I’ll be messing with the CSS a bunch, especially on the light skin.
I already adjusted some font sizes and white spacing within topics, and added grey/white stripes to list of topics in a category.
If you guys think some things should be bigger/smaller, wider/thinner, colored/not colored let me know here. This applies to the positioning of almost anything you see on your screen. (Please do let me know what skin you’re using with your replies since there’s different css on them atm.)
Added Post Count numbers to posts.
Made post length even wider. (It’s approx same length as “normal” php forums now. Is it too long now?
Alternating stripes for replies to thread. <- this is experimental
This stuff is ONLY active on light skin on desktop view. I don’t think it bugs on smaller screens but let me know if it does.
It seems like when the screen is too small the “timeline” in longer threads get’s pulled into the posting strip. Not sure if this will become a problem for ppl in practice but if it does tell me so I can prioritize a fix.
Is pagination possible? As in 25 posts per page in a thread or something?
Agree with smilodon that the length of the page over four days of mafia is going to become unmanageable.
Is there a page length choice?
Or can you create one?
Cheers
Thanks
Discourse is built with the philosophy that pagination is outdated and infinite scroll is eventually going to be the go to method in n years after some more things about it are figured out.
With that in mind, the way it’s coded makes it fairly difficult to force pagination in, and it’s reccomended users think of ways that infinite scroll can accomodate what they’re trying to do. (And I would prefer working with the software rather than against anyways).
So what would be very helpful would be : “I’m trying to to this and it’s difficult right now”.
I can at a minimum probably point you to some existing features that will help with most things (there’s a lot stuffed in here that I’m still discovering) and then think/check if solutions exist in the current discourse proper or within the set of things they’re working on. (New features/updated versions are coming out fairly regularly).
But yeah, tldr; discourse team thinks pagination is outdated. Some stuff may feel very different than on paginated forums. Some may because we’re simply just used to pages, others may because we still need to work on how infi-scroll is presented/used. Let me know what you’re trying to do that’s hard.
One article among many of the founder of discourse talking about this stuff: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-end-of-pagination/
https://meta.discourse.org/t/natural-breakpoints-or-chapters-for-long-topics/16461
Actually I’ll probably make a seperate post for this but I plan to eventually make a longish post on discourse’s own forum asking for some set of features/how reasonable certain things would be, but before that we do need to think about what features we want, why we want them, and some ideas of our own for how to implement.
RANT WARNING
As usual, the software creator’s are arrogant arseholes who think everyone has the biggest fastest setup and their software is entitled to suck every last bit of ram processing power out of the system they are running on. Brain dead morons.
RANT OVER.
What is going to happen when a thread runs into thousands and thousands of posts?
Can it be broken up by date rather than number of posts?
Can a four day mafia ‘day’ be broken into 4 real days?
I’m thinking about having separate threads for each game day in the current game. I can combine them after the game ends.
Have you tried the #key for jumping around to specific posts? I’ve used that to narrow down what I’m looking for. If you use the hotkey in a repy it works differently, but when you’re reading a thread it’s an easy way to hop around.
I’m also using ctl-f (which opens up a “search this thread” dialog box) and the iso filter to look backward in the game.
On Discourse, posts unload and reload on the DOM when you move up and down, so there shouldn’t be memory/performance issues. If the forum itself is lagging unreasonably that’s on our servers. (Above is assuming you’re on any halfway reasonable device, I’m on a piece of junk right now and it works well enough).
For the thousandfold post long megathread, what actions would you be trying to do that are hard now/would be easier when it’s paginated?
Well, if you survive to let’s say “day three” in mafia.
You would go back over the votes and interactions of players in the past days to be looking for indications of alignment.
You may go through everything but more often you would have a rough idea what page the interaction happened and work from there. Or you may be looking at votes. The current vote count does not show a change in votes or when the changes where made.
For example a voted b, c then changed their vote d to b.
We have had vote counts where this is captured to some extent by having changes crossed out but still showing.
Different searches like this are not suitable as iso searches because you are looking at the state of play around the post at the same time.
Fferyllt’s idea of breaking the thread up by real days would help I think.
The other issue is that there is no, go to the top of the thread.
If I want to check on what the GM posted I have to hold the mouse down for ages and wait for it to scroll through.
It is also not clear how long it is since someone has posted. Yes, this can be iso’d but, it is something many of us are used to being able to visualize by knowing how many pages in the past since they posted.
Mafia is a game where you are constantly referring back to things, and the habit of flicking back through pages is very ingrained.
Yes, we may be able to get used to this new style, but some of us won’t bother and will go back to playing on the older sites in the older way.
And all of this is meant as feedback, on your new site.
Not meant as personal complaints, but pointing out how the mafia experience is enhanced or not on this site.
So some Positives?
the ISO is good.
The Quote function is good
When you iso someone you can “unhide” posts in between posts.
You can! Click on the date at the top of the right timeline scrollbar and you jump there. (For example here, click on the “Mar 17”). There’s also “#” into 1 if you’re more comfortable with hotkeys. I think there are other methods but those two should already suffaice?
Okay, HASH Key post 1 takes you back to the top.
That’s good to know and works well.
Thanks
Yeah, the view hidden replies in the ISO function does help.
And that hash key search which tells you how many posts are in the thread means you can enter 1/4; 1/2 or 3/4 figure of the posts to search by factions, which is what the idea of the pagination is about. Dividing the post up into manageable quantities.
So there are ways of working around it.
Also another neat trick that might be helpful for you and others - you can bookmark and view particular posts, not just topics.
You can view specific posts you bookmarked by clicking on the leftmost symbol here:
I miss having a summary page or pop-up with a list of players and a link to their posts, but I’m tracking prod-ranges using the ISO filter. If you hover over the timestamp in the right upper corner of a post, the exact time of the post pops up.
There’s a partial summary of thread activity at the bottom of the OP. If were possible to list every person who has posted in the thread there, that would address a lot of my navigation needs.
Hmm. I don’t think I was seeing the full list (after clicking the down carat) yesterday. Maybe it kicks in at a threshold. Or maybe I wasn’t observant enough.
It is showing everyone now and how long since they posted, which addresses one of my points.
However, it would not show someone who has not posted in the thread.
So if you were checking before everyone had posted it was only showing who had posted, not who you listed as playing.
(sorry to be so obvious)
