Wow, what an inexplicably hostile and ungracious response to a constructive discussion!
Well, I regretfully see now that I am part of the problem. The community here is great, and always has been. Please carry on, and in the words of Bill and Ted, “be excellent to each other!”
He joined the SDMB in 2012. He went on to develop Discourse which the Powers That Be chose to go with as vBulletin was completely failing us. I’m not sure how the timeline works out. But he is the main developer of our current software. I’m glad he was willing to drop by.
I hope codinghorror will consider giving us a few more options with the flags. The defaults flags just need some flags to turn off or allow comments.
No one needs to be hostile towards him.
I like the new software, but this isn’t the first time that some minor request has been treated with abject dismissiveness on his part.
I’m not sure how it’s coded, but really, we just want the functionality of one flag extended. If the database is just conditionally pointing at a separate text field if flag X is checked, why not just change that with an update to use the text field for all flags? Again, an empty string won’t hurt anybody, but SDMB members are actively looking to assist moderators, so will make use of the comment section, but it wouldn’t have to change any usage for anybody else.
I agree. codinghorror has been great. He happens to be wrong in this particular case 
, but everyone is sometimes wrong.
I don’t know whether he has the power to help us improve this issue or not. He’s a developer, but he’s not our admin or our paid support or anything. But he is certainly well-positioned to offer constructive suggestions to those who do have the power to fix it.
I hope he comes back and does that!
One good thing about free software is, you don’t need to worry about one specific developer’s priorities for, or taste for, implementing features. You can write a software patch yourself. Or a plugin. Or pay someone to do it.
It’s not abject dismissiveness if someone is genuinely busy.
Sorry guys. My apologies @codinghorror.
Reading through the thread, it did look to me like you were a Discourse programmer/product manager who didn’t know SDMB (as mentioned). I misunderstand this situation, and regret confusing you for an employee of the company that did the migration. I also apologize for providing you feedback based on that misunderstanding of my part.
I don’t think anyone was. This whole thread was a discussion about what was essentially a very minor design feature which various posters disagreed with. His abrupt departure from the board in its entirety, along with canceling his account, totally mystifies me and seemed grossly out of proportion to anything that anyone said anywhere in this thread.
I, too, hope he comes back because I appreciated his various insights about UI design and hints about using the site, and presumably he’s in the best position to adopt constructive change suggestions.
I don’t think most of us were being hostile. And if he’s now going to refuse to talk to us at all, in any thread, on any subject: that strikes me as an extreme reaction.
@codinghorror, I hope you’re still reading, and will reactivate. In disagreeing with you I certainly didn’t intend to dis you. But we need to be able to disagree, and to say so. That’s also an essential part of these boards.
@codinghorror: I think what people are saying is that “inappropriate” can cover a lot of territory, and some forms of inappropriate can be hard to see if you’re not in the group affected. Room to add a brief comment helps
a) the reporter: they can explain specifically why what they’re reporting is out of line
b) the moderator: they get some nuance they may not get without that extra space
It can be hard to spot why some things are inappropriate if you’re not one of the people affected by it, or in the know about what that particular red flag sounds or reads like, you know? That extra information allows a reporter to tell a mod straight away what they’re seeing in a post, and a mod can then act on the full information rather than a vague flag.
If it is possible to extend that field to include space to add a brief explanation, it would be beneficial.
As someone who’s been in @codinghorror’s shoes, both in pro software dev and in other volunteer roles, I got concerned early yesterday that a bunch of people who didn’t know the whole story were engaging in what felt to him like a monster pile-on. Which might end badly.
It seems it has. And that’s a darn shame.
We thoroughly bit the very best hand that could feed us. And did so while knowing we’re in a time and place where our own administration is largely absent for regrettable but understandable reasons.
As to the blithe assertions of folks up thread that since Discourse is open source we can just tweak it ourselves. … Yeah right. You want to sign up to maintain your fork indefinitely as the rest of the project moves forward? Not me.
Even if the only tweak needed is to our local configuration, not to code, we still have the problem that for amateur part-time admins such as we have now and will probably have UFN, any custom config we do builds in future compatibility risks and future maintenance needs. At a minimum it builds in a need to document and remember what was done, how it was done, what it looked like before, and why the change was made. It’s entirely possible that much of the knowledge of whatever custom config Jenny had done died with her and will need to be painfully rediscovered as each tweak comes afoul of some future change.
Some days I’m real proud of us. Some days I’m not.
This. I don’t see anyone being hostile although I admit I could have missed someone. What I see is a bunch of people calmly agreeing that some features would really, really be useful but CodingHorror telling us we’re just plain wrong and there is no merit to the request. If anything, CodingHorror was the hostile one while we were generously polite in trying to explain that we do want the feature.
Wanting a feature is of course not the same as getting a feature. “I have noted the request for the feature but other communities have not requested this and so there are no plans to include this in the future” is different from “why would you even want that? That request is bad and you should feel bad.”
I’m sorry that he quit, but it may be for the best. I hope he returns eventually, but he may want to wait until we are past the “growing pain” stages, maybe even until we have a real admin, not a retiree pressed into emergency service.
Discourse is his baby. He’s proud of it, and wants us to understand what it does and value that. And instead, posters (and I’ve been at fault here, too) wrote to him as if he were an employee. He had and has absolutely no obligation to help this message board. He gave us a lot of help out of generosity, and we responded by saying, “your baby is ugly”.
I think a lot of the tension (not in this thread, but in general) was due a difference in vision. He wanted to write software that nudges users to post well. This board of old curmudgeons (with an active moderation team) preferred having people, not code, set the tone. We wanted people to be able to make questionable stylistic choices. He wanted to cut that off at the pass.
But mostly, we asked too much of him. I hope he can take a break, let us get used to the software, and get used to getting help in standard ways, and can then return as a poster. And maybe he’ll offer helpful advice, or explain his choices in coding discourse. And maybe he won’t. But i hope that after a suitable separation he can return and enjoy posting here.
Anyway, @codinghorror, I apologize for my part in driving you away.
Asked and answered in Post #10: site themes can hide It’s Off-Topic and It’s Inappropriate options from the prompt.
Personally I think - when there is an opportunity - a site admin should edit the relevant localization files (client.en.yml) and provide site-specific instructions, or maybe a link to a write-up on how to use the report post feature. I was myself confused as to the new process and had to ask early on.
Ideally, and this is more of a discussion for meta.discourse.org, the comment box would be optional for all selections. If users want to provide more details there is a place to do so, and it saves time for mods who don't have to PM to get necessary details. Users who don't need to add additional comments won't do so; moderators who don't need the additional comments to respond can ignore it - there's a character limit already to encourage conciseness. Seems like a win-win.
~Max
Agreed. If we can’t do that, perhaps we could remove the categories other than “Something Else” and “Spam”.
You can’t do that without changing Discourse itself, or possibly with a plugin (I am not familiar with the limitations of Discourse plugins). Discourse is open-sourced but I’m not sure if the Straight Dope is allowed to unilaterally mess with the source since we’re also using Discourse to host. (We probably wouldn’t want to anyways since that means maintaining our own branch)
This is possible by modifying the site theme - something an administrator can do. Sort of like the old Straight Dope Theme 3.0 and Sultantheme.
~Max
Thank you Max_S. This is very helpful.
WAIT! You still haven’t fixed the code to allow us to type “nm” as a complete post!
BTW, what does it mean, to “flag” a post? Is that like reporting a post? I haven’t had to report a post since the changeover, and now it occurs to me that without the “Report this Post” button, I don’t know how I’d go about doing it.
Yep, now at the bottom of the post is either a flag button or a “three dots” menu with a flag button. That is how you report now.
Thanks. And now I’ll know never to use the “It’s Inappropriate” button. If I’m reporting an inappropriate post, I ALWAYS explain WHY, in my view, it’s inappropriate, and I don’t expect to change that twenty-some year old habit.