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Show HN: Orange Forum – Web 1.0 style forum written in Go

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Re: Show HN: Orange Forum – Web 1.0 style forum written in Go

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a forum. Read the thread and don't have any such concept as a "mention". If you get quoted, you'll see it as you go through the pages. If you're really lazy just namesearch your handle (which may or may not change, may or may not be unique, etc) but basically participate don't just cherrypick. I hate most modern forum software with a passion.

Right, but you would just be one of the rare users that turns the system off. Which is fine, but don't let it blind you to what the typical user wants. "Just use the /search feature to find replies" isn't something I can say with a straight face to the sort of users I have. I would just leak them to competing forums that have good UX. It's no ideal for someone to be unaware that a thoughtful reply was made to a post…

If they were so invested they'd be reading the thread for people who are communicating about the topic. For people who are referring to comments or quoting other posts or didn't specifically @mention to drag a person back to look STRAIGHT AWAY lest they lose engagement.

@mentions on forums are good UX in the way that twitter @mentions are good UX - they drive clicks and opens - not engagement. They don't push good content, good conversations, good experiences. They allow people to sandbox discussions, to talk across each other. To skip volumes of content to just get their little piece.

Having the feature degrades the forum community imo, irrespective of who does and does not use it.

I'm a guy who likes old school forums though, so, you know, my opinion is probably not worth that much ;)

Re: Show HN: Orange Forum – Web 1.0 style forum written in Go

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks good. One suggestion: it doesn't work with JS off, so I don't see content when I arrive. I made a personal commitment not to use Facebook's software (React) whenever there are suitable alternatives available, because I don't want to support that awful company in any way, but hope that your project goes well.

Interesting commitment. Can I ask which URL didn't work for you, & which browser? For me, when I disable JS in Chrome Dev Tools, the website still loads properly, incl homepage, forum index and discussion topics. (but one cannot leave comments, that still requires JS). I tested a bit in Lynx also.

I went here: https://www.effectivediscussions.org/forum/

    Uncaught TypeError: debiki.internal.startDiscussionPage 
    is not a function
        at (index):257
Feel free to email me (see my profile) if you would like screenshots and more details about the errors.

Re: Show HN: Orange Forum – Web 1.0 style forum written in Go

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but you would just be one of the rare users that turns the system off. Which is fine, but don't let it blind you to what the typical user wants. "Just use the /search feature to find replies" isn't something I can say with a straight face to the sort of users I have. I would just leak them to competing forums that have good UX. It's no ideal for someone to be unaware that a thoughtful reply was made to a post…

If they were so invested they'd be reading the thread for people who are communicating about the topic. For people who are referring to comments or quoting other posts or didn't specifically @mention to drag a person back to look STRAIGHT AWAY lest they lose engagement. @mentions on forums are good UX in the way that twitter @mentions are good UX - they drive clicks and opens - not engagement. They don't push good co…

Seems you've had a bad experience with mentions. Maybe people have been using them in the wrong way, where you've seen them.

At work, we were using Slack, and @mentioned each other "all the time", and I'm fairly positive we would have abandoned Slack if people couldn't mention each other. Mentions are like going to the other person, and saying, "Hi, look there, you knowledeg & help is needed over here a short while". And then the other person takes a look, replies with help or status update for example.

Our mentions were related to none of driving clicks or opens or engagemenet — instead, it was about getting work done, directly rather than ... some day later when the person happened to maybe see the relevant comments.

Re: Show HN: Orange Forum – Web 1.0 style forum written in Go

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks good. One suggestion: it doesn't work with JS off, so I don't see content when I arrive. I made a personal commitment not to use Facebook's software (React) whenever there are suitable alternatives available, because I don't want to support that awful company in any way, but hope that your project goes well.

Interesting commitment. Can I ask which URL didn't work for you, & which browser? For me, when I disable JS in Chrome Dev Tools, the website still loads properly, incl homepage, forum index and discussion topics. (but one cannot leave comments, that still requires JS). I tested a bit in Lynx also.

And regarding the commitment not to support FB, it's because using FB's software supports FB, and FB is terrible for society. I don't want to support them (wherever possible), even if just in a small way.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/facebook-...

Re: Show HN: Orange Forum – Web 1.0 style forum written in Go

#176
post #63

This is cool. I've been thinking about this for a while. The best way to write high quality web applications is to use compiled languages and minimize the complexity of the infrastructure by using e.g. SQLite instead of PostgreSQL. I hope this trend starts to pick up more steam and become the sane default that everyone just assumes. Instead of the current mess where everyone assumes that it's "normal" to live in this…

I don't see how this would reduce complexity. If you don't need to scale, postgre still better enforces correctness and uses almost no resources. When you do need to scale, you WILL need to switch to postgre. Postgre is also dead simple to install and use for the "simple personal blog" use-cases. The enourmous technical debt you're taking on to reduce the one time installation by 2-3 commands and a slightly quicker download is not worth it.

Re: Show HN: Orange Forum – Web 1.0 style forum written in Go

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were so invested they'd be reading the thread for people who are communicating about the topic. For people who are referring to comments or quoting other posts or didn't specifically @mention to drag a person back to look STRAIGHT AWAY lest they lose engagement. @mentions on forums are good UX in the way that twitter @mentions are good UX - they drive clicks and opens - not engagement. They don't push good co…

Seems you've had a bad experience with mentions. Maybe people have been using them in the wrong way, where you've seen them. At work, we were using Slack, and @mentioned each other "all the time", and I'm fairly positive we would have abandoned Slack if people couldn't mention each other. Mentions are like going to the other person, and saying, "Hi, look there, you knowledeg & help is needed over here a short while".…

Then you're now talking about Slack instead of a forum. They're distinct entities, with distinct purposes.

Or not, maybe the line is so blurred by now that people can't handle actual forums anymore. If I wanted a chatroom though, I'd be in a chatroom.

Re: Show HN: Orange Forum – Web 1.0 style forum written in Go

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) nor can you cache client-side rendered pages in a CDN ... you can only cache EMPTY information-free pages in a CDN 2) Agreed, but again, same problem as one Truth of the matter: Javascript rendered pages 1) request(s) for the page 2) response for the page 3) at least one AJAX request (in practice: dozens) (cannot be akamai'ed) 4) waiting for all responses Server side rendering without AJAX 1) request page 2) respo…

Again, this is where the question of scale comes in. Server side may well work out quicker when you only have a few hundred visitors. But when you've got hundreds of thousands, being able to offload > 90% of your content makes a massive difference. JASON APIs are less expensive to get generate than full HTML pages which include the same content. It might only be a fraction less work on the servers but multiply that b…

If you lose performance on every single request, scale will only make you lose more. But yes, you can offload a tiny amount of server-side processing onto the client side. If that makes a difference in your costs ...

No I can't say then go for it. What you say is bullshit. Offloading string mangling to the client at the cost of doing extra requests is absurd.

We established that a single request (ie. directly filled in page) is going to be faster than javascript doing requests. You appear to agree. The only thing scale will bring is a bigger difference.

Javascript/AJAX is simply a manifestation of "Worse is better":

1) programmers start making websites. Good ones, and bad ones.

2) we see lots of examples of badly programmed server-side programming.

3) "we must fix this", and so now we do client side programming

4) incredible amounts of examples of bad client-side programming

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