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Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features
[Edit: Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features should be tracked at Google Code, not here -- matt, 2010-04-23]
Less Wrong is still under construction. Please post any bugs or issues with Less Wrong to this thread. Try to keep each comment thread a clean discussion of each bug or issue.
Requested features... sure, go ahead, but bear in mind we may not be able to implement for a while.
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Comments (628)
Can we have signatures, like in a forum?
Threads in the user page (so I can see replies and respond).
See who voted.
Force "make my votes public" to true.
Should a downvote require an explanation?
Drafts seem to show up on the recent posts list, when they aren't finished work yet.
Having a "Karma Score" seems out of place on a site focused on rationality.
Sure, I'd like to know if my participation is valued by the others on the board. Let's not call it Karma though.
Comment links are not nofollow which is a spam problem waiting to happen.
Meh. It's worth worrying about after we start having a spam problem. nofollow is just bad citizenship in this case - Lw has a lot of google juice and links in comments tend to be soaked in semantical goodness.
Yep. And even then, the simple solution is to only nofollow comments with negative karma. (There should be enough people reading the /comments feed to catch spam going to old posts, I would think.)
Brilliant - I wonder if anyone does that sort of thing (I'd guess not, since there aren't a lot of places with this sort of comment moderation)
On Hacker News all comments are nofollow but submissions above a certain point threshold are follow. Same on Reddit.
That would work.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but I would like voting limited to just posts. Voting for posts is meaningful as posts have to compete for limited main page space. Voting for comments, and indirectly voting for users doesn't have much obvious use, and might causing perverse effects of groupthink, self-censorship, karma whoring etc. - not now but once lesswrong becomes more popular. It happened to pretty much every other such system once a critical size was reached.
Youtube video embedding currently doesn't work. I place < object >...</ object > html code in the article, but nothing gets displayed when the article is viewed in Firefox. Internet Explorer 6.0 crashes trying to display such page.
This can't be a good thing. It seems like a link would be sufficient, and I don't think we need post authors dealing with difficult-to-implement-correctly tags.
I daresay that many sites and blogs do use video embedding, it is considered to be a good thing by many people, so saying that it "can't be a good thing" is unjustified.
My karma appears to me as 4294967316.
Now it's 4294967304.
In the absence of other contact information, there should perhaps be a way to send/receive personal messages. This would allow non-public comments regarding comments/articles (to point out typographical errors or make an off-topic suggestion, for example).
Thanks everyone!
Several days after I posted a suggestion that we rename the scoring system from "Karma", I was feeling kind of bad that my post had earned me nothing but downvotes.
Imagine my delight when I came to Less Wrong today and found my Karma Score to be 4,294,967,293. You guys are the best!
Reddit has a slick iPhone application, which may be portable. It's based more on browsing websites, though. Something along the lines may be possible.
Design suggestion:
All the meta stuff associated with a comment, viz.
Posted by: Kaj_Sotala 02 March 2009 09:32:50AM 2 points Vote up | Vote down | Permalink | Parent | Report | Reply
takes up a lot of space and impedes readability of the discussion. Can all this stuff be made smaller and less prominent (maybe more like it is on Hacker News) and perhaps some of the links only be visible when you're in the actual comment's thread (like the "Flag" feature is on Hacker News)? (Also we don't really need to know the exact second that a post is made.)
Karma isn't explained. Voting isn't explained.
There's no way to view old posts.
The header image is almost 400kb; that seems like a lot.
The FHI logo doesn't link to FHI
I've heard it said that some people are having registration problems. No idea steps to reproduce. Seems CAPTCHA -related.
After creating a new article, the only place I seem to be able to submit it to is "Johnicholas's drafts". If I'm not logged in, I can't see my article at all.
Is that the expected behavior? I thought that general authors could post, even if the posts are not promoted.
About that report link (http://lesswrong.com/ ???): It doesn't say what it's going to do, what it is for (hate speech, strong language, advocating the overthrow, trolling, disagreeing with me...), nor does it give me a chance to explain.
Indeed - another thing for the nonexistent FAQ.
As for the URL, it uses (inline) javascript and doesn't actually care about the href - a really stupid design decision, since it bounces you around (sends you back to /) if you have javascript off. But then, much of the site is kindof broken in that case.
In Chrome v. 2.0.172.6, any text typed into the comment box is hidden. It will momentarily appear if highlighted, but otherwise is invisible. The submit button also looks like a gray box without text.
When I try to create a new article, I type it in, click submit and "nothing happens"
That is I get a blank page, no held for moderation, no thank you for participating. Looking at the page source I see
Surely the server should never generate that, I should at least get an error message, malformed post or something.
Checking submitted nothing is found.
I'm running an old Firefox on FreeBSD 5.4, so I tried using Lynx instead, with the same result.
I have a static IP address 80.177.122.150 which might make issues easy to locate in the server log.
Unfortunately article submission requires Firefox 1.5 or newer. I was able to reproduce the problem you described in 1.0.7. However I was able to successfully submit an article using 1.5.0.7. This is due to the javascript based WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE being required, which would explain why Lynx didn't work either.
I have raised an issue to either make it work or make the behaviour more friendly.
When individuals have negative karma scores their karma reads out as some ludicrously high number like 4394, spilling out of the karma circle.
If karma is the sum of individual post scores, does that reward quantity too much relative to quality?
I agree. I would like some sort of "karma" score that tells me the average quality of work as well as a score indicating the total contribution.
An "average quality" type score would be more relevant in determining the expected quality of a comment before spending the time to read it.
Not counting the free first point for every comment toward karma would be an improvement, I think.
I disagree. If someone is posting lots of comments, they're either relevant and useful or they're not. If they're relevant and useful comments, then they should be rewarded automatically. If they're not, then someone will notice them 'gaming the system' and downvote the irrelevant comments.
If they're relevant and useful comments, then they should be rewarded by getting upmodded.
No spaces or periods in usernames? Was that <i>really</i> necessary? Did Silas put you up to this?
Also, [i]italics[/i] would be nice.
I'd like there to be a separate Anonymous account for posting potentially controversial posts open for all.
Problem might be that it would be used to post frivolous off-topic posts, but reddit-like votes should keep them away from most users anyway.
Advantage would that you could also see what other people have posted as Anonymous nicely collected under single account.
The third footnote of this post has been hacked. (Garbage text has been inserted.) http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/
Can you fix it? I am actually really curious what was there originally...
Welcome to LW! Have a point, for attempting to be useful.
The site should implement a kill-filter - a method of hiding all comments, messages, and posts from specific users.
I think I prefer things as-is. We pretty much all tend to find the same users problematic, and they don't tend to stick around - either they leave or they're chucked out. I think it's better if we're all seeing the same site.
Seconded.
Such user-specific effects might be better done externally, as with greasemonkey.
For very simple things, you could use yahoo pipes. Here is a filter that removes lojban, from the feed of new comments. rss
It would be nice if the feed were more structured. I had to match the title, rather than the author of the comment.
Please consider using a "fluid-width" theme.
I shall disagree, with equivalent explanation.
Requested feature: a 'user list', possibly sorted by karma - just like 'top contributors', but listing everybody. Preferably on its own page somewhere.
Comment karma!
Agreed, we need this and soon.
With comment karma we should definitely stop trying to use upvotes and downvotes for opinion polls.
Yeah, we need "agree" "disagree".
I have mixed feelings about karma; even without karma, I was finding myself a bit too interested in seeing how many points my comments got. But perhaps other people are better at ignoring gold stars than I am, or perhaps the effects of people attending to others' responses are net-positive.
I am definitely no better than Anna at ignoring gold stars. I think the situation might be improved if the "top contributors" box wasn't there on the right margin looking temptingly like a scoreboard.
The design of this site is rendered fairly poorly in browsers that are configured to enforce a minimum font-size above a certain bound. Specifically:
Steps to reproduce with Firefox 3.0.6 (I haven't tested other versions, but this is likely to also work with 2.x and other 3.x):
I also have a few feature requests:
On more horizontal space: We'll hopefully be fluid width before many of you read this comment.
Four-digit karma is not readily legible in the little green circle.
[currently the parent comment is at -1 points]
Interesting: does the downvoter see a statement of status in this true observation, and so feels offended?
It was probably just a drive-by. I get those on a pretty regular basis.
Reddit's up-arrow/down-arrow system with the selected arrow highlighted is much more intuitive and easier to see at a glance than a "vote up" and "vote down" with the selected link in bold. It also makes sense to have the point count next to the vote buttons. I spent my first few seconds on this site wondering why there was only a "vote down" button before I realized the minus sign next to the point count had nothing to do with voting.
I agree with the people saying show the number of comments on the front page.
A way to see the number of comments a particular post has would be useful
Currently, lots of discussions just end without the last commenter or readers knowing why.
So, feature idea: add a way for the author of the parent of a comment to set an "agreement status" with the following options by clicking a button:
I think a common one is "I'm tired of this discussion and don't want to think about it any more."
"I disagree, and am open to disagreement-arbitration on this particular issue (but not necessarily others)."
I've felt that way on issues on this board before, but didn't continue responding because there were too many comments to reply too. (I'm thinking in particular of the "no one likes the taste of alcohol" thesis that I advanced.)
In any case, you cannot force anyone to respond. Thus, in my opinion, the best response to ignorance is to summarize the debate British Parliamentary style and be done with it.
Just badger the person who fails to respond to a what seems to you an important comment.
I hereby give everyone explicit permission to do so to me.
It is a good idea, and one that would work best if it was a norm. Badgering without such a norm can come across as insecure and play right into the hands of the one using the 'rhetorical inattention' gambit. Fortunately, a concise 'badger' including or consisting of a link to the parent would remove the need to explain or justify oneself and so avoid this difficulty.
Not with this crowd, I hope.
I'm now wondering which specific rhetorical usage wedrifid!2009 was referring to. There are all sorts of meanings depending on the context and quite a few could be considered rhetorical. I think "a" would be more appropriate than "the" here.
The main one: I don't like your attitude, this is signalling crap not discussion. Stick it.
I find this makes me less likely to write up reasons later. It makes it work.
I don't like this idea, so far. I don't see any good way of adding this to the UI nicely, and for most such conversations my response would be "I walked away from the computer for a week and so didn't check any such box"
What about adding a drop-down list box to the right of "Vote up | Vote down" etc? Or below that line? The selected message can be displayed in the same space for others to see.
I guess this feature wouldn't be useful for a user who comments on a few threads and then leaves for a week. But there are also extended discussions between regulars here that end without anyone except the author of the parent of the last comment knowing why.
A norm for finishing any conversation with such status would be more flexible. This'd take at least a good top-level post, official endorsement of the policy, and some reminders for the participants of conversations that follow this template. Also, without the norm, software option won't be useful.
Yes I agree we need a norm. But we also need the software feature so that we aren't littered with agreement status comments everywhere, and also to make it easier to follow the norm, which would make it more likely to be adopted as a norm.
Actually, what I've done sometimes is I add the status to the end of my already posted comment. That way I'm not adding any 'comment noise' but if anyone reads the post in the future they can see what the outcome/latest state was.
I do that occasionally but sometimes feel a little self-important while doing so. (Along the lines of "who cares what I finally think?") But I rationalize that it would be helpful for someone following the thread, in the near or far future. I think it would generally be a good norm to have.
A map of where we are, automatically generated with the Google Maps API from the data in the Location field of the user profiles.
The site is unusable on mobile browsers. I know that web standards and accessibility were not major concerns for the site's developers, but Lw being viewable on my phone would be a major benefit.
This made me realize that if someone is having a problem posting-- not just a problem with their account, but a general inability to post-- there's no way for them to tell you.
I'm actually swestrup. I can't login. Less wrong has no method of complaining if you aren't logged in, so I had to create a new account.
Less Wrong keeps complaining my password is bad, but I couldn't reset my password because:
a) I had switched mail providers an my email address on record was no longer any good. Again, I couldn't do anything about this without logging in.
b) I managed to temporarily get my old mail address working again, only to find that Less Wrong's password reset feature is also broken.
At 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong, the list is split into two lists numbered 1-5 and 1-32.
Currently, when a post is deleted, the comments get deleted as well, i.e. they are not listed on the Overview page for the author. I think this shouldn't work this way, the author shouldn't have the power to erase the content contributed by other people.
Is the recent comments page broken right now or is that just me?
Edit: Working again!
It's been broken for me, too.
The problem may be associated with comments from a time period-- recent comment is working for me now, but I can't page back.
For reference, it's usually the fault of one particular comment - when this happens, finding any page with that comment will break the site. "Recent comments" works again when that comment falls off the first page.
Not just you. It happens periodically.
I had a red envelope, but when I clicked on it there were no new messages. Does that just mean someone sent one or posted one and then deleted it?
Also, is there an email notification system? I didn't see one in Preferences.
I've mentioned something like this before, but I think a monthly 'Sequence Topics' thread would be a good place for new users to talk about all the background topics. It would be especially convenient to have such threads automatically and visibly linked from the Sequence pages.
(LucasSloan and inklesspen also made recent suggestions along these lines.)
Following up on a comment by byrnema:
We already can - I've just done that.
You might object that the process to do so is cumbersome. I quite agree. On the other hand, the Law of Unintended Consequences applies whenever you think "I wish...". It is always wise, when considering a new software feature, to think of the potential downsides.
I can think of at least one: to some, moving a thread could turn into a "weapon" to be used against comments they would prefer to make less visible. Moving threads at a buttn press would be a power, and power tends to corrupt.
You need to make the reference point in both directions, I think - in other words, to follow up that comment with a pointer here.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/z0/the_pascals_wager_fallacy_fallacy/
This post imported from Overcoming Bias is marked "deleted" and doesn't have author's name.
Feature request: profile pages, at minimum an empty box where the user can put text and links.
This is issue 108.
Thanks. Can we get a link to http://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/list on this original post?
This post imported from Overcoming Bias has an encoding problem in a link to Loeb's theorem post.
The post Interpersonal Entanglement imported from Overcoming Bias has formatting issues, e.g. italized text has no spaces around it.
(Original report, by kpreid.)
I tried to save a draft using Opera; it zipped up on the New page rather than ending in a drafts area. It was easy to delete, but I'd sure like to save a draft and view it. Maybe Firefox will be friendlier....
Just so you know, if you save a draft to "Drafts for JRMayne", it appears to you (but no one else) as if it were live. To check if the post is really live, log out -- if it's in your drafts, you won't be able to see it once you log out.
It's quite annoying -- one time I thought I was initiating an Open Thread, but no one else could see it. Another time I gave myself a good scare thinking I had made an incomplete post available to everyone.
Feature Request
In the recent past, some LW members have mentioned that karma was part of their motivation to post and comment.
This led to a change in the karma system to re-align incentives: 10 points for post upvotes, 1 for comment upvotes.
Here's another change that could motivate people who seek karma to contribute more to LW:
Instead of just showing the top 10 contributor in the column on the right, we could show more than 10. Even better if we can have a link to a top 100 or full list, like the leaders page on Hacker News.
If this simple change can encourage more people to contribute to LW, it seems like it's worth it. A small improvement in participation can lead to significant gains over time.
Seconded - I'd not only like to see a 'full list' of contributors, but vital statistics would be cool too - how many comments, how many posts, average post karma, average comment karma, how many upvotes/downvotes made, how many upvotes/downvotes received, etc.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/p5/brain_breakthrough_its_made_of_neurons/
This post imported from OB has Japanese characters where they shouldn't be (encoding problem).
No indent
Maybe there should be a sandbox?
Use your own old comments, then revert.
I'd like a way to display all of a user's posts and comments on a single HTML page, so I can find things easily. I've written a PHP script to mechanically "press" the "next" button repeatedly and collate all of the pages into one, and I've found it very useful. I would make the URL public and let everyone use it, but unless I add some kind of caching, it might put a lot of stress on my my server and Less Wrong's if many people use it at the same time on some prolific contributor (e.g., Eliezer).
So my questions are:
If the answer to 1 is yes, but 2 is no, then I'll code the caching and make the URL public.
ETA: In case anyone wonders why I didn't submit a patch to the Less Wrong codebase, it's because I can't understand how it works. Is there some documentation for potential developers?
I wrote earlier:
There doesn't seem to be a huge demand for this (or not many people are paying attention to this thread), so if anyone wants to know the URL for this, just send me a private message, and I'll give it to you.
The comments page is badly broken at the moment.
Why does a page pop up when I click on any user's name... But mine doesn't (have a page that pops up when I click on my user name)?
Edit: I see that Vladimir has already pointed this out, Thank you, Vlad.
The Top Contributors list hasn't been sorted by karma since the karma system was changed to give 10 karma per vote for top level posts. For awhile they were obviously out of order; now, the top 10 list is internally sorted, but does not accurately represent the top 10 users by karma (I have more karma than 3 of them). Perhaps it's sorting by number of upvotes instead of amount of karma?
MatthewB doesn't have a user page ("The page you requested does not exist"); example comment of his: here.
Is there a convenient way to access old incoming personal messages? My inbox is obviously fully of replies to threaded comments and I can access old ones by search if I remember details. I can also access sent personal messages with the next tab over. But is there any way to get to an old pm without clicking 'previous' enough times to bring me back to April? If not, this would be a welcome addition.
Some changes to karma have been deployed today. Posts will now show scores less than zero, previously scores below zero were shown as zero. Votes on posts are now worth 10 points up or down to the contributor. Also the threshold to be able to post is now 50, up from 20.
It's unclear -- do you mean that the number of points received for posts gets multiplied by 10, both for positive and negative votes? This factor seems too dramatic. I'd go for 2 or 3, no more. One also has to take into account that posts get more votes than comments simply because more people rate them, so the effect of a post is already greater than that of a comment.
Also should (have) been discussed in one of the open/meta threads in advance of deployment.
Yes an up vote on a post is worth 10 karma points to the contributor, a down vote -10 points.
With regard to discussion, I just implemented what I was instructed to do.
Copying quoted text probably shouldn't produce text with extra spaces in front. (see here and the comments) This behavior depends on the browser, but it is probably possible for the html to make it uniformly good.
There is a problem with <math> plugin on the Wiki: see this page for example. The error message is:
This post imported from Overcoming Bias misses some spaces around formatting, possibly an importing bug.
It would be useful to have an RSS feed showing all descendants of all comments and top-level postings made by the logged-in user. It would help in avoiding accidentally ignoring a comment in a conversation I'm actively participating in.
Alternatively, or also, highlighting in some way all such comments in the other RSS feeds and web pages.
Is there a page for "how to use this website" somewhere that I've missed? For the most part, it is intuitive. But I got a bit worried when I clicked "Report" on some spam and it asked me "Are you sure?". No I'm not sure - I'm just guessing what "Report" means and what it does...
I'd also be interested in knowing how Karma works, who (if anyone) is notified about my comments, what Voting does, etc... Just a general overview of how the website works. And if this information isn't all in one place already maybe it should be.
For my part, I think I accidentally clicked on Report the other day, while expanding a lot of comments for Context. But I don't remember any dialogue so I can hope that it didn't go through.
The reddit FAQ may answer a few questions.
Update: the welcome post has a small explanation of voting and karma.
There are no "next" and "previous" buttons like there were on Overcoming Bias, which especially breaks context on some older posts. Altogether there should be some easy way to navigate / browse through old posts on Lw.
I second this notwithstanding VN's post. Also, I think I'd have gotten further the first time I encountered the sequences if there'd been First/Previous/Next in Sequence buttons.
(edit) Beware Trivial Inconveniences seems possibly relevant.
(edit 2) This post backs me up on Next buttons.
In the meantime, there's the all posts list on the wiki.
That indeed seems like a good resource for now.
Any chance a feature could be added so that an account's display name can be changed (without changing the account name, email, etc.)?
Bug: comments deleted by a moderator behave differently than comments deleted by the user.
The comments deleted in this thread are still visible on the user pages (mjgeddes and outlawpoet); when the user deletes comments, they vanish from the user page, or at least they used to. Leaving them on the user page is probably not the desired behavior, at least for the second deletion.
this post claims to have 1 more comment than it displays. I wonder if this is a deleted comment effect as well. Not a big deal, but worth recording for anyone who wants to debug deletion.
LessWrong.com sends the user's password in the clear (as reported by ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 8.
Please consider warning people that is so.
This URL causes an error: http://lesswrong.com/user/G%C3%BCnther_Greindl/
If you try to write a comment with a numbered list, like so:
Then the points are silently renumbered to "1. 2. 3.", which will mess you up if you refer to the points by number - "point 0", "point 1".
markdown is standard. Use backslashes \ if you want different behavior.
but the help screen should have a link to daringfireball.
Did green for non-followed links just get added?
Maybe I'm color-blind, but the gray/green distinction seems too subtle for me.
If it's a standard effect that people under-estimate how much they'll learn to use subtle colors, then of course ignore me. My guess is that I'll learn to tell, but it will cost attention and I won't be able to scan or unconsciously check, the way I do on other sites. The permalinks are not so difficult because they have nearby links for comparison, but links in the main text are difficult for me, despite their larger size.
(it works fine on the yellow background, just not white or gray)
I'd like more context.
Since there are anchors, is there any cost to replacing context=1 with context=3 ?
Alternatively, context for the parent button (or even the permalink button) could be controlled from the preferences page, at the cost of UI proliferation. This might make more sense for people who want context on the recent comments page, which is a feature that would have cost to people who don't want it. (hmm...I guess greasemonkey could make parent=context=3)
Incidentally, the combination of deleted comments and context is buggy. If you go here where the parent is deleted and visible, there's no obvious way to proceed up (permalink, then parent is a non-obvious escape). If there are two deleted comments in a row, I think it's impossible to navigate up, short of editing the URL to context=9.
Spam bots are preparing a siege for the wiki, several of them register every day (although there were no attempts to edit the pages yet). Maybe a captcha extension on registration could fix this?
There are lots of weird things about deleted posts, but showing the author as "[deleted]" is definitely a bug.
I reached that belief from this post and it matches what Yvain says
I don't like the AddThis button (because it pops up when I accidentally mouse over it). I searched for a few minutes on the AddThis site and elsewhere, but couldn't find a way to turn it off.
Well if you use firefox, there are a bunch of extensions that would let you get rid of it. But I agree that it's annoying, badly implemented, and shouldn't be there.
"Recent Comments" is currently broken, though I must confess I enjoy the error messages.
Something's wrong with encoding in the references section of this post moved from Overcoming Bias.
More problems with encoding: http://lesswrong.com/lw/rd/passing_the_recursive_buck/
See umlaut in "Godel, Escher, Bach" at the beginning.
Sometimes browsing of old comments on the comment feed fails. This is an example link that doesn't work now.
Have an option when viewing all recent comments on the site to display the parent along with each comment, because many comments can't be understood out of context, and it's a pain to click on "Parent" for each such comment.
Post tags should be visible on the main page, rather than only on the article's page.
Oh, so completely seconded. Put 'em right under the title where we can see them!
As I mentioned elsewhere: recent karma changes to posts and comments.
Also, a 'preview' feature for comments would be nice.
Seconded. It's a little frustrating when my karma creeps up or down and I have to guess what's getting the approval/disapproval.
And: Sometimes it doesn't creep! I just had a gigantic upswing of karma and an equally dramatic downswing in the space of a few hours (on the order of fifty points in each direction). It doesn't seem to be my latest comments that are getting adjusted, and I would just love to know what is generating such strong opinions.
There is no visible difference between an unpublished draft and a published article. I am not the only one who has written an article and wondered why it seems to have drawn absolutely no response, then remembered there is this feature of not publishing immediately. I then hunted around for something to click called "Publish". In fact you have to click "Edit", even if the text already says exactly what it should, and publish from the edit page.
Proposal. When viewing multiple articles on a page, each article (down to its summary break) is currently followed by a block with "Comments (nnn)" at the left and a set of links ("Edit", "Save", etc.) at the right.
An unpublished draft cannot usefully have comments. Therefore, replace the comments link by the words "Unpublished draft", in the same text style (but not a link to anything).
Add to the series of links at the right, one called "Publish", which will immediately publish the article. ETA: Web conventions might indicate that "Publish" be a button rather than a link, since it Does Something rather than Going Somewhere.
Unpublished drafts also show up on the user's "Submitted" page. But they are not submitted, so they should not be displayed there.
There should be a way to undelete articles, or no way to delete them: currently, deleted articles are still visible from the feed, and it's possible to comment on them, but otherwise they are in limbo: they are not on the sidebar or any other list of articles, and there is no way to restore them.
For the last several days, both overcomingbias and lesswrong wiki (but not lesswrong blog) simultaneously experience some downtime and/or extremely slow responses. The largest outage a few days ago lasted for several hours. Yet another outage started a few minutes ago.
The new favicon doesn't really stand out well - it blends into the background of my tabs. Obviously this isn't a universal issue, but I'm just using standard themes. A white (or other color) background might fix this without sacrificing design.
And to finally re-post from the Open Thread:
It should be possible to tag posts (especially articles, possibly comments) by language, and let users pick what languages they want to see. The interface wouldn't necessarily have to be translated; it would just be nice to have some support for multilingualism.
The links from this post moved from OB to other OB posts weren't converted to LessWrong links, they still point to Overcoming Bias (which promptly redirects back here).
Some comments seem to be missing from some posts moved from Overcoming Bias. For example this one: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Agree+with+Denis.+It+seems+rather+objectionable+to+describle+such+behaviour+as+irrational.%22
Here's the search result as of now, in case Google updates its index:
Overcoming Bias: The Allais Paradox Agree with Denis. It seems rather objectionable to describle such behaviour as irrational. Humans may well not trust the experimenter to present the facts ... www.overcomingbias.com/2008/01/allais-paradox.html?cid=6a00d8341c6a2c53ef0115706bcf8b970b
"Parent" links in comments get confused when the context is on. See, for example this link: clicking on "Parent" on the first thomblake's comment leads nowhere.
The comments on the old OB articles that have been imported appear to be by LW usernames that were created just for that purpose. Any chance of 'claiming' those? (my technical spider-sense says no)
We did our best to try to link up OB names with Less Wrong user names. However as there were many hundreds of names this had be done automatically. For a match to be made the name on OB and username on LW had to match, as did the email address on both sides.
If you supplied an email address on OB then that will have been imported and you can claim the account by following the forgotten password process for the account. Assuming it has your email address you will be sent an email and be able to reset the password.
My username on OB was slightly different. Is there any way to merge those comments into this account after the fact? If not, no worries.
I don't have any particular interest in claiming the other account if merging isn't possible.
There are some problems with fonts in the post 2-Place and 1-Place Words moved from Overcoming Bias (see the infinity symbols in the first quotation block).
I'd like the recent posts to show the number of comments, just like the front page does.
I'd like the non-post pages that show comments, like the new comments page and user pages, to show the number of children for each comment.
The picture wasn't inlined in this post moved from OB.
ETA: See also this report.
There is now a new wiki.
All the content from the wikia wiki has been migrated to the new wiki.
However the users can't be exported and hence weren't migrated. You may create an account at the new wiki with the same username as the wikia wiki and then you will have the same user page and all your contributions will match on your username.
For those that have been looking carefully you will have noticed the link to the new wiki next to the about link in the nav bar.
Enjoy :)
For those that have been keeping an eye on the new wiki you may have noticed a couple of things change recently.
First anonymous editing has been disabled, so you have to login to the wiki in order to contribute.
Second the URLs are in wikipedia style format, so articles can be accessed like http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Utilon instead of http://wiki.lesswrong.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Utilon (the second form still works of course)
Three issues:
First, as others have mentioned, posting to drafts seems to actually post the article publicly. Is that just how it shows for the individual user, causing it to appear in "new" only for them but not for anyone else, or is that a bug with LW?
Second, I set some text as bold in a posting, it displayed as bold in the article editor... But in the actual posting... it didn't.
Third: Google Chrome (the browser I'm currently using) has a built in spellcheck that seems to work in text entry boxes, including those for entering comments on LW. But in the article editor, it seems to not operate. I'm not sure if the problem is with Chrome or LW, but I thought I'd mention this issue at least.
New shows all categories you can see including your drafts, others can't see your drafts. See the FAQ
This is an issue specific to browsers that use WebKit, namely safari and chrome. Unfortunately we can't do anything about this, though it appears to be fixed in the latest WebKit (used by safari 4 beta)
I made a change such that where possible the browser spell check will be on. Firefox and safari appear to work and provide support. IE6,7,8, chrome and opera don't.
When I click on links here, the first time my browser usually gives a popup saying that I am trying to open a file of type application/octet stream and asks me what program I want to use to download the file. The second time I try the same link it works fine.
I found some threads on the Firefox help forum about it, and they say the problem is with the server. Any way you can get this fixed? Is anyone else having this problem?
Inbox links!
Massive thanks to whoever coded in a link to my inbox just under my karma score. I haven't gotten a comment reply since this appeared, so I can't tell whether it gives notification -- would anyone care to test it?
It should work fine - I tested it heaps :)
Maybe this is a dumb question, but is there any reason I'm suddenly unable to edit my comments? I've been typing quickly tonight and have been making an annoyingly high number of typos.
Apologies to anyone I've annoyed with them btw.
I'm having problems saving a post in drafts, it keeps on losing the text. Is this just me?
It would be wonderful if those pressed for time could have a link where they could see the top-scoring comments of the last day/week/etc.
When viewing a post with styles off, the comment headers are shown twice. Example:
badger22 April 2009 05:14:21PM* 2 points [+] (0 children)
badger22 April 2009 05:14:21PM* 2 points [-]
Also, you'll notice a lot of cruft at the bottom of the page, that is presumably hidden by styles.
I don't see a way to send my new article to the mods. When I'm done editing in my drafts folder, then what?
We made a recent change such that when you are creating or editing an article the "post to" selection always shows LessWrong. In the case that you don't yet have enough karma to post to LessWrong then it will be grayed out and have a message next to it explaining why.
Old versions of IE unfortunately don't honor the grayed out option. In this case you can select LessWrong but submitting will inform you that you can't yet submit to the LessWrong category (of course you can always save to your drafts).
To publish an article, you need to have at least 20 points of Karma. Granted, this rule should be placed somewhere visible to the newcomers. It doesn't seem to be on the About page.
Terminology. Try to be consistent. "Liked" and "Vote Up": pick one and stick with it. IMHO
For those who don't get this one right away, if you check your user page, you see links to 'liked' and 'disliked' as categories of posts that you voted up or down. Since this doesn't seem to quite match the semantics of voting, the names of the categories on the user pages should be changed.
How about a basic Users' Guide, and include a link to it right in the top links bar?
PhilGoetz is not on the "Top Contributors" list, despite having more karma than many on that list (Goetz has 646, while five others listed have 615, 536, 513, 504, 495).
I don't know if this is due to a bug or to some feature I don't know about.
We've deployed a fix for the Top Contributors that should see all 10 users listed. Although it may not be immediately visible due to client and server side caching. You may need to give it up to an hour before it shows up.
awesome, thanks =)
I disappeared because I banned my "anti-rationality quotes" post. Today I found out how to unban it and then hide it; but my name didn't reappear on the list.
ciphergoth is still missing, and 1 other person.
Thanks for noticing. :)
A "Reply" button is present in the list of comments on (other) users' pages, but doesn't work.
On the global "Comments" page, it's not possible to edit your comments, even though it's possible to write replies (and later edit them).
"Bookmark" widget is annoying: mouse over it causes the pop-up list of bookmark services to appear, which sometimes doesn't want to go away.
On the Recent Posts page, there is an option to sort by new or sort by rising. If you selected "sort by rising", it does not display any posts
We need to run a periodic process on the server to make rising work. I've raised an issue to address this.