Comments and You

I think I lead the swarm in typos. If I gave a meep about re-reading before I posted, I'd still suck at posting. So there.

I don't care if the live preview is there or not.

Never use it. Don't care.

How many of you ignore the entire meep and just type your meep out as you crouch in your hovel which reeks of catbox and alimony payments and stupid meep like using the paring knife to cut cheese and other slow forms of failure where the only victim may be yourself but the rest of us certainly pay a heavy toll nonetheless?

you must be psychic

I don't drop down anything. I just punch in the html I want. Judging from the looks of alot of the comments and journals however, that's asking far far far too much of the average person.

The live preview thing I don't like to look at because it doesn't present alignment very well.

it should definitely be included in 2.0, it doesn't take up much space and would help keep people from meeping up their html

i like it. i usually use the bold and italic meepons and glance to make sure i'm not fuking meep up. furthermore, i cannot comprehend the type of person who chooses not to at least glance at something that's already right-the-meep-there for them.

I love the laziness it affords me. Instead of hitting a private journal and entering in a picture or whatever then refreshing the journal and copying the code into the comments, the live preview is meep.

+1 for

Keep it.

mundhra: furthermore, i cannot comprehend the type of person who chooses not to at least glance at something that's already right-the-meep-there for them.

Heh, heh heh heh, heh, heh. (I hate learning)

meep.

OK, so the preview answers range from don't-care to must-have.

Now, let's assume you can do one or more of the following to interact with said preview...

• manually enter HTML tags around text you want to mark up
• click meepons to wrap selected text in HTML tags
• use shorthand like italic and bold or emphasis to produce HTML markup for you

My thrust here, ultimately, is to find out how important that last bulletpoint is.

I don't use the emphasis meepons

I only use HTML and I suck at that too. The shortcuts never do what I want them to, and then I have to find out why they didn't speak HTML the way it should have been spoken. I also like pie. And Heather.

I'm alright with typing my own html, and never use the meepons, but I appreciate having the preview so that I can see when I mangle it.

I had noticed the stupid markdown codes, but only because I was trying to put s around a word and the stupid box wouldn't let me, so I had to use &s for the s. lol

I vote that you kill the markdown and keep the preview. I'm ambivalant about the meepons.

Keep the preview. Is there anyway, for example, to make centered items to appear centered within the preview?

Non HTML markup is annoying and just adds to the jumble. Silly meepons are silly.

keepy keepy

Leave the whole shebang; multiple solutions to a problem are always good, even if only so one can proclaim "i use shorthand markup, unlike the rest of these cretins"

BTW i can thank linkswarm for my bushleague html skills

PS. implement them meeps swarmwide

Personally l like it, and was delighted when l first saw it.

+1, all the way. It's great and handy.

How many of you use the built-in markdown code that exactly none of you know is there? (Example: in that link comment form I linked above, try typing *meep* and **meep** and watch what happens in the preview).

I love the preview thingy and hope it stays, although I think Chex is right when he says that it seems to look a bit funny - perhaps this is because the preview box doesn't wrap to the same width as the final comments div/table cell?

Also, I never used the build-in markdown code, but now I know it's there I'll use it all the time :> Request: can we have a markdown code for links? I really hate doing those in HTML. And how about making stuff like that usable throughout the whole site?

thanks Vas

previewing comments is for meeps.

:D

I don't know what markdown means, presumably the opposite of markup, but I don't know what that means either. What I do know is that the handy meepons are handy. I vote for them.

I like the preview and can cope with it centre justifying everything instead of left justify like the actual comment. I hadn't actually played with the meepons etc, but now that I have tried them I will probably use them. My html skills are non-existant.

Wotak-I think I lead the swarm in suck So there. I don't care

fix'd

I like it, I learn or relearn something everytime. More tools is better, unless it costs you somehow.

vasudeva: Now, let's assume you can do one or more of the following to interact with said preview... - manually enter HTML tags around text you want to mark up - click meepons to wrap selected text in HTML tags - use shorthand like *italic* and **bold** or _emphasis_ to produce HTML markup for you My thrust here, ultimately, is to find out how important that last bulletpoint is.

i would say that your list goes high, medium-high, no priority for me. i think clickable meepons is of the highest priority for me for others.

maybe you could leave it as-sis, except with an extra option to turn off the 'shorthand' code?

KEEP

again

KEEP

The problem with HTML is that it's easy to meep up. If I had a dollar for every time someone left off the second quote mark when doing a link and broke the whole fuking page, I could buy a meep.

That said, I definitely won't get rid of HTML. I like negroes. I'll try to put something in (HTMLTidy) to automatically detect that you meeped up your HTML and quietly fix it for you like a stupid baby getting its fat stupid chin wiped free of pea smudge.

The markdown stuff is just a handy shortcut to having to remember HTML tags and it makes a kind of newb magic sense in that you may well use underscores to show emphasis anyway and lo and behold, when you do, the site actually turns that word bold, thus providing emphasis. It's not a dealbreaker. I'll probably concentrate on BBCode support, then -- BBCode is probably a lot more widely used than markdown anyway. How many times have you seen a LS nub littering [url] in his posts, not realizing that BBCode only works in the forums?

Which brings me to another point which could probably use its own thread but whatever: I definitely want to make sure all post comment fields (links, forums, journals) act the same exact way, cause that just makes sense.

Along the way to making that true, I've come across the idea of making the front page links section show forum threads and journal posts also. Here's my very crappy very rough draft, just as a proof of concept...

So all forum threads and all journal posts would be part of the main stream of content on the front page and they'd get the appropriate little icons next to them. We'd still have blocks to the right, but they'd probably show other things, like the last 10 pictures uploaded, a shoutbox that contained swarmer site activity ("joojoobee just PMed you", "catface_mcgee just commented on your 'Why Me God?' Journal post") and whatever. Also, I'm considering renaming the forums to 'AskTell', losing the website reviews, and using them as an all-out free discussion area not confined to specific categories. Instead of digging through the forum categories to find where your new thread best fit, you'd just create an AskTell thread, tag it 'cool', 'bizarre', and 'meepual', and then let the swarm know how you almost got it on with a hooker who turned out to be a transvestite and then as you were going to leave you saw guitarjon in the corner and he had a bag of weed on him and he got you high.

Here is a pretty good place to tell me this is the best idea you've ever heard, and/or/or you loathe it entirely and it's the stupidest thing anyone ever typed. It's also an excellent time to do so, as left to my own devices this is probably what we're ending up with.

EDIT: And yes, along the way, I want to turn links orange before you've clicked them. I realized that newcomers who haven't clicked any links yet see a sea of white on grey, which sucks.

<span class="post_was_edited">On 2008-12-05 at 17:09:57, vasudeva asked to smell your meep</span>

vasudeva: Along the way to making that true, I've come across the idea of making the front page links section show forum threads and journal posts also. ... So all forum threads and all journal posts would be part of the main stream of content on the front page and they'd get the appropriate little icons next to them.

The only problem I see there is that it means the spammers can get their spam journals into the main stream of things without the usual protection of link rejection...

12:15 Gothmog> I'd post but I have nothing good to say about it other than great idea 12:15 vasudeva> so post that, stupo 12:16 vasudeva> i just want personal +s or -s

+s

Keep the preview even though I rarely even look up to see what the meep as I post at 100 miles an hour with my hair flying in the wind and eagles screeching overhead.

That is an extremely crappy draft to be sure. I do like the concept as it'll add more content to the front page when links are slow.

Fidel_Castro:

vasudeva: So all forum threads and all journal posts would be part of the main stream of content on the front page

The only problem I see there is that it means the spammers can get their spam journals into the main stream of things without the usual protection of link rejection...

No way. I'm thinking of making new journals either...

• uncreatable by newbs, or
• strictly private until voted up by the AQ.

Thinking of making asktell threads require an AQ consensus also. Haven't finished even fleshing out the idea, but figure that could work pretty well.

EDIT: Post collisionz.

<span class="post_was_edited">On 2008-12-05 at 17:19:52, vasudeva asked to smell your meep</span>

vas: "...left off the second quote mark when doing a link and broke the whole fuking page..."

Sweet! I was wondering how (else) to do that.

Ya know what else we could use around here? xxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx...

[EDIT] i decided that might not be a polite thing to post?

<span class="post_was_edited">On 2008-12-05 at 20:18:45, Fidel_Castro asked to smell your meep</span>

I heart the preview, has saved face for me more than once. Thanks for the tip off on the sekret code.

So when did you change the memberlist? No more Linkswarm as pawn for Ghostie, but I like it.

Keep it cause I suck the aherf e-penix.

dragonstaff: So when did you change the memberlist? No more Linkswarm as pawn for Ghostie, but I like it.

I was gonna mention this.

vasudeva: So all forum threads and all journal posts would be part of the main stream of content on the front page and they'd get the appropriate little icons next to them. We'd still have blocks to the right, but they'd probably show other things, like the last 10 pictures uploaded, a shoutbox that contained swarmer site activity ("joojoobee just PMed you", "catface_mcgee just commented on your 'Why Me God?' Journal post") and whatever. Also, I'm considering renaming the forums to 'AskTell', losing the website reviews, and using them as an all-out free discussion area not confined to specific categories. Instead of digging through the forum categories to find where your new thread best fit, you'd just create an AskTell thread, tag it 'cool', 'bizarre', and 'meepual', and then let the swarm know how you almost got it on with a hooker who turned out to be a transvestite and then as you were going to leave you saw guitarjon in the corner and he had a bag of weed on him and he got you high. EDIT: And yes, along the way, I want to turn links orange before you've clicked them. I realized that newcomers who haven't clicked any links yet see a sea of white on grey, which sucks.

I vote yes

<span class="post_was_edited">On 2008-12-07 at 01:11:48, magicchex asked to smell your meep</span>

dragonstaff: So when did you change the memberlist? No more Linkswarm as pawn for Ghostie, but I like it.

Like yesterday. I kinda like it too. I've kept Ghostie PawnView though. ^_^

vasudeva: I've come across the idea of making the front page links section show forum threads and journal posts also. ... We'd still have blocks to the right, but they'd probably show other things

Getting rid of the forums/journals blocks means you'd have to use the Talking meep page to keep track of those threads, the way you have to do now for links.

Why not make it a choice, like selecting categories basically. Have all three in the standard layout (or whatever combo) and then implement someway for users to save it.

Punting decisions into user preferences is one way to go, but I'd far rather have defaults that everyone agrees with and save the engineering for the weird stuff. No sense in making a global system change if everyone's going to turn it off.

If people come back and go "oh wait, I never use the talking meep page and am not about to start", that's my cue that getting rid of forums and journal blocks as currently envisioned means those threads will see little activity and my plan needs more work before I get started on it.