from controversialism to discussion: has the let's-embed-a-tweet feature made ilx worse or better?

A: better
commentary: i don't often disagree w/deems but here he is RONG
reason: i myself use the let's-embed-a-tweet feature a LOT and obviously i make ilx better not worse QED

meta-commentary: "from controversialism to discussion" (or "fCtD:") wd be a good* acronym** to generate the threads which will stop the Post a controversial opinion thread merely becoming a "test kitchen for potentially interesting discussions / clusterfucks" (much as i like the phrase "test kitchen")

*in fact excellent
**first attempt at this was ANACRONYM, which turns out to be a super-useful (if unusual) word in its own right

There's seem to be minor, technical, but irritating nonetheless, issues with opening threads with embedded tweets. Other than that, I have no objections.

It will be frustrating when twitter goes away and there are a bunch of dead links

As one who copies and pastes tweet text often (without linking to the tweet but including the @username) I prefer that to embedding tweets which can easily be disappeared (which has bothered me re unlabelled youtube embeds in the past also).

worse!

i would rather have soundcloud embedded than twitter

The embed feature does three good things

1. Saves readers a trip to twitter
2. Preserves the text of the tweet itself (for when twitter goes away)
3. ...automatically!

However, it does not do three other things:

1. Prevent people from embedding one tweet in a threaded discussion while providing insufficient context as to why you are supposed to care enough to go read the whole thing
2. Fit in well with the ILX CSS options
3. Stop Twitter from being a cesspool

Unless people are going to stop linking to Twitter from ILX I think the embed function is about optimal. I do still wish the tweets were smaller in my browser.

1b and 2b are i think solvable

3b is outside even my roomy wheelhouse (tho my excellently curated twitter TL is of course a joy)

Aw it's nice that we don't disagree too much mark

"Unless people are going to stop linking to Twitter from ILX"

Dream, TB, dream big!

If it bothers you, turn your images off. Mine are usually off so I don't even notice it beyond the convenience of having direct links to tweets that might've just been quoted here before.

I like images. A tweet is not an image it's a snapshot of a proudness.

i like twitter and find it useful* but it takes quite a lot of work to keep it that way

*and soothing, courtesy john milton paradise lost books 1-12 (ymmv)

So hills amid the air encountered hills,

— Paradise Lost Book 6 (@milton_book6) May 28, 2017

Deems, I legit think you should petition the OED to consider using your definition of 'tweet (n)'.

I am not a fan but for mostly personal reasons - I try to avoid Twitter, and going on ILX and seeing certain threads which are, increasingly, Twitter annexes doesn't enhance my life. On the other hand there's nothing in those threads which would ever enhance my life to begin with; actually seeing the tweets people are discussing rather than just seeing lengthy discussion of what people are saying on Twitter (which was already happening) isn't _that_ much of a change.

like it on desktop, looks fucking horrible on zing

Zing occupies a weird place as weapon of choice for ilx prosumer superusers despite secretly being hideously unusable

I'll leave you to draw out the parallels to twitter while I smash the OK button on the xpost warning for the next quarter hour

i think one's answer to this question probably has more to do with what threads they hang out than like all other factors combined.

Zing is great as long as you remember not to post on "trending" threads with it.

The embedded tweets in Zing are tolerable, just click on the post to render it correctly.

call all destroyer otm

The embedded tweets in Zing are tolerable, just click on the post to render it correctly.

i don't think you fully appreciate just how lazy i am

i kinda like it. it saves me from having to go to twitter which i hate. and its easy to scroll past in a thread if the tweet is dumb or not particularly interesting and most tweets are pretty dumb and not particularly interesting.

i would rather have soundcloud embedded than twitter

This would rule so hard

^^^

Meanwhile:

BARBRA BRABEG BARBEA BRABRBA RBABRAB

— Choose love💚 (@_Braveisfree) June 13, 2016

Lol

i think tweet-loading and image-loading should be separate. i like having tweet text autoloaded with the links added in, but visually tweets are alien interlopers and they are too big;

but i ain't turnin off images

it is to debate what Lip Sync Karaoke is to music.

I'm agin it. It looks like shite in Zing, and oftentimes someone's posting a tweet that only refers to another article anyway.

Just post the damn article. If I wanted to read peoples tweets I'd be on effing Twitter.

(this objection, now I think about it, wasnt helped or hindered by embedding anyway as people were already doing this before, I guess. I just hate twitter.)

I approve of ILX0rZ serving as my personal filter for other internet things I can't deal with

Well, theres that point to be made, I guess ya.

the trump threads are really the only long threads i go on with lots of tweet embeds and even after all this time those threads are strangely comforting and some sort of refuge and i still don't hate you all. which is kind of a of miracle in this day and age.

But we hate u Scott

We hate u

https://fthmb.tqn.com/43hpN6s3_pspYHubqjVkKWhE_lw=/768x0/filters:no_upscale()/about/haters-56a6a44c5f9b58b7d0e41acd.jpg

You do yourself no service by such posts imo

I approve of ILX0rZ serving as my personal filter for other internet things I can't deal with

― El Tomboto, Sunday, May 28, 2017 7:38 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm another reason I appreciate Ned's posts in us politics thread

the tweet embeds are obviously great, wtf is this thread

"changing the format of posts i wasn't going to bother reading anyway has RUINED my ilx experience"

tweet embeds have made basketblolz like infinitely better and that's really all that matters.

some days after work the Trump thread gets so fuckin many new posts that I just look for the Tweet embeds to give me cliff notes on what I missed that day

The tweet embeds are a big mess of HTML code in zing.

i have no opinion on this matter whatsoever

— Ack Ack Gunz (@AckAckGunz) May 29, 2017

'Twitter as cesspool' is a weird blanket definition for anyone who regularly goes to their local cineplex to make

You don't have to listen while queueing for sodas morbs

Ok a jokes a joke can we please turn this off now. The site is just becoming a series of embedded links.

onwards and upwards, it's all good

turn images off imo, the tweets then just become text

you should have been doing this anyway though you disgusting savage

I like images!

so click on em to load, if you like them so much. do i have to explain everything?

Clicking sometimes spoils the effect of a well-placed visual gag tbf

Which are rare enough nowadays tbf

I'd like to keep images/videos turned on but Twitter embeds turned off, if that isn't a massive ask of the tech dept.

i want relevant and hilarious images embedded in text the unsatisfactory poster hasn't bothered to provide images for plz

is this function what has destroyed the "open thread at the first unread post" utility

Yes.

There's seem to be minor, technical, but irritating nonetheless, issues with opening threads with embedded tweets. Other than that, I have no objections.

― Punnet of the Grapes (Tom D.), Sunday, 28 May 2017 11:34 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am taking a stand on a subboard i moderate and no longer allowing twitter links to be posted.

would it be rude or inconsiderate to suggest removing this feature site-wide or is that overstepping my boundaries?

I feel like there was a recent debate on another thread about this - iirc the only plus about still allowing embeds is that deleted tweets remain visible

I am 100% in agreement fwiw, it should be disabled here, and people who still use it are out of excuses

I think there's agreement all the way to the top of the org chart about this (but don't quote me), it's just a matter of catching stet when he has time to implement it and not busy with 1) AI scrapers, 2) other outside attacks, 3) his day job, etc

Its a shame but I'll embed till the last day

we know

would it be possible for Bluesky to embed in the same way?

Is there a way to make the embeds but make them look more like quoted messages. Sometimes tweets are from a notable person or someone on the ground, but often they're more like outsourced posts for when someone on the move didn't necessarily have the time to write themselves. Another forum I use has done something similar, stripping out most of the formatting

This is a really useful post explaining how the twitter embeds work:

stet/keith question or whoever is in charge of code these days