Ars forum updates are now here!

[kenada]

One issue I’ve noticed is the buttons on the editor toolbar don’t reflect the current state of the editor; or if they do, it’s too subtle. On other XenForo sites, it’s much more obvious (e.g., on EN World it turns blue).

Compare Ars:

To EN World:

 

[barnercobblewood]

Hi,

I realise that this may be a dead issue, but the lack of depth when quoting is quite irritating. For example look at https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threa...rvices-worth-your-money.1489775/post-41609295 and tell me company what the post is about. No way to tell. I don't really understand what was gained by cutting nested quotes in replies.

I often revisit a thread several times over a few days. It's now much more difficult to follow discussions in the forums, rather than reacting to responses. While I can click the links and do all that stuff, it's asking a lot, and the breadcrumbs don't always seem to work properly, or perhaps it's user error. In any case, the end result is that I am losing interest in trying to follow the forums, which is what I liked about Ars in the first place. I'd appreciate an update on whether this is something that might be revisited now that we see it in practice.

 

[grommit!]

Hi,

I realise that this may be a dead issue, but the lack of depth when quoting is quite irritating. For example look at https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threa...rvices-worth-your-money.1489775/post-41609295 and tell me company what the post is about.

Clicking on "x said" eventually takes you down the chain of replies to this: https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threa...worth-your-money.1489775/page-2#post-41608839

While I can click the links and do all that stuff, it's asking a lot, and the breadcrumbs don't always seem to work properly

While the above worked, it would be a good idea to provide an example that doesn't. If only to allow them to understand whether something is broken.

 

[Evan E]

Hi,

I realise that this may be a dead issue, but the lack of depth when quoting is quite irritating. For example look at https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threa...rvices-worth-your-money.1489775/post-41609295 and tell me company what the post is about.

Clicking on "x said" eventually takes you down the chain of replies to this: https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threa...worth-your-money.1489775/page-2#post-41608839

Is that better or worse than having the relevant information right there in the post? I understand that removing multi-level quoting is intentional, but I also find that that choice has made the forums worse.

 

[grommit!]

Is that better or worse than having the relevant information right there in the post? I understand that removing multi-level quoting is intentional, but I also find that that choice has made the forums worse.

It doesn't bother me. It's a link to click on, and doing so presents additional context or information, the same way embedded links in articles do.

 

[Coppercloud]

This is the second time I've gotten a notification that someone is "following" me. This last one seems like a bot given that it was just created. On one hand the posts are public so I'm not sure that I could stop this even if the feature was off. On the other hand this is exceedingly creepy.

 

[DanNeely]

Is that better or worse than having the relevant information right there in the post? I understand that removing multi-level quoting is intentional, but I also find that that choice has made the forums worse.

There is value in auto-snipping, and having to do it manually when reaching 6 levels was a major pain point in the old software. Only having 1 level is too few though. Not just due to lack of context between replies, but because when someone quotes an external source as opposed to another message in the thread what is often the meat of the message being replied to is automatically removed as well. Bumping to 2 levels of quote instead of 1 would be a major improvement.

 

[milan616]

Is there any way we can get view comments to take us to the forum page? It's pretty much the main thing I wanted from subscribing during the last change to article comments. Before that I was just paying for Aurich's awesome images.

 

[Justin Credible]

Is there any way we can get view comments to take us to the forum page? It's pretty much the main thing I wanted from subscribing during the last change to article comments. Before that I was just paying for Aurich's awesome images.

When you click on the comments rectangle (i.e. my avatar) you should be able to click on a "view comments on forum" link.

 

[Evan E]

It's not just me that can't make out dark blue text on a black background to save my life, right?

 

[Carhole]

I’ve tried using the automatic image upload/rescale to inline in one post in the Lounge and one post in the maker forum but neither works, the image just shows as 100% uploaded while composing a reply and the page freezes, with a refresh bringing the draft back and upload discarded. Mobile Chrome, iPad Pro 11”, all updates applied. Cheers

 

[milan616]

When you click on the comments rectangle (i.e. my avatar) you should be able to click on a "view comments on forum" link.

View attachment 51602

Sadly that's not what it used to be. To get that to appear you have to click to see comments, which does a full page refresh, then wait for comments to load so the page can jump down to the comments area, then click reader comments, then click once more. Lord help you if you've already seen some of the comments though! Then the page is going to jump to the end instead.

The old way used to be a simple account preference and you'd go to the forum every time. And before that the forum was the only place to see comments you young whippersnapper!

 

[Shavano]

OK, serious lags are happening when I click on thread title links. Many seconds in some cases.

What's up with that?

 

[Dr Nno]

OK, serious lags are happening when I click on thread title links. Many seconds in some cases.

What's up with that?

Same here. Up to 10 seconds to open a thread. I was wondering if it was on my side.

 

[grommit!]

Noticed the same lag since last night.

 

[paintivore]

Apologies if this has already been reported, but is there anything that can be done to improve readability of promoted comments in dark mode on mobile? (Edit: The problem is only on mobile.) This is in Firefox on Android:

 

[Shavano]

Same here. Up to 10 seconds to open a thread. I was wondering if it was on my side.

It is definitely not on my side. My internet is very fast.

 

[Skoop]

I see it, too. But, if I click the link a second time, it opens right away.

 

[Ecmaster76]

OK, serious lags are happening when I click on thread title links. Many seconds in some cases.

What's up with that?

I've seen that since Thursday

Also other JS things like the spoiler form that pops up from the post editor seem to hang frequently

 

[Chuckstar]

I still think a control to clear the text box would come in handy. On mobile it can be a pain to clear the box manually, and “Delete draft” only deletes the draft on the server, but doesn’t clear the text box. Maybe just make “Delete draft” also clear the text box? For me, at least, I don’t think I’d ever have a reason to delete the draft on the server while not wanting the text box also cleared.

Not a particularly major issue, by any means. Just a suggestion.

 

[Chuckstar]

Is that better or worse than having the relevant information right there in the post? I understand that removing multi-level quoting is intentional, but I also find that that choice has made the forums worse.

At least one trade-off is that multi-level quoting will have to eventually hit a limit, and then you’re dealing with having to edit out the quotes exceeding the limit. I, personally, would be happy to never have to deal with that again. Plus, mistaken edits of the excess quotes was a big source of getting the quote nesting all screwed up.

That’s my vote for leaving it the new way, in case that wasn’t clear.

(Not trying to say “you’re wrong”, only that we have different opinions.)

 

[malor]

It's been annoyingly laggy for me for several days, mostly during times when I anticipate reader count to be highest. (eg: a few minutes ago, roughly noon Pacific time.) It feels like the database isn't keeping up with the load.

 

[BrangdonJ]

At least one trade-off is that multi-level quoting will have to eventually hit a limit, and then you’re dealing with having to edit out the quotes exceeding the limit. I, personally, would be happy to never have to deal with that again. Plus, mistaken edits of the excess quotes was a big source of getting the quote nesting all screwed up.

That’s my vote for leaving it the new way, in case that wasn’t clear.

(Not trying to say “you’re wrong”, only that we have different opinions.)

I don't think anyone wants to go back to manually editing the quotes, or getting rid of the limit altogether. The suggestion was to automatically limit to 2 levels, rather than 1 at present. (For what it's worth, I agree that 1 level is too few.)

 

[Ecmaster76]

I agree that two would better

Especially when you try to quote someone who's post is mostly excerpts from an article

 

[The Aloof Alot]

I’ve tried using the automatic image upload/rescale to inline in one post in the Lounge and one post in the maker forum but neither works, the image just shows as 100% uploaded while composing a reply and the page freezes, with a refresh bringing the draft back and upload discarded. Mobile Chrome, iPad Pro 11”, all updates applied. Cheers

9 cases out of 10 on other forums with this behaviour, the image is actually too large (in bytes) to be uploaded and it hits the (server) upload limit. The lack of feedback to the user is really annoying.

 

[Chuckstar]

I don't think anyone wants to go back to manually editing the quotes, or getting rid of the limit altogether. The suggestion was to automatically limit to 2 levels, rather than 1 at present. (For what it's worth, I agree that 1 level is too few.)

Please don't lecture me about the suggestion only being limited to 2 levels, when nowhere in the thread I was responding to was that mentioned at all.

 

[BrangdonJ]

Please don't lecture me about the suggestion only being limited to 2 levels, when nowhere in the thread I was responding to was that mentioned at all.

It was post #2,207, by DanNeely, about 4 days before your comment. If you responded without reading the entire thread first, well, please don't do that.

 

[Chuckstar]

It was post #2,207, by DanNeely, about 4 days before your comment. If you responded without reading the entire thread first, well, please don't do that.

So four days earlier someone else that I wasn’t replying to said something different than what I was replying to? Well so what? You do know how discussions work, right?

 

[BrangdonJ]

So four days earlier someone else that I wasn’t replying to said something different than what I was replying to? Well so what? You do know how discussions work, right?

The way discussions usually work is that you read what other people have said before you before pitching in yourself. That way, if someone else has already made a similar comment you can upvote that instead of posting yourself, which saves your time writing and avoids needless repetition, increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. Or, as in this case, if the discussion has moved on to a better suggestion you can comment about that instead and not waste your own and everyone else's time on outdated ideas. Failing that, you can at least not be a dick about it when someone points out that the discussion had, in fact, moved on.

 

[Shavano]

It was post #2,207, by DanNeely, about 4 days before your comment. If you responded without reading the entire thread first, well, please don't do that.

Oh please. Everybody should read more than 2200 posts before they can comment? How about you not gatekeep the thread?

That would be nice.

 

[Shavano]

OH, and fetching pages is still extremely slow.

 

[Tofystedeth]

Yeah, I'm having occasional slowdown issues on loading article comments. Seems to be related to loading links and embeds.
For instance this page of comments
https://meincmagazine.com/science/202...cination-a-crime/?comments=1&comments-page=15Took a minute or two to load. For a while it was saying it was communicating with the Ars CDN, but it was also hung on at least a few other sites like Politico. In general when I've run into comment load slowdowns it's usually links to random external external sites instead of some of the bigger one like YouTube that tend to be generally well behaved. I know they're in general trying to get all the embeds to load before the page is rendered so the comments don't jump around a lot, but maybe for stuff like embedding random webpages as opposed to common media sites it could be disabled? Or is it possible to put a timer on it so after maybe 30 seconds it just loads the comments and gives up on embeds?

 

[Hap]

I see a lot of issues in the general forums. Links to threads don't load unless you click a second time (then it's instant), or trying to post and you get the little scrolling pending thing across the top of the page that is perpetual. Leave the page and come back and your comment is posted. Seems to be getting more frequent.

 

[Jonathon]

I see a lot of issues in the general forums. Links to threads don't load unless you click a second time (then it's instant), or trying to post and you get the little scrolling pending thing across the top of the page that is perpetual. Leave the page and come back and your comment is posted. Seems to be getting more frequent.

Same here. Intermittent, but frequent enough that I'm seeing it multiple times a day.

 

[Ecmaster76]

We are approaching the two week mark from what I've seen. Its annoying but not a showstopper. Admins are probably tied up with something more urgent I guess

 

[Carhole]

Progress note: the automated image inlining and downscaling feature that Aurich introduced fairly early into the rollout seems to be working again. I’ve been able to post a few illustrative comments this week without having to rely on third party hosting services so thanks for working out whichever kinks were breaking that feature as it’s a very convenient for the end user.

Still observing occasional hangs when single-clicking on the post reply button, and I too am seeing the random server barf where an F5 or refresh of any kind seems to invoke an instant fix/render of pages in question. Wish that I could be more helpful on the latter issue but posting from iPad and mobile chrome, logging is not ideal. Normally the update is working gloriously, to be clear, and these issues are intermittent.

 

[Hap]

Still observing occasional hangs when single-clicking on the post reply button, and I too am seeing the random server barf where an F5 or refresh of any kind seems to invoke an instant fix/render of pages in question. Wish that I could be more helpful on the latter issue but posting from iPad and mobile chrome, logging is not ideal. Normally the update is working gloriously, to be clear, and these issues are intermittent.

It's getting annoying enough for me that occasionally I just give up and go elsewhere. Granted, I'm still on medical leave so spending far more time on Ars than I would normally.

 

[Readercathead]

Hi, not really replying but I can’t see what I’m doing here in the forums. It’s always been really unusably terrible on my iPhone, overlapping windows and mostly blank space with everything squished to the side.

Did all the normal article comments go away? I participate here by commenting on and reading article comments, but when I click on that I see nothing. I can see the number of comments in the menu, at the top of the article, and the ‘click here to read comments’ button at the end, but no comments appear.

Safari on iPhone

 

[lastbeliever]

Hi, not really replying but I can’t see what I’m doing here in the forums. It’s always been really unusably terrible on my iPhone, overlapping windows and mostly blank space with everything squished to the side.

Did all the normal article comments go away? I participate here by commenting on and reading article comments, but when I click on that I see nothing. I can see the number of comments in the menu, at the top of the article, and the ‘click here to read comments’ button at the end, but no comments appear.

Safari on iPhone

I came here to report the same issue. Firefox on Pixel 6 pro.

Edit. I went and clicked my posts and was able to see those. I then went back to the main page and I can now see the comment sections for the articles?

 

[Tofystedeth]

There's currently something weird going on with the mobile version of the article comments view, which is probably what you encountered. There's a separate thread for it.