[ADMIN] Updating ILX's code

Hello! You might have seen from the message at the top of every page that a new version of the ILX code is being worked on. Here's a thread about it.

TLDR: We need to upgrade our code, that means lots of changes both behind the scenes and to the website, feedback is welcome. No fixed date yet set; all posts will be kept.

Longer version:

Why change?
The current ILX code was last written in 2006 (by Keith) and while it has been tweaked over the years, the core engine that handles how threads and posts work still dates to back then, as do various bits of server infrastructure. It's held up remarkably well but three things have happened in the past year that have some serious implications:

• AI Bots: You might remember that we had a number of outages over the past year. These were down to the huge amount of AI bot-scraping that is now affecting virtually the entire web. Because the current code is designed to handle human levels of traffic mainly to currently popular threads, it starts to break down under the load of bots trying to read the entire database multiple times a minute. We have used a third party service (Cloudflare) to help manage this traffic, but it comes with trade-offs, not least that many real users get interruptions or blocked because they are suspected of being bots.
• Regulation ILX is hosted and run out of the UK, and falls under the UK's Online Safety Act. That has implications for a few aspects of how we manage and moderate posts and even what features we can have, that the current code isn't fully compliant with.
• Security. I'm going to be a bit vague about this on a public thread, but a second factor of the rise of AI is that security vulnerabilities are far, far easier to find and exploit both in custom code like ILX's and in the software we use on the server to host it.

What changes?
Code-wise a lot: this is a really significant change to the underlying architecture of ILX - the code is virtually all new. A lot of thought went into solving the challenges I mentioned, but also on how to address some limitations that have been long-running pains in our side over the years, and also just some things that are now better understood.

In terms of things you can see and click and use, the core idea stays the same - we host multiple boards containing questions/threads that have answers/posts from posters. You can read, search, bookmark and follow threads. There's mobile apps (Zing mostly works, Flagging will need to be updated). By far the easiest way to understand all the changes is just to play on the version up and running on the Sandbox and see for yourself.

What doesn't change?
All the current posts and threads will stay available - nothing will get lost in the update as they will all be migrated. The site stays at its usual address. Your login and password stay the same.

Can we feedback on new features and changes?
Yes! There are a few threads running on the Sandbox right now discussing the new code, and Keith has made a lot of changes both in response to feedback and as we see how the new interface is really working out for people.

When does all this happen?
We don't have a set date in mind - this happens when we're ready. A few things are in consideration here:

• Feedback from posters on the new stuff!
• The regulation aspects mentioned above means it is risky to stay as we are, so a change will have to happen sooner rather than later.
• Cost: the Sandbox is running on an ILX-sized server, so we've effectively doubled some of our hosting costs for now

is Zing going to still support the new ilx or will it have to be rewritten (zing actually seems broken to me on my iphone with standard ilx anyway)

do eet

Zing supports the new ILX - though the code has been changing a lot with all the feedback so I'm a bit behind on incorporating all the changes and getting them on the App Store. I do have a Testflight build if people want access to that, it gets the latest fixes as I make them. There's also an Android beta in testing I can make available to people.

I would use the Testflight build

I’m really glad this is finally happening and incredibly grateful to you and keith fwiw!!

Thanks for all your hardwork Keith & Stet.

is the new shiz in a memory safe lang

is login pswd to sandbox new and unique — a new registration? my old old sandbox login does’t seem to work

Can I ask about the Online Safety Act stuff? I suppose I hadn’t really thought about ilx being a site being affected by that being mostly text based but I assume you are referring to the age verification and threats of violence (or stuff that could be considered to be so) stuff mainly?

With an existing userbase that is mostly known, would a way around this be age gating a 77 esque board for anything that might be reportable by malicious actors of age verification violations? Again I don’t even know what would fall under that in a mainly text format? The sex discussions on various threads? The discussion of rape on the Gisele Pelicot thread? It’s a terrible piece of legislation for so many reasons.

trm: we keep forgetting how bits work so no

Hunt3r: old registrations should work - try a password reset if not

gyac: yeah, we did a compliance audit and there's a few things that were concerning and features that it really rules out for us - like supporting image hosting and DMs. Age verification is something I want to avoid as I don't trust (or want to pay) the third parties involved.

terrible piece of legislation otm btw: a lot of UK forums (including one pretty famous cycling one I think?) just fully shut up shop rather than try and comply

I assume that the legislation would still hold even if the site were operated and maintained in the US? I haven’t actually looked at it but my experience with GPDR makes me think it would.

Yes it would - though there's less risk to the admins that way. A few US sites have been charged under it (mainly porn) and just ignore the regulator. UK ones can get a knock on the door so they generally comply.

Thank you for the comms stet - and everything else of course!

Yes, this is a useful explainer! Thanks.

As a non-tech person, I’m curious: does the act of hosting images itself have legal implications, or is the issue that hosting images exposes ILX to risk because of the content of the images? Like, a smartass posting goatse or whatever.

Dms make sense btw, though wouldn’t webmail in theory fall under the same? I don’t have a vpn atm so I’m in the laughable position where I can only read my bluesky dms every time I go home to Ireland. Where is the court challenge we need to strike this down already…and agree re swerving age verification entirely

I would assume that you don’t have much control over a link posted on your site but you have a lot of control over data you are hosting, so a foul image link can just be handled by deletion but actually hosting an image opens you up to much more liability.

Again, I’m unfamiliar with the details of the legislation, just drawing on past experience

thanks for the great explainer. i'm guessing once this space goes offline the other one becomes ilx de facto? i guess migration will probably occur naturally in stages before that? doubled hosting costs is no bueno. if it's decided that there is a firm switchover date i support that.

Because this is UK law, there's a lot of variables here, and wording like "reasonable adjustments" and "proportionate to risk". The types of controls you need to offer vary depending on your risk category. A huge number of factors go into calculating your risk category such as - do you allow anon posts? do you age verify users? Are children likely to try and use your service? Are your posts pre-vetted by mods? Do you have 24/7 moderation?

Image upload is one of the big things that shifts you into a higher-risk category, and those call for more stringent safeguards, like using image hashing and real-time moderation etc.

xp webmail is treated differently because in theory the email host has done all the work to make sure access to under 18s is managed, we're not responsible for that. If we offered a private inbox here, we'd then be on the hook for provisioning all the same controls an email provider needs to have.

i'm guessing once this space goes offline the other one becomes ilx de facto?

OK that wasn't much clearer. Basically, when all this is done there will still be two sites - www.ilxor.com and sandbox.ilxor.com - and they'll both be running the new code.

Will there be a fundraiser to deal with additional expense or is that all covered?

Keith and I are covering it between us, but thanks!

I mean if you ever do need us to pitch in, let us know for sure.

Yeah please! Happy to throw in as well

We would be extremely happy to donate! I always arrive to the ILX fundraiser threads after the goal has already been met, and feel like a freeloader as a result.

Overall --- obvious huge thanks to stet and to Keith for putting in all this work to make ILX stay viable for another twenty years. The gigantic under-the-hood overhaul is obviously necessary for the reasons laid out, and it's clear that it's reaping benefits in terms of things like search, etc. Thanks also to Keith for remaining open-minded and continually working to implement various requests on the sandbox.

One thing I'd highlight for those who haven't checked it out is that while the new interface can seem very startling at first, you actually can get it very quickly to something more familiar. The gear menu at the top has a bevy of settings, each developed by Keith in response to particular requests. One of those, near the top, is "Styles developed by users," and switching to the "back in the day" mode will toggle a bunch of the other checkboxes, and set you up with something that's more baseline familiar ILX. You can customize further from there, but I think it's worth playing with sandbox in both the default mode, and the "Back in the day" mode, to see the range of implementations that Keith's made available. As time goes by, other such styles will probably get developed, and perhaps more of the minor settings can fall behind the curtain in an "Advanced Settings" menu or something.

I have a longer post of thoughts about the design and where I'd like to see it go next, but that'll wait til after work. Short version is, I'm really liking where this is headed, and can now see it becoming a more easeful and pleasant posting and reading experience than Keith's 2.0 --- which has been a part of my daily existence for two decades. I don't think this is yet quite where I'd want it to be in terms of replacing the 2.0 interface. I think some people are already there, which speaks to the strength of what Keith's already implemented! But I think there are a couple of missing pieces of functionality that are pretty important; several ways that the layout could be tidied up for ease of viewing; some minor tweaks in terms of ILX flavor (like going from "SNA" to "RA"); and several things that are more conceptual/fundamental to the culture, and which deserve more than any of the above to be really hashed out by the community, here on this thread, rather than by the few of us who are most active in expressing our thoughts on Sandbox.

agree that it is nice to have the chance to donate something.

Even if it cost nothing, and the time is not nothing, I’d still want to buy you a beer or some Buffy DVDs.

Good choice on image hosting and navigating not just UK law but the increasing patchwork of laws around the world. Sites are starting to straight up block whole geographies rather than try and comply. Yahoo Japan blocks all of Europe rather than try and comply with GDPR and that is in a country with GDPR equivalency.

That thought brought up another. If you go back to the early days of ILX on greenspun; more than a few posters used their full government names, myself included. I don’t really care about my name but some might including some posters who have long since stopped posting. It’s the one bit of PII the site really has and I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better to redact or conceal those.

People have asked before, but it's not been something we could do without expending a lot more man-hours than we're willing to give up - not sure if the new code would make it easier to do as an automated process, but one thing that might be useful is something on the sign-up page saying DON'T USE YOUR REAL NAME, IDIOT - or, y'know, that but in less insulting language.

Poxy fule, maybe?

xp webmail is treated differently because in theory the email host has done all the work to make sure access to under 18s is managed, we're not responsible for that. If we offered a private inbox here, we'd then be on the hook for provisioning all the same controls an email provider needs to have.

Will it be possible in the new version to edit the email address associated with a user name?

some Buffy DVDs

Well that's taking it back.

something on the sign-up page saying DON'T USE YOUR REAL NAME, IDIOT

Aw.

Will the Butthole Surfers thread still be purple?

That thought brought up another. If you go back to the early days of ILX on greenspun; more than a few posters used their full government names, myself included. I don’t really care about my name but some might including some posters who have long since stopped posting. It’s the one bit of PII the site really has and I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better to redact or conceal those.

Not disputing your larger point, but typically PII requires a name plus another identifiable piece of information, such as a Driver's License Number, account number, password, etc. Thus, a name alone is not PII at least by the definitions with which I am familiar under NY law.

Sorry, NY law = US law on this point. These laws are very similar across the states, the primary differences being the list of other information that together with the name constitute PII (for instance, IL includes name + biometric information in the definition of PII).

is the new shiz in a memory safe lang

― trm (tombotomod), Tuesday, 1 September 2026 17:57 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

trm: we keep forgetting how bits work so no

― stet, Tuesday, 1 September 2026 18:03 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Enjoying the joke, but also curious - what are the old and new versions written in?

the old one is Java; the new one is something slightly more esoteric (and memory and type safe) but I'm being cagey about it because I want to limit what AI knows about it.

That sounds wise (and I thought it might well be the case).

Is there a wall of lava lamps involved in all of this?

Nevermind, I know you can't answer that

of course! also DUMPLINGS!

It I'm being cagey about it because I want to limit what AI knows about it.

what a world.

appreciate the work stet <3

very interesting, thanks for all the info stet

i'm now past the processing my grief phase wrt losing old ilx, ready to jump ship, lfg

greenspun’s not dead, late losers

assuming URLs will be changing, will redirects be in place for old bookmarks, search results, etc.? eg if I stumble onto an old tab for the previous post:
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=9337048&boardid=40&threadid=117039

I don't believe URLs will be changing.

The domain is the same but the URLs do change. There are redirects though - the old ones redirect so links will all still work

Also feel that if someone is obnoxiously chainposting all the time that should be represented visually

Hahaha otm - an obnoxious chainposter

i agree with wins

I have no problem making that a setting - I’ll get on it. The current look is definitely not final either way

Can you make a tiny dunce cap hover above the display name of an obnoxious chainposter?

after the initial concerns about having new code at all

they mean idiots like me, I wasn’t concerned about new code “at all”, I was concerned about poor ui and usually when a new ui is “not good” I’d rather go back and use the old one rather than make a bunch of detailed posts and have a big old debate about it, which is what happened.

it’s not that deep

Sorry if that sounds “ungrateful” or whatever, again, that whole saga really showed a weird side of ilx to me

I think the backlash to the original announcement was mostly because of poor communications. While we were told that feedback was welcome, it felt like a radical change was suddenly being foisted on us with only a small possibility of tinkering on the edges. Now that I understand the reasons for the new code, the parameters of what can and can't be changed, and that Keith and stet are genuinely willing to iterate on the design and incorporate feedback, I am content to just let the process play out without registering any further feedback of my own.

I agree. Also had a friend stop posting after the way that was handled so I definitely didn’t appreciate the tone of that message. (Bet I’ll get a response and the whole defence squad now).

I literally just saw your post that you were wondering what I meant and was going to respond, but "bet I'll get a response now" makes me think you don't actually want one? But I guess I'll rise to the bait so you can feel superior in some way?

I didn't initially enter into discussion with you as your post after mine was a statement of your thoughts, it wasn't a question, and it seemed a reasonable enough quibble about framing rather than an enticement into an argument. To me, suggesting that people were worried about having a new code at all doesn't seem inaccurate - the new code introduced a bunch of functions and UI that people were hostile to (some of which I was hostile to myself), there was questioning about why we even needed it, and now we have a chance of providing feedback to make it how we want it, so my way of framing it seems legit to me. I realise you're less interested in the code and were mostly concerned with the handling of the announcement of plans - that wasn't really relevant to what I was bumping for so I didn't think to mention it. Sorry for not writing exactly what you wanted me to, I guess?

I've also got to ask, what the fuck kind of tone did you read into my post??? My tone was literally meant to convey "hey, people were worried about this and now feedback has died down, does anyone want to chip in their thoughts?" I have no idea what malevolence you think it conveyed but whatever it was, that was entirely your imagination.

jaymc summarized where i'm at with this as well.

i am a proud chainposter and i stand with other chainposters tbqh.

Thanks for the response Emily. As I said, I don’t believe people were “concerned” about the code at all. I don’t recall the debate on here being on the merits of the code, I would assume that was a sandbox issue as that is where people were testing. Glad to know I’m entirely inventing the dismissive responses that have characterised so much of this.

a friend stop posting after the way that was handled

it's really incredible that any of us are still posting after the unspeakable assault we all faced, when we were brusquely informed that a plaintext message board would look somewhat different at some point in the future

You don't remember anyone talking about reactions or the user interface? Or why there was a need for anything to change? You really don't remember that?

Glad to know I’m entirely inventing the dismissive responses - if you actually read my post you would see I am talking about a single post, the one where you questioned the tone. I have no standing to talk about anybody else's tone and would not presume to do so.

xp

I mean, sorry if I sound snippy here but I posted one of the most innocuous messages possible in order to bump this thread, I have no idea how it's getting tone policed! I just feel like I'm living in some absolute bizarro world.

You don't remember anyone talking about reactions or the user interface?

Or why there was a need for anything to change? You really don't remember that?

plaintext message board would look somewhat different at some point in the future

come on man this is an uncharitable bad faith reading.

You thought that was a coding issue and not a “why are these unrequested changes and features being shoved in without discussion about what people actually want” issue?

Those two issues are not mutually exclusive! Changes and features are made by coding them in, they are therefore part of the new code - my reference to the new code covers those changes and features that people were dismayed by. I kind of figured that "code" obviously covered all the ins and outs of the backend and frontend, and that it was pretty clear that I wanted people to continue to have their say on things.

I'm mostly at "don't like how it looks, don't like the new features, think they will both impact the board negatively" but i don't want to get into it that deeply because it looks like it'll be possible to cobble together something that's adequate for my dwindling interactions with ilx

I haven't seen a single person complain that the code undoubtedly needs a redo

er, complain that the code doesn't undoubtedly need a redo

I think there should be a user survey with this new format in progress - with the first question: “Do you actually enjoy posting on ilx?” (Second question: “Are you sure?”

I mainly read ILX on Flagging on my phone so I don't visit the Sandbox unless I'm sitting down on a laptop.
BTW will Flagging be updated?

I had to bow out of the last thread because I inadvertently irritated people by talking about how to describe changes before they are implemented - without whatever techy knowledge you all have I don't really know how to talk about 'the new code' in general in ways that everyone understands, so I won't attempt it here, but will get over to the Sandbox where the temporary/proposed/suggested/test changes can be played around with. It is still a bit jarring seeing it - feels a bit like a different place, but in a way that's hard to pinpoint!

(Also you don't get the sticky thread on Flagging, so I forget and live in denial)

I will note, as a long-time Flagging user, that viewing the Sandbox on android via chrome is a buttery-smooth experience. Haven't tried it with other mobile browsers though.

user-facing new features and UI are 'new code'. People had issues with this. that is all.

Okay! So --- my thoughts on the 3.0 currently being tested in Sandbox.

This all comes with the blanket statement that Keith has worked a ton on this project, on a volunteer basis, and so I sincerely hope all of this comes off as good-natured constructive feedback, reflecting just one user's impressions and opinions. I also want to note everything Keith has implemented over the last month; on the earlier thread, I'd said that if the update went forward as-is, I'd most likely bow out. That's no longer the case, and that's down to Keith taking in a ton of commentary and implementing a ton of stuff. I'm not technically savvy, but some of those changes took substantial rewiring of how the system handles its basic tasks! At this stage the 3.0 draft on Sandbox has some really, really nice quality-of-life improvements that I look forward to using constantly: editing after posting, improved search, ranked polls, the WYSIWYG editor liberating me from endless bbcode fiddling on my crappy phone's keyboard interface, etc. Starring/saving individual posts is an interesting thing that I haven't yet played around with. Etc.

I do still wish we'd gone through this differently in terms of process, as discussed at length previously. But like others, I've been heartened by the evidence that Keith does take that feedback and revision part seriously, and that we're *not* just being asked to rubber-stamp a nearly-complete project. His implementation of stylesheets (like the currently available "Back in the day" mode) also offers a lot in terms of recreating familiar experiences, within the new codebase. One of these days I'll do a little more tweaking to my settings, and ask if Keith would consider them as a stylesheet - I think I'm getting close to a nice halfway point. But anyway. Keith also killed off the "reacts," which had some fans but also had the most sustained "absolutely not" reaction from other posters. He's made a lot of the other new things into options - though, as discussed below, I would prefer that many of these be "default off" rather than "default on." The effort to take in and implement various small and large ideas is obvious.

So! My notes at this stage fall into three categories: 1) Features that appear "missing" between 2.0 and 3.0, and perhaps are already on Keith's to-do list; 2) Substantial changes to the way the site works, that I think merit discussion by the community before we commit to them as on-by-default; and 3) Comparatively minor layout/interface tweaks. I've voiced some of these on various sandbox threads, so this may be a repeat for Keith and other readers. Again, for all of these, please insert "Just in my opinion" and "Sharing to see if anyone else feels the same, if not then I may just be the one weirdo and life will go on."

FUNCTIONALITY PRESENT IN 2.0 BUT NOT (YET) IN 3.0:

Xpost Warnings: 3.0 adds the nifty feature of displaying new posts, as they arrive, even if you're currently writing your post. This is unfortunately easy to overlook, so I think we do need some kind of more visible "heads up" when you click to post, to reduce the risk of confusion or unintentional rudeness etc.

Load whole thread (or search whole thread): To protect the system from overload, AI scraping etc., 3.0 does not allow you to display an entire thread at once. Though a necessary loss, it's still a feature loss. Could loading whole threads be restricted to "vetted" users (or something like that)? Otherwise, we really do need "search within this thread," so that as a partial fix, you can find a specific post you're looking for and pick up reading from there.

Number of posts visible at a time: Related to the above, on Sandbox currently, it can be the case that as few as two posts are currently visible, with the rest behind the "Previous page" link. That's a low ceiling to bump into, and just means I have to open up the previous page in another tab and click back and forth to get oriented before posting. Could we go with the most recent 100 posts, say?

NEW FEATURES/CHANGES, ON-BY-DEFAULT: DO WE WANT THEM?

These are all major changes to the user experience and how the site looks and feels. Some of them might rise to "should not exist at all" for some folks, but for most of them, my question is, should they remain on by default, or should they be things you can switch on if you want to try them out? In general, I think the selling point of ILX, to a great extent, IS the way it looks/works/feels. I don't even hate all of the new extras --- but I like being able to tell people "ILX is amazing, it's everything old-school message-boards used to be, with no extras tacked on." If the default experience feels heavy on 'extras,' I do think something gets lost.

Overall new thread display/layout: The default is the "two columns" layout with poster info to the left and post text to the right. I find this almost unusable, but some people have explicitly said they prefer it. Keith has made it where you can switch this off, restoring an old-school layout with the posts and signatures stacked; you can then adjust further settings (separator vs. no separator, 'wide view' vs. 'narrow view' etc.) to get it looking the way you'd prefer. But I kinda feel like, ILX has built its ILX-ness on the classic layout; shouldn't the new site try to emulate that as much as possible, and offer this alternative as an opt-in for people who want to try it out?

Polls showing "who voted what": Keith has, in response to feedback, adjusted this to where, I believe, it can be set by the individual poll-runner and also can be hard-set for a particular board by board mods. IMHO it should default to "off" for all cases, and be very very loudly announced when turned on. Anonymity by default, please!

Numerical 'red alert' for new activity: Here too, Keith has kindly implemented an option to turn this off and display updates at the top of the board pages/Recent Activity, as in current ILX. But do we want the red alerts as the default approach? Based on comments in previous threads, I don't think I'm alone in feeling like this sets a tone or creates a kind of "to-do list" pressure that I've grown to really dislike on the modern Internet generally.

Embeds (Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp, Bluesky, etc.): After testing a bunch of them out, I believe that, because of how they're designed by the third-party sites, they just take up way too much screen space. They also leave us at the mercy of these other sites and their ever-changing code, and kinda make ILX feel like it has a brand partnership with entities that many here might find objectionable for various reasons. Keith has made it possible to disable these in options, so you just see the long string of HTML pasted in from the other site. (Also doesn't look great, tbh, so I've raised the perhaps-impossible notion that these could be auto-replaced with cleaned-up hyperlinks). But I think there's a "board culture" question here which is worth weighing.

YouTube watch parties as a feature: A variation on the above. This is currently a clickable option whenever you start a new thread. It doesn't strike me as something that would get used a lot, and my own personal preference would be for no "branded" features of this kind.

"New since you last read": The site now explicitly keeps track of when you've last *viewed* all threads, independently of bookmarking. This feels inadvertently Big Brother-y, to me, and I'd like it turned off by default. Why does the system need to know what I'm reading, if I'm not bookmarking?

"Recent Activity": This may read more clearly than "Site New Answers," but we've got twenty years of posts referencing "SNA," whole threads like "no way sna," etc. I say keep the old name, or change it to like, "Sitewide New Activity."

Graphical stat displays for poll results: Keith has kindly made these into a checkbox option. I still think "off by default" should be the way to go.

Minor but somehow significant: there's an option to force other people's thread titles to display with tidy capitalization for your viewing comfort. I say, let people control how their writing is displayed! I recognize that in the post editor, there are similar substitutions that are beyond Keith's control, because they come with the post-editor "package." But this one is on ILX's end. Anyway there are so many settings on the settings page, they all take a lot of verbiage to explain, and this one feels easily dropped. (Unrelated: I'd kill the little "hand" graphics that accompany one of the other modal choices, as I don't think they're intended to illustrate the four choices anyway.)

MISCELLANEOUS LAYOUT / FUNCTIONALITY CHOICES/CLEANUP:

New Answers and New Questions are now on one page: on desktop as two columns side by side on desktop, and on mobile as a stack with New Questions down at the bottom). I find the desktop version a little overwhelming, and the mobile version problematic in that new threads are basically buried unless they're already getting posts from others. Why not continue with two separate pages? Or two separate pages with another 'combined' view?

The 'thread metadata/thread activity/top posters' box at the bottom of every thread: IMO this should be deleted, or downgraded to something you can pull up on command by clicking on the thread title. It's something I don't expect to use, or to use very rarely, but it takes up a big chunk of screen space (especially on mobile) at all times. If I'm writing a post, I would much rather see the last few posts in the thread, to which I'm likely responding.

Poll stats: Similarly, I would suppress all the statistical deep dives that display with poll results. Opening a poll thread right now means scrolling past a couple pages of site-generated data visualization before getting to user-created conversation. Keith's 2.0 design handles this much more tidily, IMHO. To be clear, I sincerely love the prospect of ranked polls, but if we need all these ways of tabulating them (do we?), do we need them all right up top, or could they be something you click to expand? (On the other hand, the number of people who voted should be clear, front and center.)

The bookmarks page: This currently displays as complete chaos on mobile - I think this is probably something Keith just hasn't tackled yet in redesigning each component to play well with the new code base.

Idea: Should my 'profile' page pull up My Recent Posts, threads I've started, etc.? I'm fine with downgrading My Recent Posts from a top-of-the-screen menu choice, but I think Search is a counter-intuitive place to find it. Anyway, this would give some functionality to the profile pages, which have always been a little bit of a backwater.

Minor: when polls auto-post to announce they're ending soon, or that results are now in, it takes a lot of words and therefore a lot of space.

Bug: On the settings page, clicking checkboxes scrolls you to the top of the page. (Clicking on the text next to the boxes checks the boxes without doing this.)

and, as one more vote of confidence, i can't begin to tell you how much easier it would have been to format that post on 3.0

"New since you last read": The site now explicitly keeps track of when you've last *viewed* all threads, independently of bookmarking. This feels inadvertently Big Brother-y, to me, and I'd like it turned off by default.

I don't have extremely strong opinions about most of your points — just a general "I like almost all this new stuff" — but I really, really like the explicit "you've read to this point."

Why does the system need to know what I'm reading, if I'm not bookmarking?

So it knows where to scroll to the next time you go to it. Otherwise it would always start at the top, right?

That's what bookmarks are for, though!

My experience is that I read many, many more threads than I bookmark, and bookmarks are for the ones that move so fast they fall partially behind the partially-displayed-thread wall.

Do you really want every non-bookmarked thread to load only at the beginning every time you open it?

Honestly never struck me as an issue before! Guess it's one of those different-people-using-the-site-different-ways things.

Most of the time I bookmark the last message I read, AND it is the latest. But there are times when I want to come back and follow from a different point (like from when things get interesting) so I will bookmark a few posts up. It's not a difference I need coding to address, I also have the ability to just scroll up a bit.

Doesn't the current site already jump to the last post you read when you open a thread?

yes

But not on extremely active threads, at least not on mobile

Mobile browser or mobile Zing? I’ve had oddities on zing myself.

Mobile browser. I always forget zing exists

everything Dr Casino wrote I agree with

(ironically I take the "we didn't actually new code at all stance" but I had a real hard time getting the site to post that just now so I may be wrong...)

Doesn't the current site already jump to the last post you read when you open a thread?

― whimsical skeedaddler (Moodles), Wednesday, 9 September 2026 18:22 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not if the last read post sits within "xxx messages skipped"

true, but wouldn't it still be data that is currently being tracked for your profile?

I think the complaint is that it’s more obvious now

Personally, I think all of our info is already on the dark web and has been there for decades so most of the tracking/privacy concerns we have about our online activity are moot, but that may be overly pessimistic

I always forget zing exists

Crazy talk!

zing has been busted for me for weeks. it simply won't load any boards, just bounces back to the list. signed out, signed back in, same thing.

What iPhone are you using akm?

Lol y'all are right, this absolutely exists currently and I just never registered it without the site explicitly telling me! Please mentally strike that item from my voluminous list.

Very well considered and thought out post Dr Casino.

I really need to log back into the sand box and take a look.

Not that I agree with it all, I would love a threads updated since last view view.

Plus as someone who reads this site in a mobile browser, never on zing, never on desktop I’m very keen to get that right.

thank you for that list!
i agree that the settings page is borked - I've had trouble clicking to change anything without it jumping up to the 'change password' section at the top.