week seven comes a bit early this week again because this week offers up what might be the most articles that i've covered in one of these so far. no [LONGFORM] articles this week, but we do have a lot of policy stuff, mostly from the secondary and lesser candidates!

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 thread • Week 2 thread • Week 3 thread • Week 4 thread • Week 5 thread • Week 6 thread

News

General Stuff

• from NBC News: Democrats face defining 2020 question: Does defeating Trump outweigh all else?. this is possibly the biggest question democrats have to answer this election cycle, and it's not a question that is readily or easily answered since a lot of it ties into other problems like representation and electability. expect this to continue to be a major theme since it's already been one from the beginning.

• from Pacific Standard: The 2020 Democratic Candidates Are Split on Letting Incarcerated People Vote. one low-key issue that seems to be becoming a defining issue is the matter of incarcerated people voting. i imagine this is an issue that is not going to receive much coverage, nor be center fold in most candidate's platforms, but nonetheless, some people have already taken stances on it (sanders is a yes, buttigieg is a no).

• from Vox: Women of color want 2020 Democrats to work for their vote. this was also a point of note last week in the Guardian (see Black female voters to Democrats: 'You won't win the White House without us' with the 'She the People' forum, and i anticipate this is not an issue that's going to go away.

Joe Biden

• from NBC News: Biden is the Democratic front-runner, but a vulnerable one. we begin with NBC News and their big takeaway from biden's entry to the democratic primary:

Bottom line: 96 hours in, Biden looks more like John Kerry of 2004 (the slight front-runner in a volatile Democratic field) than Al Gore of 2000 or Hillary Clinton of 2016.

• from Jacobin: Joe Biden Is Not a Blue-Collar Candidate. jacobin offers up this take, arguing that biden is not a blue-collar candidate because his voting record suggests he sells out the working class often, and while he is generally acceptable at representing the white working class, he fails to really represent minority working class voters and therefore cannot be a properly blue-collar candidate.

• from the Atlantic: Biden Is Betting on Unions. They Might Bet on Someone Else. biden is of course angling for the union vote and union endorsements, which he's already winning to some extent with an endorsement from the (admittedly in the biden tank) International Association of Fire Fighters (membership: 300,000). he's going to have a hard time garnering labor endorsements, though, because he is far from the only candidate with union ties. as the article notes, among the other candidates vying for the backing of the unions are sanders, warren and harris, and each of them have arguably just as much claim to the working-class as biden does (see also last week's Democratic presidential candidates seek union support at workers' forum).

Bernie Sanders

• from CBS News: Bernie and Biden: Fighting for Trump voters. one of the side effects of how this primary is being waged is that obama-trump voters are being targeted significantly by just about everybody involved. this targeting by the two ends of the primary (and the related issues involved with that) is the subject of this article by CBS News.

• from Reuters: Bernie Sanders promises help for family farms, rural residents on trip to Iowa. policy-wise, sanders has focused on rural communities in recent weeks, promising among other things to "strengthen anti-trust laws to block new corporate agriculture mergers and break up existing monopolies" and "changes to farm subsidy programs to shift the benefits away from bigger farms to smaller and mid-sized operations".

Everybody Else

• from Buzzfeed News: Almost Two Months In, Beto 2020 Is Still In Flux. Staffers Know They’re Behind. despite looking like a relatively early frontrunner in the race, beto has been worse-than-stagnant in the past few weeks, dropping back behind warren, harris, and buttigieg. things aren't looking up either: as the article notes, the campaign is still in the process of trying to fill positions and not lose people (see also, week 5's somewhat related A Top Adviser To Beto O’Rourke Has Left His Presidential Campaign).

• from CBS News: Elizabeth Warren bets big on policy to break through crowded Democratic field. warren's focus on policy so far has been well documented, and this CBS news article mostly focuses on that in comparison to other candidates, who barely have sketches. it also tackles the electability issue, though, which it notes could be a problem that weighs down warren's prospects (cf. last week's Can a woman beat Trump? Some Democrats wonder if it's worth the risk):

New Hampshire is a state where Massachusetts candidates like Warren typically do quite well, but a Suffolk University survey of Granite State Democrats released earlier this week had her in fourth place behind Biden, Sanders, and Buttigieg. When asked why, nearly 1-in-5 non-Warren voters said the main reason they don't support her is because they doubt she can beat Mr. Trump.

• from the Atlantic: Mayor Buttigieg Is Working Remotely Today. this article mostly focuses on the interesting issue buttigieg has--which is, of course, that he is still the mayor of south bend while he's out campaigning. since buttigieg has state he has no intentions of stepping down from the mayoral position he holds (and his term expires in november), this is probably going to be an interested background note of his campaign for the next little while.

• from POLITICO: Gillibrand proposes public campaign financing plan. kirsten gillibrand has policy too, folks! admittedly, i have no idea why her policy takes this form, but she nonetheless proposes that:

...eligible voters could opt into her “Democracy Dollars” program and register for vouchers, provided by the Federal Elections Commission, to donate up to $100 in a primary election and $100 in a general election each cycle. Each participant would get $200 for each type of federal contest: House, Senate and presidential elections.
But there would be limits on both donors and candidates in order to use the public voucher program. Voters could contribute only to candidates in their state — including House candidates outside their district but within their state. In order to accept the public money, candidates would have to restrict themselves to accepting only donations of $200 or less.

• from Roll Call: Klobuchar plan to combat addiction draws on experience with her dad. klobuchar also has policy! this mostly focuses on addiction and mental health, and a summary was helpfully provided by a press release i don't have on hand:

“Amy will support incentives for state governments to enact ignition interlock laws for those convicted of drunk driving to help reduce repeat offenders. Since problems with alcoholism often start early, Amy will support educational initiatives that focus on the risks of alcohol as well as early identification and treatment of alcoholism,” a summary said.

supplemental reporting by CBS News also notes the following: "The Minnesota Democrat wants to pay for treatment for those addicted to opioids by charging a two-cents-per-milligram fee to companies that make the drug."

• from Vox: Cory Booker now has the most ambitious gun control proposal of any 2020 candidate. cory booker meanwhile is focusing on gun policy. as vox writes:

His plan includes the typical Democratic proposals: universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, better enforcement of existing gun laws, and more funding for gun violence research. But Booker’s plan goes further by requiring that gun owners not just pass a background check but obtain a license to be able to purchase and own a firearm. It’s a far more robust gun control proposal than any other presidential candidate has proposed.

in many respects this is similar (but more comprehensive in some respects and les comprehensive in others) to the current gun policy of massachusetts. booker's plan also includes a national database for tracking firearms, and also limits on purchases to prevent things like resale. vox's part of the writing here also has info on the underlying research and statistics with respect to whether or not these policies work (for the most part, they seem to).

• from CBS News: Jay Inslee unveils plan for 100 percent clean energy by 2030. jay inslee is a lower-rung candidate, but that hasn't stopped him from pushing the limits on climate policy. among other things, his ideas include: "100 percent clean energy, mak[ing] all new vehicles zero-emission, and [eliminating] the carbon footprint for all new buildings." you can find his policy specifically here.

• from Grist: A tale of two Washingtons: How Jay Inslee aims to take his climate plan nationwide. Grist goes into more detail on inslee's policy, mostly focusing on how they're being implemented in washington, inslee's home state, and how they compare to the other climate policies in the race already like beto's.

• from CBS News: 2020 hopeful John Hickenlooper unveils plan to "re-energize trade with the world". john hickenlooper has hitched his wagon to trade, of all things. the main planks of his policy on fair trade, which is possibly one of the least energizing seminal issues a campaign can run on, are:

• Ensure trading partners adopt and enforce fair labor and safety standards
• Ensure the protection of IP rights of American companies
• Require trading partners to enforce environmental and climate standards
• Ensure U.S. firms enjoy equitable and comparable investment rights abroad
• Ensure U.S. workers have assistance to adjust to job displacement from trade

if you're interested in that sort of thing, CBS also helpfully embedded the five-page outline going into more detail on those planks in the article.

Opinion/Ideology-driven

• from Pacific Standard: There's No Good Way to Determine Electability Other Than Holding Elections. this is an interesting piece which is hard to summarize, but probably the best summary of it is what it concludes on the matter of electability:

...the discussion around the topic is fraught, particularly for the Democratic Party, which has defined itself in recent decades as the party that embraces and seeks inclusion and diversity. If you're going to assert that a white man is better qualified for a job (the party's nominee) by virtue of being a white man, you really need to be sure on your facts. And the facts just aren't there.

• from Jacobin: Stick With Bernie. this jacobin piece argues that progressive/leftist types need to rally behind bernie given biden's strength, or else they risk a biden v trump general election which would likely (in their view) go the same way as clinton v trump did in 2016. it's pretty much impossible to tell this far out, but honestly, it's pretty easy to see their point here given biden's circumstances.

• from Truthout: The Era of “Centrist” Establishment Democrats Is Over. this op-ed from Truthout strongly rebukes the "centrist" tendency of the democratic party, arguing that there is basically no place for that tendency anymore and that it simply does not and cannot produce a winning coalition at this point. bold and new ideas which buck the traditional orthodoxy in this view are the only way to mobilize and produce a winning coalition, because otherwise either too many people stay home, or not enough people vote democratic.

• from the Guardian: Bernie Sanders needs black women's support. So what's his plan to win us over?. bernie's biggest failing so far between his two presidential runs has almost certainly been his failure to appeal to minority voters, particularly black women. this is of course an issue because he likely needs black women to win the primary and the general. as allison writes here: "Black voters and women of color do not want another president who does not see or value us. Sanders needs to let us know that he understands deeply how frightening, difficult and dangerous this political moment is for us, and for the entire country."

• from the Guardian: Joe Biden wants us to forget his past. We won't. perhaps the biggest failing of biden on the other hand is his absolutely god awful track record, for which he is raked here and will likely continue to be raked. the main crux of the op-ed:

As times have changed, Biden has expressed retrospective misgivings about some of those earlier actions and stances. For example, he very recently attempted to offer an apology of sorts, more like an unpology, to Anita Hill, which she quite understandably rejected. And he remains a pure, dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal, as much as ever a tool of Wall Street and corporations. We deserve better than a candidate who wants us to look past his record and focus only on the image he wants to project and, when that tack fails, can offer progressives only a “my bad”.

• from the Guardian: We can't save the planet with half measures. We need to go all the way. this is one part an op-ed written about climate change, one part an op-ed responding to beto o'rourke's climate plan. on one hand, it does note that o'rourke's plan is good--but it also notes that "good" is not nearly enough to avert the problem, and it's also a downgrade from what o'rourke originally endorsed, which was net-zero emissions by 2030.

• from the Guardian: Is Elizabeth Warren's college plan really progressive? Yes. this op-ed is pretty straightforward and argues against the somewhat-weird position that warren's college plan isn't progressive because it also helps middle-and-upper-class people that's been advanced by a few people.

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.

week six comes slightly early, because i have way too many links and i actually started writing this yesterday because it's just over a page and fuck writing all this in one day, lol. the [LONGFORM] tag continues and finally returns, offering up two pieces to us today.

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 thread • Week 2 thread • Week 3 thread • Week 4 thread • Week 5 thread

News

General Stuff

• from FiveThirtyEight: What The Potential 2020 Candidates Are Doing And Saying, Vol. 16. a pretty quiet week for most of the candidates. most of the highlights came after the end-date for this volume and will be reflected in next week's.

• from NBC News: Can a woman beat Trump? Some Democrats wonder if it's worth the risk. even though it's pretty inane, this topic is probably going to be a recurring theme, because voter preferences are some of the absolute weirdest, most unfathomably illogical shit possible. electability is a large part of why this is probably going to be a theme: clinton might have poisoned the well for all of this year's "first" candidates by fucking up in 2016, and that might make voters hesitant to pull the lever for another one. but again, who the fuck knows. voter preferences have an uncanny tendency to make zero sense.

• from the Guardian: Black female voters to Democrats: 'You won't win the White House without us'. another recurring topic is going to be the black female vote, which is consistently the most democratic bloc possible. in really any place where there's a significant minority vote, democrats have to turn these voters out significantly, and obviously presidential primaries and elections aren't exceptions to that rule. most of the candidates don't seem to be doing the best job of winning them over yet.

• from Reuters: Democratic presidential candidates seek union support at workers' forum. union voters could be significant in the democratic path to the presidency, and so you're seeing a lot of democrats try and angle themselves as union candidates also. which one will win out here? i have no fucking clue.

• from NPR: The Democratic Field Is Set: 8 Questions About What Comes Next. NPR offers up a series of questions about the trajectory of the primary, which will probably aid us in the coming months:

1. How far does name identification go?
2. It's there for Biden now, but can he prove himself?
3. Can Bernie Sanders expand beyond his loyal base?
4. Does Pete Buttigieg continue his momentum?
5. Does Elizabeth Warren find her lane?
6. Does Beto O'Rourke get edged out or does he find his way in?
7. Can Kamala Harris supercharge her candidacy – and fend off Biden in South Carolina?
8. Can others have a breakout moment?

Joe Biden

• from the Atlantic: Unlike His Rivals, Biden Sees Trump as an Aberration. we begin this week with how biden is framing his candidacy. one of the cruxes of biden's campaign is that trump doesn't reflect a change of values in the american public or even in the republican party, necessarily. in his view, the status quo hasn't really changed, and if we return to electing people like biden then trumpism will effectively cease. whether you buy that, i leave up to you.

• from Vox: The health care industry is betting on Joe Biden in its war against Medicare-for-all. another thing about biden is that he has very decisively positioned himself against medicare-for-all, which mostly reflects his status as an establishment candidate. this, as it happens, is super great if you're a lobbyist for the healthcare industry, which is unsurprisingly and firmly in biden's camp in this election.

• from Buzzfeed News: Joe Biden Backs A Public Option — Not Medicare For All — As He Argues For Electability. as far as biden is concerned though, this is mostly a matter of electability. among his other points of policy: "[a] on noncompete clauses ... a $15 minimum wage and ... a more simplified process for issuing professional licenses."

• from the Guardian: 'Battle for America's soul': Biden comes out swinging at first 2020 event. beyond that, biden also has this for policy: "reversing Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations" and "enacting the so-called “Buffett Rule” – which would apply a minimum tax rate of 30% on individuals making more than $1m". he's supposed to unveil more of this in the near future.

• from Slate: 10 Questions Joe Biden Needs to Answer About His Views on Race. Slate offers up 10 questions that they feel joe biden is obligated to give us better answers on, thanks in no small part to his incredibly long history of being a dumb politician who might now be on the wrong side of the political traintracks.

Bernie Sanders

• from Buzzfeed News: Bernie Sanders Is Getting A Shadow Organizing Campaign In The Midwest. bernie sanders has had a quiet week in the media, relatively speaking. one of the only notes from this week about him came in the form of people realizing that yes, our revolution does actually exist and yes, it does actually do things. the sanders campaign is probably going to need things like this to win this year.

Beto O'Rourke

• from the Guardian: Beto O'Rourke is coming to California. Can the trip redeem his campaign?. beto has been busy in california the past few days trying to drum up support, which is easier said than done because he's on the wrong side of a wave now. he's been quietly slipping in the polls for the past little while, to a point where he's now usually sixth or so in the order. will stumping in california help with this at all? probably not, but he's gotta do it at some point.

• from NBC News: Beto O'Rourke releases $5 trillion plan to combat climate crisis. on the policy front, he's finally getting around to expanding on what he's running on. his climate change plan is fairly extensive:

The plan begins with proposed executive actions, including rejoining the Paris climate agreement on day one of an O’Rourke administration and moving quickly to raise efficiency standards for buildings, cars and appliances. Longer term executive actions include setting a net-zero emissions carbon budget for federal lands by 2030 and adding more national parks and monuments to protect land and seascapes.
The meat of the O’Rourke plan is a promise to send Congress, as his first piece of legislation, a bill that would mobilize $5 trillion over the next 10 years to upgrade infrastructure and spur innovation — including more than a trillion dollars in tax incentives to reduce emissions, and $250 billion dedicated directly to research and development.

• from Buzzfeed News: Beto O’Rourke Is The Latest Democrat To Make Climate Change Central To His Campaign. Buzzfeed News helpfully fills in some of the other details, such as this:

His plan, starting day one in the White House, would include spending a record $5 trillion on climate action over ten years and mandating the US reduce its emissions to net zero by 2050. (This means the nation, by midcentury, would no longer be emitting more climate pollution into the atmosphere than it was pulling out of it through trees and other ways.)

Elizabeth Warren

• from POLITICO: Warren puts Bernie on defense. POLITICO pitches the interesting take that warren is putting sanders on defense by pushing a shit ton of policy. this seems... dubious? at best, given that warren is polling at literally half of what sanders does, sanders has greatly outraised her, and in general the two just have not interacted especially significantly at any point in the campaign so far. but a take is a take.

• from Truthout: [LONGFORM] Elizabeth Warren’s Student Debt Plan: An Outsized Economic Boon for People of Color. truthout provides an analysis of elizabeth warren's student debt plan, suggesting that it would be the best for people of color. this is interesting, because...

• from Slate: Elizabeth Warren’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Mostly Helps the Middle Class, Think Tank Finds. one of the big takeways most other sources have had is that it would be a boon for the middle class instead. figure that one out.

Pete Buttigieg

• from the Atlantic: Authenticity Just Means Faking It Well. this article is more about authenticity than it is about buttigieg, but its catalyst is buttigieg so i'm placing it in this section. what constitutes "authenticity"? who the fuck knows, honestly, but buttigieg is apparently it in a way that resonates with voters.

Opinion/Ideology-driven

• from Truthout: [LONGFORM] None of the 2020 Frontrunners Go Far Enough on Climate. Truthout opines that realistically, absolutely none of the current frontrunner candidates have a compelling platform on climate change that will work. this might change now that o'rourke has actually unveiled a comprehensive plan, but in general outside of inslee (who is running as The Climate Change Candidate), so far climate change hasn't really played much of a role in the primary.

• from the Guardian: Joe Biden is the Hillary Clinton of 2020 – and it won't end well this time either. this take opines that biden is basically this cycle's hillary clinton and that biden basically does not get it. perhaps the best distilling of this argument is in this paragraph:

Biden’s answer to Trump isn’t systemic change that will make America a more equitable place. He’s not offering progressive policies like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. His is the vaguest and most centrist of battle cries: let’s go back to, you know, “all those good things”. Let’s go back to a time where racism was a little more polite and white people could pretend America was a post-racial society. Let’s fight for the soul of America by pretending that Trump is the problem, not just a symptom of the problem. Let’s pretend that Charlottesville was a direct result of Trump – an aberration – and not a product of a racism that has always existed in America. Let’s rewind the clock a few years to when everything was just fine and dandy.

• from the Guardian: Bernie Sanders v the Democratic establishment: what the battle is really about. this piece takes an interesting alternative frame on the major split that seems to divide sanders from the rest of the democratic party. in essence, it is this:

The Shakir-Tanden debate about money in politics at Cap is also the larger debate Sanders is sparking in the Democratic party. Joe Biden opened his presidential bid by allowing a Comcast executive to host a fundraiser for him at his home in Pennsylvania. Sanders, on the other hand, has written off such fundraisers and is insisting on relying on small donor funders, not corporate executives or lobbyists.

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.

EDIT: minor grammatical stuff

It would be nice to have an optional feature that filters out posts that a) you have read and b) don't have any new unread comments. When a post gets new comments it should reappear. That way we could see more unread content on the page, but still keep long running topics going. Have it not affect search, so people can still find posts for reference.

The recent implementation of automatic tag suggestion has inspired another idea for me.

What if Tildes could suggest related tags to the one(s) you've already chosen? You select a tag for your topic, and then Tildes suggests other tags to add to your topic, sourced from tags which have been commonly used in association with that tag you've selected.

For example:

• You tag a topic with "facebook", and Tildes suggests "social media" and "privacy" to add.

• You tag a topic with "world war ii", and Tildes suggests "history", "nazis", and "military" to add.

• You tag a topic with "avengers", and Tildes suggests "marvel" and "superheroes" to add.

The data could be obtained by monitoring the frequency of associations between various tags: if tag B is frequently used in association with tag A, then tag B would be suggested as an additional option whenever tag A is used.

Do you ever feel as though you want to learn everything?

I enjoy learning. I wouldn't say I crave it but I love finding out about new things or learning how to do something I don't know how to do. Almost anytime I see somebody talking about or doing something that interests me I think, "I could learn to do that" or "I should read up about that." This ranges from anything to my own personal pursuits (of which I have too many due to this feeling and thus never sink enough time into any... different topic) to my friend's career paths or interests, to all of you on Tildes, you cool bastards. My partner is studying medicine. Shit, I haven't learned anything bio/health-science related since college Freshman year Chemistry class but I was just googling "free [biology|physics|intro to medicine] textbooks online" because what she's learning sounds awesome and like some really beneficial stuff to know about. Every time I read the "What are you doing this weekend" or similar threads on here I just think... damn, I'd love to contribute to open source maps (shoutout u/hungariantoast) or play that game or learn to fix up my car or ... you get the idea.

Does anyone else feel this way? How do you cope? Want to vent and relate? I know of priority lists, I have made plenty and they have both helped and not helped me solve this. I guess I'm just destined to try learning everything forever.

HIVE MIND Hey folks! Have any of you:

1. Sent your kids to one of those “coding camps”
2. Gone to one of said camps as a kid
3. Worked at or for one of said camps

Mostly he's looking for experiences from the past five years or so.

One of my authors is writing an article on the topic, so please get in touch! jfruh@jfruh.com!

This recent topic has me thinking.

On one hand, you have the whole "Death of the Author" idea that divorces the writer from their work. This makes a lot of sense, and allows for creative works of fiction to exist entirely as fictions.

On the other hand, you have the #OwnVoices movement which specifically prioritizes the identity of the author as a method of affirming their work. This makes a lot of sense too, befitting the longstanding principle of "nothing about us without us." Who better to write a fictionalized experience than someone who has gone through a real-life parallel?

Then you have authors whose personal beliefs and experiences may or may not texture their work for readers. Orson Scott Card is commonly brought up in discussions like these on account of his views and public comments on homosexuality. William S. Burroughs famously shot his own wife. I can certainly see how those would be hard things to look past.

With all this in mind, does the author matter to you when you read (particularly works of fiction)? Does knowing about them enhance/detract from your reading experience?

I have found this to be a semi controversial topic. Its almost becoming a required point for getting a new job to have open source work that you can show. Some people just enjoy working on programming side projects and others don't want to do any more after they leave the office.

Whats your opinion on this? Do you work on any side projects? Do you think its reasonable for interviewers to look for open source work when hiring?

I can't shake the dejavu feeling I'm getting using any kind of messaging these days. Today we have an awful lot of messaging apps, that are all roughly the same, with similar features - Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Riot, etc. This happened once already, at the dawn of 200X IM revolution that deprecated SMS for good we also had MSN, ICQ, GTalk, Jabber, etc. This also was a set of very similar personal messaging clients and protocols, similar in any way to each other. It all changed when the multi-protocol messaging apps came out - Pidgin, QiP, Miranda and others made it easy to gather all your contacts from various protocols in one place and to keep in touch with everyone. Shortly after Jabber transports were made so you could congregate all other accounts into one single XMPP account. Even N900 that came out in 2009 had the ability to gather various accounts into one single contact list.
I feel like right now with all the segmented IM apps it's a good time for something like this to happen again, and Telegram already has wat-bridge.
What are your thoughts on that topic? Do you think the history will repeat itself? Would a new federated formate like XMPP rise up?

I just came across this field of 13 admin-removed comments and frankly it left me feeling rather unsettled. That's a lot of content to just nuke all at once. Contextually, the thread up to that point was genial and non-controversial, so it seems especially odd that there's just this black hole there. What struck me mostly was how opaque the moderation was. There is no indication of what kind of content was removed, why it was removed, or specifically who did the removal or when it happened.

Then I scrolled down and at the very bottom I found what I guess is meant to address these concerns, a comment from Deimos:

Sigh, I saw this thread was active and thought it was going to have an actual on-topic discussion in it. Let's (mostly) start this over.

It's not always clear online so I want to say that I'm not rage-posting or bellyaching about censorship or any of the usual drama that tends to crop up on sites like Tildes from time to time. I trust Deimos' moderation and give this the benefit of the doubt. What I'm actually doing, I guess, is making a feature request about better annotation for removed comments.

Would it make sense to show a note (like Deimos' comment) in-thread at the position of the deleted content? Instead of down at the bottom of the page or unattached to anything relevant? In my opinion some kind of "reason" message should always be provided with any moderation activity as a matter of course. Even if it's just boilerplate text chosen from a dropdown menu.

Also, would a single bulk-annotation for all of the related removals make for better UX than 13 separate ones? I think that would be both easier to read, and easier for Deimos to generate on the backend.

I feel like we may have had this conversation previously, but I couldn't find it. Apologies if I'm beating a dead horse.

I suggest that if a user other than the topic submitter makes a change to the topic that is reflected in the Topic Log (e.g., tag/title/group change), then the topic submitter receives a notification.

This may or may not apply to topic deletion and/or topic locking—to be discussed.

Should offtopic comments bump up topics? IMO, offtopic discussion is not “real” discussion. Seeing a topic at top with 7 new comments only to discover that all of it is offtopic, meta discussion, is annoying and disappointing.

As an example, there is one topic on the front page (don’t want to link it), that was bumped by the biggest offtopic discussion I’ve seen on Tildes so far. The discussion itself is not wrong, and is quite interesting, but it’s not about the post. The comment chain should IMO either be in it’s own topic, or not bump the topic up.

https://tild.es/55n has some discussion about this already, and now that this feature is actually implemented, I'd be interested what your opinions on allowing users to edit their own topic titles after posting are.

My main argument is that it would allow fixing typos and providing significant updates — think adding a [Solved] marker in the title for topics related to some problem or reflecting a title update of a linked article — without having to contact other users that have permissions to do that. The topic log allows that to happen transparently already.

as an offshoot of this topic, i'm interested to see if any of you folks read/were previously big into webcomics. the last time we apparently had this question was about ten months ago and obviously the site's grown quite a bit since then, so i'm sure there will be plenty of new answers.

Quick thought. Is there currently a purely visual way of distinguishing the rationale for why a comment is collapsed? It seems to me at the moment there's three distinct ways a comment can take on a collapsed property:

• The user actively collapsed the comment while scrolling through the topic. This type of collapse is transient, and is neither persisted on the Tildes server, or in the browser, after the users leaves the page.

• The comment was collapsed via the "negative weighting" heuristic as the community applied noise/joke tags to the comment. This is permanent, until presumably the comment gains enough votes to exceed any negative weighting causing its collapse.

• Thirdly, the comment can be collapsed because the user has enabled "collapse old comments" in https://tildes.net/settings/comment_visits. Once a user visits a thread, any comments that existed at the last visit to the thread will be collapsed on any subsequent visits to the thread.

Is there any visual way of distinguishing a user-collapsed comment from a community-collapsed comment currently? And if not, should there be one? Perhaps by making the collapsed text slightly more translucent? I'm actually looking to contribute to the Tildes source code in some small way, so this would potentially be an interesting shoehorn for that.

A recent thread has had its title changed due to the title being sensationalized. I'm not sure that this is the correct move, as the title in question was also the title of the submitted article. I think this does a disservice to the community as a whole, as it makes it appear as though we want to editorialize the content submitted here which seems to go against the ideal of fostering quality discussion.

"But wait!", I hear you say, "We have a topic log!" That will be ignored, easily, especially by those seeking to equate the community with something else. While we're busy misrepresenting content (because that's what changing a title does, it misrepresents), others will point at us and shout about how we're misrepresenting the content being posted. I cannot agree with this, and I think its detrimental to the community and the idea of Tildes as a whole. Note: Text-only posts obviously are excluded from this, I'm concerned with titles on submitted links that have their own title.

Now, what happens when the title of an article is already sensationalist and editorialized? The authors, editor, and publisher obviously have biases and platforms they want to support. It currently seems as though we are changing titles to something different than what the title of the article is, and I find this extremely off-putting. I can understand wanting to avoid bringing that bias over to Tildes, but I cannot understand a reason to deliberately misrepresent that bias by changing an article's title. I think this is going to be detrimental to the community and the mission of Tildes to generate high-quality discussion.

Where articles with sensationalized headlines are posted, I propose that we must retain those titles. The system of tagging is sufficient to indicate that a title is too strongly sensationalized. Deviating from this norm is antithetical with Tildes' mission to generate and foster quality content and discussion.

There are too many responses to really get into things individually, but I must say I feel as though there has been a breach of trust. I had no idea that altering the titles of submissions would go so far, and it has destroyed the image I had of the site. Maybe the site will evolve more as the experiment continues, who knows. In the meantime, I've been accused of making arguments in bad faith multiple times in this thread. I'm deeply offended by this, as I've tried to present my thoughts and feelings as clearly as I could. This is deeply troubling to me, especially since those accusations have been given strong support by other users.

unless we stopped editing titles

This is a misrepresentation, I only ask that titles match the article they're from. Edit away if the title doesn't match the article, or is a user's text post. Maybe I wasn't clear, but there it is spelled out.

Also, there was never an ultimatum, but Deimos and other users would smear me with such claims. Being unsure of whether or not a community is a good fit for yourself is not nearly the same thing as an ultimatum.

I think having a hobby, something outside of your work that you enjoy doing and/or are simply just good at, is kinda important, and fulfilling. And so, I wanted to make a topic in general about what hobbies you might have and why that particular hobby appeals to you (along with some tips as to how a newcomer might be able to introduce themselves to the hobby).

For myself, I have recently gotten into the Rubix Cube and have had a lot of enjoyment learning some different methods and improving the time it takes me to solve it.

Started out with a non-descript cube from a supermarket and have recently purchased a GTS3M which I am enjoying a lot so far (plenty of online stores in a variety of countires that will deiver quickly and cheaply). I was able to find a plethora of tutorials on youtube (jperm and brodythecuber in particular) that I found very helpful. For any other cubers: favourite perms, methods, do you compete, tips?

Something, something first post, may not be perfect, but I want to be more engaged.

As the title say, does tilde have RSS feeds for topics? I'm thinking a feed for the frontpage, as well as feeds for each group?

I've looked around but it doesn't seem like there is. Is the feature planned? Has it been decided against? Am I the only one who'd like the feature?

Does or will tilde have RSS feeds for the frontpage and for groups?

I think it'd be useful to merge duplicate threads when there's two topics that are very close to each other. I don't want the stackExchange style "closed as duplicate of x," but I think it would be worthwhile to simply have the comments moved to the oldest thread and transfer any votes that are different users on each topic.

This way, we aren't losing discussion by flat-out deleting topics that are dupes, and we're also able to take some sort of action on threads that are dupes.

Just a thought.

it's apparently been awhile since we had a proper one of these on tildes (we've had a few mental health related topics but nothing direct like this), and seeing as the site has grown a bit (to say the least) since the last one there's probably some utility in a new one of these. share your experiences/whatever you've found helps/etc. i think this is pretty straightforward.

I like to think I have broad interests. Part of what I like about Tildes at this stage in its growth is that I'll probably encounter folks who are highly knowledgeable about areas I'm totally ignorant in, simply because the userbase isn't too fragmented into niche groups quite yet, but the convo won't necessarily be too esoteric for me to follow. I like encountering tangential references that lead me into entirely unfamiliar topics, especially when I can learn from the people who are particularly interested in it. I tend not to post very often myself though (primarily because I'm a painfully slow and/or bad writer)... but I wondered how many other tilderinos are like me.

So, in an effort to contribute to the site, what topic or field could you talk about for hours at Tildes level of discussion, whether by education or interest? Mine would undoubtedly be soccer. I've played and followed it for 30+ years, and could easily bore you with all sorts of minutiae of the on-field side of things, but it's the world's game, so there are all sorts of tie-ins to culture, language, politics, etc. that help inform my non-sport conversations as well.

in the interest of trying to slightly curtail the domination of politics in ~news for people who don't care for it while also consolidating discussion for people who potentially do, i think we should try one of those weekly threads that's so hip and popular on the rest of tildes, so here we go: this is a test run of a weekly thread on 2020 presidential news/analysis/etc. it's probably not going to get any lighter from here, news wise, so it might pay to establish a recurring topic like this before the media really gets rolling with election coverage (and potentially before ~news becomes a deluge of 2020 topics).

i think common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread if it works out, so i guess i'll just say: if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

leading off (and demonstrating that there really is going to be no dearth of 2020 primary and election news about this despite this week being pretty quiet on that front):

from NBC - Why some Democrats say: Don't sleep on 'Mayor Pete' Buttigieg. buttigieg is a pretty small candidate in a field of big names, but that hasn't put the damper on people's optimism for him as this NBC piece shows. i personally don't think he's got the runway necessary for takeoff, but with the debates, who knows. it might be that the debates stratify the field even more than it's already stratified--or it might be that they level it out a bit, to the benefit of people like buttigieg

from Buzzfeed - The Romance Of Mayor Pete In The Season Of Scam. another piece on buttigieg. this one is a bit light on substance and is basically an opinion piece, but if you're curious about buttigieg's qualifications you might be interested in it.

from Heavy - Bernie Sanders’ Los Angeles Rally Draws So Many, Overflow Crowd Fills City Hall Steps Across the Street [PHOTOS]. bernie sanders made the second of three stops in california yesterday, and he drew a pretty major crowd that's currently estimated at around 15k--and could potentially be as high as 20k or 25k, depending on the setup of the venue. his stop the day before was in san diego where he drew a crowd of about 6,400, and today he'll be in san francisco, which could lead to an early messaging and marketing win if he can draw a comparable crowd to kamala harris's kickoff in oakland (which drew 20k).

from The Guardian - The B-Team: are Beto, Biden and Bernie the best Democrats can offer?. i'll let this one present itself: "...But three of the top-polling candidates for 2020 so far are white men: Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, O’Rourke and former vice-president Joe Biden, who has not even declared his candidacy. Does that present a problem?" one of the big criticisms of the democratic party is that, even as it diversifies its slate of candidates across the board, its biggest hitters generally remain white and male, especially in this presidential election. whether or not that's a particularly valid criticism, i'll leave up to you.

from POLITICO - Harris and O'Rourke go straight for each other's strongholds. sanders wasn't the only one buzzing around this week: o'rourke and harris have both been on tours of their own in states that will be pretty instrumental to the path of any democrat that wants to win the nomination. o'rourke, you may remember (tildes discussion), is the current day-one fundraising leader, and it appears we now actually have his individual donor numbers now (112,000, average donation of $55). so far, he doesn't appear to have parlayed that into particularly large crowd sizes (and outside of her campaign launch, harris hasn't really either) but we're still very early on, so i anticipate as their campaigns ramp up they'll start pulling larger numbers.

from NBC - Beto O'Rourke could be a threat — to Biden on his right and Sanders on his left. this article, as you can probably guess by its title, mostly focuses on how beto is trying to position himself in the primary, but also how some of the people he appeals to feel about his candidacy and why they support him.

lastly, from NPR - Small Donors Hold The Key To Campaign Buzz And The Democrats' Debate Stage. this NPR article on push by democrats to incentivize campaigns to build up their small donor bases in the leadup to 2020. the democrats have pretty much always been the undisputed champions of small-donor politics since the internet became a significant player in american politics, mostly on the back of things like actblue. nevertheless, there are still a lot of places they've been looking to improve (and it's really only a matter of time before republicans build infrastructure of their own), so it makes sense that they're really trying to shore up that advantage where they can while they can.

this isn't even every article that i could have tossed on here, but i've already been working on this post for like an hour, so i think that'll suffice for now. feel free to contribute other interesting articles or comment on some of the ones up there.

Hi, simple request here, can we have a dedicated channel group for the economy & related financial topics? It is an important enough field of topics that deserves to be on its own and not just labeled via tags, IMO. Especially with interesting developments and happenings which may be driving political and other news, it would be nice to have them easily in one place.

Now that I look again, ~politics probably deserves its own too, although I can see how that might turn into the most raucous part of the Tildes community. Economics is usually a bit more dry though--it's nicknamed the "dismal" science after all--so hopefully that would be less of an issue.

Thanks.

Pretty straight forward question, but basically I was watching a discussion panel the other day talking about the ethics of Self-Driving cars. A topic came up about people writing crappy code, and more than that, people not testing their code. And if they do, they do point testing. I am in my last semester of uni and I am working with some companies where we are doing pretty extensive testing, happy flows and a lot of alternate flows, as well as UI/UX testing. I wanted to extend this question to you, do you guys do testing, what type? How much do you focus on it? And if u love it/hate it?

I've been somewhat of a lurker here, actively reading posts, but today I came across a topic which had a small typo in it. No big deal, but if this was wikipedia, I could easily go in and fix it... Then it hit me, what would a site like tilde be like if anyone could propose an edit to a post, and have that edit go into effect if the original poster approved it? Of course revision history would need to be available too, for accountability. Good idea? Bad? I'm just curious how that might play out.

Hereby I suggest that there be a dedicated Tildes group for social media–related topics.

Current State

The (recent) number of topics tagged social media exceeds the number of topics in several existing groups:
https://tildes.net/?tag=social_media
In addition, there are more topics without the social media tag but with tags related to individual social media, e.g.,
https://tildes.net/?tag=reddit
https://tildes.net/?tag=facebook
https://tildes.net/?tag=twitter

These topics are quite scattered across the site (many of them are in ~tech, and some were moved to ~tech from places like ~talk and ~misc).

Why Not Just ~tech?

The topics are often focused on non-technical aspects of social media, and the mentioned moves from more general groups might suggest that social media are perceived as a general rather than a purely techn(olog)ical phenomenon. In addition, ~tech is already the biggest Tildes group.

Special Relevance

Tildes is itself a social medium site, and many of the above topics are thus specifically relevant for Tildes. For this reason, I suggest ~socialmedia as a top-level group rather than a subgroup (of ~tech, apparently).

I've been thinking about the way some people use their opportunity to share in places like Tildes.

There are weekly topics what the music the users listen and the books they read. Since the community is small, there are rather few people interacting with those, which has the capacity to create stronger interpersonal connections.

There's also the fact that I see a few names very often, in many different threads. Unlike some other places, though, I don't automatically map them to an idea of a person behind them. It's more Reddit than a small forum: people share their opinions and discuss subjects, but there's little personal interaction. It's a more a space of intellectual, rather than emotional, engagement.

And yet, there are threads here about oneself where the person asks questions or raises subjects that are of importance to them. Some time ago, someone asked what to do with their existential dread. I bet there were similar threads here that I didn't get to see. There was also the "Hey, whatcha working on?" thread a while ago. So it's not that asking personal questions is opposed here: you can, if you want, ask for community support.

So I'm wondering: what's Tildes' attitude towards more personal content? Things like life updates: "So hey, I'm doing okay, am still in a relationship (going great), looking for a job, working on the pet project I mentioned" etc. etc.. Is this something the users and the admins approve of? would enjoy?

I was just writing a different long post here and lost it all because of accidental navigation away from the page. I know the feature to prompt for unsaved changes works on desktop, but is there any way to get it working on iOS?

Edit: maybe another solution would be to save one new topic draft in local storage, and clear the draft data on click of Save or a new Discard/Cancel button? This way if there was data on load of the new topic page, it would still be there.

I'm trying to get onto the podcast bandwagon, and so wondered if anyone can recommend any?

Tech podcasts are certainly interesting to me but anything geeky (tech, gadgets, science etc. as opposed to cartoons, comics, pop-culture - have no interest in any of those topics) would be ace.

Thanks!

Hey everyone, thanks to you who posted in the original Workshop Wednesday; I think it went really well! Here we are for week 2 (sorry it took me til noon, I was busy this morning!)

Some questions:

• do we need a new topic every week? Or will one be enough?
• any other comments/suggestions?

Please begin your comment with [META] to discuss these. Otherwise, I'll copy and paste the guidelines from last week.

What's a workshop?

Basically, a workshop is when you have a bunch of people with poems or stories they've written, and everyone gets together, reads everyone's work, and comments on it, sharing what they got out of it and what the author could do to improve the work for publication. I used to do a lot of them in college, and I've missed the dynamic since graduating. I thought others might also be interested, so here goes nothing.

How this'll work (for now, anyway)

Each week, I'll post a "Workshop Wednesday" post. If you have a poem or (short) story you'd like workshopped, post that as a top comment. Then, read others' top comments and reply with what works/doesn't work/questions you have/ideas you have for the piece that could make it better. If you post some writing, try to comment on at least two other people's pieces as well -- we're here to help each other improve.

Preface

Recently I briefly touched on the subject of cyclomatic complexity. This is an important concept for any programmer to understand and think about as they write their code. In order to provide a more solid understanding of the subject, however, I feel that I need to address the topic more thoroughly with a more practical example.

What is cyclomatic complexity?

The concept of "cyclomatic complexity" is simple: the more conditional branching and looping in your code, the more complex--and therefore the more difficult to maintain--that code is. We can visualize this complexity by drawing a diagram that illustrates the flow of logic in our program. For example, let's take the following toy example of a user login attempt:

<?php

$login_data = getLoginCredentialsFromInput();

$login_succeeded = false;
$error = '';
if(usernameExists($login_data['username'])) {
    $user = getUser($login_data['username']);
    
    if(!isDeleted($user)) {
        if(!isBanned($user)) {
            if(!loginRateLimitReached($user)) {
                if(passwordMatches($user, $login_data['password'])) {
                    loginUser($user);
                    $login_succeeded = true;
                } else {
                    $error = getBadPasswordError();
                    logBadLoginAttempt();
                }
            } else {
                $error = getLoginRateLimitError($user);
            }
        } else {
            $error = getUserBannedError($user);
        }
    } else {
        $error = getUserDeletedError($user);
    }
} else {
    $error = getBadUsernameError($login_data['username']);
}

if($login_succeeded) {
    sendSuccessResponse();
} else {
    sendErrorResponse($error);
}

?>

A diagram for this logic might look something like this:

+-----------------+
|                 |
|  Program Start  |
|                 |
+--------+--------+
         |
         |
         v
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+
|                 |    |                 |
|    Username     +--->+    Set Error    +--+
|    Exists?      | No |                 |  |
|                 |    +-----------------+  |
+--------+--------+                         |
         |                                  |
     Yes |                                  |
         v                                  |
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+  |
|                 |    |                 |  |
|  User Deleted?  +--->+    Set Error    +->+
|                 | Yes|                 |  |
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+  |
         |                                  |
      No |                                  |
         v                                  |
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+  |
|                 |    |                 |  |
|  User Banned?   +--->+    Set Error    +->+
|                 | Yes|                 |  |
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+  |
         |                                  |
      No |                                  |
         v                                  |
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+  |
|                 |    |                 |  |
|   Login Rate    +--->+    Set Error    +->+
| Limit Reached?  | Yes|                 |  |
|                 |    +-----------------+  |
+--------+--------+                         |
         |                                  |
      No |                                  |
         v                                  |
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+  |
|                 |    |                 |  |
|Password Matches?+--->+    Set Error    +->+
|                 | No |                 |  |
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+  |
         |                                  |
     Yes |                                  |
         v                                  |
+--------+--------+    +----------+         |
|                 |    |          |         |
|   Login User    +--->+ Converge +<--------+
|                 |    |          |
+-----------------+    +---+------+
                           |
                           |
         +-----------------+
         |
         v
+--------+--------+
|                 |
|   Succeeded?    +-------------+
|                 | No          |
+--------+--------+             |
         |                      |
     Yes |                      |
         v                      v
+--------+--------+    +--------+--------+
|                 |    |                 |
|  Send Success   |    |   Send Error    |
|    Message      |    |    Message      |
|                 |    |                 |
+-----------------+    +-----------------+

It's important to note that between nodes in this directed graph, you can find certain enclosed regions being formed. Specifically, each conditional branch that converges back into the main line of execution generates an additional region. The number of these distinct enclosed regions is directly proportional to the level of cyclomatic complexity of the system--that is, more regions means more complicated code.

Clocking out early.

There's an important piece of information I noted when describing the above example:

. . . each conditional branch that converges back into the main line of execution generates an additional region.

The above example is made complex largely due to an attempt to create a single exit point at the end of the program logic, causing these conditional branches to converge and thus generate the additional enclosed regions within our diagram.

But what if we stopped trying to converge back into the main line of execution? What if, instead, we decided to interrupt the program execution as soon as we encountered an error? Our code might look something like this:

<?php

$login_data = getLoginCredentialsFromInput();

if(!usernameExists($login_data['username'])) {
    sendErrorResponse(getBadUsernameError($login_data['username']));
    return;
}

$user = getUser($login_data['username']);
if(isDeleted($user)) {
    sendErrorResponse(getUserDeletedError($user));
    return;
}

if(isBanned($user)) {
    sendErrorResponse(getUserBannedError($user));
    return;
}

if(loginRateLimitReached($user)) {
    logBadLoginAttempt($user);
    sendErrorResponse(getLoginRateLimitError($user));
    return;
}

if(!passwordMatches($user, $login_data['password'])) {
    logBadLoginAttempt($user);
    sendErrorResponse(getBadPasswordError());
    return;
}

loginUser($user);
sendSuccessResponse();

?>

Before we've even constructed a diagram for this logic, we can already see just how much simpler this logic is. We don't need to traverse a tree of if statements to determine which error message has priority to be sent out, we don't need to attempt to follow indentation levels, and our behavior on success is right at the very end and at the lowest level of indentation, where it's easily and obviously located at a glance.

Now, however, let's verify this reduction in complexity by examining the associated diagram:

+-----------------+
|                 |
|  Program Start  |
|                 |
+--------+--------+
         |
         |
         v
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+
|                 |    |                 |
|    Username     +--->+   Send Error    |
|    Exists?      | No |    Message      |
|                 |    |                 |
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+
         |
     Yes |
         v
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+
|                 |    |                 |
|  User Deleted?  +--->+   Send Error    |
|                 | Yes|    Message      |
+--------+--------+    |                 |
         |             +-----------------+
      No |
         v
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+
|                 |    |                 |
|  User Banned?   +--->+   Send Error    |
|                 | Yes|    Message      |
+--------+--------+    |                 |
         |             +-----------------+
      No |
         v
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+
|                 |    |                 |
|   Login Rate    +--->+   Send Error    |
| Limit Reached?  | Yes|    Message      |
|                 |    |                 |
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+
         |
      No |
         v
+--------+--------+    +-----------------+
|                 |    |                 |
|Password Matches?+--->+   Send Error    |
|                 | No |    Message      |
+--------+--------+    |                 |
         |             +-----------------+
     Yes |
         v
+--------+--------+
|                 |
|   Login User    |
|                 |
+--------+--------+
         |
         |
         v
+--------+--------+
|                 |
|  Send Success   |
|    Message      |
|                 |
+-----------------+

Something should immediately stand out here: there are no enclosed regions in this diagram! Furthermore, even our new diagram is much simpler to follow than the old one was.

Reality is rarely simple.

The above is a really forgiving example. It has no loops, and loops are going to create enclosed regions that can't be broken apart so easily; it has no conditional branches that are so tightly coupled with the main path of execution that they can't be broken up; and the scope of functionality and side effects are minimal. Sometimes you can't break those regions up. So what do we do when we inevitably encounter these cases?

High cyclomatic complexity in your program as a whole is inevitable for sufficiently large projects, especially in a production environment, and your efforts to reduce it can only go so far. In fact, I don't recommend trying to remove all or even most instances of cyclomatic complexity at all--instead, you should just be keeping the concept in mind to determine whether or not a function, method, class, module, or other component of your system is accumulating technical debt and therefore in need of refactoring.

At this point, astute readers might ask, "How does refactoring help if the cyclomatic complexity doesn't actually go away?", and this is a valid concern. The answer to that is simple, however: we're hiding complexity behind abstractions.

To test this, let's forget about cyclomatic complexity for a moment and instead focus on simplifying the refactored version of our toy example using abstraction:

<?php

function handleLoginAttempt($login_data) {
    if(!usernameExists($login_data['username'])) {
        sendErrorResponse(getBadUsernameError($login_data['username']));
        return;
    }

    $user = getUser($login_data['username']);
    if(isDeleted($user)) {
        sendErrorResponse(getUserDeletedError($user));
        return;
    }

    if(isBanned($user)) {
        sendErrorResponse(getUserBannedError($user));
        return;
    }

    if(loginRateLimitReached($user)) {
        logBadLoginAttempt($user);
        sendErrorResponse(getLoginRateLimitError($user));
        return;
    }

    if(!passwordMatches($user, $login_data['password'])) {
        logBadLoginAttempt($user);
        sendErrorResponse(getBadPasswordError());
        return;
    }

    loginUser($user);
    sendSuccessResponse();
}

$login_data = getLoginCredentialsFromInput();

handleLoginAttempt($login_data);

?>

The code above is functionally identical to our refactored example from earlier, but has an additional abstraction via a function. Now we can diagram this higher-level abstraction as follows:

+-----------------+
|                 |
|  Program Start  |
|                 |
+--------+--------+
         |
         |
         v
+--------+--------+
|                 |
|  Attempt Login  |
|                 |
+-----------------+

This is, of course, a pretty extreme example, but this is how we handle thinking about complex program logic. We abstract it down to the barest basics so that we can visualize, in its simplest form, what the program is supposed to do. We don't actually care about the implementation unless we're digging into that specific part of the system, because otherwise we would be so bogged down by the details that we wouldn't be able to reason about what our program is supposed to do.

Likewise, we can use these abstractions to hide away the cyclomatic complexity underlying different components of our software. This keeps everything clean and clutter-free in our head. And the more we do to keep our smaller components simple and easy to think about, the easier the larger components are to deal with, no matter how much cyclomatic complexity all of those components share as a collective.

Final Thoughts

Cyclomatic complexity isn't a bad thing to have in your code. The concept itself is only intended to be used as one of many tools to assess when your code is accumulating too much technical debt. It's a warning sign that you may need to change something, nothing more. But it's an incredibly useful tool to have available to you and you should get comfortable using it.

As a general rule of thumb, you can usually just take a glance at your code and assess whether or not there's too much cyclomatic complexity in a component by looking for either of the following:

• Too many loops and/or conditional statements nested within each other, i.e. you have a lot of indentation.
• Many loops in the same function/method.

It's not a perfect rule of thumb, but it's useful for at least 90% of your development needs, and there will inevitably be cases where you will prefer to accept some greater cyclomatic complexity because there is some benefit that makes it a better trade-off. Making that judgment is up to you as a developer.

As always, I'm more than willing to listen to feedback and answer any questions!

I'd like to be able to bookmark posts from the front page. Right now it really isn't an issue yet since posting frequency is low, but I often quickly check the front page for interesting reads, while not having the time to actually read them. I'd like to see a "Bookmark" button on front page posts that allow me to save those posts for later when I actually do have time to read the posts.

For quick scrolls over the front page, tapping the post and then bookmarking is one click too many.
You could argue I'm lazy, I call it efficiency.

While on the subject, if I click "bookmark" on a topic, it'll read "bookmarked" but does not offer an "unbookmark" option until I refresh the page. Since I have big thumbs(large bones) I often tap wrong, so it could be nice if there was a quick way to undo this, similar to how we can undo votes.
Edit: this seems to be a bug: it does work for comments.
Edit2: Made this into an issue.

I'm fairly sure it's either a Reddit or RES feature, but whenever I select text in a comment and then click Reply, it'll copy that text to the comment box and add a > in front so it'll turn into a quote. It makes it a little quicker to respond to a specific part of someone's message.

I'm no IT bird and as such I don't know if this is something that can be implemented easily(if at all). It'd also require more JS, not sure if that's an issue as well.

In any case, let me know what you think.

Edit: I'd like to suggest something else, should I make a secondary post or append it to this one? I'd like to avoid cluttering up the front page.

Basically, the ability to receive a notification whenever someone comments on a subscribed topic. Currently, there is a save option (Unless it's been removed? I'm looking now and can't seem to find it) which makes for a decent solution for the time being, but personally I know how easy it is to forget all about what you have saved and have it fly completely under your radar. I, for one, think it would be a good idea if you could subscribe to a topic you're interested so you don't completely forget and miss some discussion.

Comment Visits Setting

This data is retained for 30 days. After not visiting a particular topic for 30 days, the data about your last visit to it will be deleted.

We've had discussions before about long-lived topics, resurrecting old topics, etc. and the general consensus is that they were good and encouraged. Unfortunately, with the limited 30-day memory for topic read-vs-new comments, resurrected posts become a real pain. The current activity-sorted all-time front page has three topics from 2018, each with over a hundred comments. It'd be nice to read the new activity, but that takes either some tedious Ctrl+F with various terms ("minutes", "days", etc.) to find newish comments or re-reading everything.

I'd like to avoid relying on a third-party extension to handle this (browser and device support, issues with syncing multiple devices, etc.), and I understand the privacy goals. What are people's thoughts on making read-comment memory user-configurable, even if it's just "default 30-days" and "all-time"?

I am wondering if it is planned to provide the user with methods to control the content they see, ie; filtering the topics in a group or comments in a topic based on various criteria including keywords.
I looked around to see if this has been asked, or if there was a roadmap document, but did not find anything. (this is no criticism, I do realize we are early in the dev cycle and I cannot image just one person being able to do all this!)

I do hope so. No matter how high the quality of the topics/comments there will always be things a user may not want to see.

I've noticed lately that on certain social media websites, particularly Reddit and Facebook, there has been an uptick in articles about fake hate crimes and false rape reports. The comments on these articles especially fan the flames on the subjects of homophobia, racism, and sexism. While the articles themselves are still noteworthy and deserving of attention, the amount of attention that they've been receiving has been disproportionately high (especially when considering how fairly unknown the individuals involved are) and the discourse on those articles particularly divisive.

On top of that, there are clear disinformation campaigns going on to attack current Democratic presidential candidates in the U.S. It seems pretty clear that we're having a repeat of the last presidential election, with outside parties stoking the flames of discrimination and disinformation on social media in order to further ideological divisions, and the consumers of that media readily falling for it.

I would caution readers to be mindful of the shifting representation of historically controversial or contentious topics moving forward. Even if the articles themselves are solidly factual, take note of how frequently you're seeing these articles, whether or not they're known to be contentious topics, and how they're affecting online discourse.

In short: make sure that you can still smell bullshit even when it's dressed up in pretty little facts.

What is our policy about posting original contents (e.g. me submitting a blog post I wrote, which I just did a few minutes ago)?

IMO, if it is a personal blog, it should be okay, and not really different from submitting a text topic here. Especially if the blog is not tracking you.