Snap! Team development discussion, vol. 2

bharvey

Hardmath123 wrote:
Sussman succinctly describes the algorithm I use to interface with other people

Scary. Don't some random signals get the other people angry?

PullJosh

Hardmath123 wrote:
bharvey wrote:
You put signals (by analogy: impulses, sine waves) into it, and see how it reacts, and from this you induce its general behavior

^^ Sussman succinctly describes the algorithm I use to interface with other people

I wish we had a subtle way to appreciate posts, because this one really made me smile. (This is why we need Discourse, btw)

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bharvey

PullJosh wrote:
I wish we had a subtle way to appreciate posts, because this one really made me smile. (This is why we need Discourse, btw)

Nah. My plan is to disable likes, and rewards for posting a lot, and all that social network stuff. One is supposed to post because one has something worthwhile to say, not as clickbait. We'll see how much user clamor there is for likes; Scratch users are younger, so they need lollipops.

Hardmath123

Aww, so Slack-style emoji responses are out of the question? :-(

Hardmath123

bharvey wrote:
Hardmath123 wrote:
Sussman succinctly describes the algorithm I use to interface with other people
Scary. Don't some random signals get the other people angry?

Yeah. Still working on that. Sadly you can't “git reset –hard” in real life if you make a mistake.

cycomachead

I think I figured out how to merge blob's accounts correctly. It requires running a script on the forum server, but it should be working fine.

Also, I don't think there's a way to disable the hearts on posts. But they're not all bad, hearts are better than a bunch of +1, or LOL comments, or at the very least it's less noisy.

bharvey

Hardmath123 wrote:
Aww, so Slack-style emoji responses are out of the question? :-(

You can use emoji, yes. They have the virtue of not being added up and displayed in aggregate for people to compete about.

bharvey

cycomachead wrote:
Also, I don't think there's a way to disable the hearts on posts.

You can (I have done it) disable seeing the like button, so there won't be any hearts to see, if I've done it right.

blob8108

cycomachead wrote:
But they're not all bad, hearts are better than a bunch of +1, or LOL comments, or at the very least it's less noisy.

+1!

tosh · slowly becoming a grown-up adult and very confused about it

cycomachead

blob8108 wrote:
cycomachead wrote:
But they're not all bad, hearts are better than a bunch of +1, or LOL comments, or at the very least it's less noisy.
+1!

Ha hah! I was expecting someone to do that….

bharvey wrote:
cycomachead wrote:
Also, I don't think there's a way to disable the hearts on posts.
You can (I have done it) disable seeing the like button, so there won't be any hearts to see, if I've done it right.

I can still see hearts and heart posts.

We're a smaller group of people, so as long as we don't over encourage poor posts with too many hearts I think it will be fine.

_nix

cycomachead wrote:
We're a smaller group of people, so as long as we don't over encourage poor posts with too many hearts I think it will be fine.

I'm of the view that artificial scores like this don't have a place on discussion threads… I really dislike how I automatically think about what score my post will get – if people will like it – even if for just a moment. And I think the system, the presence of hearts/score, is more to blame than me here!

Last edited by _nix (Dec. 26, 2018 23:56:48)

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bharvey

This thread has been reopened. Yay!

_nix

bharvey wrote:
This thread has been reopened. Yay!

Phew! We're good.

(You said something about responding to my Dec. 26 post here on the other thread…I'm curious about your thoughts on the topic!

)

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bharvey

_nix wrote:
(You said something about responding to my Dec. 26 post here on the other thread…I'm curious about your thoughts on the topic! )

Oh, I was going to agree with you, especially about blaming the social environment rather than the individual participants. All those hearts and stars have been deliberately engineered to hold people's attention, so they'll hang around online and look at the advertising. If you're interested in this topic, read Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (http://www.jaronlanier.com/tenarguments.html). It's a quick, easy read, but eye-opening, even though I'd argue about a few details.

Also was going to say to Michael that you can still see the three hearts that were given early on, but not the button to give new hearts, which I think I've turned off.

cycomachead

_nix wrote:
cycomachead wrote:
We're a smaller group of people, so as long as we don't over encourage poor posts with too many hearts I think it will be fine.
I'm of the view that artificial scores like this don't have a place on discussion threads… I really dislike how I automatically think about what score my post will get – if people will like it – even if for just a moment. And I think the system, the presence of hearts/score, is more to blame than me here!

I kind of feel that way, but I also feel that way about replies, or really any interaction. I guess, when I feel concerned about feedback, views, likes, or something similar I always like it when it's easier to give a small reaction than a comment – since sometimes that's all that's needed. (Comments often feel a bit formal.)

Also, bh, I can still heart new posts.

But in the case of Discourse – where there are hearts, or GitHub where you have a few reactions to posts – I don't think the advertising reasons apply. Those sites aren't fueled by advertising, and the engineers both mentioned reducing noise from “+1” style posts. (Twitter favs originally were more intended for the reader, to keep their own list, but now have morphed into the more social-media type interactions.)

bharvey

cycomachead wrote:
Also, bh, I can still heart new posts.

Oh. What did I do by removing Settings>Basic Settings>Post menu>Like-count and Settings>Basic Settings>Post menu hidden items>Like ?

But in the case of Discourse – where there are hearts, or GitHub where you have a few reactions to posts – I don't think the advertising reasons apply. Those sites aren't fueled by advertising, and the engineers both mentioned reducing noise from “+1” style posts. (Twitter favs originally were more intended for the reader, to keep their own list, but now have morphed into the more social-media type interactions.)

Right, the conventions developed by the advertising sellers have infected the expectations of everyone on the net, such as the Discourse developers. (Everyone but a few crotchety dinosaurs who remember the Arpanet days.)

I wouldn't mind a “+1” button. I have clicked a few of those myself. The connotation of “+1” is different, at least for me, from that of a heart. The former applies to posts that include a suggestion for action, like the Github post I just made recommending fixing the misfeature that “next costume” doesn't work from costume number 0. The latter can mean anything from “the same thing happened to me” to “this post made me laugh” to “will you marry me?” But mainly it means that the heart-giver wants to see this post highlighted on the web site. That's a popularity contest.

PullJosh

bharvey wrote:
The connotation of “+1” is different, at least for me, from that of a heart.

If that's the only issue, we can definitely swap out the heart icon for anything else you'd prefer with a little CSS.

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bharvey

PullJosh wrote:
If that's the only issue, we can definitely swap out the heart icon for anything else you'd prefer with a little CSS.

Am I hearing a volunteer, in that “we”?

P.S.: Base e is the best number system, if the measure of quality is how many stick-on digits you have to buy at the hardware store to be guaranteed able to express any address < n, for some n. (I learned this in operating systems class, for some reason.) (In practice, this means base 3, the closest integer to e.)

Last edited by bharvey (Dec. 30, 2018 01:35:22)

cycomachead

bharvey wrote:
I wouldn't mind a “+1” button. I have clicked a few of those myself. The connotation of “+1” is different, at least for me, from that of a heart. The former applies to posts that include a suggestion for action, like the Github post I just made recommending fixing the misfeature that “next costume” doesn't work from costume number 0. The latter can mean anything from “the same thing happened to me” to “this post made me laugh” to “will you marry me?” But mainly it means that the heart-giver wants to see this post highlighted on the web site. That's a popularity contest.

Funny, I've never personally interpreted a “+1” to mean anything specific, other than a general agreement or like… but then I also know that “revenge liking” is a thing on twitter, and probably elsewhere. Facebook, of course, only had 1 reaction for most of its life and we all knew it could convey many things.

That said, I don't have a problem trying to change it to something else. We could do it with CSS, though I would personally prefer a Discourse plugin.

bharvey

cycomachead wrote:
though I would personally prefer a Discourse plugin.

There is one!

Edit: here it is:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/change-the-like-icon/87748

Last edited by bharvey (Jan. 2, 2019 06:45:20)

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