You're thinking of rewriting ILX?

HOWEVER if the "last read" functionality could be fully restored, it would be fairly simple to list "New Answers (but only if i've already read the thread)" so you could make your own sub-set of New Answers that way - and remove them with the "forget" link. Obviously to see new threads or old threads that have popped back up on to NA you'd have to see the full NA list.

Tom, the idea of introducing CAPTCHAs for anonymous posting is probably a good one. There are plenty of freely available libraries for doing this also.

(but yeah, divs and spans styling elements already would make it easier)

It will definitely be all CSS-driven.

YESS!

although perhaps the fun really WILL go with it :/

css i'd go with, cos i think greenspun would do it that way if he started now.

That's been broken for years.

I also don't think killfiles are such a good idea, but then again, I'm not in any bitter deathfeuds with anyone.

I don't know why you'd turn off e-mail notification, unless it's a server burden.

I've heard all the arguments against the 'ignore user' function and frankly I think they're pretty weak. It can only improve things IMO.

I don't really see the harm of an edit post feature on largely peaceable boards like ILB but I really wouldn't want it on ILE or ILM. I am largely shameless about using mod priveleges to edit my own typos and html fuckups and so forth but I'm sure some people would abuse it so much. Especially in, ahem, heated discussions.

Also, if everyone was able to rewrite posts they regret/were unhappy with it'd make some threads impossible to follow.

Yes to being able to moderate more than one post at once. A tickbox message deletion feature or something similar would be very useful for getting rid of random spam etc.

we don't agree on this. it is a big change in the fundamental format of the board - and it's not something as simple as a personal preference that you can opt in or out of - the fact that other people are using it changes things. i might be in the minority, but even so i think you should consider everyone's view on imposing this on the code (whether you find it weak or not).

i hope i'm not coming over adversarial here, but i'd be suprised if there wasn't more opposition to this if the thread became more widely discussed.

now i agree with alan: i think it would change something fundamental for the worse.

- will it completely hide all posts by the user in question, so the ignorer doesn't even know there were posts in the first place?
- will it hide, but put a message (ignored post by user X)?
- will it hide, but enable reading after clicking some link (click to show this response)?
- will it force some kind of tree-structure onto the whole board? (if you ignore messages by X, do you also ignore the replies to that message, enforcing a slashdot-structure everywhere - no more "xpost"?)

I don't like any of these options though, because I'm against the whole "ignore user" idea.

The user Tuomas now has been ignored on this board.

Perhaps I have a higher tolerance for idiots or dullards. There are a few people who I have little interest in what they say, but that doesn't mean I want to shut them out. One day they might say something wildly interesting, thought-provoking or even just invite me round the world for free beer and I wouldn't read it because I thought they weren't worth reading the rest of the time. In the meantime, I'm with s1ocki on the brain thing.

- IPs visible on every post from every user - even if we still allow people to post unregistered. There is no provacy issue here, and if some smartass insists on proxying their IP then they're still well hidden, but it'll let anyone interested see patterns and be able to ignore idiots.

- edit posts allowed, but possibly with a limit (either time based or edit-amount based), and any time a post is edited, it clearly states the time/date it was edited by the poster. Posts can't be deleted - only edited, and obviously only by the user who made the post. This is something quite common on a lot of other boards, and if someone makes it really obvious they're forever heavily editing their posts, they'll look silly; to me it's a self-check.

I strongly believe everyone should be able to see the IP of all posters.

The ignore function OTOH, I'm neither here nor there about. It won't really work in any case - some of the kind of people we know say they would use it are also the kind of people who will complain/get paranoid the people theyre supposedly ignoring are talking about them, etc etc.

I'm guessing that's unworkable BUT how about making the IPs of just the unregistered users visible?

i also don't like the editing/deleting idea at all. again, this would radically change the way the board works, in my opinion for the worse.

besides, like i said, on certain occasions (tho not always) an ip will point to an employer which in turn exposes rather personal information to the world at large, potential cyberstalkers and all.

eh? are you saying that people shouldn't post to ilx from work?

And I guess my point more was that NOT being able to hide would stop people pposting ugly shit like insults and such. Just my 2c, I guess no one else agrees tho, and thats ok thats what this forums for :)

Or maybe it can show IPs for non-logged ins only or something. I dunno?

Not going to happen. No discussion.

- edit posts allowed, but possibly with a limit (either time based or edit-amount based), and any time a post is edited, it clearly states the time/date it was edited by the poster. Posts can't be deleted - only edited, and obviously only by the user who made the post.

The time limit thing is something I've been thinking about, so that people can edit to fix images/links/typos but not drastically change the narrative after the fact. As I said on the other thread, the ability to edit a post would be enabled on a per-board basis, so ILE/ILM would most likely stay the same as they are now.

The implementation of "ignore user" would be such that instead of a post, the text "You are ignoring this user, to see who it is and what they posted click here" would appear. There would be no way of finding out who is ignoring you. I think the ability to ignore someone is an entirely personal choice and is nobody else's business. Again, the ability to ignore users would be enabled per-board so ILE/ILM may stay the same.

and also fun and great.

Cool, thats ok, just thought I'd throw the idea in :)

I think the ability to ignore someone is an entirely personal choice and is nobody else's business

Agreed.

i refer you to jergins's "fun and great" comment here too :)

feel free to ignore this post.

That's another reason to make the board register-only, IMO.

Since, for right or for wrong, it is not in the moderators' charter to police assholish behavior, I would love the ability to never have to see the people I think are assholes (and I'm sure there are other posters who feel the same way about me). Given that there WILL be annoying metabitching, either between posters sniping at each other for no fucking reason or posters moaning about getting ignored, I'd rather go with option 2.

On the same subject, ignoring threads would be nice as there are a bunch of threads I never click on that are essentially white noise to me and obscure stuff I'm actually interested in; if you're vehemently opposed to allowing people to ignore, perhaps consider allowing people to mark threads as "threads of interest" and displaying them at the top of the New Answers list.

excellent idea, i've always wanted some sort of top of page thing similar to the bookmarking of favorite boards.

^^^^^ big cosign on this - plz anonymize my name posts

for all this complaining that 'ignore user' will damage the spirit of the board or whatever, it would merely be an OPTION and entirely up to the individual whether they take advantage of it or not. why actively oppose an individual's right to tailor ILX more to their own liking (by filtering out that which they dislike)?

Ability to mark up threads of interest would be k-classic though.

(xpost)

-- Dan (Maybe A Smiley Teddy Bear; I'm Not Picky) Perry (djperry@gmail.com), Today 10:24 AM. (Dan Perry) (later)

...or use your browser's "bookmark" function?

What would happen to threads started by people that have been set to ignore? Because there are a couple of people I can imagine starting threads like "How DARE you ignore MEEEEE?!?!?" to get their required amount of daily attention if they see they are being ignored.

Q: Why did you decide to use perfect anonymity, not even requiring a user name?

A: Because delivering news without taking any risk is very important to us. There is a lot of information disclosure or secret news gathered on Channel 2. Few people would post that kind of information by taking a risk. Moreover, people can only truly discuss something when they don't know each other.

If there is a user ID attached to a user, a discussion tends to become a criticizing game. On the other hand, under the anonymous system, even though your opinion/information is criticized, you don't know with whom to be upset. Also with a user ID, those who participate in the site for a long time tend to have authority, and it becomes difficult for a user to disagree with them. Under a perfectly anonymous system, you can say, "it's boring," if it is actually boring. All information is treated equally; only an accurate argument will work.

Presumably if you're ignoring them, when you click on the thread you see everybody else's messages but the ignoree's posts are replaced by the 'you are ignoring this person' message. Seems reasonable. If you find that the thread is actually interesting and you wish to read it in full context I imagine you could easily deselect the 'ignore' on that user and then resume it at a later date.

Because there are a couple of people I can imagine starting threads like "How DARE you ignore MEEEEE?!?!?" to get their required amount of daily attention if they see they are being ignored.

How will they know if they are being ignored? People's comments/replies are already often ignored/unseen by the person they were replying to anyway. It needn't make such a difference in that respect.

-- Masked Intruder (dr_...), Today 12:40 PM. (ex machina) (later)

uhh RSS bookmarks?

lol kate mirite?

I was referring to the "otoh it may be quite good if they could see how many people are ignoring them" part of your post. I could see a lot of meltdowns happening if people were able to find out one way or another that they were being ignored.

-- s1ocki (slytus...) (webmail), April 3rd, 2006 1:49 PM. (slutsky) (later) (link)

Yes, but that would require flagging them with little stars for there to be an RSS of all your flagged bookmarks.

PWNED

I don't quite understand why people are opposed to optional enhancements that wouldn't change their preferred methods of browsing ILX...?

Also, if the overall look and feel doesn't change, I don't see why users shouldn't be allowed more customization options for how they get info from the board.

xpost - shouldn't and there's gonna be a blooddrive to amp up ilx wattage at some point right?

Can someone explain me the point behind "edit posts", besides correcting typos? Because I don't think typos are such a big deal, and they're often a source of amusement.

I kind of don't see why, for example, me never seeing snide comments made about me by Dr Morbius or Dr Morbius never seeing snide comments made about him by me and thus extending out tired arguments long past the point where they are entertaining or funny would be a BAD thing...?

Since it is not the moderators' job to get rid of people who I think are assholes and there are people here whose posts I never want to read but there aren't enough of them to cause me to find no worth in reading or posting to this site, why is it such a big fucking deal to give me the tools necessary to make my experience reading and posting to ILX more enjoyable?

On the other hand, if Mentalist A really wants to wind up Mentalist B (or even Mentalists C-Z) then frankly all they're going to do is log out and start being a creepy weirdo that way. And the problem with every one of these solutions that's been put forward is that if someone's really determined to be an odious turd (and most of them are), then they're going to find a way of doing so anyway.

If I do rewrite the codebase, there will be an ignore function. It will operate as I described above. End of discussion.

you suck at being an internet character though

2. A search that doesn't always break

3. Ordering options on search results

4. Coders that don't say "no discussion" without really explaining why IP numbers shouldn't be shown. Or abruptly close discussions that need reopened. Like:

5. Ignore option that lets you still see a users posts, but blocks their images. So CSS-weilding chumpers can't fuck up threads, but you can still read them being obnoxious about computers, and still see images from other posters.

Um er, we have that function now, its called "hide images".

As for the visible-IP-address thing, there's no legitimate reason why any normal user should be able to see another user's IP. The relative anonymnity has allowed for some of the most interesting discussions on ILX. Plus all the other reasons given upthread. I thought that much was common sense.

ANYWAY YES PLEASE CONTINUE TO DISCUSS THIS STUFF WHATEVER. I'm just going to keep making my list on the other board. Keep throwing new ideas out there. There have been some good ones in this thread so far!

Maybe I missed the suggestion somewhere upthread, but what about just a "preview post" option? Most msg boards have this feature, and it's useful for checking the img or url links (or any other post that uses html). Most of the posting "errors" on ILX involve improperly entered html, and img links in particular.

Problem is, there are a few people who have mentalist argumentative tendencies towards others, who are also interesting and funny and thought-provoking posters. If I'm going to have to "open" every post they make to find out whether they've got their sensible hat or their mentalist hat on, I still reckon I'm quicker scrolling through the dickishness.

This tone would be a bit better recieved if, you know, you occasionally paid enough attention to the Mod Request board that the search function worked for more than 24 hours at a time. Instead the impression we get off the mods is of you as a vague force who occasionally moves over the waters and does stuff.

. No-one has no use, you can't draw a line and say 'these people are no good, and I never want to hear from them again' because every rubbish poster on the board has produced at least one great thing. ILX has rehabilitated any number of asshole over the years, and also has a bunch of posters (most prominently jess/blount/trife) who are useful (and even maybe important) members of a board/subboard AND ALSO incredible assholes the rest of the time.

. No-one has no effect, that line you can't draw would also have to include 'these people, and everyone who responds to these people and everyone who responds to them etc' until it's just you and the logged-outs. Without a threading system, you can't tell if someone's responding to something you wrote, or something someone you're ignoring wrote, or what. NB I am in no way suggesting a threading system. This is why saying "If you don't turn it on, it won't effect you" is at best shortsighted.

Ignoring these and going straight to "I say so" is a bad idea.

I know we're at 'end of discussion' but, um, I just wanted to add a voice on the side of 'ignore user option sounds like unnecessary faff'; there are a lot of threads I ignore or read with gritted teeth due to single posters, who sometimes aren't even trolls or anything but just irritate me, but I don't see any way an 'ignore user' function would help, i'd probably end up reading them anyway out of trainwreck interest or to fill in the gaps in conversation. (remember when... was it calum who was made invisible to logged-in posters? and it was funny and all, but only workable in that one situation. plus I totally logged out to find out what it looked like from outside. There's another point, it could become nigh-incomprehensible if people with slightly different ignore-user lists were on the same thread as people they were ignoring - incomprehensible to someone who wasn't ignoring anyone, I mean) But maybe it would be interesting to code just to see if you could do it? That's a good reason to build it.

Giving people the option of editing their own posts, in any way beyond a 'preview this post' function, sounds like a fucking stupid idea (even tho it works for lulz, see noize bored).

xpost

of course you can do this. it's up to you to take the risk of blocking them out and ruling out the prospect that maybe you'll miss that one great thing or it would atone for the thousand bad things.

because ilx is a conversation; it WILL affect non-ignoring ppl's reading because they'll be engaging with people who don't know what else has been said:

Walter Sobchak: Were you listening to The Dude's story, Donny?
The Dude: Walter...
Donny: What?
Walter Sobchak: Were you listening to The Dude's story?
Donny: I was bowling.
Walter Sobchak: So you have no frame of reference here, Donny. You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know...
The Dude: (interrupting) Walter, Walter, what's the point, man?
Walter Sobchak: There's no reason - here's my point, dude, there's no fucking reason why these two...
Donny: Yeah, Walter, what's your point?

(xpost: THAT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME ALREADY)

people ignoring would still see that the person they are ignoring has posted so it seems quite likely they would be able to tell if that person had in fact answered the question in some way (based on responses to their post) i.e they have some clue that an attempt at answering or moving the discussion on has been made. as said upthread, people often fail to see this anyway even when they can see all the posts. and people liable to crack the same joke are unlikely to want to ignore each other surely?

Anyone wanting to troll would just change their login slightly

but most actual trolls are anon anyway so that's a separate issue that 'ignore user' isn't really concerned with.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/identitymatters

is interesting

I very much wouldn't wouldn't like the ability to edit posts. This would be abused for sure, in ways that we can't even conceive of now.

These would change the way the board works, and in my opinion for the worse.

That still doesn't invalidate the point, only my self-assessment of my mental acuity.

It's discussion, yo!

Big ups to 'Preview Post.' That would save me a hell of a lot of embarrassment.

Interesting thought. I'll add it to the list.

THAT BEING SAID, I WANT A FEATURE IN WHICH ALL OF MY POSTS TASTE LIKE ICE CREAM.

Who knows? It'd be interesting to see what kind of discussions that would provoke.

some people might think it makes sense to use it in a healing culture kind of way, talking about personal problems or oprah rpg etc , other people might think it makes sense to use it for hardt-negri "multitude project" kind of purposes and what not.
through this feature more people might be inclined to call a spade a spade.
All information treated equally; only accurate argument will work. other ideas why else would it make sense?

or what Andrew said. ps thanks for addressing the idea

that way i'll be able to fill in the missing context from memory.

The features that have been discussed in this thread represent about one percent of the total work involved in rewriting ILX. The bulk of my time would be spent writing more efficient database code with the goal of having ILX respond quickly 100% of the time.

1. Preview post option to see how it looks in the context of the thread.

2. Ability to see last x-number of posts or list of threads which user has posted to.

3. Reintroduction of some of the html elements which were disabled some time ago e.g font size/colour etc

And ability to disable said html elements in user prefs (kind of ties in with the user CSS Jon requested)

Interesting thought.

You'll never catch Ned that way!

You're thinking of rewriting ILX?
ilXor.com > ILE | ILM | B-ball |Moderator Request Forum | New Answers | Unanswered Questions | Ask A Question Logout | sanskrit | Settings

becomes fixed at the top so if I'm midway through reading a boring long thread I can click out without having to hit my browser's back button or scroll all the way to the top (or bottom) for the board link.

also, i like the Google AdSense idea for logged out users. It's a good way to monetize random googlers who are interested in more info or in the wrong place altogether.

you don't use "Home" and "End" keys?

uhh.. so about those avatars..

http://digg.com/science/Global-warming_alarmists_intimidate_dissenting_scientists_into_silence.

also they are rss feeds that the main interface aggragates, except they are fed out through an MVC structure so that they can be DIFFERENT KINDS of rss feeds or atom ones, oh yeah and they're dynamically rendered on the page and sortable using xsl.

also, you should be able to "toss" the divs containing the different content boxes and they'll float around the page with momentum until they gradually come to a stop and the user can control the friction ON THE FLY with a javascript slider control thing.

SC, I HAVE A FEED CLASS THAT LETS ME TARGET ALL DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF RSS ATOM ETC IT RULES

AND MARQUEE

this is true or false depending on ones perspective on it.

ILX ranks really well on google through the brute force of users repeating subject names over and over (ex: chowhound, Scout Niblett). Basic seo best practices include using thread title or referer keywords in the URL, doing this would shoot us up in the rankings even more, which could be a good or bad thing.

it would be awful if an influx of unregistereds started shitting on the boards, it could be great if jw's proposed AdWords idea came to fruition. That might be the only way Andrew will be properly compensated for his hard work.

ideally, the indecipherable urls would remain, but perhaps after a certain amount of time automated duplication of threads with keywords in the URL would happen. only these threads would have AdWords contained within, and it would mostly be random googlers who saw them, we could have adwords not load for registered users.

(i realize you guys are mostly concerned with caching)

a) Andrew should monetize them, as they are the most likely to outclick on a text ad
b) it serves to discourage random people from sticking around too long

c) did you completely miss the part about no adwords for logged in users?

Put he poster's name before their message with a link to the next message. Like this:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

-- Annoying Suckah(egeb@gmail.com), April 16th, 2006 9:14 PM. (later) Fuck that shit. Next post, please.

LETS MAKE A THING LIKE THIS FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE THE SUN NOW!! BECAUSE ITS SO COOL TO DO THINGS LIKE THIS AND SHOW THE WORLD
THAT YOUR PROBABLY THE RACIST WHITE TRASH SOUTHERN HICKS!!

IF YOUR EMO, OR GOTH YOU SUCK!! GET A LIFE!!

GOOD CHARLETTE SUCKS ASS!!!

-- NExt Poster (egdm@gmail.com), April 16th, 2006 9:15 PM. (later) Fuck that shit. Next post, please.

Yes, esteban, that's very clever.
-xpost-
---------------------------------------------------------------------

-- s1ocki (slytus...) (webmail), April 13th, 2006 4:55 PM. (slutsky) (later) (link)

how is this lame?

Some random googler looking for mp3s does a search on Thom Yorke Chris Martin. As of April 14th, ILM has the 6th and 7th natural search position on Google. Random googler shows up, scans for YSI links, sees nothing then posts "U GUYS R LAM3RZ".

Alternatively, as an unregistered, he could be served AdWords links on the side which direct him to eMusic where he can buy mp3s. He clicks on that link and Andrew gets a dime of compensation for his long hours coding and maintaining ILX.

Andrew's not sitting on a goldmine here, but ILX could easily pull in $100 a day just from random googlers outclicking. Do the math and see what he missed out on by not implementhing this a few years ago.

- if they want to stick around they can register (sorry ethan, you'll have to see a couple ads on the side)
- not all AdSense ads are mp3s
- and then summarily registered

...? I mean seriously, I actually don't get why people care so much about features that actually don't affect them. But I didn't show up here through google so maybe I'm not getting something?

I don't really care what they do as long as I get an ignore feature.

i don't give a shit if tombot has to click away an adwords frame that appears only once, i doubt he would either.

- not all googlers are looking for free mp3s

absolutely right! they're looking for recipes, movies, all sorts of things that get discussed here for which they would be better served by an actual website rather than an extremely long conversation, the Q + As format of which they will likely not understand. the fact that you said this leads me to believe you don't understand how content targeted text ads work.

- most ppl who post here showed up via google

yes, and since the more worthwile posters (example: label owner posting on Arthur Russell thread) are so interested in the topic at hand they will continue reading and posting even with AdWords present. If they love the board so much, and want to lose the ads, they will register.

- "andrew is missing a great business opportunity" fails to convince me

whether you are convinced is irrelevant, it's not your decision to make.

one more point, it was never a business opportunity, it is compensation for all Andrew's hard work.

but nu-ILX is MAKIN MONEY G

NO

jon, do you understand how the targeting works? if morbius is writing about wong kar-wai, it will show text ads for wong kar-wai dvds. if it's you raving about anal beads again, it will serve ads for anal beads.

err I was disagreeing with that. ILX is more interesting than many popular blogs and often serves as a meta-aggregator for info on media topics -- SEE: ILM

If someone is actually looking for interesting discussion on a topic, they might stay and register but for a good portion of random googlers they aren't going to get what they want out of ILX because they weren't on the internet seeking a discussion. They were seeking a specific answer to a specific question and somehow ended up here.

Anyway, my point is that I am 100% anti-ignore feature.

/ignore [on|off|nickname|address] Toggles ignoring of a nick or address or sets it on or off totally.
/invite {nickname} {#channel} Invites another user to a channel.
/join {#channel} Makes you join the specified channel.
/kick {#channel} {nickname} Kicks nickname off a given channel.
/list [#string] [-min #] [-max #] Lists all currently available channels, evt. filtering for parameters.

DITTO

don't like? don't read.

I mean the state of the board being what it is lately I can see very little to be lost by the ignore feature. You might even -gasp- convince people to behave themselves, once in a while.

That's sort of fucking hilarious, it's not like Tuomas is harassing him.

I think it already came up and was buried about not allowing unregistered users to turn on e-mail notifications--can that actually be done? Sooner rather than later with the amount of spam going on these days on the board? Or maybe, better yet but poss more complicated, can we install a feature in settings where users can choose to never e-mail notify? IE even if someone turns on notification, MY posts will not be sent to that person's e-mail box if I choose to not have them sent.

I get massive spam on my regular gmail acct fwiw. I dunno.

I've never used the notifications, personally, as mentioned--I am curious those who do use it, does it email you the entire post, or just a note that a post is now on the thread?

DV uses it, Sean C as well, I think.

-- Allyzay Science Explosion (allyza...), November 10th, 2004.

But please keep doing ILX searches on me and pointing out how much you hate me, that will definitely prove that an ignore function isn't needed to, say, keep people from just leaving this board altogether, Morbius.

Is there any way we can manage to eke out a search function that can handle 3 letter words?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyer-Moore_string_search_algorithm

By comparison, Canada's communications-intelligence operations are conducted by the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), a branch of the Canadian Department of National Defence. It has a staff of 890 people and an annual budget of $110-million (Cdn). The CSE's headquarters is the Sir Leonard Tilley Building on Heron Road in the nation's capital of Ottawa, Ontario, and its main communications intercept site is located on an old armed-forces radio base in Leitrim, just south of Ottawa.

(That's not a pissing contest, toothpicker.)

Prediction: dwindling returns on your efforts.