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.

Just an observation on the main view for each board (or SNA/recent activity). I can only see the 6 or 7 recently updated threads, even on “minimal view”. On the right I can see 5 or 6 new threads (some of which are the same as the recently updated threads on the left).

That’s a total of about 10 visible threads.

On current ilx I can see about 25 most recent threads, (bookmarks + SNA), at least on the old.css stylesheet with previews disabled. I like being able to scan that many at a time.

No idea how many feel the same way, of course

Thanks

Those of you who asked for an option for absolute, rather than relative dates, there is one on the options page now:

Show absolute date/time, rather than relative

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

This is great, thank you! It would be lovely if it could take up less vertical space, but one step at a time.

Okay, see if that’s better. There also shouldn’t be that weird gap to the left of “Bookmark”, but having just looked, it’s because this option is conflicting with the show username etc. below the post. Give me some time and I’m sure I can sort that too.

Thank you sir. Can any of the three lines—name, date, menu—be combined, so it doesn’t take up three lines? Or is that a request that goes deeper than cosmetics, probably?

Absolute date/time is a very welcome option. I would suggest making it the default with “relative” as the opt-in, which I think you implemented on ILX maybe eight or nine years ago (?), and has served pretty well! Of course, I’m biased as one of the cluster of people who just dislike relative dating in general: https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=8322222&boardid=40&threadid=109285. But from people’s C&Ps of other posts, you can tell that both modes are widely used.

Although interestingly I guess it’s displaying the posting user’s local time, which means posts in sequence can seem to jump forwards and backwards in time, with people in different time zones. Has it always done that and I just never noticed?

Btw I know you have a long long list of to-do items, but I’m realizing how much I rely on the xpost warning to adjust my posts as the conversation continued above me! (TESTING: Editing post for a typo)

Ha, right enough. I can’t remember what it did before, it was more like 20 years ago than 9. However, thinking about this, it’s going to want to convert datetimes to the locale of the user, rather than the originator.

Sorry, I’m doing this stuff too quickly, so I expect there will be bugs that creep in. Will take a look later.

No sorry to be sorry for! Just noting stuff as I see it. Thanks for taking seriously all my deranged post-it notes.

Haha, no bother.

still hard for this almost-60 guy with reading glasses to see where the posts delineate, but maybe I just need to play around with formatting more

great post Lily Dale TYVM

Right, I figured it out, but it’ll take some time. If you refresh the page, you’ll see all the dates and times in your timezone; however, as they arrive live, at the moment, they’re coming in the poster’s timezone... This is because of how broadcasting messages works:

• A user posts

• That message is broadcast to all listening users

• But if it is to be correct, then the message much be altered on a per recipient basis, so if I’m sending it to someone in Spain, they have to have the date altered to Spain time, someone in Australia, likewise etc.

So that’s just a bit more complicated, and will take a bit more time.

Sleeve, if you play with “Post separator” in text display options, there are options for more space, various types of lines, traditional typographic thing, and some stupid stuff.

The post separator options go a long way. Sleeve, I’d also try the option to put the username below the post, which I find very effective.

Sadbonx, it does for the whole lot, but it is quite straightforward to change the time to be t0 the right of the username; the menu less so. That said, I’d be changing an option people seem broadly happy with, and I am kind of nervous of having so many options that it becomes rapidly unwieldy. Perhaps people can give their view and I can do it if people want it, or don’t care one way or another.

cool thx y’all xps

lol will we be able to disable reacts to our posts as well? ;)

Haha, well you know, I did just find that handy! But I mean I have pushed to let people see this, so they have a chance, but the rate of signup here has (obviously) slowed and views haven’t changed, so I wouldn’t worry about that.

Sorry, I’m probably being overly circumspect there, what I mean is I’ll give it until tomorrow evening or something (a week), and assuming there’s no massive groundswell of opinion in the next 36 hours, then I’ll look to put something in that lets admins disable reactions on specific boards, and obviously then they can just do that.

And I don’t mean disable viewing them, I mean removing the ability for people to post and/or receive them.

so many options that it becomes rapidly unwieldy

Perhaps some of these details could be left up to aftermarket CSS styles rather than dozens of options tickboxes? I know you said it’s more complicated by far than the cuurent site, but on one of these threads Treefell was saying it looked at least possible.

It’s certainly possible, so I wasn’t saying people couldn’t do it, just that now at almost 12,000 lines of code vs. about 300, it’s harder. That doesn’t make much difference to me, though, if people want to have a go, although in practical terms no-one’s going to write 12,000 lines of CSS, plus they would break all the functions they can’t see, like admin functions etc. However, I think what’s practical is that when I get to that point, an override stylesheet can be provided which takes the 12K one as the starting point, but is loaded after it, so overrides bits of it. I’d need a new mechanism for including it, although that’s fine, and I do think it has some complexities, e.g. the current mechanism is a one-and-done setup—you choose one stylesheet, that’s what you get. You’re kind of hinting at a mix-and-match setup (maybe you’re not, I dunno), where you can pick a selection of individual things that change specific things. And if you do that, then you have an ordering issue too, because CSS is order-sensitive, so you might need to be able to control the order of inclusion—probably getting too complex for the average punter.

Anyway, some version of that is doable—I guess what I’m saying is that it requires thought—right now, I’d suggest you just ask a bunch of people if in “show metadata below post” mode, it’s okay to put the username and datetime horizontally, just because it’s going to be much faster.