Help/input wanted on a couple of updates
Nothing very major has changed yet, but I'm working on adding a couple of open-source contributions to the site and could use some help and input related to them:
Theme system rework
First, I've just deployed a rework of the "theme system" (for the display themes that you can select in your settings) that @Bauke has been brave enough to work on. As some of you know, the site originally only had two themes - Solarized Light and Solarized Dark. Because of this, the theme system was built around those themes and meant that the Solarized colors had to be used in all other themes as well. This is why, for example, the new default theme (with the white background) still uses Solarized colors for links/alerts/etc., even though the contrast and appearance of some of them isn't very good on white.
This rework will allow every theme to have completely custom colors (as well as other possibilities), but the first stage was just deploying a refactor to convert the existing themes to this new system. If you've ever tried to refactor CSS, you know that it's not much fun and there are a lot of subtle things that can go wrong. So as of right now: nothing should look different yet, and if you notice any issues with colors or other appearance changes, please post here to let me know.
This is mostly just to make sure that nothing's been messed up during the transition to the new system, and once it seems safe we can start making more interesting changes like adjusting colors, adding more themes that diverge from that Solarized base, and so on. But for now, we're just looking for issues in the existing themes to make sure everything survived the transition intact.
Saving/bookmarking/favoriting/etc. terminology
@what has also been working on a contribution that will add the ability to save/bookmark topics and comments. It's close to being ready to deploy, but I thought I'd ask for some input about what term to use for the function before it goes live, since it will be more hassle to change it afterwards if necessary.
"Save" has the benefit of being short and also used on other sites like reddit, Facebook, and some others. I think it's slightly misleading though, because you're not really saving the post, just a link to it. If the author deletes it, you won't have it saved.
"Bookmark" is probably more correct, and used by some sites including Twitter. However, it's longer and may be confusing to some people if they think it's related to browser bookmarks.
Any preference on either of those, or are there other options (like "favorite") that might be best?
But it won't - and shouldn't - always cater to a tech-oriented crowd. It should be welcoming to non-tech people as well.
Absolutely agree, but even people who have never used a computer in their entire life will likely know what a bookmark is and so should generally be able to easily figure out the meaning of a feature labeled as such in the online environment.
I deliberately didn't challenge the use of "bookmark".
I wanted to make a general point about our overall approach in designing Tildes. We can't take the attitude that we can design Tildes to suit the current crowd, where tech-type people are over-represented. When Tildes goes public, it should be able to attract non-tech people as well. I wanted to remind everyone of that.
Fair enough and fair point.
One thing that can be done for this is showing the name of the button/link as "bookmark" and add a tooltip on hover that explains what it actually does, like "save the link to check later" or something along those lines. It could became difficult to resolve this on mobile, tho.
Seconded on suggesting bookmark as the more appropriate term. And IMO very few people are going to mistake a "bookmark" feature on a specific site as somehow tied to their browser's bookmark feature.
And also seconded in thanking @Bauke, @what and all the other opensource contributors so far, too!
Another echo for "bookmark" as the preferred term. "Save" has been semantically satiated out of all meaning for me over the past few years; and seems a tad generic; whereas bookmark has slightly more specific intent and meaning behind it.
I don't think it matters in the end. People will understand, whether you use "favorite", "bookmark", "save", "star" or anything else. I like "Save" for the reasons you said. OTOH you raised a good point here:
If a comment is worth saving for someone, maybe it's worth not deleting for that person? This reminds me a lot of the playlists I have on YouTube. My YouTube account is at least a decade old, I'll let you imagine how many videos I've favorited over the years that are now dead and I don't even have their title to find them elsewhere :(
I don't think this will be such a big problem with tilde but maybe this is worth discussing?
Edit: From first reactions it sounds like people are against this, which is probably not surprising given the site's audience.
This makes me wonder if there's a use case for two versions of delete; delete and "detach".
Delete: deletes the comment.
Detach: Detaches your account as an author to a comment (at least visible to users, admins might still be able to associate) and it will not show up on their user page.
Often people delete comments on reddit to prevent a buildup of details about themselves. Detach would allow people to leave useful information and anecdotes in threads for posterity but would protect them from people stalking their profiles. I could even see "detach all comments older than x months" as a profile setting.
Perhaps with a thread-specific hash of your username, so conversations are easier to follow. The gfycat standard of URL randomization seems like a good fit for human readability.
"Scrappy Panda" and "Petulant Flamingo" could have their conversations preserved even if the original users wanted to disassociate with it.
Hah you read my mind :p - I was considering suggesting using a thread-specific ID but decided to cut the comment down. I like the human-readable idea of <adjective> <animal> for that too.
I think this is a pretty good idea.
I was wondering if there are other features around this we could add?
Should a comment show how often it's been bookmarked / saved?
Should users have the option to hide a comment so it doesn't show up in thread but anyone who's saved it (and the user themselves) can see it?
As much as I also dislike when content disappears, I would absolutely be opposed to that since IMO it's everyone's right to control their own data online (inasmuch as that is possible to facilitate). Natively supporting archiving of content on the site, outside the author's control, is incredibly ethically (and potentially legally) dubious as well IMO. E.g. I suspect that it would likely run afoul of the GDPR.
For what it's worth, I'm also usually in the camp of wanting to be able to permanently delete things. Or... at least I used to be. I'm not so sure now that I've had a few years to think about the implications of it.
It would not, as long as the comment is properly detached and anonymized. If the comment does contain personal data (in the text), a legitimate request could be made to delete it, but if you write something online, the best you can hope for is that you might still have a copyright to it (this varies depending on where you live and/or the site's own terms).
Let's get philosophical for a sec: The moment I say something, it's no longer conceptually "my" data! What if you quote parts of this comment in your next reply, are those parts of my comment now your data?
These questions are all the types of questions that copyright law deals with, because a tweet, a reddit comment, a post on Tildes or any of those things are not really any different to a blog post, an article in a newspaper, a speech on a public forum, a presentation for a conference, or at the end of the day, a book.
And there is no real offline precedent to being able to retroactively delete literary works you've made available to the public (whether it was free or for a fee).
I very much doubt "or to personal data rendered anonymous in such a way that the data subject is not or no longer identifiable" could be guaranteed to a high enough standard with regards to archived comments and topics on Tildes to qualify for that provision in Art. 26.
Which would only be possible if they were aware their comment was even archived in the first place, which they would need to be since the presumption would be that by clicking "delete" on a post it was actually deleted, in accordance with the stated 30 day data retention policy of the site.
Not according to the GDPR. See Art. 17 - "Right to erasure ('right to be forgotten')"
That's a shortfall of the quote system that IMO should actually be attempted to be addressed at some point, not simply shrugged off as somehow justifying removal of a user's right to their own data. Especially when that quote has personally identifiable data in it there absolutely should be an easy mechanism for ensuring its removal, IMO.
I also fundamentally disagree with your comparisons between the various forms of online communication and literary works since there is a fundamental difference between them with regards to the intent on the authors' in those situations as well as their expectations for their permanence. The author of a news article or book is voluntarily ceding their right to delete the contents to the publisher upon publication for remuneration, and the expectation with published physical objects is also that once they are sold you cannot force others to destroy their purchased copies. Whereas online comments, even blog posts, you are not being remunerated, nor do you necessarily cede your rights to delete them, nor is the expectation that it will be permanent, especially when there is a delete mechanism available on the site in which you made them.
All my comments were taking the general case, not tildes', so I'm putting aside Tildes' own stated policies.
You're making the assumption a comment is personal data, I think? It's copyrighted data, but that doesn't make it personal data. There may be personal data in a comment which can give you a right to remove (some of) it. This applies regardless of who the author is. This also addresses your concern on quotes, and I don't think we should be talking in absolutelies on something like this.
Okay, I mean, I feel like there should be asterisks to every single assertion after this. Expectations vary, even among the same people. For the simplest example: until 2015-ish, I used to use my Twitter account as a "burner". I would tweet something, delete it after a week or so. No expectation of permanence. Whereas now I seldom delete.
Those expectations can also change the minute a new service pops up (like say a search engine that lets you efficiently search your previous works), or hell even a reddit-style redesign that resurfaces older content by nature.
As for remuneration and publishers both those are not constants either. And if it sounds like my point is that all those things have a lot of "it depends" attached to them, that's because they can all be interchanged pretty well. Some use Twitter like others use blogs or journals. Some write books, others write high quality Reddit poetry and end up making a patreon.
http://www.privacy-regulation.eu/en/article-4-definitions-GDPR.htm
And as for how to interpret that, we don't have any legal precedent specific to the GDPR yet so we can't know definitively, however the general consensus thus far with regards to what should be considered "personal data" is to interpret it as broadly as possible. There is a decent article on that particular definition on Intersoft's GDPR compliance consultancy site: https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/personal-data/
Which means comments and topics, even pseudo-anonymous ones, would likely qualify as personal data under the GDPR.
And while I agree there needs to be a lot of asterisks when discussing intent and expectations with regards to communicating ideas, since not everyone uses platforms the same way, there is the concept of "reasonable expectation" that you have to consider (both in law and ethics). i.e. What would a reasonable person expect from any given situation or contract? And with regards to participation on websites to which someone is not being paid to participate and to which they are only bound by EULAs and/or Terms of Service/Use (which have no signatory requirements), I think the vast majority of people would reasonably expect that they have a right to remove their personal data from said site should they wish to. Is that unrealistic given the nature of data on the internet? Maybe but that doesn't matter either since as it currently stands in the EU that user's expectation of their "right to erasure/right to be forgotten" is now enforced by law, meaning compliance with it is necessary.
If I were to take the body of every single one of your comments in this thread, with your username removed, I would not be able to know they are from you. Just because it is created by you does not make it personal data, broad as that definition may be.
As I said, some comments may contain personal data about their author (or other people), which may make them eligible for a removal request. But even the broadest informed interpretations of GDPR can't include inconsistent information that is de-facto made public. This contrasts with the emails you send as there is an expectation of privacy (the recipients are restricted).
The logical extension of your argument is that there should be no "delete" function at all on websites.
Listen, I've assumed good faith so far in your comments, but you really have to stop trying to bury fallacies into my posts. I suggested that it may be worth talking about the delete functionality. The post you're replying to is addressing @cfabbro's concern on GDPR. Nowhere does it say what you're suggesting, nor is there a "logical extension" that does.
There's this:
If this comment I'm typing is no longer "my" data when I click on 'Post Comment', then I have no right to delete it. It's not my data after that point, it belongs to Tildes or to the world in general. And, if it doesn't belong to me but to other people, then I no longer have the right to delete it. If I don't have the right to delete it, then there's no point having a 'delete' button.
You're arguing that me deleting my comment should not remove your saved copy of my comment. Well, what if everyone saves a copy of my comment? Me deleting it would have no effect. And, what if someone saves a discussion thread which contains my comments? They've saved the entire discussion, including my comments. I can't delete them. What if someone archives the whole of Tildes? I can't delete my comments.
If everyone is entitled to save and store my comments without my permission, then there's no point in me deleting them. There doesn't need to be a 'delete' button.
P.S. I never argue in bad faith. You might disagree with, or dislike, my arguments, but they are presented honestly, sincerely, and with as much intellectual vigour as I'm capable of.
Those are big "if"s for an even bigger "then". "If everyone spams, there doesn't need to be a ban button".
Entertaining your take on this:
Well, you don't have any right, really, other than the ones you get by law. You have access to what the site grants you. The site recognizes your posts' content as being written by you, you have access to delete that content if the site grants you that. My argument re GDPR is that you do not have a legal right to delete that data. Reddit is not in breach of GDPR, yet they do retain comment text when you delete your account. You are allowed access to delete that data, which can legitimately be revoked without infringing on your rights. You will always be able to delete your username, however.
IANAL -- I simply worked on GDPR a ton with lawyers and on my own at my previous company.
That's no different than if one person saves a copy of your comment, offline, then redistributes it.
Which is why I described my point as a
legallogical extension of your argument - if we extend your argument, we get to my end result.Let's not discuss the nature of "rights" here. Personally, I don't even believe in the concept of innate rights, only legal contracts between governments and individuals, and individuals and other individuals. But that's not really relevant to this discussion about whether I should be allowed to delete my comments from an internet forum.
According to what you want to do, the site would not grant me access to delete your saved copy of my content.
I'm not a lawyer, either - but I didn't think that was relevant. I thought we were discussing philosophy, rather than law. (You did mention "philosophically", after all.)
I give up. The ground keeps shifting under me in this argument, and I just can't keep up. Sorry.
You seem to have stuck to my initial post and I feel like you're projecting quite a bit of stuff I didn't say, maybe that's why you feel the ground is shifting (it wasn't there to begin with).
I didn't even make a strong argument for the feature itself. I initially replied to you because I don't believe your logic that "It's my comment, if I'm deleting, there's a good reason" holds water.
If I delete a comment of mine, I'm deleting it for a reason. I certainly don't want you to have your own personal copy of it!
I mean, if I "save" it and think it actually is worth saving, I just might have copied it on paper and there's nothing you can do to stop that. The comment is anonymous either way.
Yup, of course. I suspected the site's audience wouldn't be generally too receptive to this :)
It's my comment, not yours. My decision to delete it should always override your decision to keep it.
Re: "It's my comment", I'm inviting you to read my other reply here.
But I think you missed my point. POTUS45 deleted his now-famous "covfefe" tweet but it's been archived for the foreseeable future and it's publicly talked about it. And yes that is by virtue of him being POTUS, but there's similar precedent around celebrities, or really anyone with enough of a following to have people saving what they write online before they delete it.
Regardless of their reason for deleting it.
For what it's worth, I have no objection to my comments being actually saved. I make that concession when I post on the internet.
I find it really irritating when viewing older threads on reddit where half of a conversation is gone, or edited by a script. It really destroys the value that those conversations held. It's particularly bad when the only response is "Thanks, that solved the issue for me!".
I'd be curious to try a system of abandoning and anonymizing one's comments instead. It's not flawless (eg. trolls may use anonymizing to hide themselves), but I prefer it to disrupting existing conversations.
If there was a time constraint, say 30 days, before someone can detach their identity from the comment that would be enough time to deal with trolls. People with a certain trust level could bypass the time constraint.
I'm getting a weird blue highlighting thing on mouse-over of a nested comment.
I'm using Tildes Extended (no custom styles) and Chrome 69.0.3497.100
edit: with some more testing, it only appears when the top-comment is collapsed (e.g., from a previous viewing of the thread) and there is a newer comment (non-collapsed) further down the chain. A completely new chain (all visible) or a completely collapsed chain (all previously read) don't trigger it, nor do viewing comments in new threads.
Yep, confirmed that one happens even without Tildes Extended. Thanks, that's exactly the sort of weird issue that I'm looking for.
Edit: that one should be fixed now.
I think "save" is clear enough, and a fair bit cleaner than "bookmark". One option for mitigating confusion would be to put a small blurb on the "saved links" page explaining they're not necessarily permanent.
For starters, you can't use "favorite" because it's spelt wrong. :P
I kind of like "bookmark". "Save" is so over-used as to be almost meaningless these days.
What about something like "read later"? It's clear and functional, and reasonably short. Or even "remember"?
Favorite and favourite are both generally accepted as proper spelling in Canada. But I hear ya! Lord how I hate the fact that web standards are entirely based on American English spelling and don't even accept the Queen's as a variant... e.g. HTML/CSS using Gray but not accepting Grey, Color but not Colour, etc. I have been designing websites for ages but still reflexively type Colour only to have to go back and delete the 'u' every damn time.
ha. you need an autoreplace for
colour:tocolor:like me :)Are comment labels supposed to all be blue now? Seems like the
body.theme-black arule overrides.bth-comment-label-jokeand others. Changing them to.bth-comment-label.bth-comment-label-jokehelps, but I don't know if that is a proper solution, since I've always hated CSS.They shouldn't be, no. Thanks, I'll fix that.
Edit: should be fixed now.
can confirm its fixed
It looks like that's happening on all themes but the White one.
Can confirm that I see all labels as blue now on iOS Safari. (Black theme)
Bookmark is a good name, general enough to include people who what to favourite something because they really like the comment as well as users who will use it to mark posts that they wish to come back to in the near future, like a reading list.
I'm using the "Solarized Dark" theme, and occasionally while reloading the site a blue outline will appear around every comment. Nothing else major to report
Did that just start happening today, or has it always been doing that?
Just today
If you're not happy with "bookmark" how about a lesser used term used online like "sticky" i.e. sticky note.
Discord uses "pin"
Pinning on Discord isn't really a personal saving feature. It's akin to pinning on a forum (or even reddit), it just doesn't have the "always on top" effect that forum pinning does because that's not good for instant messaging.
It looks like you broke something about how 'Exemplary' labels are displayed in Solarized Light. They used to show as blue text against the beige background. Now they're black text against a blue background which is nearly unreadable.
Thanks, should be fixed now.
Thanks. (And it seems I misremembered how they used to look.)
Bah, looks like the spoiler tag is messed up in the same way too (from your Doctor Who topic). I'll try to get that in a bit. (Edit: and should be fixed)
For me, personally, "bookmark" is a function of the browser, and if someone told me "I bookmarked this", I'd assume they hit Ctrl+D on their browser to add it to their browser bookmarks. "Save" is familiar to me from Reddit, "favourite" from HN. I personally dislike "Like" buttons because one doesn't necessarily need to like something to make a note of it, and to like is an emotion, not an action. I think I like "save" the best, and "favourite" more than "bookmark".
I didn't have any trouble with the themes as of now.
I think you're right. Bookmark is unambiguous while save is not, and any one who makes it here will know what it means.
The text box seems to be a darker shade of grey now, though I'm not 100% sure on that.
On the default/"white" theme, right? I think I see what could be causing that, thanks. (Edit: and should be fixed)
How about "Follow"?
This is typically applied to users (personified content) on Facebook etc. and I think reclaiming and reapplying it to posts makes more sense.
Also, I appreciate it in the context of moving away from ego-centrism in social networks.
Plus it's:
When I "follow" someone on Instagram, Twitter, etc. that doesn't "bookmark" their page... it's a subscription mechanic so I get notifications whenever they submit something new to the platform. So if I "follow" a topic, comment or user on Tildes, I would expect it to behave similarly and notify me whenever a new reply is made in the topic, to the comment or that users posts something.
You also can't really claim something is "un-ambiguous" and when it needs "reclaiming" and "reapplying" since that's exactly what ambiguity is, something open to multiple interpretations. :P IMO it would be incredibly confusing to the vast majority of people using "follow" for a bookmark mechanism when a word for that exact already exists... bookmark. ;)
oh yea I misunderstood / didn't read the post properly; you're right, "follow" doesn't really make sense