No, I did not say that.

That is such a huge design decision and the consensus so strong against it that the burden should be on those advocating for that change to make the case and at least discuss what is trying to be accomplished.

Sorry, that was an xp, distracted by a 2 yo.

In fairness, it does seem the most positive reaction to reactions is “I don’t mind them”

I personally find them very funny because of the vitriol they are inspiring both here and on the main ILX site. People find them absolutely repellent. My first thought on seeing them was “how can I make jokes about my own posts with these” but I recognize that isn’t a common or mainstream view.

If changing my display name to the reaction emojis is being taken as full-throated “I love these, they’re the best” support, that wasn’t my intent.

Is there a site-configuration screen where this could be controlled globally? It really does seem that most of the community here is outright hostile to them but, from a platform design view, I absolutely get that a message board that couldn’t support them seems very out of step with expected functionality.

I think a user setting would make more sense if everyone was singing their praises but that’s not what is happening here. This feels more like a per-board or site setting given how deeply feel it will change the way people communicate and post. That would remove it from here but preserve the functionality for any other hypothetical projects where reactions would be wanted.

ILX has always been, and hopefully will always be, about discourse. Reactions disincentivise discussion. That’s my objection to them.

To give one perspective—‘reacts’ reduce the need to actually participate in discussion or community. I’ve seen so many people on sites where a similar functionality is now built-in (AO3’s kudos or hearts on Tumblr as examples) complain that since their introduction you don’t get comments or reblogs in the way that you used to. It’s too easy to just provide an instant reaction rather than participate in a way that adds to discussion or helps build that sense of community. I suspect much the same thing would happen here and I, for one, like that ILX is a text heavy community that’s very much about discussion

Thank you all, I hear you.

Thank you for that response, Keith. And despite my sometimes strong language, I do believe we are on the same page in many ways and I know you want what’s best for this forum. That said I agree with PBKR’s posts above— in some ways I feel like the consensus against them is so overwhelming that they should simply be turned off, or that those who are indifferent to them (or like them, egads) need to explain why they are interested in keeping them, at least so all of us haters can contemplate those reasons.

I strongly suspect we are on the same page. A lot of what I did here was to encourage that discourse, not least the typography, respect the history (make it easier to look at!) and hopefully make it easier for people to use.

Again, I know you’re likely to disagree, but my reasoning (apart from some people suggesting over the years that they would be fun) was that it might free up threads from less information-heavy comments, if that makes sense. The absolute last thing I personally would like is that it turns into some kind of popularity contest or upvoting/downvoting.

People are perhaps interpreting me not immediately turning them off as some kind of dogged resistance. And it is, in a way, but only in as far as giving people a chance to see things and let them sink in. Right now, it is my view that your opinion will prevail, but I do think it’s reasonable to give people a chance. 147 people have looked at the Sandbox, out of around 1,000 active users, and maybe 20% of the 147 plus a few others who haven’t looked at it have expressed an opinion.

As I say, I feel it reasonable to give people a chance, but the strong bets go with your view, and I suspect that’s the way it will be.

I absolutely meant what I said upthread—I am genuinely interested in what people think ILX is and what it should be. Partly, because almost certainly people have differing opinions on that, and partly from my point of view, because it does help drive how it should be.

I just put a reaction on my long post as a button/joke. That’s the primary way I would use them.

I mean I would also thumbs up your response, table, but yeah.

Also, I’ve looked at many an old thread that I was in back in the day and if you get rid of information-light posts, I might as well delete my account now

What about a single reaction that says OTM? How would people feel about that?

I think the general message is pretty clear; the objection isn’t that the reactions aren’t the right ones. It’s that they exist at all.

OTM might be more palatable but it’s still going to be the same issue as the more standardized ones.

Personally I think if we go that route, we should include hatcat and maracas.jpg but I don’t think I’m a good barometer for community sentiment on this

On my phone, it looks like scrolling mode 3 is the only one that doesn’t have the menu taking up half the screen. However, then when I scroll to the bottom there’s no good way to get back to site new answers. Suggested fixes:

1) provide a way to collapse the menu in other modes.

2) provide links at the bottom (under the posting window) to jump back to SNA, and bookmarked boards.

Jordan, yes I had assumed that people on phones would be using Zing, so it’s not really been designed for that. I will look at what can be done to improve matters.

Oh yeah, lol, I never got in the habit of using Zing, maybe I’m a weirdo for using it in my browser (Chrome on Android) all this time. Thanks!

It’s no bother, it seems you’re not the only one!

Postimg.cc, which was the image hosting service that many ilxors preferred after imgur became inaccesible, allows you to grab the straight url for the image.

I played with Zing a little but I don’t understand why it’s better than the web version so I stick with what I know.

My vote: reaction/emoticons bad, visible stats bad. Everything else I can deal with.

I think it’s more suited to a small screen, personally.

Oh, I was using Zing on my phone.

I don’t mind the narrower text, it’s easier to read. More like a book. I don’t mind the “You’ve read up to here” thingy, I think it’s kinda funny.

I don’t understand a lot of the settings and I can’t figure out the differences between the modes. I’m letting smarter people than me figure that stuff out and I’m taking their recommendations.

Personally, and I know I am probably the only one that wants this and I’m not going to whine about it, but I would actually like user icons. Like, an image of my face (or whatever) by the username. This is just because I’m really, really bad with names and it would help me keep up with who’s who. But that’s my problem and I think changing it would not suit the spirit of ILX.

I have been on ILX for over 20 years and I think it took me 10 years before I figured out there was more than ILM.

I just figured out bookmarks a few months ago. I might be the worst ILX user in terms of exploring and using features so that might be why I’m not bent out of shape about all of these changes.

Thanks to everyone for making this happen including the people pushing back and making this place the best it can be.

I think that would piss off the already aggressively pissed off even further tbh

XP Haha, well done for getting there. TBH failing to discover anything but ILM I would consider a ‘feature’.

Oh yeah, I’m not even mentioning the icons thing on proper ILX, I think peeps would melt down.

They refuse to even register here where Keith will answer them. Can you imagine adding user icons? lol

I did my first edit! I meant to say that I figured out bookmarks (with a lot of help) a few months ago, not years.

I don’t think I agree with ‘Reactions disincentivise discussion.’ as we know from experience how common it is just to post ‘OTM’ or something similar. It’s not clear that the option to react to a post in this way will even lead to a reduction in those kinds of non-discussion responses—might be interesting to find out in practice imo. I think both approaches are reasonable and I’m generally pro-options (a number of options I’m seeing here don’t interest me at all which is good :).

But apart from that I can take or leave emoji and don’t have a strong argument for them just sympathy for what I understand is the reason they’ve been introduced here. I find them enjoyable to use among friends on e.g. WhatsApp (tho at the same time hate that we’re on WhatsApp go figure) in ways that don’t necessarily add anything besides a basic acknowledgement that I read their post (tho ofc you’d want more than that usually). This is not the same as that but I think it explains reasonably well my relative acceptance of them (leaving aside how they look, which ones are available etc.).

the setting you’re after is ‘disable sticky menus’ (which is not very intuitive and took me a few days to find)

Again, I know you’re likely to disagree, but my reasoning (apart from some people suggesting over the years that they would be fun) was that it might free up threads from less information-heavy comments, if that makes sense.

i think this is just not a real problem that needed to be solved, especially with how lightweight ilx already is. it’s not like a single ‘otm’ post (which isn’t like, super common) takes up a ton of space to scroll past because you have a giant flashing avatar and signature to scroll past or anything.

i don’t really care if reactions go ahead, i don’t expect to really use them much & it sounds like a lot of others would use them even less, but i completely understand why some absolutely hate the idea

What if the site played the nyancat song on a loop at maximum volume

Just going to weigh in on the reacts issue, although I have already stated I am Team No Reacts: it is actually a hill I will gladly die on, we shouldn’t have them. I don’t think this one is a matter of time to get used to it, I just straight-up think it’s a bad idea. As others have said, even giving us the option to hide them isn’t enough, as they’ll still inform a change in culture on the boards.

What if the site played the nyancat song on a loop at maximum volume (DJP)

This, on the other hand, is a change I’d 100% support.

• What ILX is... What does it represent? What is it not? What should it not be like? For example, is it a music discussion forum? Is it a general discussion forum? How does it differ from other forums, as in, what makes it different?

• What should it be? I would expect that what people would like it to be is most likely different to what it is, in some way or another

it’s primarily a music message board to me. a lot of what makes it different is the community and its distinct tastes, but the forum software is also quite distinct from every other message board out there (in a good way), it’s pleasingly minimalist and very functional at facilitating discussion—it has all the necessary features and most of the ones that would be nice to have and nothing more.

what should it be? i’d like it to keep being the same thing really, it’s good at that. two common message board features it doesn’t currently have that would be useful additions are

• a ‘quote post’ button, which is basically here in the new reply feature, although it doesn’t work quite the same as other message boards—if clicking on the quote scrolled to the original post that would be a lot smoother

• an on-site private message feature to replace the awkwardness and problems of ‘send an email to this user’, but it’s completely understandable if that’s too much hassle and is hardly essential, very much ‘would be a little nice to have’

What ILX is...

Not sure if this has been stated, but the thing most central to the identity of ILX is the people who participate. So a primary design goal of the new software should be to not alienate those people.

what is ILX?

ILX is a hamhock in your cornflakes, yeah

ILX is the ring around your bath.

ILX is a joint rolled in toilet paper

ILX is rusty ankles and ashy kneecaps

ILX is you, big mama.

i knew reactions would be the most triggering part of the nu-nu-code and I said as much to keith before we flipped the switch on this test. I genuinely don’t know where I stand on them, though I do quite like them on Slack, especially custom ones, and istr the ILX slack made a fair bit of use of them.

I’m not sure we’ve got quite the right set here, and I admit I’ve done a bad job with the ones I chose for Zing bc I basically just whacked some in to make it work and those need revisited for sure.

But to be more philosophical a lot of the reactions to reactions are coming from posters, who by definition don’t mind posting. And ILX has lots of lurkers too, who are also part of the community to my mind. Reactions might be a good way to let them participate?

One thing that most online forums don’t have in comparison to in-person conversation is you don’t get to see how the listeners are reacting to things—you don’t see the nods of agreement/the chuckles/the furrowed brows of confusion. Done right and done well, reactions might be a solution to that. I think it’s pretty risky — gamifying and engagement-farming with reactions has led to some horrors on reddit and elsewhere — but I don’t think it absolutely has to be a bad thing.

Which is a long way of saying I was and am pretty open to the idea of testing it out a bit, seeing what was helpful and what was awful about them, tweaking and then deciding further. I don’t think we should just rule it out because everything is perfect about how things are today.

XP

It’s a music discussion board for me too. The email thing is a vestige of a prior era and has to go, and indeed it has.

Sadbonx, I kind of agree and disagree; I mean I’d need to elaborate... I think the thing central to ILX’s identity is the posters who started it 26 years ago. Pick only one, classic or dud, pick only ten, OTM etc. etc. all come from that time.

I think it also depends on what you mean by participants... In that I agree if you mean readers too, of which there are always 100 times as many writers. I would also include potential future users in that.

Part of the reason for asking is that ILX is basically dying slowly—it peaked in April 2004, and now has ~16% of the posts from that time and considerably less ‘traffic’. I think that’s definitely within a wider context of social media decline; however, ILX’s decline precipitated social media’s decline by a good fifteen years, so I think it’s a useful question to ask.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that it is now more than a generation old. For over 20 years I have seen posters complaining that “this has been discussed before”... No shit! Some people who may be here now might not have been born when it started!

So this is the context in which I’m keen to hear people’s views. E.g. why did it start declining 22 years ago (quite sharply too, I might add)? What might stop that? Do you even care?

It’s whatever De Subjectivisten say it is, IMO.

lol

OTM

I genuinely don’t know where I stand on them, though I do quite like them on Slack, especially custom ones, and istr the ILX slack made a fair bit of use of them.

they can work fine in a live chat format (especially where there’s custom emotes and a million options so people have all sorts of weird idiosyncratic reactions to use) but add far less to this sort of message board format where discussion is just slower to begin with

yes — chat rooms and slack are about being in the moment, they’re ‘live.’ message boards are something you can read back later. in the same spirit: pointing out something has been discussed before isn’t necessarily a complaint! it’s a citation, because you actually can go and read the old discussion, which can provoke new thoughts which you then bring to the table. this is a feature, not a bug.

oops, just noted a bug: i typed three consecutive dashes and the site converted it to an emdash. trying to test that out and i’m getting more: if i type three dashes on a new line and it creates a horizontal line across the whole box. if i try to type a dash followed by a blank space, it wants to create a bulleted list. please let me just control the text i’m typing.

It’s not necessarily a complaint for sure, but it certainly has been!

That’s not really my point there Doctor C... More just that the remarkable age of this community does mean that because society and views change, some discussions are worth having again, in a modern context.

if i type three dashes on a new line and it creates a horizontal line across the whole box

Wow, I did not know it did that. Some of it is not stuff I have done, it’s the rich text editor that I am using, which I can only control to a limited degree.

On the football forum where I lurk, which I judge to be roughly as disputatious and slow-paced as ILx, though perhaps shorter-winded, there reads and they are used sparingly and rather well. I find it quite helpful to understand which things are being laughed at or whatever. Very occasionally they get discussed “what is to you think is funny about my post concerning our football club’s responsibility for world hunger??!!”) but mostly they’re a useful temperature check.

So, I’m in the “don’t mind them” camp, and the “think they’re quite funny” camp, rather than being mad for them.

this sort of message board format where discussion is just slower to begin with

I remember stet and I having a discussion 20 years ago about whether the speed of the (then) new stuff would change things, as particularly in the year or two before, it was sometimes taking upwards of two minutes to make a post.

WYSIWYG editor seems like a great option to be able to enable/disable in settings.

So this is the context in which I’m keen to hear people’s views. E.g. why did it start declining 22 years ago (quite sharply too, I might add)? What might stop that? Do you even care?

2004 is well before my time but the obvious reason is failure to bring in new users and i don’t really know how you solve that these days, it’s just a niche corner of the internet that i was lucky to stumble onto. iirc i found it via the singles jukebox, which i found because a friend of a friend was writing for it at one point? when i joined over a decade ago this place came across as insular and a bit cliquey, though it seemed to have been mellowing out around the time i joined?

it’s not clearly a music message board for any particular sort of music either which makes it a bit of a harder sell too. it has its leanings and those are unfortunately a bit narrower than they used to be as a lot of people have moved on

The small caps are super cute though

My own take on why reactions don’t fit in with what I think of as ILX:

ILX has always, to me, been a place for lively discussion, and one where ideas can matter outside of a context of cliqueishness and groupthink. When I post something, I have no idea what everyone in the room thinks of what I’m going to say, and this encourages me to be as clear and considerate in my thoughts as I possibly can. In forums that use reacts this is not the case—because posting a react is so quick and easy, any statement rapidly gets categorised as good or bad due to group consensus. So if I post something and get a bunch of downvotes, I won’t further explore the topic even if I think I’m onto something. Likewise, if I get a buncha upvotes, it is easy for me to get arrogant about it and take what others are saying less seriously. So there not being the furrowed brows and/or nodding heads, that to me is a feature, not a bug. Every other place I post I am very aware of the pecking order; here it is less clear, and that allows me to focus on the substance more.

This dynamic holds even when we’re just posting OTM or emojis to previous posts—because you’re still going out on a limb on your own, stating that you think a certain point is worth agreeing with, as opposed to being, like, user number eleven to click on the thumbs up react.

To be clear I am not a purist about this: if someone has shown themselves to be out of order to a significant degree they should know the community thinks that, which is why the suggest ban feature is good. But a constant update on what everyone thinks of every thought posted would, I fear, lead to blander, less interesting discussions.

that makes sense. kinda unfortunate to lose control over how our stuff looks. (in the same spirit i’m against the option to force other people’s writing to display with capitalization they didn’t select.) but that’s one that i’d accept as the cost of having an overall more workable and easier-to-maintain typing interface.

also just now discovering that new posts pop up while i’m typing??? that’s both kinda cool and kinda really distracting. makes me feel like i have to race to keep up, losing my train of thought while things bounce into frame. again ——chatroom versus message board. (let’s see if the double dash followed by single dash gets the same conversion treatment.)

fwiw Keith I just posted my overall feelings about the design on the main site. i’m sure you’re keeping up with both—just felt suddenly weird to be sharing micro-feedback here while i’ve inadvertently written an essay there.

Yes, I know, I read them, thank you.

Re: them popping up, I will be putting in an option to let you disconnect from that if you want.

quick idea: instead of “Replying to Keith,” maybe it should actually insert (in the blue typeface) “@ Keith” next to the start of my paragraph. like:

@ Keith—that makes sense....

(where it’s blue, rather than bold/underlined). i’ve never gotten used to “Replying to...” tags in any environment, my brain really gets jumbled trying to run back up the stack. whereas ILX has a very established rhythm of just saying who you’re responding to, and that’s enough to distinguish your post from the ongoing flow. it also uses less vertical space.

Appreciate that, on both points.

OTM

I mean thumbs up

Oh FFS, something like that.

In forums that use reacts this is not the case—because posting a react is so quick and easy, any statement rapidly gets categorised as good or bad due to group consensus.

this is v. good point – groupthink’s already enough of a problem on every damn website. I think HN hide post votes to try and get around that. maybe reacts should be sealed for 10 years and only made visible after that

OK weird feature on my last post — I had full carriage returns between my different lines there, but they got dropped.

Thank you for your comments, Daniel... Out of interest, do you feel that ILX is a considered, polite place? It’s not a trick question in that sense, I just know so many people who think the exact opposite. And I wonder if it’s one of the reasons for the 22+ year decline. If you read early threads, it’s not that way at all for the most part.

My comment about De Subjectivisten was 95% a little joke and 5% a serious comment—my view of ILx is that it’s a series of somewhat connected communities that have coalesced around a space which gives them room to talk about what they see fit.

Like most—perhaps all—of the other places I’ve loved on the internet, this has been owned, operated and (lightly) governed by one or (at most) two individuals who have an idea for the thing and how they want it to be and set about creating the space for that to happen. And then it has.

Which isn’t to say that it always works, of course, or works forever.

Very surprised by this post tbh, because I don’t associate the decline of ILX with the decline of social media at all; I associate it with social media hegemony! The way I remember it ILX started losing members when they started deciding that Twitter and Facebook were better places for networking and communication; this mirrors my experience on other old school forums.

As to what is to be done about this, I’ll admit I don’t know and have sort of gotten comfortable with the idea of this place as a hangout for an established community. Vaguely I feel like the best type of new blood would be people actively googling, I dunnom Haroumi Hosono or Javier Cercas or whoever and stumbling upon this place. But I guess that’s also working with an outdated view of how people use the internet.

I found ILX a frankly terrifying place to be in the early 00’s! People were mean as fuck, but I will say that for me personally that also held some value, it showed 18 year old Daniel_Rf that he was not the genius he thought he was.

These days I would categorise it as basically pretty chill compared to most online spaces, but this is also a bit a byproduct of the retirement home vibe—we all know each other’s quirks, know that some posters tend to be more abrasive in ways that would I’m sure be quite discouraging to newcomers.

Yes, I think there is truth in that.

suggestion: the “update bookmark” button should visually make clear it’s about updating a bookmark—like maybe a bookmark with a little “circle of arrows” in it, rather than a “cloud” icon. it took me a minute to understand that this was how you updated bookmarks.

THIS IS A RED LINE I WILL NOT CROSS.

Joking. Can you provide me with some example of the type of thing you’re meaning and I can try to sort something suitable.

oh! i’m just saying, for the “Update” icon, take the current “Remove” icon and replace the “X” with the “arrows” from the update icon. does that make sense? i think if you had that, you might not even need the words “update” and “remove,” but others might disagree on that one.

wow control-enter is a nice shortcut for posting, i gotta say.

... maybe call it “bookmark” to match the funky “you’ve bookmarked up to here” arrow?

Ah okay... I mean the problem is that I’m not like drawing these icons (I wish!), I’m buying them! And I don’t mean the expense, it’s a subscription thing, so it’ll be dependent on whether they have such a thing! I will look.

Tim, it is called bookmark, up until you have bookmarked it, then it becomes update. I could make it ‘Update bookmark“ to be clearer.

ok here’s another design suggestion: the ‘thread stat’ box at the bottom of the thread should take up less screen real estate. it’s fun if you’re curious but not something you need 99.99% of the time that you’re reading a thread or editing a post. right now it’s half of my screen, along with this posting window. could it actually be something you get by clicking on the big blue thread title at the top of the screen? or! what if that had a little “(i) for information” type of graphic next to it, in subscript at the end of the thread title, and you click that to get the metadata/activity/top poster stuff?

Ah! If there’s room, that sounds cool

Ahhhh that makes sense, fair enough.

wait, how are some of you managing to “reply with quote”? when i reply to a post, it shows the entire post in my edit box, but then when i hit post, it only shows the “Replying to Keith.”

I mean I agree with the point, I did this like 15 months ago and had completely forgotten, some weird refreshing cloud icon is a bit strange. I’ll try and find something.

It’s a modal thing (like Jazz). If you reply to something more than IIRC 8 posts ago, it quotes a chunk of it. If you’re replying to something ‘roughly above’ you, it doesn’t. I felt huge chunks of repeated text would be pretty ugly. The number 8 is tweakable.

Hmm—I think the idea of just keeping the vanilla bookmark icon, but changing the word to ‘update,’ makes the most sense.

Confused! It does say update... Do you mean ‘Update bookmark’?

Hmm, I found a different icon, I mean it’s not exactly what you want, but it’s bookmark shaped and has a sort of star in the middle. The problem is, it’s been drawn by someone different and looks different, and hence a bit shit when they’re side-by-side. What about just the same icon that’s in the main menu for bookmarks?

Testing out replying to an older post to see if block-quoting shows up. But it doesn’t seem like I can edit the post to control how much is shown? If that’s the case, I’d suggest turning off the auto-quoting entirely. We should feel fully in control of what our posts are going to show up as, and it’s going to be weird if you think a quote will appear and it doesn’t, or vice versa.

What might massage this, if possible: “Reply” doesn’t quote anything by default, but it DOES allow you, while you’re writing your post, to select text from the post you’re replying to, so that you can copy-paste into the edit window and apply the convenient block-quote formatting in the text editor, Is that possible?

re: bookmarks: Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I mean, keep it saying “Update,” but swap the “Cloud” icon for the “Bookmark” icon, and it’ll be clear that one of these buttons updates bookmarks and the other one removes bookmarks.