80 votes

Your own "main" user page (both topics and comments) is now paginated - this will be extended to everyone soon, so last warning to do any history cleanup

Tags: changelog

Things have been really quiet for the past few weeks. I've been pretty deep into server-admin-type work trying to get the site ready to be publicly visible, and while I have a decent understanding of that side of things I'm definitely not an expert, so I've been doing a lot of reading and experimenting that hasn't really looked like much happening from the outside.

I'm pretty happy with the state of everything now though, and I'm intending to make the site publicly visible (but still requiring an invite to register/participate) sometime next week. Part of that will be making some changes that have been overdue for a while, and catching up on merge requests and other things that have been getting backlogged while I've been in server-admin mode (and I apologize to all the people that have submitted those that I've been neglecting).

So this change is one that I've said is coming for a long time: your "main" user page is now paginated, and you no longer need to select "Topics" or "Comments" to be able to look back through older posts. For the moment, this is still restricted to only your own page, but on Monday, I will be enabling pagination on all user pages. So this is the final warning that if there's anything in your history you'd like to edit or delete before people can easily look back through your history, you should do it in the next few days.

I'm still considering whether to add any options for restricting the visibility of your user history, but I think it's really important to stress that anything like that will always be a false sense of privacy. I know for a fact that at least one person has already fully scraped all the comment threads on the site, and probably already has the ability to look through everyone's posting history if they want to (and they could easily make that data available to others). Once the site is publicly visible, scraping everything will be even more common, and it simply can't be prevented. If you post things, it will always be possible for someone to find them.

That being said, one thing that I am considering is making it so that logged-out users won't have access to pagination on user pages (similar to how it is for everyone else's user pages right now). It's still a false sense of privacy, but it at least lowers the convenience a little and means that someone will have to get an invite to be able to dig through anyone's history easily (though there's still the possibility that someone scrapes all the data and makes it browseable/searchable on an external site). Anyone have any opinions on whether it's worth doing that, or should I just let everyone look through user pages, whether they're logged in or out?

And since I haven't done it in a while, I've topped everyone up to 10 invites again, so please feel free to invite anyone else you want before we get into the public-visibility phase.

Thanks - please let me know if you have any thoughts about user histories or if you notice any issues with paginating through your "mixed" history (since it was a bit weird to implement and I'm not 100% sure it's correct).

32 comments

  1. [4]
    Comment deleted by author
    Link
    1. Deimos
      Link Parent
      Ah, that's good to know that you didn't retain any of the comment contents (but you easily could have kept it all). You're also not the only scraper activity I've noticed, though I don't think the...

      Ah, that's good to know that you didn't retain any of the comment contents (but you easily could have kept it all). You're also not the only scraper activity I've noticed, though I don't think the other ones have gone through everything like you did (but they might have). Either way, the point is that it's very easy for people to collect that data if they want to, and it'll only get easier once we get to the point of providing a proper API.

      Looking forward to your next post with graphs/statistics, thanks for all the work on everything!

      17 votes
    2. [2]
      Algernon_Asimov
      Link Parent
      Wow, invite rounds have no correlation whatsoever with activity. Based on that graph of activity, public visibility is not only desirable but necessary. Tildes is dying under its current model of...

      As a little tease, here's a graph showing topics and comments per week along with invite rounds annotated

      Wow, invite rounds have no correlation whatsoever with activity.

      I'm looking forward to Tildes becoming publicly-visible!

      Based on that graph of activity, public visibility is not only desirable but necessary. Tildes is dying under its current model of private + invite-only.

      5 votes
      1. Amarok
        Link Parent
        Tildes is ready to come out of private early-access alpha testing. Can we call it 'open alpha' now? I think we'd like to save heavy hitting words like 'beta' for something with a trust system and...

        Tildes is ready to come out of private early-access alpha testing. Can we call it 'open alpha' now? I think we'd like to save heavy hitting words like 'beta' for something with a trust system and working group.subgroup systems. ;)

        I daresay few platforms ever get a test run like the one we've seen here so far. How many sites open up with this much content on their first 'real' day?

        8 votes
  2. [9]
    Comment deleted by author
    Link
    1. [8]
      Algernon_Asimov
      Link Parent
      I consider this ironic, considering you have advocated for user bio pages. :) I'm curious, though. And this question is directed to everyone who wants limited viewing of user history pages, not...

      I also strongly support the ability to limit what others can view on my profile

      I consider this ironic, considering you have advocated for user bio pages. :)

      I'm curious, though. And this question is directed to everyone who wants limited viewing of user history pages, not just you. Given that you've made public posts and comments throughout Tildes, which everyone can already read, what's the reason for limiting people's ability to read those same posts and comments on your user page? As someone once said, "we really shouldn't be posting things on the Internet, if we don't want them to be accessible by anyone, anywhere, forever".

      3 votes
      1. [2]
        Comment deleted by author
        Link Parent
        1. Algernon_Asimov
          Link Parent
          "Trust users, punish abusers" is one of the philosophies behind Tildes. The idea is that Deimos is not going to hold back on building features just because someone might abuse those features....

          Beyond that, there's nothing we can do to stop web scraping, but ensuring that other users can only see the last X amount of topics and comments on my profile means they'll have a much harder time digging into my post history and being ugly about it.

          "Trust users, punish abusers" is one of the philosophies behind Tildes. The idea is that Deimos is not going to hold back on building features just because someone might abuse those features. Rather than withhold the feature from people acting in good faith, he would prefer to punish people using the feature to act in bad faith.

          I tend to agree with this approach.

          This looks like a prime example of that sort of situation. You're worried that someone might abuse an unlimited user history, but I think it's more relevant to punish the bad behaviour rather than withhold a possibly useful feature from everyone else. "Some of you will eat too many sweets and make yourself sick, so none of you can have sweets!"

          In the end, there's nothing you or I can do to stop our profile histories from being recorded and potentially used against us, whether that just be in arguments or even extreme cases like doxxing, except to not post any sort of information at all, but some people don't care, don't know better, or just make honest mistakes. So while I am careful about what I post online under this account (sort of),

          I've been attacked by some extremely hateful people on Reddit during my time as a moderator there. You wouldn't think that moderating a history subreddit would be too problematic, but it attracts more than its fair share of racists and Holocaust deniers who don't like it when you stop them spreading their bigotry or revisionist fact-denying stories. So, I know what it's like to get death threats! I was already careful about what I post on this account, but that experience taught me to be extra careful.

          It's better to not put identifying information out there in the first place than to try to find ways to cover it up after the fact. For example, on Reddit, every single comment is scraped by multiple bots as soon as people press 'save'. Even if you delete your comment within a few seconds, someone somewhere probably has a copy of it. The same thing can be, and probably will be, true of Tildes at some point. Hiding parts of people's user histories is only a false sense of privacy, as Deimos says.

          4 votes
      2. [2]
        Comment deleted by author
        Link Parent
        1. Algernon_Asimov
          Link Parent
          It's not my saying. I'm quoting someone else. ;)

          That saying has always been too absolutist for me.

          It's not my saying. I'm quoting someone else. ;)

          2 votes
      3. [5]
        nsz
        Link Parent
        Giving people the ability to look through a users post history is really only used in a witch hunt, at least that's the most likely use case I see for it. Sure maybe you might want to look...

        Giving people the ability to look through a users post history is really only used in a witch hunt, at least that's the most likely use case I see for it. Sure maybe you might want to look thorough a quality poster to see what they have to say, but idk, far more likely it's to find some mud to sling.

        I understand the data is still accessible in theory but the steps required I think are enough of a barrier to insulate the vast majority of users from harassment.

        Also just on a conceptual level it just distances internet interaction away from in person conversation. The ability to look through all past history with ease has been explored in books and film and always seems to be a negative.

        6 votes
        1. [4]
          Akir
          Link Parent
          That's not a good characterization, I feel. Being able to look through a person's history is a good way to get to understand where they are coming from. If they're behaving badly, it gives you a...

          Giving people the ability to look through a users post history is really only used in a witch hunt

          That's not a good characterization, I feel. Being able to look through a person's history is a good way to get to understand where they are coming from. If they're behaving badly, it gives you a chance to see if it's a pattern of behavior - and those types of people usually aught to be chastised. You can also know to just give up trying to convince someone on an opinion if they are married to their current ideas.

          One thing you aren't considering is that in-person conversations typically are between people you know, whereas online conversations typically are not. Being able to look at a person's post history gives you a chance to get to know what they are like. I view that as a positive.

          9 votes
          1. [3]
            nsz
            Link Parent
            I think you make some good points. But the current system covers most of them, at least I think one page of activity is enough to get a sense of the individual behind the username. The one...

            I think you make some good points. But the current system covers most of them, at least I think one page of activity is enough to get a sense of the individual behind the username.

            The one exception would be looking for long term trends or scolding bad behaviour patterns, but my response would be who are you or anyone else (not talking about mods) to do that?

            Arguments should be had over the things presented at that moment. You have no idea what the situation was when poster X said that thing 3 years ago, or 3 months, really doesn't change thing much. And it's ridiculous to want to use that in an argument happening now. The users here are not politicians were views need to be carefully considered and focus grouped so they're bulletproof. Imo you should be arguing with the person right now not them from 3 months ago.

            5 votes
            1. [2]
              Akir
              Link Parent
              That question seems a tad philosophical in nature. I personally believe that the community should have a reasonable degree of self-policing, so everyone should have the ability to scold people for...

              The one exception would be looking for long term trends or scolding bad behaviour patterns, but my response would be who are you or anyone else (not talking about mods) to do that?

              That question seems a tad philosophical in nature. I personally believe that the community should have a reasonable degree of self-policing, so everyone should have the ability to scold people for bad behaviour within reason. I certainly don't want to see any death threats here.

              Arguments should be had over the things presented at that moment. You have no idea what the situation was when poster X said that thing 3 years ago, or 3 months, really doesn't change thing much.

              Ah, but you do. You can click on the dark grey "parent" link and get the context of those arguments. In an ideal world, everyone checking other's profiles would also be checking that link any time they want to bring up a past comment.

              The users here are not politicians were views need to be carefully considered and focus grouped so they're bulletproof. Imo you should be arguing with the person right now not them from 3 months ago.

              I'm actually tempted to agree with most of your reasoning, but this point demonstrates the differences in our beliefs. I believe that people should always be liable for what they say. In the real world, your statements have repercussions. If a person says something that ruins their reputation, that is their own fault, and they have to deal with those repercussions.

              You are right that people aren't politicians, but they also don't typically change that dramatically. And when they do change, they can apologize and be forgiven for past remarks. That is how society works.

              Finally, about the one page being good enough, please keep in mind that one page doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. As Tildes grows, people will have much more activity and the length of time shown on a single page will likely go down.

              5 votes
              1. Amarok
                Link Parent
                I think it likely that some form of 'report card' feature will do the work of tracking incidents of bad behavior - something more formal/structured that provides details about incidents, actions...

                I think it likely that some form of 'report card' feature will do the work of tracking incidents of bad behavior - something more formal/structured that provides details about incidents, actions taken, links to relevant information. We need something better than just raw comments and combing through a user's history. I expect that report card will only be visible to users with high trust levels so it isn't used as an excuse to witch hunt.

                It'll make a good daily discussion topic sometime exploring the ways to do this stuff.

                4 votes
  3. clerical_terrors
    (edited )
    Link
    I think this is a solid idea and I support it despite knowing it will, in practice, not really do much. My one caveat would be that if this is too complicated or makes further development more...

    That being said, one thing that I am considering is making it so that logged-out users won't have access to pagination on user pages (similar to how it is for everyone else's user pages right now). It's still a false sense of privacy, but it at least lowers the convenience a little and means that someone will have to get an invite to be able to dig through anyone's history easily (though there's still the possibility that someone scrapes all the data and makes it browseable/searchable on an external site). Anyone have any opinions on whether it's worth doing that, or should I just let everyone look through user pages, whether they're logged in or out?

    I think this is a solid idea and I support it despite knowing it will, in practice, not really do much. My one caveat would be that if this is too complicated or makes further development more thorny then I'd be fine with discarding the idea. But as long as you remain open and honest about it being a False sense of privacy I don't necessarily think it bad or a waste.

    Personally I would consider a false sense of privacy a bad thing if it were used to mislead users, which doesn't seem to be your intent. Otherwise I think feeling good about the site having such functionality is still a relative advantage for the common user.

    EDIT: I've noticed a slight issue on the user page, and have submitted it to the gitlab issue page.

    17 votes
  4. [2]
    Comment deleted by author
    Link
    1. Amarok
      Link Parent
      Most malice is an idiot-in-the-heat-of-the-moment thing. It doesn't take much to frustrate them into inactivity. Tossing up small barriers like this will absolutely help.

      Most malice is an idiot-in-the-heat-of-the-moment thing. It doesn't take much to frustrate them into inactivity. Tossing up small barriers like this will absolutely help.

      12 votes
  5. [2]
    Wes
    (edited )
    Link
    It seems the pagination uses comment IDs for setting the next page. This is probably a lot easier on the server-side for doing lookups, but does mean there's no way to "skip ahead" 10 or 20 pages....

    It seems the pagination uses comment IDs for setting the next page. This is probably a lot easier on the server-side for doing lookups, but does mean there's no way to "skip ahead" 10 or 20 pages. (Not unless you somehow know an earlier comment ID)

    That's not a complaint or even argument for changing it - just an observation.

    I support making history longer for everyone.


    edit: I've had a bit more time to think about it. A good reason for limiting history to logged-in only users might be bots. Bots can easily index your comments, either intentionally or not. This isn't always a bad thing, but you're more likely to run out of crawls from the big search engines. As for small bots trying to track people, it forces them to associate with an account which may make it easier to punish bad behaviour.

    12 votes
    1. Deimos
      Link Parent
      Yes, this approach is usually called something like "keyset pagination". It's more efficient and avoids some issues with the other usual method, which is "offset pagination". The downside is that,...

      Yes, this approach is usually called something like "keyset pagination". It's more efficient and avoids some issues with the other usual method, which is "offset pagination". The downside is that, like you said, you can't easily jump to specific pages. If you're interested in the technical side of it, this article does a good job of explaining the differences: https://use-the-index-luke.com/sql/partial-results/fetch-next-page

      I'd eventually like to add support for specifying a time period, similar to how you can choose "last 3 days", "last 7 days", or any other time period in the topic listings already, but with specifying both the start and end points. That way if you're looking for something that you know was posted over a year ago, you could easily just jump to that starting point instead of needing to page all the way back to it. I think that should cover most of the cases where you'd want to be able to jump pages, and won't have the other downsides of offset-based pagination.

      14 votes
  6. unknown user
    Link
    Totally worth doing for all the reasons people cited here. One thing I'd suggest adding would be that new users without any submissions and comments should not be allowed to access other users'...

    That being said, one thing that I am considering is making it so that logged-out users won't have access to pagination on user pages (similar to how it is for everyone else's user pages right now). It's still a false sense of privacy, but it at least lowers the convenience a little and means that someone will have to get an invite to be able to dig through anyone's history easily (though there's still the possibility that someone scrapes all the data and makes it browseable/searchable on an external site). Anyone have any opinions on whether it's worth doing that, or should I just let everyone look through user pages, whether they're logged in or out?

    Totally worth doing for all the reasons people cited here. One thing I'd suggest adding would be that new users without any submissions and comments should not be allowed to access other users' pagination too, in order to add one other obstacle to accounts created just for scraping content.

    9 votes
  7. [3]
    CrazyOtter
    Link
    Is it difficult to code it so that people who aren't logged in can't see users history? I think it's a case of cost/benefit, if it's easy to do then fine otherwise don't bother. I suppose being...

    I'm still considering whether to add any options for restricting the visibility of your user history, but I think it's really important to stress that anything like that will always be a false sense of privacy.

    Is it difficult to code it so that people who aren't logged in can't see users history? I think it's a case of cost/benefit, if it's easy to do then fine otherwise don't bother.

    I suppose being unable to see post history might encourage someone to signup, but probably quite a weak nudge overall.

    5 votes
    1. [2]
      Deimos
      Link Parent
      It's not difficult at all, it's effectively already done. The current restriction of "only allow pagination on your own user page" just gets switched over to "only allow pagination if you're...

      It's not difficult at all, it's effectively already done. The current restriction of "only allow pagination on your own user page" just gets switched over to "only allow pagination if you're logged in".

      5 votes
      1. CrazyOtter
        Link Parent
        Cool in that case I think it's worth doing.

        Cool in that case I think it's worth doing.

        4 votes
  8. [3]
    Pilgrim
    Link
    My immediate reaction is that I dislike this change. If I'm honest with myself, I often go back and look at how many votes a comment or post gets. I think reddit has conditioned me to want to know...

    My immediate reaction is that I dislike this change.

    If I'm honest with myself, I often go back and look at how many votes a comment or post gets. I think reddit has conditioned me to want to know my "score." I was prevented from dwelling on this too much by only being able to look at a single page. I don't think Tildes is intended to be about having a high "score" and I wonder if the addition of pagination may change people's behaviors.

    Of course this could just be me, but I have a feeling I'm not alone at looking at my comment/post history to see where I "stand." I think that's human nature, and perhaps something we shouldn't encourage.

    You can say "well don't look dummy!" but I'm not sure I could help myself. This may be a non-issue but I wanted to share my thoughts.

    5 votes
    1. [2]
      Deimos
      Link Parent
      I understand where you're coming from, but you've already been able to look through your whole history by just switching to "Topics" or "Comments", and that's been possible for 5 months now. The...

      I understand where you're coming from, but you've already been able to look through your whole history by just switching to "Topics" or "Comments", and that's been possible for 5 months now. The barrier has always only been "just don't click that button", and that hasn't changed. The button you shouldn't click just says "Next" now instead of "Comments".

      8 votes
      1. Pilgrim
        Link Parent
        I wasn't aware of that other change so I've been insulated by my own ignorance :) Thanks for taking the time to respond. I love Tildes very much.

        I wasn't aware of that other change so I've been insulated by my own ignorance :)

        Thanks for taking the time to respond. I love Tildes very much.

        7 votes
  9. [6]
    Algernon_Asimov
    Link
    A question for clarity: Will there be a limit to how far back people can view other people's user pages? Or, can a person with enough patience keep paging back to someone's first post/comment on...

    on Monday, I will be enabling pagination on all user pages.

    A question for clarity:

    Will there be a limit to how far back people can view other people's user pages? Or, can a person with enough patience keep paging back to someone's first post/comment on Tildes?

    (Some people coming here from Reddit might be used to its 1,000-item limit on pages, which prevents people from paging back to the beginning of time.)

    4 votes
    1. [5]
      Deimos
      Link Parent
      There's no limit (on any listings). The 1000 limit on reddit is more from a bad implementation than anything deliberate. One of the possibilities that's been discussed a bit before is a setting...

      There's no limit (on any listings). The 1000 limit on reddit is more from a bad implementation than anything deliberate.

      One of the possibilities that's been discussed a bit before is a setting like "only allow people to see the last year of my activity through my user page" that could add a stopping point, but I'm still not sure about that one. I think it's interesting in theory, but I don't really like the result it would give with inactive accounts, where they all just become blank once the user's been inactive as long as the window is set to. That is, if it's set to a year, once they're inactive for a year their page will just be blank forever, and nobody would be able to use their user page any more.

      14 votes
      1. Algernon_Asimov
        Link Parent
        Thanks for confirming that.

        There's no limit (on any listings).

        Thanks for confirming that.

        4 votes
      2. [3]
        Abrown
        Link Parent
        https://media.giphy.com/media/IQ47VvDzlzx9S/giphy.gif No chance to fix that in future updates, I imagine? :P

        The 1000 limit on reddit is more from a bad implementation than anything deliberate.

        https://media.giphy.com/media/IQ47VvDzlzx9S/giphy.gif

        No chance to fix that in future updates, I imagine? :P

        2 votes
        1. [2]
          Deimos
          Link Parent
          I think it's extremely unlikely that they'll ever fix it at this point. There would be a lot of potential issues and side effects that they'd need to worry about if they start messing around with...

          I think it's extremely unlikely that they'll ever fix it at this point. There would be a lot of potential issues and side effects that they'd need to worry about if they start messing around with it, and the large, large majority of users would probably never even notice any difference from it being fixed. I can't imagine they'll ever bother trying.

          4 votes
          1. Abrown
            Link Parent
            Thanks for the insight. That's a shame, but I understand in terms of practicality and utility that it's not worth their time/effort. Thank god for PushShift at least...

            Thanks for the insight. That's a shame, but I understand in terms of practicality and utility that it's not worth their time/effort. Thank god for PushShift at least...

            3 votes
  10. [4]
    PopeRigby
    Link
    I'm not really sure I like it. I find it nicer when I could have the different types of content sorted into tabs. Now I have to scan to find out whether something is comment or post.

    I'm not really sure I like it. I find it nicer when I could have the different types of content sorted into tabs. Now I have to scan to find out whether something is comment or post.

    2 votes
    1. [4]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. [3]
        PopeRigby
        Link Parent
        Oh. Then I guess I'm confused to what pagination is. What is it?

        Oh. Then I guess I'm confused to what pagination is. What is it?

        3 votes
        1. [3]
          Comment deleted by author
          Link Parent
          1. [2]
            PopeRigby
            Link Parent
            Is this how it's supposed to look? I can't find any next buttons or anything.

            Is this how it's supposed to look? I can't find any next buttons or anything.

            2 votes