Removed all counters, replies, following/ers, timestamps, from textlog
textlog.cc
textlog.cc
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I do feel reluctancy answering to a post even a few hours ago thinking my answer might not be applicable to their context anymore. But not knowing, I believe keeps the conversation going for a while. I see it actually taking place.
So, what is the right thing to do here? More engagement and lack of information, or more information and less engagement? Not an easy answer.
First time I hear about textlog today, seems interesting (and good to remove likes etc). But if there aren't other comments that already address whatever point I would want to make I dont care if it is 10 minutes old or 10 days old (now, 10 years might be different and probably should be different).
Maybe that is due to my background in forums focused on solving technical problems (troubleshooting, programming, etc), but even if the original poster helped by my input any longer, someone else might be even if that is years down the line, so answers are always useful.
Of course context is everything, and if it is someone talking about what they had for lunch, that is irrelevant 10 days later (but I also wouldn't be interested in that content to begin with, even if it was 10 seconds old).
So in conclusion, I think having a timestamp is useful, and definitely for older posts (but for newer posts I think you are overestimating the problems of having them).
Show the date but not h/m/s.
Textlog didn't exist before 2021, did it? (though you are probably making a general point)
> Did the author write this piece about someone they admire and aspire to before or after the murders became public knowledge?
This is a really good point.
> What was the expert consensus on the topic when the author wrote about it?
Also a really good point.
> What meaning did this slang have back then?
True, but many people just don't care (unless you are talking 10 years in the future).
I'm not going to bother writing every quote-reply, but in this spirit, I wrote in another comment that I think I'm pro not having timestamps but now maybe not. I'm liking the suggestions of having very low granularity. To throw in an idea: rough labels such as: fresh, day-old, recent, this year, last year, 2/3/4/5 years ago, years old. Maybe even whole threads could become "stale" after a large amount of time, like a year. Very much spitballing here.
I like the idea of playing with granularity. I'll also suggest: one way to make timestamps available but less of a focus is to add friction. Require an extra click into a post metadata page that loads with a full page refresh. Any friction introduced reduces a feature's usage, and even as little as just adding an extra page refresh tends to be enough to reduce its usage by an order of magnitude or more. If you wanted to be particularly sadistic you could require the user download a pdf with that data lol
>Secure Connection Failed
>An error occurred during a connection to textlog.cc. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length.
Edit: I’ve opened a ticket and waiting for their answer. Thanks for the report!
(¹in this case)
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.
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.
Google Chrome, Brave, Waterfox, Waterfox Classic, Firefox: error
qutebrowser: site works fine
There is a discussion on it but cannot figure out if it's new or not.
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)
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.