Sleeve, don’t worry about getting cranky. As long as you don’t think I’m deliberately trying to piss in your cornflakes. Thanks for the helpful, constructive comments. I’m also glad you like most of it—it is you guys I do it for.

I’m not sure I have made some big defence of reactions, although I can understand why people might think that. I have made a defence of giving something a chance and making sure more than a few people get a chance to see stuff. The alternative is switching it off when only forty out of around a thousand active users have had a chance to even see it (it’s now about 160 people, but it was 40 or so at that point).

FWIW, I am also sympathetic to the arguments against them. As I’ve said before, although perhaps I will be a bit more. blunt now, the smart money is on me ‘removing’ them (most likely on a disable by board way, is my thinking, and please don’t anyone kick off, just disable them on the boards you want them disabled on, even if that’s all of them, I don’t care one way or another).

Perhaps people think because I put the time and effort into developing it that I’m keen on forcing it through—no I am not, and nor am I trying to ‘sneak’ them in by having an option to hide them—I also fully understand and have some sympathy with the view that even if you can’t see them, they alter the discourse. I once did an hour long talk about Marshall McLuhan to about a thousand bemused IT people (one person’s comment “yeah all very interesting, WTF does it have to do with us?”).

I’d like to think that because a bunch of us went through this twenty years ago, when I made something because the board was broken and because no-one else volunteered, and was swiftly followed by everyone hating me for it for some months, but I did work with people, and we made a bunch of changes, and it seems now everyone loves it. I like to think that at least those around at the time understand that I will do the same again, because I have that track record. The same goes for stet, and indeed the admins, who give their time freely to support the community.

What I would ask people to recognise, much as I fully understand it is hard to do so (I certainly didn’t 20 years ago), is that pretty well everyone thinks they know what ILX is and what everyone else wants. I learned the hard way back then that this is absolutely not the case—everyone has a different experience of it, because I, and Graham before me, developed a piece of kit that can be highly customised. That means that there is no one ILX, there are a lot of ‘versions’ of it, and everyone likes/dislikes different things about lots of bits of it.

Also, I’m kind of busy with various things in between trying to make things more the way people want them, but I did have a bit of a chat with Table about kind of existential ILX stuff, and I will get back to that. I think the most helpful thing for this is to understand what we want ILX to achieve, what we want it to encourage, what we don’t want it to be etc. etc. but that’s a longer term chat—it’d just be great if you and others would join in on that.

Okay, I fixed the bug with wide mode, where it didn’t really work unless you had the other setting about putting usernames below posts.

Hey William, it’s not particularly easy, I mean it means deleting the existing set and redoing them and building a UI that lets you insert at the right point... I guess I think that sounds like quite a lot of effort for something maybe a little niche?

That said, I am awed at your attention to detail there!

Thank you... I completely agree about the first. TBH I think it’s kind of cute, but also a sort of shit solution and I know of a better one. I suspect I will replace it at some point in a way that doesn’t get on yours or my tits.

To your second point Yeah, I’m actually the same, and kind of compulsively drag text around. The problem is I did try what you’re suggesting and everything I came up looked disgusting, because it’s essentially a repeating button, whichever way you look at it, which makes it look less like a nice piece of text and more like a spreadsheet. So I totally sympathise with your point, and I’d like to do it, I just need the great idea that makes it work!

This is a low priority comment, but I would love an option to have poll results appear as they do on ILX (vertical list in descending order by number of votes) without any graphics.

That’s fine, I have it on the list. The graphics are also useless on mobile, so I’ll probably just make them disappear by default on mobile too.

Okay, I removed the graphics on phone widths. The option will take a bit longer as it’s more work, but I’ll get to it.

I just need the great idea that makes it work!

Compress the menu into a single line including poster name, timestamp, and abbreviated action buttons, and have it always visible beneath each post? I’m thinking it could look something vaguely like this:

Okay, there is an option now for removing poll results charts, if you want that. Again, it might require some fixing if stuff shows up.

Who Voted For What

Can there be an anonymity option when answering a poll? What if I’m ashamed of my love for On the Beach and don’t want the shame attached to my username? I think we’d get more poll participants (I’m thinking more of ILE-type polls about personal info)

Hey William, it’s not particularly easy, I mean it means deleting the existing set and redoing them and building a UI that lets you insert at the right point... I guess I think that sounds like quite a lot of effort for something maybe a little niche?

No worries. I suspected that would be tougher to do, and I agree it’s a little niche. If the pollstarter wants alphabetical that badly, they’ll do the work. (as I will)

BUT, please see here:

I Love Music

Elvis, William, I can possibly help with this stuff. I’m not really that familiar with your polls—not in close quarters, but what I did was 100% influenced by how (at least what I casually see of them) you ran them.

The 50 limit takes ten seconds to change, so if you need more, just say the word. Other stuff is likely a bunch more work, but as I say, the work to date was totally influenced by your work, so just let me know. Not everything is easy/practical, but we can definitely have a chat about that to arrive at something that might work better for you.

Keith

rank the neil young albums

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.