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PatNet Improvement Suggestions


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2017 Jan 28, 1:48pm   109,467 views  216 comments

by Dan8267   ➕follow (4)   💰tip   ignore  

Thread for idea submission for PatNet improvements

#patnet

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156   Dan8267   2017 Sep 29, 3:46pm  

@Patrick, another bug. Some HTTP requests for images are returning the text "content was not found". It's also returning a 404 status.

157   Patrick   2017 Sep 29, 9:04pm  

Thanks Dan, that /uploads/2011/12/excuse.jpg link refers to an image which is simply not on the server. I did not delete it. Kind of disturbing that it's gone.

Other images from that month are still there. I'll check my backups to see the last time I had excuse.jpg.
158   Patrick   2017 Sep 30, 12:54pm  

Dan8267 says
Here is an example of one of the links from a user page that takes you to a page with no comments.


OK, at least all the comment permalinks should work correctly now. So when you click on the date/time of any comment, even in a user's comment list or a search result, you should go to the right comment.
159   Hircus   2017 Oct 1, 6:17pm  

I want a live post/comment editing preview. I'm always frustrated editing the raw html every time I quote someone - it's hard to read with no indentation to help me decide what parts to remove. Being able to see it rendered as I type would at least help with that a bit. It's easy too:

<textarea id="textArea"></textarea>
<h3>Post Preview</h3>
<div id="preview" style="padding: 1em; border: 1px solid #aaa;"></div>
<script>
var textArea = document.querySelector('#textArea');
var preview = document.querySelector('#preview');
textArea.addEventListener('input', function updatePreview(){
preview.innerHTML = textArea.value;
});
</script>
160   Hircus   2017 Oct 1, 6:30pm  

On the same note, it would also be nice if the html presented to me when I quote someone was just plain easier to read. Use indentation and newlines to help. Eg

Formatting example: https://codepen.io/anon/pen/zEdRqr
Ideally, it would support adding a new additional level of indentation for each nested quote, like shown above. But, that's harder to code because you'd have to parse it and reassemble it with indentation. But, it should be very easy to make at least the top level a & blockquote tags be formated, and the content indented 1 level, and that would still help most use cases.
161   Patrick   2017 Oct 1, 6:33pm  

Thanks goat! This is a good idea.

I actually format text on the server side, so that's a complication. Maybe I should not do that, but let people compose entirely in the browser in wysiwyg mode, and then post to the server only when they save.

Anyone know a good wysiwyg editor I can use?
162   Dan8267   2017 Oct 1, 8:25pm  

goat says
preview.innerHTML = textArea.value;


Hmmm, how can I exploit this to inject JavaScript?
163   Hircus   2017 Oct 4, 7:54pm  

Dan8267 says
goat says
preview.innerHTML = textArea.value;


Hmmm, how can I exploit this to inject JavaScript?


I guess it's not apparent from the post, but it's meant as a sample. I spoke with him recently about his html stripping strategy, and felt it was obvious that he should plug the same stripping code into this. Otherwise, the preview could be quite a bit different than what you see after you post.

Even if used as-is though, I think it'd be tough to exploit. Maybe if you can coerce someone into manually copy pasting code into the textbox.

Patrick, I agree and think a wysiwyg editor is the better direction to head in. My idea is just a monkey patch.
164   Dan8267   2017 Oct 6, 12:28am  

test
165   Dan8267   2017 Oct 6, 12:30am  

test2
166   Dan8267   2017 Oct 6, 1:03am  

OK, here's the problem, @Patrick.

In the old site you did a full postback when a user submitted a comment. As such, the user could always click the browser's back button to get back to the page state where his comment was in the text area control.

In the new site you are doing a partial postback with the request body containing key/value pairs separated with ampersands. Example:
comment_content=test2&comment_post_id=1302130


In the response body you are giving the HTML of the new or edited comment. I would give you an example of that, but I get an alert saying "database failed to accept some content".

I assume you have a JavaScript handler, perhaps using a third party library or framework, that inserts the returned HTML subtree into the DOM at the appropriate point and then clears the contents of the text area with the ID "ta". You do this without using the HTML 5 History API and thus the prior content of the text area is lost for good.

What you should do is use the pushState(stateObject, title, url) function to save the text of the text area "ta" so that if the user presses the back button the state is popped and the text area is restored.

Here's a JS Fiddle I threw together to demonstrate the concept.
1. Enter the following text in the text area: This is the index page.
2. Click on Page 1. Notice the text area goes blank.
3. Enter the text: This is page 1.
4. Click on Page 2. Notice the text area goes blank.
5. Enter the text: This is the second page.
4. Click on Page 3. Notice the text area goes blank.
5. Press the browser back button. Notice the text area now says, "This is the second page.".
6. Press the browser back button. Notice the text area now says, "This is page 1.".
7. Press the browser back button. Notice the text area now says, "This is the index page.".
8. Press the browser forward button. Notice the text area now says, "This is page 1.".
9. Press the browser forward button. Notice the text area now says, "This is the index page.".
10. Press the browser back button. Notice the text area now says, "This is page 1.".

No full postbacks. No loss of text history. 100% HTML 5 compliant.
167   Patrick   2017 Oct 7, 12:43pm  

@Dan8267

You're right that that was a problem. If there was an error accepting comment content (typically an apple emoticon which is in some character set the database does not understand) then the site would erase the content and going back would not recover it.

I did not know about pushState() and that looks quite useful, but I did something even simpler:

+ if (!response.err) document.getElementById('commentform').reset() // don't clear the textbox if error

So now your problem should never happen again, at least not the same way. Thanks for telling me about it, and a solution with code.
168   Hircus   2017 Oct 9, 8:56pm  

It would be nice if when someone posts a stock ticker like $shop that it would auto link it to yahoo finance. Might be even nicer if the $ prefix wasn't needed - download a db of all tickers.
169   Patrick   2017 Oct 9, 9:11pm  

Yes, that would not be hard. Thanks for the idea!
170   anonymous   2017 Oct 9, 9:24pm  

Get back to 'debt is slavery' and homes are overpriced. post the original rant about income vs. home price, and when it makes sense to rent.

your advice literally saved my life. it could save more
171   Patrick   2017 Oct 9, 9:29pm  

It's still available, in the footer, broken into 3 parts:

10 reasons it's a terrible time to buy
8 groups who lie about the housing market
37 bogus arguments about housing

But yes, hoping to make the site more about specific topics instead of continuous flame war, and housing should be one of the top 3.

Looking for people who want to be moderators for a given hashtag (topic). Moderators will have:

moderation power for comments and posts for their topic
ability to whilelist or blacklist users for their topics
ability to free comments in their topics from comment jail
ability to upload a css stylesheet to be used for their topic
a donation link (paypal, patreon, or bitcoin)

also thinking they should be able to appoint deputy moderators
172   Hircus   2017 Oct 10, 1:57pm  

It would be cool if I could take private notes on each user. Eg, add a new button or link near the user's profile picture area on each post/comment right next to the link to their profile, that when clicked, opens a popup / tooltip that has an editable text box. This way I can easily keep track of my interactions with people. It's hard for me to remember names, but I sometimes I wish I could note that a certain person was friendly, or a dbag, or that they helped me with a certain something.

Obviously, I could keep my notes in a text file, but it would be a nice touch to have it integrated into the UI for me.

Also, since people would probably not store any notes on most users, the button should indicate whether or not I have stored any notes on that person yet. That way as I read through the comments in a thread, it sticks out if I have notes on the author of a comment, and I can then just click the button to see the notes.

I guess you'd want to store data this server side, associated with their account.
173   Patrick   2017 Oct 14, 9:00pm  

Anonymous posts need to be civil if you want them to remain.
174   Hircus   2017 Oct 17, 10:32pm  

disable submit buttons onclick to prevent double submissions.
175   WookieMan   2017 Oct 28, 3:34pm  

anon_04599 says
another test of an anonymous comment

Looks good to me. I do like that you made it a longer number. I don't want to be biased out of the gate with anonymous users . So if the number is longer and harder to remember I think that's good if you're looking for more users, even if they don't register. But if someone is being an ass, there's at least some identifier to know, especially if it's spam.

We'll find out tonight when the "oil" starts getting slick. Or they may legitimately be paid and have the weekends off. We'll see. We'll actually see if I'm here tonight. Got things to do.
176   Hircus   2017 Nov 4, 10:02am  

patnet should support unicode characters like the rest of the modern web.

simply setting the following header on all textual pages will likely get you 99% of the way there:

content-type: text/html;charset=utf-8
177   Patrick   2017 Nov 4, 10:14am  

goat says
patnet should support unicode characters like the rest of the modern web.

simply setting the following header on all textual pages will likely get you 99% of the way there:

content-type: text/html;charset=utf-8


Thanks! Don't know how I missed that.

Better now?
178   Patrick   2017 Nov 5, 10:46am  

People complained about the post titles being links to the external stories, so I put it back.

Now the main title is the patrick.net link once again. The (domainname.com) part after the title is the link to the external story.
179   Patrick   2017 Nov 5, 10:53am  

Now you can, I think!

Thanks for telling me about this. Fixed a bug.

Works?
180   Patrick   2017 Nov 5, 10:54am  

@Sniper does it work for you too now?
181   anonymous   2017 Nov 6, 7:04am  

@Patrick

It appears you can no longer see anything but the last 40 comments in a thread. You used to have a link to see (say) comments 1-90 in a 130 comment thread, but now it's gone.
182   Patrick   2017 Nov 6, 7:16am  

Damn, you're right.

Will try to fix during my commute.
183   Patrick   2017 Nov 6, 7:55am  

OK, fixed it!
184   Onvacation   2017 Nov 6, 10:14am  

Get some ad revenue. We all ignore ads on other sites. You should make some money from your work here.

Somebody would love this demographic. Maybe the company that makes freeze dried yams?
185   mell   2017 Nov 6, 10:32am  

On Chrome on my Android phone the submit button does not work. Other browsers work fine.
186   WookieMan   2017 Nov 14, 7:40pm  

Any chance you can add how many people are on the site, regardless if they are registered or not? I like how you have the users that are online, but how about "guests" like a lot of other forums do? I don't know if there are only 3 "guests" or anons viewing the site at anytime or 300, but usually it shows something like 3-8 registered users online. That's not a good look.

I'm thinking a lot of people that could become active may be turned off by the low numbers that are clearly visible at the top of the page. Even if there are only 3-5 registered members online, but another 30 anons viewing the page, that might be motivation for someone to become active or post. I think I may have posted this in another thread (or even this one) but it would be nice to know the audience size a new post might be able to reach.
187   Patrick   2017 Nov 14, 7:41pm  

Yes, good idea. I should have "and 24 lurkers" or whatever it is.
188   WookieMan   2017 Nov 14, 7:44pm  

Patrick says
Yes, good idea. I should have "and 24 lurkers" or whatever it is.

Or "69 pussies that won't register and put a username behind their words." Just kidding ;)
189   Patrick   2017 Nov 20, 8:10am  

Sorry all, site was down most of last night. My fault for trying to fix things that were not broken!
190   anonymous   2017 Nov 20, 8:27am  

WookieMan says
Or "69 pussies that won't register and put a username behind their words." Just kidding ;)


Nope just me1-69, Patrick offered me 72 virgins if I could keep the site going through the weekend. Naturally I accepted.

What you couldn't tell every anon was me?
191   MrMagic   2017 Nov 20, 8:44am  

Patrick says
My fault for trying to fix things that were not broken!


@patrick, speaking of broken. The ability to Edit a post is broken again. This is the error that comes up.

node server says: Cannot read property 'post_title' of undefined
192   Onvacation   2017 Nov 20, 8:57am  

anon_961a0 says
Patrick offered me 72 virgins if I could keep the site going through the weekend. Naturally I accepted.

You failed. No virgins for you :(
193   Patrick   2017 Nov 20, 9:22pm  

Sniper says
Patrick says
My fault for trying to fix things that were not broken!


@patrick, speaking of broken. The ability to Edit a post is broken again. This is the error that comes up.

node server says: Cannot read property 'post_title' of undefined


Fixed now. Thanks for telling me.
194   Patrick   2017 Dec 4, 6:37pm  

I did add the user_name reporting uncivil comments to the comment jail page:

http://patrick.net/comment_jail
195   Patrick   2017 Dec 4, 6:41pm  

BTW, you have to be logged in as a registered user to see the names.

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