked or harassed, trans MeFites, and some very rare legal issues. Please talk to us if this is your situation.")
posted by ftrtts at 9:50 AM on March 5 [3 favorites]

I vote for usernames being permanent other than the existing limited set of exceptions.
posted by Klipspringer at 9:54 AM on March 5 [3 favorites]

Overall a great looking v1, but a few thoughts:

I'm not a fan of all the icons next to every comment, thats a lot of repetition in a page full of comments and it grabs attention away from the text.
Also the heart symbol in place of [add to favorites]
Back in the day there were several discussions about renaming Favorites to Likes, do we need to go through all that again? Favoriting, Liking and Loving are all slightly different things.

I think the side bar which pops open/closed could do a with a short CSS animation timing of 0.1 or 0.2s to make it a little smoother. Also it is currently showing on every page, would be better on just the home page.

The search box should be wider and have Search instead of Go.

I think it would be more logical to move the Username next to the logout button, so it is clear who you are logging out.

Comment previews are not yet in place, which has me wondering, the current mefi comment preview has an instant 'live preview' and then a second preview which is presumably after stripping illegal HTML - could they be combined into one live preview and thus remove the need for a preview button completely?
posted by Lanark at 10:06 AM on March 5 [2 favorites]

500 for me right now, but thanks for all the hard work.
posted by yerfatma at 11:22 AM on March 5

I vote for usernames being permanent other than the existing limited set of exceptions.

The discussion about usernames is a bit of a derail.

I'm not a fan of all the icons next to every comment, thats a lot of repetition in a page full of comments and it grabs attention away from the text.

I'm experimenting with hiding them by default and showing them on rollover (on desktop).

Also the heart symbol in place of [add to favorites]

Based on my user experience research, a favorite button "usually takes the shape of a star or heart." Most of the other sites I visit use heart icons, and I'd like to reserve stars in case we do something like add a rating system in FanFare.

could they be combined into one live preview and thus remove the need for a preview button completely?

Comments in the WYSIWYG editor will look almost exactly like they will on the page, so in most cases you probably won't need to do a preview. The editor essentially is the live preview. We can add a more robust preview if we need to.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 11:40 AM on March 5

500 for me right now, but thanks for all the hard work.

Again after no code changes. Time to switch hosts.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 11:41 AM on March 5

I'm going to switch hosts, so the testing site will be unavailable at some point later this week during the DNS change,.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 11:43 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]

I don't know what a UI designer would say, but when I see tabs I read them as metaphorical index tabs

Based on some research, a row of circles with numbers something similar to this would probably work better.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 12:29 PM on March 5 [4 favorites]

What is happening on the DreamHost VPS to cause a 500?
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:47 PM on March 5

I'm not a fan of all the icons next to every comment, thats a lot of repetition in a page full of comments and it grabs attention away from the text.

Agreed, that's the first thing that jumped out at me too. We don't need them shown on rollover or anything, just stick with text. I think MetaFilter's text-based interface is part of the charm and we don't need to make it look more generically like every other website out there in this process.
posted by ssg at 12:49 PM on March 5 [4 favorites]

Aw, I really like the "+" sign for ... favorites. So thrifty, so local.

Also I made a yellow [+] banner on a translucent backing for summer meetups.
posted by clew at 12:50 PM on March 5 [4 favorites]

Also one of the reasons the big social sites lean heavily on graphical icons, is that they can work for multiple languages, but everything on Metafilter is in English, so unless there are plans to encourage posts and comments in multiple languages I don't think that matters.
posted by Lanark at 1:01 PM on March 5

Does [+] mean something in another language?
posted by phunniemee at 1:07 PM on March 5 [1 favorite]

We're already using flag icons, and a reason to use graphical icons on MetaFilter is so we have same features and interaction as any other site where people can enter comments and react to them. It would also make it easier for new members to understand and use the site.

What is happening on the DreamHost VPS to cause a 500?

Fun things like Laravel throwing an error saying a field isn't in the database when it actually is in the database. It's hard to figure out. If it's working and I don't make any code changes, it should keep working.

Yesterday I opened a ticket and they checked and it was working. Then today it's down again.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 1:09 PM on March 5 [1 favorite]

I'm just stating my opinion on icons, though, and if we as a community decide not to use them then we could drop them.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 1:23 PM on March 5

A vote for keeping [+] if possible.
posted by freethefeet at 3:55 PM on March 5 [3 favorites]

I will figure out a way to poll users and we can decide as a community. I think that would be better than going back and forth in a MetaTalk thread since there are plenty of members that don't visit MetaTalk.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 5:34 PM on March 5 [8 favorites]

i would like to state for the record that it would be a very bad idea to get into bikeshedding about fucking icons, of all things, at this stage in the proceedings. That stuff is, or at least should be, all strings in a language file anyway! It can all be swapped out at any point!
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:12 PM on March 5 [12 favorites]

It can all be swapped out at any point!

So we can have themes?
posted by mittens at 6:31 PM on March 5

mittens: Strings being in a file and swappable is "localization". Theming is a different thing, but i'm sure we can have that too! Theming is entirely a function of being able to swap CSS, as long as the markup is solid. I'm planning to dig into the codebase pretty deeply as soon as i have the energy; hopefully over the weekend. I have some issues with how the data model is set up, but after that i'll be looking at markup and CSS.
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:00 PM on March 5 [3 favorites]

Just to say, I'm happy people can get their handles changed if they need it. It's a case where I'm glad I was mistaken!
posted by JHarris at 7:15 PM on March 5

Clicking on the "5 years back" link gets a 500 server error. The other archive links are fine.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:16 PM on March 5

So I just tested this on Google Chrome on an iPad 8.

* The New Post form is TIIIINNNNYYYY. There's so much wasted space on the margins. The comment form is a better use of space, but not optimal. This current MetaTalk comment box on the same browser & device is great - full size, no problems.

* I know this copies the current setup on Metafilter, but it occurs to me that the URL and Link Text sections could be pretty unintuitive to newbies. Could we add an example post on the form to show the format? Maybe switch the URL and Link Text boxes around? Change "Link text" to "Name of link"? We are in an era where people no longer key in URLs in browsers but are basically told "go to Google, search this term, it's the first thing on the list"

* nthing Markdown, especially given how it's super common on Discord and Reddit (as well as notetaking apps like Obsidian whose userbase would intersect neatly with Metafilter) and not a lot of people code websites by hand with HTML anymore. Even Youtube comments support some basic Markdown.

* Are tags still going to be single words, no spaces? That's not mentioned on the form. This tagging system could be seen as a relic of del.icio.us-era Internet - nowadays the convention for tags are either phrases with spaces (Tumblr, Ao3) or single word hashtags attached to the # symbol (most other social media sites).

* Agreed that there could be a clearer way to indicate that the comment is a reply to someone else. I'm not sure what the consensus is on threaded comments - I would be into threaded comments, or something along the lines of Autostraddle and Dumbing of Age where it's indented directly under the original comment, with a limited number of indented levels.

* This could be a Light Mode thing (I use Dark Mode on reg Mefi) but all the text on a post, including links and usernames and such, being one colour and font weight makes it hard to differentiate within text.
posted by creatrixtiara at 7:17 PM on March 5 [1 favorite]

getting a 500 server error
posted by mirileh at 1:35 AM on March 6

Not getting into the weeds about icons, but in terms of social hurdles I think minimising changes and barriers for the oil-monster conglomeration of curmudgeons that makes up this beloved userbase is a primary need.
posted by lucidium at 3:32 AM on March 6 [4 favorites]

lucidium: oil-monster conglomeration
Sorry, what?
posted by Too-Ticky at 3:58 AM on March 6 [1 favorite]

Sorry, I sometimes forget that other people aren't inside my weird-ass head. I was referencing a late 90's Ben Affleck flop that featured a monster made of oil that absorbed peoples' knowledge and intelligence.
posted by lucidium at 4:36 AM on March 6

If these 500 server errors are due to a mismatch between what Laravel thinks is in the DB and what is actually in the DB, it may be a caching issue or the result of uncommitted transactions in the DB. FWIW, unless DreamHost is managing the software, switching VPS providers won't solve this problem.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:14 AM on March 6 [1 favorite]

I will figure out a way to poll users and we can decide as a community. I think that would be better than going back and forth in a MetaTalk thread since there are plenty of members that don't visit MetaTalk.

I want to give a huge, hearty thanks to you, kirkaracha, for how insistent and consistent you have been on saying this is a community decision and not yours. It's really great to hear someone on staff listening to the users. Thank you!!!
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:45 AM on March 6 [10 favorites]

Thank you for all this hard work, team!!!

Unfortunately, I'm getting a 500 server error just trying to go to the staging server. :/
posted by frecklefaerie at 9:22 AM on March 6 [1 favorite]

I'm still getting the server error. Is it an intermittent thing?
posted by freya_lamb at 10:20 AM on March 6 [1 favorite]

Idk if it's related to the new site at all but I've been getting an "ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED" page intermittently over the last 2ish weeks when going to normal website mefi from my phone. I know it's not my connection because everything else works fine.
posted by phunniemee at 10:52 AM on March 6 [7 favorites]

Same here, phunniemee.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:53 AM on March 6 [2 favorites]

Wait, that's a site issue? I figured my internet was being weird.
posted by mittens at 11:21 AM on March 6 [2 favorites]

Yes, I've experienced that as well over the last couple days.
posted by ssg at 11:21 AM on March 6 [1 favorite]

Getting 500 Server Error as well, please put a "working on site" error if that's what's happening.
posted by drossdragon at 11:32 AM on March 6

I'm still getting the server error. Is it an intermittent thing?

I need to do some troubleshooting on the server errors. I'm at work, so I won't be able to fix it until tomorrow. I'll do an update MetaTalk post on Monday.

Idk if it's related to the new site at all but I've been getting an "ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED" page intermittently over the last 2ish weeks when going to normal website mefi from my phone.

Different code, different data, different server. My guess is it's not related.

Getting 500 Server Error as well, please put a "working on site" error if that's what's happening.

There's a scheduled maintenance page if that's what's happening, but in this case the error is accurate.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 11:36 AM on March 6 [3 favorites]

Feature request: bottle kirkaracha's communication style and tone and serve it to the mods.
posted by donnagirl at 11:56 AM on March 6 [8 favorites]

I know this copies the current setup on Metafilter, but it occurs to me that the URL and Link Text sections could be pretty unintuitive to newbies.

I have them because they're on the current site but now that you mention it, I'm not 100% sure we need them. Anyone agree?

This tagging system could be seen as a relic of del.icio.us-era Internet - nowadays the convention for tags are either phrases with spaces (Tumblr, Ao3) or single word hashtags attached to the # symbol (most other social media sites).

I want to modernize the tags and was leaning towards phrases with spaces. And ideally we could convert the old tags to the new format.

Maybe switch the URL and Link Text boxes around?

I put the URL first because then we could automatically get the title when you leave the URL field, but that's probably more trouble than it's worth.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 12:39 PM on March 6

kirkaracha: "I want to modernize the tags and was leaning towards phrases with spaces. And ideally we could convert the old tags to the new format."

This might be tricky because the vast majority of existing tags are in all lower-case.

(Personally I prefer the look and function of the new CamelCase style over spaces, but both are a lot more flexible and user-friendly than the weird patchy hierarchical system Tildes uses.)
posted by Rhaomi at 1:29 PM on March 6

Agree that we should remove the URL and Link Text fields. Looking at the front page right now, few people are using them, most are using the description only.

Moot point if we remove them, but I don't think page titles are likely to be good link texts so fetching them automatically probably doesn't make sense.
posted by ssg at 1:33 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

Staging site is back up.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 2:02 PM on March 6

So this is weird. I mentioned in a previous comment that this link produces a 500 error : https://www.metastaging.net/archives/2020/03/06

But these do not:
https://www.metastaging.net/archives/2020/03/07
https://www.metastaging.net/archives/2020/03/05

So something about that post or whatever data that date pulls is causing the site to break.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:09 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

I don't think page titles are likely to be good link texts so fetching them automatically probably doesn't make sense.

Yep. For example, the title of this page on the screen is "I think my cat likes my partner more. What should I do?" The title tag is "I think my cat likes my partner more. What should I do? | Well actually | The Guardian."

This might be tricky because the vast majority of existing tags are in all lower-case.

That sounds like a fun coding challenge!
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 2:09 PM on March 6

So something about that post or whatever data that date pulls is causing the site to break.

That's really weird. My first guess was no results being returned for that date, but that's handled on March 5 and March 7 is showing results.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 2:10 PM on March 6

That sounds like a fun coding challenge!

If you store new tags with spaces, all it needs is a bit of SQL to strip the spaces and match against any old-style concatenated tags, then UNION that with some standard SQL for direct matches and you can open a tag page with everything.

This also catches those cases where people continue to use concatenated tags out of habit.
posted by Lanark at 2:35 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

That's really weird. My first guess was no results being returned for that date, but that's handled on March 5 and March 7 is showing results.

Time to tail the logs!
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:44 PM on March 6

Yeah I think removing the URL and Link Text boxes would make sense. It would make the post form more in line with blogging systems in general as well as places like Tumblr and Reddit - familiar formats.
posted by creatrixtiara at 3:41 PM on March 6 [2 favorites]

Filled in the new user stuff. Server 500 error on finalising but still created the user. Made a post, the text on the preview vanishes if I mouse over it (Firefox on Windows). Comment details are not there unless I mouse over them. Favouriting seems to work. Could make flagging work, I had to cancel it. Commenting worked.
posted by antiwiggle at 2:22 AM on March 7

First, bolshoi gracias (slava ukraini!)

Comment box seems to totally strip out line breaks including double breaks, but of course this may be intended

Editing a comment creates a new comment, at least visible to the user (my fake user is RimjobSteve)
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:26 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]

The background color for everything below the nav bars is white for me for some reason (which makes comments on the site have no visible author unless I mouseover them). CSS glitch?
posted by rivenwanderer at 7:45 AM on March 7

Thanks, kirkaracha, for all of your work.

Is there a compelling reason you added the color change on rollover for posts? I'm using desktop Firefox and rolling over the post titles makes a dark blue box appear around white text *and* turns the post text itself a less readable light blue, which is a new change. Then if you move the cursor down a bit the title turns light blue on white, too. That seems overly busy and distracting; scrolling down the page looks like an ongoing slow blink tag. Personal preference, but do we really need to change the color of the entire post text upon mouseover, and make a box appear around the title?
posted by catspajamas at 9:32 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Also, I now have to mouseover the post to see the username, time and number of comments on the post; I'd prefer to be able to see those at first glance. Removing that functionality doesn't seem like an improvement to me.
posted by catspajamas at 9:36 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]

I might be tricking myself but I think this has been happening more frequently since I mentioned it.

I put in a thingy on the contact form about it yesterday when I realized it wasn't just me. No response yet.
posted by phunniemee at 11:20 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

Yeah, phunniemee, it's happened to me three times in the last hour here. Other sites work fine.
posted by catspajamas at 11:58 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

Also, I now have to mouseover the post to see the username, time and number of comments on the post; I'd prefer to be able to see those at first glance. Removing that functionality doesn't seem like an improvement to me.

Agreed. What is currently happening is a UI/UX antipattern.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:54 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]

Is there a compelling reason you added the color change on rollover for posts?

Again, nothing so far is being presented as a finished product. I'll clean up the rollover states. It's a challenge because I need to set up the light/dark mode switcher so I can actually switch back and forth.

The code that's been inserting 2500 dummy posts into the database is now only inserting one. I've asked for help on a couple sites.

Until I get that sorted on my local computer I don't want to push any changes to the server.

I'll do an update post on Monday.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 3:46 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Until I get that sorted on my local computer I don't want to push any changes to the server.

It may be worth looking into a free or cheap CI/CD solution to handle depoyments so that you can easily roll back a change if it causes problems.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:35 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Kirkaracha, I'm so excited about this work that you're doing. THANK YOU.
posted by kimberussell at 8:18 AM on March 8

It may be worth looking into a free or cheap CI/CD solution to handle depoyments so that you can easily roll back a change if it causes problems.

I'm looking into it.

Personally I prefer the look and function of the new CamelCase style over spaces

If we're going to be pedantic (and as an English major turned web developer I certainly am) if the first letter is capitalized it's PascalCase, not camelCase.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 2:05 PM on March 8

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