Subtle changes, bugs and feedback

Take this post (5457) as an example. It is a reply, but I didn't quote you.

So, if you hovered over the "in reply to" link on this post, you would see a tooltip of your post (5456).

Ah.

This is far more complex than you realise.

Your post isn't 5457 to me, it is 5368. For I have ignored mdcc_tester who I believe has posted a fair bit in this thread.

The logic to calculate which page a post is on is quite expensive... we remove, per user viewing it, the posts that are deleted, moderated, by those ignored, etc. In fact... I'm on page 215, I don't know what page you are on.

The cost is such that we don't do it... we provide a link, the "in reply to" link. That is the only time that we bear the cost of working out what page to find a post on.

We don't actually know the post number as 5457 (or whatever)... all we actually do is get you to the right page, multiply by 25 (posts per page) and then increment a counter on that from the first post on a page to the last on the page.

If you think about it that's neat... we only ever need to work on the 25 posts that we're going to display. A SQL SELECT statement that only needs to work on 25 rows. But to do what you need I'd need to calculate the above for each of the 25 posts that can appear on a page. Effectively, the cost of rendering a page will be multiplied by up to 25.

Fun, eh?

The joys of a heavily permissioned and yet performant system for displaying long threads (can you imagine the work that happens on the Spotted thread?).

The tool buttons at the head of this comments box; I haven't verified, but they seem to be triggered on mouse down, instead of mouse click. Kind of annoying when you're on mobile, thumbing through comments and you catch one of them. You don't expect click-type events to trigger when scrolling.

Stock browser on Android 5.1

Ah ha, yes that makes sense. Of course, I am now wondering if there is a way of performing the necessary lookup logic at the point of hover over, with an AJAX style load, instead of a full page load redirect.

Not a straightforward fix though.

You know, if I find the time, I would love to get to grips with the code base and maybe submit some changes. I don't know if you are up for running a getting started session sometime? I know that at least one other person has expressed an interest in doing so. Can't remember who, right now...

Git.

You know, if I find the time, I would love to get to grips with the code base and maybe submit some changes. I don't know if you are up for running a getting started session sometime? I know that at least one other person has expressed an interest in doing so. Can't remember who, right now...

Today, it's best just me doing it.

We built it as a platform, optimised for how it would need to run and grow. It wasn't optimised for how easy it would be to spin up and run a local development environment.

Needless to say, if you want to start work on it... it's a bitch to get running locally (even though we have provided a repo with Vagrant and some instructions).

What I'm currently doing is tidying up the Go code so that I can move the Django logic into Go. This will take a few months... but the outcome should be that it will be extraordinarily easy to build and run locally, which means it will also be really easy to work on and contribute to.

I'm happy to talk you through code, to give lessons on how it works, etc. But today it remains difficult to just get working on it, as it's difficult to run a dev environment.

I've been looking for a project to work on, and to properly learn a language that feels like there's a point to me doing it, rather than learning it for the sake of learning it.

As such, if I want to help out and contribute to the project in future, does this mean that I should therefore be looking to get myself up to speed with Go?

Yes, but I would recommend Go anyway. Most of the startups I know in London and San Francisco are either using Go or looking at it. It would make you very employable.

Hi boss quick question apols if already answered. Will we ever see rep again?

So far (5 minutes in) lots of the setup is reminding me of Pascal.

Ahhh, Pascal. The first programing language I ever learnt. I think I might like Go.

Not soon, but my answer back whenever was that as soon as I could build the right thing I would. Rep as it was, was the wrong thing. But some aspects were quite neat like the semi-private micro-commenting.

Event search links added to the home page (on the right hand side, under Content)

It seems when I edit a post that has enough lines of text to require scrolling, when scrolling, all the text disappears for a few seconds before coming back. Firefox, Windows 8.1.

However, it doesn't happen always as I just tried to do it with this post but it worked as one would expect.

I'm not sure if anyway else has this but for how long ago something was posted it says 'in 8 days' if it was posted recently.

^^ is 8 hrs ago
^ is in 5 days

Click the date, the "8 hrs ago" bit... and it will show the precise time it was posted.

Yeah. Just wanted to tell you if it was a bug or something.

I get this whenever my computer clock is wrong. Have you checked what yours is doing?

Will do. Just got lollipop so probably the cause.

Sometimes posts get deleted, numbers get shifted... the link will always work.

Just to revisit this, I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'm finding it so hard to keep track of who is saying what to whom. The link just means taking an age to traipse off, find the original comment, come back, find where you were, and continue reading.

Very occasionally posts get deleted, numbers shift, but I would posit that for the vast majority of the time, being able to get a pop-up of the original post being replied to would be utterly awesome.

being able to get a pop-up of the original post being replied to would be utterly awesome

Just having proper quotation would be a start

So, perhaps posts that are "replies" could have a pointer stored with them to the "replied to post". Then it is trivial to load it and display it in a tooltip. Maybe.

I'm not sure if anyway else has this but for how long ago something was posted it says 'in 8 days' if it was posted recently.
^^ is 8 hrs ago
^ is in 5 days

Oh I forgot to say. It was my phones time and date issue. Was 8 days off.

Interesting it says that the post happens in 8 days.

Is there any intentions of having a 'nursery' for new members, make 20 posts before you get let loose kind of thing?

Posts which are replies already have an identifier for the comment which they are in reply to, I think: http://microcosm-cc.github.io/#comments-collection-post (see the 'inReplyTo' property).

Just having proper quotation would be a start

..yea I miss that too.