4 ms·

Removed all counters, replies, following/ers, timestamps, from textlog

84 points by stagas 2mo ago

a1o 2mo ago
Timestamp is not mentioned in the linked text. Timestamp is useful, I wouldn’t remove timestamp if possible. I don’t know why it made into the title though…
sanqui 2mo ago
The late Cohost also lacked like, reply, and follower counters; it was generally regarded positively. It did have an unread notifications counter though, so you knew you went viral when that read 99+.
- stagas 2mo ago
  Oh we have it, that counter is still there, obviously that one is necessary. I removed everything that I considered noise and not contributing much.
  - forgotmypw17 2mo ago
    Just to help with the troubleshooting, I tried a few different browsers on Windows: Google Chrome, Brave, Waterfox, Waterfox Classic, Firefox: error qutebrowser: site works fine
    - stagas 2mo ago
      Thanks! I think you meant to answer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425349 instead of this thread.
      - forgotmypw17 2mo ago
        Yes, thank you.
techjamie 2mo ago
I like the rationale you have behind trying to be anti-addictive with the design. I wish more places around the net had that sort of mentality. Though I am curious, why remove timestamps?
- stagas 2mo ago
  To resurrect old discussions. The hot algorithm makes old engaging posts stay a little bit longer, and with the timestamp it introduced bias that you might not want to answer a very old post. My instinct was right as users are engaging with those old posts more often now.
  - vector_spaces 2mo ago
    The irony here is that modern social algorithms actively conceal these for exactly the same reason. Social feeds want to show you a steady stream of content that you are likely to engage with. They are incentivized to frame content as literally timeless and impose a continuous, never-ending present on the user, since they don't want recency to get in the way of engagement. But the time-context in which a piece of media was produced is a fairly important detail in critically evaluating it and situating it in an actual, human conversation. Did this piece of writing with common AI smells get posted before or after 2021? Did the author write this piece about someone they admire and aspire to before or after the murders became public knowledge? What was the expert concensus on the topic when the author wrote about it? What meaning did this slang have back then? What technologies were commonplace? He said he needs help with something I'm an expert in -- can I help him, or was it over a decade ago? What was happening culturally when this was written? What was the weather like? Did this collection of posts with a dour tone get posted during a global pandemic when mostly everyone was self-isolating? Did he write this post about his loved one before or after her death? I mean hopefully I don't need to sell you on why this information is useful and actually antithetical to addictive, low nuance, engagement-driven social media. We need more media literacy, not less, and de-emphasizing critical details like this seems problematic I do sympathize with the challenge and know that there aren't really easy answers here, and every possible change is likely to ruffle someone's feathers, but I have a feeling there is another way to achieve what you're after.
surgical_fire 2mo ago
I had never heard of this. I always sort of hated social networks. Even the ones I eventually participated in, such as Reddit or HN (although I tend to see those more as forums). I navigated a bit on textlog, and I found it strangely compelling. I will give it ia shot.
forgotmypw17 2mo ago
Does anyone else see this error, and/or know what it is about? >Secure Connection Failed >An error occurred during a connection to textlog.cc. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length.
- stagas 2mo ago
  Yes, your client is trying to connect using IPv6 and failing. This is odd however because we had this problem and then we’ve configured it properly and it was working. This must be some upstream issue from our hosting provider. Edit: I’ve opened a ticket and waiting for their answer. Thanks for the report!
  - jmesmith 2mo ago
    same for me in zen browser fwiw
  - deathanatos 2mo ago
    I'm curious, but how/what is the actual problem there? I can connect over IPv6 just fine, and IPv6 shouldn't make a difference to TLS¹? (¹in this case)
    - stagas 2mo ago
      I’m not an expert on networking but that’s the verdict I get when pasting this problem to ChatGPT. We did have this and went away when we activated IPv6. Firefox and depending on your network/OS you might access the site via IPv6, in which case it will fail if it’s not accessible. I still have problem accessing it locally, curl fails, it works when I am in the network, so I don’t know what’s the case here. It works for some and not for others? Super weird.
      - deathanatos 2mo ago
        Well, that sounds hallucinogenic; v6 & TLS should basically not interact. But like, what error does curl give? I'm sort of wondering if it's more cert store weirdness. Curl & Firefox, I think, will use different stores. I think FF uses Mozilla's cert store, always, whereas curl will default to the local machine's store. The site is also using the LE YE1 cert — i.e., it's using an EdDSA cert, which is a bit unusual. It's also serving the root cert itself, which it shouldn't do, but also shouldn't be fatal. (But that also results in a whopping 4 certs sent by the server, which is also quite unusually high, but again, shouldn't be fatal.) But EdDSA is also odd enough I could see it fouling something up, and TLS libraries and path building is source of so many bugs.
knorker 2mo ago
I disagree with removing timestamps. It's extremely frustrating to read some technical post somewhere only to finally see that it was written in 2008. The very first thing I read now on that site when looking for a good example of this was "Which Linux distribution do you like, and why". You know, it REALLY matters if that discussion is from 1995 or 2025. Nowadays I tend to close articles if they don't have a year listed. Without the context of knowing if it's from last century, it's often less informative than not reading it at all. It could still be relevant, but the context is very important. To add insult to injury, some unhelpful people write month and day, but not year.
- stagas 2mo ago
  Might bring them back for historical posts, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425728
  - knorker 2mo ago
    I also find it useful to see someone's progression. Newer posts on a topic from the same person will usually have clearer thinking about it.
- abanana 2mo ago
  Fully agree - see also Stack Overflow's relative date display for comments. They all just say "Over a year ago". Mouse over and find it's from 2012. You need that context especially for e.g. web dev, where CSS and JS have moved on a great deal in that time.
Groxx 2mo ago
Generally the correct default, I think. And sometimes the correct non-option too. I personally prefer to have them in many social media things (it's a hint for "this is popular enough that they won't even notice my contribution" vs "likely ~nobody else has seen this, maybe I should spread it"), and I think I manage to avoid the addictive parts pretty well... but it does still affect behavior (e.g. above, do I boost it or no?) and sometimes that's a net negative for the ecosystem. (unintended but fittingly: ^ above is just barely under their 500 char limit. though this addition is not. I generally don't like small char limits, but to each their own)
sodapopcan 2mo ago
I've had textlog open in a tab for a few weeks now. Was iffy as I've never really used anything like Twitter before. I finally made an account as I really like this change. I already embarrassingly posted my bio as a note. I'm on the fence about timestamps but I don't think it's inherently bad, and could be good. It depends on the goals of the platform. I'm actually overwhelmed by how both freeing and extremely weird it is not to see any numbers. But I will say that I think it's great to be able to respond to a thread with zero stigma or worry if you are "necroing" it or not. I think I'm learning more toward no timestamps.
mofosyne 2mo ago
Wonder if textlog have an ssh interface as well
djray 2mo ago
I agree with removing the obvious dopamine-related signals, but removing timestamps is a mistake, as they are vital for technical and news-based posts. They're a valuable relevance signal in many cases, not 'noise'. At least make them available on-hover or as a user option. Yes, you could try with a 'limit to historical posts' option, but that's going to be difficult as some topics move a lot faster than others, e.g. current affairs versus web standards. This sort of unilateral action-before-asking is imo not a great signal to send out if you're trying to grow a platform. If you're going to run experiments, let people know first. Could I also suggest making the comment text size larger (it's smaller than CSS 'small'), changing the typeface to be proportional, and most importantly making sure the contrast between foreground and background elements is WCAG-compliant? Most of the text is less than 3:1. Currently the site may be quite challenging to access for a visitor with visual impairments, and I think many such users would enjoy a site such as this if it were more accessible. Thanks.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- stagas 2mo ago
  Re: timestamps, feel free to vote[0] on the matter! Re: design, a lot of people seem to like it the defaults. If you make an account you can customize theme, color scheme, font face/size, and more. If we’re missing a more contrasty theme it should be easy to add. [0]: https://textlog.cc/post/2326 https://textlog.cc/post/2326
  - djray 2mo ago
    Your default should be WCAG-compliant. That's the whole point! A visually-impaired user shouldn't have to customise your site for it to be readable. Your site will be failing some accessibility metrics until you do that, and that will affect your search ranking etc. Plus it's generally a good audience-friendly thing to do. I was aware of the poll, but putting that up after the fact and it being only about the timestamp is a bad signal, too. It says that you're willing to pull the rug on whole sets of features at a whim and just because _you_ think it's the right thing to do. If you're trying to foster a community, I'd argue that this is not the best approach. These sorts of things could be reversible experiments - such as a banner at the top of the page saying "We're trying out removing timestamps and counters like likes! Click here to give us feedback or to switch back to the old UI." And then you keep track of everyone who switched back or re-enabled the feature you're fiddling with. Or you let people switch for a while and give their opinion after the test period.
rf15 2mo ago
We are reverting to a more forum-like data shape, which is hilarious. (and good)
chanux 2mo ago
Looks like login/signup(?) emails are not delivering. There is a discussion on it but cannot figure out if it's new or not. https://textlog.cc/post/1933 https://textlog.cc/post/1933
- stagas 2mo ago
  Touché, yours got bounced, I checked, others’ are getting delivered. Funny how Resend doesn’t have a “resend” button in their UI. Just retry.
  - chanux 2mo ago
    Thanks for taking time. I tried a few times. I guess it's better to let the site have it's exclusivity. Good luck.
    - stagas 1mo ago
      I see the retries. Sorry about that. I don’t know what going on, I’ve sent you an email with an invitation magic link from my personal gmail. It can be used within a week. Hope that gets delivered!
xtiansimon 2mo ago
What's the overall philosophy/design of this community visa vie the github repo? Are users meant to start their own communities? or connect their community to larger communities somehow? Or or something else?

84 points by stagas 2mo ago

a1o 2mo ago

Timestamp is not mentioned in the linked text. Timestamp is useful, I wouldn’t remove timestamp if possible. I don’t know why it made into the title though…

sanqui 2mo ago

The late Cohost also lacked like, reply, and follower counters; it was generally regarded positively. It did have an unread notifications counter though, so you knew you went viral when that read 99+.

stagas 2mo ago
Oh we have it, that counter is still there, obviously that one is necessary. I removed everything that I considered noise and not contributing much.
- forgotmypw17 2mo ago
  Just to help with the troubleshooting, I tried a few different browsers on Windows: Google Chrome, Brave, Waterfox, Waterfox Classic, Firefox: error qutebrowser: site works fine
  - stagas 2mo ago
    Thanks! I think you meant to answer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425349 instead of this thread.
    - forgotmypw17 2mo ago
      Yes, thank you.

techjamie 2mo ago

I like the rationale you have behind trying to be anti-addictive with the design. I wish more places around the net had that sort of mentality. Though I am curious, why remove timestamps?

stagas 2mo ago
To resurrect old discussions. The hot algorithm makes old engaging posts stay a little bit longer, and with the timestamp it introduced bias that you might not want to answer a very old post. My instinct was right as users are engaging with those old posts more often now.
- vector_spaces 2mo ago
  The irony here is that modern social algorithms actively conceal these for exactly the same reason. Social feeds want to show you a steady stream of content that you are likely to engage with. They are incentivized to frame content as literally timeless and impose a continuous, never-ending present on the user, since they don't want recency to get in the way of engagement. But the time-context in which a piece of media was produced is a fairly important detail in critically evaluating it and situating it in an actual, human conversation. Did this piece of writing with common AI smells get posted before or after 2021? Did the author write this piece about someone they admire and aspire to before or after the murders became public knowledge? What was the expert concensus on the topic when the author wrote about it? What meaning did this slang have back then? What technologies were commonplace? He said he needs help with something I'm an expert in -- can I help him, or was it over a decade ago? What was happening culturally when this was written? What was the weather like? Did this collection of posts with a dour tone get posted during a global pandemic when mostly everyone was self-isolating? Did he write this post about his loved one before or after her death? I mean hopefully I don't need to sell you on why this information is useful and actually antithetical to addictive, low nuance, engagement-driven social media. We need more media literacy, not less, and de-emphasizing critical details like this seems problematic I do sympathize with the challenge and know that there aren't really easy answers here, and every possible change is likely to ruffle someone's feathers, but I have a feeling there is another way to achieve what you're after.

surgical_fire 2mo ago

I had never heard of this. I always sort of hated social networks. Even the ones I eventually participated in, such as Reddit or HN (although I tend to see those more as forums). I navigated a bit on textlog, and I found it strangely compelling. I will give it ia shot.

forgotmypw17 2mo ago

Does anyone else see this error, and/or know what it is about? >Secure Connection Failed >An error occurred during a connection to textlog.cc. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length.

stagas 2mo ago
Yes, your client is trying to connect using IPv6 and failing. This is odd however because we had this problem and then we’ve configured it properly and it was working. This must be some upstream issue from our hosting provider. Edit: I’ve opened a ticket and waiting for their answer. Thanks for the report!
- jmesmith 2mo ago
  same for me in zen browser fwiw
- deathanatos 2mo ago
  I'm curious, but how/what is the actual problem there? I can connect over IPv6 just fine, and IPv6 shouldn't make a difference to TLS¹? (¹in this case)
  - stagas 2mo ago
    I’m not an expert on networking but that’s the verdict I get when pasting this problem to ChatGPT. We did have this and went away when we activated IPv6. Firefox and depending on your network/OS you might access the site via IPv6, in which case it will fail if it’s not accessible. I still have problem accessing it locally, curl fails, it works when I am in the network, so I don’t know what’s the case here. It works for some and not for others? Super weird.
    - deathanatos 2mo ago
      Well, that sounds hallucinogenic; v6 & TLS should basically not interact. But like, what error does curl give? I'm sort of wondering if it's more cert store weirdness. Curl & Firefox, I think, will use different stores. I think FF uses Mozilla's cert store, always, whereas curl will default to the local machine's store. The site is also using the LE YE1 cert — i.e., it's using an EdDSA cert, which is a bit unusual. It's also serving the root cert itself, which it shouldn't do, but also shouldn't be fatal. (But that also results in a whopping 4 certs sent by the server, which is also quite unusually high, but again, shouldn't be fatal.) But EdDSA is also odd enough I could see it fouling something up, and TLS libraries and path building is source of so many bugs.

knorker 2mo ago

I disagree with removing timestamps. It's extremely frustrating to read some technical post somewhere only to finally see that it was written in 2008. The very first thing I read now on that site when looking for a good example of this was "Which Linux distribution do you like, and why". You know, it REALLY matters if that discussion is from 1995 or 2025. Nowadays I tend to close articles if they don't have a year listed. Without the context of knowing if it's from last century, it's often less informative than not reading it at all. It could still be relevant, but the context is very important. To add insult to injury, some unhelpful people write month and day, but not year.

stagas 2mo ago
Might bring them back for historical posts, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425728
- knorker 2mo ago
  I also find it useful to see someone's progression. Newer posts on a topic from the same person will usually have clearer thinking about it.
abanana 2mo ago
Fully agree - see also Stack Overflow's relative date display for comments. They all just say "Over a year ago". Mouse over and find it's from 2012. You need that context especially for e.g. web dev, where CSS and JS have moved on a great deal in that time.

Groxx 2mo ago

Generally the correct default, I think. And sometimes the correct non-option too. I personally prefer to have them in many social media things (it's a hint for "this is popular enough that they won't even notice my contribution" vs "likely ~nobody else has seen this, maybe I should spread it"), and I think I manage to avoid the addictive parts pretty well... but it does still affect behavior (e.g. above, do I boost it or no?) and sometimes that's a net negative for the ecosystem. (unintended but fittingly: ^ above is just barely under their 500 char limit. though this addition is not. I generally don't like small char limits, but to each their own)

sodapopcan 2mo ago

I've had textlog open in a tab for a few weeks now. Was iffy as I've never really used anything like Twitter before. I finally made an account as I really like this change. I already embarrassingly posted my bio as a note. I'm on the fence about timestamps but I don't think it's inherently bad, and could be good. It depends on the goals of the platform. I'm actually overwhelmed by how both freeing and extremely weird it is not to see any numbers. But I will say that I think it's great to be able to respond to a thread with zero stigma or worry if you are "necroing" it or not. I think I'm learning more toward no timestamps.

mofosyne 2mo ago

Wonder if textlog have an ssh interface as well

djray 2mo ago

I agree with removing the obvious dopamine-related signals, but removing timestamps is a mistake, as they are vital for technical and news-based posts. They're a valuable relevance signal in many cases, not 'noise'. At least make them available on-hover or as a user option. Yes, you could try with a 'limit to historical posts' option, but that's going to be difficult as some topics move a lot faster than others, e.g. current affairs versus web standards. This sort of unilateral action-before-asking is imo not a great signal to send out if you're trying to grow a platform. If you're going to run experiments, let people know first. Could I also suggest making the comment text size larger (it's smaller than CSS 'small'), changing the typeface to be proportional, and most importantly making sure the contrast between foreground and background elements is WCAG-compliant? Most of the text is less than 3:1. Currently the site may be quite challenging to access for a visitor with visual impairments, and I think many such users would enjoy a site such as this if it were more accessible. Thanks.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
stagas 2mo ago
Re: timestamps, feel free to vote[0] on the matter! Re: design, a lot of people seem to like it the defaults. If you make an account you can customize theme, color scheme, font face/size, and more. If we’re missing a more contrasty theme it should be easy to add. [0]: https://textlog.cc/post/2326 https://textlog.cc/post/2326
- djray 2mo ago
  Your default should be WCAG-compliant. That's the whole point! A visually-impaired user shouldn't have to customise your site for it to be readable. Your site will be failing some accessibility metrics until you do that, and that will affect your search ranking etc. Plus it's generally a good audience-friendly thing to do. I was aware of the poll, but putting that up after the fact and it being only about the timestamp is a bad signal, too. It says that you're willing to pull the rug on whole sets of features at a whim and just because _you_ think it's the right thing to do. If you're trying to foster a community, I'd argue that this is not the best approach. These sorts of things could be reversible experiments - such as a banner at the top of the page saying "We're trying out removing timestamps and counters like likes! Click here to give us feedback or to switch back to the old UI." And then you keep track of everyone who switched back or re-enabled the feature you're fiddling with. Or you let people switch for a while and give their opinion after the test period.

rf15 2mo ago

We are reverting to a more forum-like data shape, which is hilarious. (and good)

chanux 2mo ago

Looks like login/signup(?) emails are not delivering. There is a discussion on it but cannot figure out if it's new or not. https://textlog.cc/post/1933 https://textlog.cc/post/1933

stagas 2mo ago
Touché, yours got bounced, I checked, others’ are getting delivered. Funny how Resend doesn’t have a “resend” button in their UI. Just retry.
- chanux 2mo ago
  Thanks for taking time. I tried a few times. I guess it's better to let the site have it's exclusivity. Good luck.
  - stagas 1mo ago
    I see the retries. Sorry about that. I don’t know what going on, I’ve sent you an email with an invitation magic link from my personal gmail. It can be used within a week. Hope that gets delivered!

xtiansimon 2mo ago

What's the overall philosophy/design of this community visa vie the github repo? Are users meant to start their own communities? or connect their community to larger communities somehow? Or or something else?