Hi Keith, thanks for all your hard work. I wanted to share my thoughts on reacts, though I may just be repeating things you have already heard by now.

I joined ILX in 2019, and this was one of my first posts:

As someone who just showed up here a few days ago, here are my possibly inaccurate impressions:

1. This place doesn’t seem cliquish or unwelcoming, though clearly the regulars know each other well.

2. I like the absence of likes or upvotes, it really lowers the sense of pressure around posting/checking back.

3. I probably wouldn’t come here to talk about literature that much, though I read a lot. It seems like the chances of getting an interesting conversation going around music are much higher.

― Lily Dale, Thursday, August 8, 2019 12:08 PM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

So to me, the absence of reacts has always been a defining feature of ILX; it’s part of what drew me to the site and kept me here. When I tell people about ILX, I usually say something like “There’s this old-school message board I post on that I like because it hasn’t really changed since 2001; it doesn’t even have likes or upvotes, so it’s kind of a vestige of the internet as it used to be, before everything got horrible.”

But I hadn’t really sat down and thought out why reacts make such a difference to me, and I think it’s mainly the sense that on social media you are constantly being ranked, graded, evaluated, given multiple ways to compare yourself to other people and to earlier versions of yourself, and that this omnipresent environment of self-comparison is seeping into our lives in toxic ways. ILX is one of the few places left where you can just post something and let other people respond to it if they want to, but you don’t have a constantly updating metric of exactly how many people liked it or didn’t.

On a personal level, I also find that upvotes, likes, etc. mean that I can never just write a post and walk away; I end up tethered to my computer refreshing the page, looking for those little hits of validation like a rat hitting the cocaine lever (which is very different from just checking the conversation to see how it’s going), and that compulsion feels so unhealthy that at a certain point I just have to disconnect from the site entirely. And I don’t want that to happen with ILX.

That said, I also really appreciate all the things you actually did put into the site—I don’t mean to imply that it’s just about the notes you don’t play.

Good post, thank you for your feedback!

I mean I would like it or love it or whatever, but it seems inappropriate!

Just in case people miss it, I put back the ability to bookmark any post in a thread—I didn’t know people used it that way (no-one said!). It’s on the post menu.

I didn’t know people used it that way (no-one said!).

For the record, just to let you know, I’ve never beaten my wife.

sorry i’ve probably been leaving my comments on the wrong threads

i agree with everything Lily Dale says about reacts, it’s perfectly put. i really don’t want ilx to become like every other site on the internet and the lack of reactions is a big part of that. the posts stand or fall or provoke conversation on their own merits.

seems like the “recently updated threads” column in the top view of the board should list the time and date that each thread was last updated (like the bookmarks view does)

has anyone mentioned showing the date and time of posts instead of “the day before yesterday”? I don’t need to be reminded how long ago 2009 was on every single post

Yes, they have, and it’s on the list.

Tracer, I assume you’re looking on a phone, it collapses some of the information basically to get space back. I could put it in, but equally it’ll use a bunch of vertical space. It only does this when the device you’re looking at it on is < 550px wide.

This is AWESOME, thank you!!

Any time.

Not literally.

thank you!

No bother.

PBKR, I put in Divider 17, which is a longer horizontal line. I tried to make it look nice, but let me know if you want it tweaked. I also fixed a few bugs with wide mode etc. so that stuff is properly horizontally centered.

sadbonx, I put in an option to always show post menu. See if that helps.

It’s nice that the cursor goes into the reply box as soon as you load a thread, but on the other hand it means I can’t hit back on the keyboard. Maybe Esc should de-focus on the reply box?

Thanks, I did put a lot of work into little subtle bits and pieces like that. But yeah, I’ll check it that causes any other issues with OS-stype stuff and if not I’ll do it.

It’s not actually doing it when the page loads, it’s doing it with an intersection observer when the post editor window is more than 50% on your screen, but obviously if you’ve read the thread before, or had it bookmarked, it’ll jump there and that’ll happen.

Okay, I have done that, but not deployed it yet. Will test some more and all being well, I’ll put it up tomorrow.

Snoball, I have added data on to pagination links, e.g. ↓ Next page (1,553–1,600 of 1,652). Same as above I haven’t deployed it yet, as I’ll test it for a while and deploy it tomorrow.

divider 17 is nice!

I haven’t read this whole thread so apologies if you have answered this already. I know you can see the date stamp if you click on the posters name. Is it possible to incorporate that to the posts itself like ilx does?

Good job Keith, so far I’m loving some of these changes.

Thank you for your thankless work!

Ha, thank you Bee. I hope you enjoy it.

There are a few things going on with date:

• The time is shown in a relative sense below the poster’s name, i.e. “six minutes ago”. Others have asked if they can have an option for it to say “16th August 2025, 12:13” or something like that, and I’ll do that for them

• However, it doesn’t always show the name or date by default; it shows it if it changes. If you don’t like this, you can go into the settings and say “Always show post names and date”

So I think what you’re looking for is a combination of that latter part, and the bit I haven’t done yet, but will shortly.

Have you thought about views per topic? I think this version is keeping total posts instead of new posts, which is an improvement.

Also on my desktop it showed how many people are online? Is this a settings option?

Edit is a life saver thank you most of all for that!

Sorry, can you elaborate? I’m not sure I follow... You mean how many people have viewed a thread, or something like that?

The thing on the menu is the people who are connected, in the sense that if you posted, you would see it immediately. There’s an option to disconnect, like it used to be, so actually the real number of users is likely a bit more than the number shown.

Correct, how many views.

Right, yes I mean I have thought about it, but it involves some technical complications that essentially reduce the scalability of the website. So it means on every read, I’d have to update the database. Updates are quite expensive in terms of computing power, and given AI stuff repeatedly attacks and blasts threads with reads, that makes handling that more difficult, but at the same time also renders the numbers fairly useless, as it’s not people reading things.

I suppose I could do reads by only logged in users though. Never really thought about it that way.

AI is shit, I get it. Not really important but is more of a nerd thing.

There are ways. I mean I have to get a bit technical, I can hold counts in memory, which assuages the cost of writing to the DB if you accept that some numbers get lost during starts and stops. If people are interested and want it, I can do it.

The only way it makes sense is if its people and not bots. Costs are also a big deal so no need to add to the $$$.

Interesting stuff.

ILX Testing Board

Poll

Bee

Test

I set up this poll to test out. I didn’t want to see the results that were in process so that worked but I did allow editing until closing but can’t?

Personally I would be fine if bookmarks auto-updated.

Okay, a few more things in response to suggestions upthread or on the other one:

• Pagination data on the links

• [Esc] takes focus off of the editor

• The main menu is now the only ‘sticky’ bit, not the site name / board name / thread title. I don’t think there was a good reason there, so thanks for the feedback, as it seems all upside

Not sure I follow, but I think we’re maybe mixing up a couple of concepts:

• That there’s an option to edit the poll options for a period before voting starts

• And, that users can change their votes when the poll is running—which is what you have set

it’s not really practical/workable to allow editing of poll options while the poll is running, because you’d be potentially:

• Deleting people’s votes

• Adding options they might have voted for if they’d seen them

• Editing the meaning of something they did vote for, that might change their vote

• etc.

The last bullet there (sticky menu only) is very, very nice. A 100% upgrade to current ILX.

I was going to add my voice to the chorus requesting that the list of bookmarks with unread posts be added to the top of each thread, but with the sticky menu clicking that then clicking on the bookmark list might actually be easier than scrolling to the top and and clicking. I’m going to think about that and would want to hear what others think about that.

Ok, that’s weird. I was replying to your post two posts ago, not the most recent. When I hit reply, it showed that post in the editor as if it were going to be quoted in my post, but when I hit “Post Message”, it only posts the link to your post, which is confusing because you posted again.

Is there a way to have the reply function actually quote the post replied to?

No, I’m on desktop. Image attached.

After quick testing, I think the Reply function needs some tweaks.

1. The ability to quote the post being replied to (I think I have seen others do this so I think I am just missing something).

2. The ability to edit which part of the quoted post being replied to that appears in your post. I frequently quote only a portion of a longer post and see this dozens of time a day on ILX by others.

1. When quoting a post that has a quote, the post does not differentiate between the quoted portion and I did not see a way to do this. On ILX, you can just throw in quotes/italics into different portions to differentiate and preserve the original quoted post.

I cannot figure out what the text editor is doing to my posts when I try to incorporate a list. Can we just have the ability to turn that off?

PBKR, the quoting is now contextual to remove duplication in the thread. Posts with 5? 7? posts of the reply (I forget the actual number) get the “Replying to…” link. Posts further away get inserted as an abbreviated quote (see this example). The quote editing you’re looking for still hast to be done manually like in old-ILX and I haven’t played around enough with the editor to see how to make it approximate the old functionality.

Ok, that’s weird. I was replying to your post two posts ago, not the most recent.

What I did here was copy the text from your post, edit it down, and then format it as a quote, like in old-ILX. It’s not as fancy as the automatic quoting but it works.

I also edited my post because I accidentally hit the “monospace” format button instead of the quote button, oops

Yes I keep doing that!

What I did here was copy the text from your post, edit it down, and then format it as a quote, like in old-ILX. It’s not as fancy as the automatic quoting but it works.

Definitely going to be the way I reply to posts. I’m not digging that reply function.

Tracer, thanks for the image, it’s helpful, although I have to admit I have spent the last hour tearing my hair out trying to work out how you have managed to get that view, as it really should just kick in at <550px, i.e. mobile phone-sized.

And then I remembered that I added an option in that another user requested to display “Minimal board view”, about half way down on the options page, which presents a good deal less information on the board view—have you by any chance accidentally checked that option?

Yes I do have that ticked!

I have now unticked it. However I think I’ll tick it again because I don’t like the preview text for most recent post on each thread. Not a big deal.

Thanks, at least I know what it is now!

There’s another option to put the new threads table below recently updated threads, if that helps at all.