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Discussion started by Dennis Hackethal

Discuss Veritula itself. For feedback and suggestions.

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Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#337

When all I change during a revision is the criticism flag, the activity log just says ‘no changes’.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#353

As of 9702c05, a revision activity now says that the idea was either marked or unmarked as a criticism.

Criticism of #337
Tom Nassis’s avatar
Tom Nassis revised about 1 year ago·#448

Hi all! This platform looks like such an awesome idea!
This discussion says, "Discuss Veritula itself. For feedback and suggestions."
I wanted to ask about how many members are here. And whether it's encouraged to invite more people, in order to add more and more conversations.

Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#595

See #449. Since this is a separate concern, not directly related to #337, you’d want to submit a top-level idea rather than comment on #337. The form for top-level ideas is currently at the bottom of this page. I obviously need to make this clearer.

Criticism of #448
Tom Nassis’s avatar
Tom Nassis, about 1 year ago·#549

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#344

Should probably show the explanation in a revision, when given. In the activity feed, that is.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#346

Done as of 7e7c6cd.

Criticism of #344
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#339

Should I give the icons in the activity feed colors?

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#347

Done as of 8269806.

Criticism of #339
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#349

The activity feed just shows top-level criticisms as regular ideas. They should be shown as criticisms just like when they are child ideas.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#354

Done as of c11a13c.

Criticism of #349
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#342

Highlight current nav item.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#343

Done as of 146e967.

Criticism of #342
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#351

When a comment is a criticism on another criticism, the activity should say ‘So and so addressed criticism #…’

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#352

Done as of 735c3cc.

Criticism of #351
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#355

In activity feed, behind timestamp (‘… hours ago’), link to corresponding discussion.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#356

Done as of e3f2c5b.

Criticism of #355
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#408

There should be user profiles.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#410

Done as of b3c06c4, see eg my profile.

Criticism of #408
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#414

Since the diff processes the text as a single line, the hunk header is always going to say either @@ -0,0 +1 @@ (for the first version) or @@ -1 +1 @@ (for every subsequent version). Meaning the header provides no real information. So I might as well remove it.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#416

Done as of 8d3eed0, see eg the version history of #414.

Criticism of #414
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#417

There’s a bug where hovering over a link in the markdown preview removes the form and all typed text. Hovering over a link should have no effect on the form.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1747

Fixed as of b555677.

Criticism of #417
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#420

Now that there are user profiles (#408), each profile can have a tab for unproblematic ideas. Among all the ideas a user has submitted, those are the ones he can rationally hold. And another tab for problematic ideas, ie ideas he has submitted that he cannot rationally hold.

Criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#422

Diffs should omit unchanged lines. Maybe just leave up to three lines around changed content for context – that’s how git does it.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#426

Done as of cc8e3e9. It now says ‘x unchanged lines collapsed’. See eg this activity.

Criticism of #422
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#424

Would be neat linking to a specific activity.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#425

Done as of a02e6c4, see eg this activity.

Criticism of #424
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 2 months ago·#1749

Each activity should have a distinct HTML title. The browser history and search results in search engines all look the same…

Criticism of #425Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1751

Done as of 7ef69da.

Criticism of #1749
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#434

There’s a bug where right-clicking in a form to paste text doesn’t result in the preview updating.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#435

Fixed as of b5d435e.

Criticism of #434
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#437

Dirk Meulenbelt says the concept of revising someone else’s idea is not intuitive.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#444

The following commits should address this:

  • 3af3966 Clarify in title that someone revised an idea (rathen than originated idea)

    The HTML title now says ‘Idea x revised by…’

  • 6c70cea Underneath idea, indicate that someone revised an idea (rather than submitted it)

    It says ‘Dennis Hackethal, 1 day ago’ for new ideas, ‘Dennis Hackethal revised 1 day ago’ for revisions

  • d20d386 Explain that users can revise each others’ ideas

    As part of the alert on the revision page, when the user is about to revise someone else’s idea.

  • c5748e3 Turn ‘revise’ link into ‘revise their idea’ when it’s someone else’s idea

    Underneath each idea.

  • e0fbd41 List user under each revision in version history

    So that each version is clearly attributed to the corresponding user.

  • 06d3241 List contributors at top of version history

    Comma-separated list to see all contributors at a glance. Eg see here

Criticism of #437
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#449

Tom Nassis asks (#448):

I wanted to ask about how many members are here.

Currently 7.

And whether it's encouraged to invite more people, in order to add more and more conversations.

Yes.

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#453

The more ideas there are in a discussion, the further the form for top-level ideas is pushed down. Then people don’t know how to submit a new idea and comment on an existing one instead, even if it’s unrelated, as happened with #448. So I need to make this clearer.

Criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1764

The way IG solves this is by rendering the form in a fixed position. It’s still on the bottom but always remains visible.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1768

Facebook does it this way, too.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1767

Reddit is a bit different because they have multiple subreddits/communities, but each community has top-level posts which people can then comment on. They have a completely separate page/UI for top-level posts. And then directly underneath a top-level post, there’s a textarea saying “Join the conversation”.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#452

Now that there are notifications, people should be able to @mention each other.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#456

Mostly done, apart from some polishing, as of 5f5c545. Eg @dennis-hackethal.

Criticism of #452
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Tom Nassis revised about 1 year ago·#500

I'm still getting a feel for this platform. I'm wondering whether it would help promote wider and deeper engagement if Veritula was organized in terms of problems and their solutions. So instead of discussions, discussion trees, and broad topics such as 'Abortion', users would articulate problems and their solutions. Of course, the problem itself could be criticized as well as its proposed solutions. This approach might also make Veritula even more Popperian. All life is problem solving as Popper says.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#502

As I recall, previous iterations of Veritula had explicit designations such as ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ but I decided against continuing those designations. It’s been years but I think it was too rigid and felt too much like ‘red tape’. It’s easier when the only check box in this regard is a boolean for ‘criticism’.

Can’t discussions already map onto the structure you suggest?

Discussion title: problem
Top-level ideas in the discussion: proposed solutions
Nested ideas: criticisms, counter-criticisms, and further solutions

Note also that revisions act as solutions to problems. So do counter-criticisms, in a way.

So I think people can already use Veritula in the way you suggest.

They can also use it like this:

Discussion title: some topic (such as ‘abortion’)
Top-level ideas: problems
Nested ideas: solutions, criticisms and so on

Criticism of #500
Tom Nassis’s avatar
Tom Nassis revised about 1 year ago·#506

Makes sense to me.
'Discussions' is a much broader term than 'problems and their solutions.'
So I can see how that would allow for greater freedom.
I can also imagine some of the challenges presented in prior iterations of Veritula, if it had more of a 'problems and their solutions' structure.
Perhaps some of this theory of problem-solving just shared can make it into 'How Does Veritula Work?'
Yes, I do think discussions can map onto the structure I suggest.
So, no worries. I was wondering whether the 'Discussion Titles' can draw in current and future users in a more frictionless manner with problem statements.

But if it was tried before, why try it again? Thanks.

Criticism of #502Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#509

You marked this as a criticism but it sounds like you’re agreeing with me.

Criticism of #506
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#511

Perhaps some of this theory of problem-solving just shared can make it into 'How Does Veritula Work?'

Done, see #510.

I was wondering whether the 'Discussion Titles' can draw in current and future users in a more frictionless manner with problem statements.

I think you’re right, that would be best.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#503

You suggest replacing discussion trees:

[I]nstead of […] discussion trees […] users would articulate problems and their solutions.

But then you also write:

Of course, the problem itself could be criticized as well as its proposed solutions.

Which means you’d still have trees regardless. So that sounds like a contradiction.

Criticism of #500Criticized1oustanding criticism
Tom Nassis’s avatar
Tom Nassis, about 1 year ago·#508

To be clear, I'm not opposed to 'trees' in general.

I was wondering whether 'discussion trees' can be replaced with 'problems-and-their-solutions trees' (for lack of a better phrasing).

Criticism of #503
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Tom Nassis, about 1 year ago·#501

Veritula should have a section with a list of all its current members.

For now, people just have profiles.

But having a list of members would build a sense of rapport between the participants.

And would promote a greater flow of communication.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#504

Good idea. I’ve added this to my list of features to implement.

Tom Nassis’s avatar
Tom Nassis, about 1 year ago·#550

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#514

Done as of 6251b6a, see veritula.com/members.

Criticism of #501
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Tom Nassis, about 1 year ago·#551

Thank you, Dennis.👍

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#515

[H]aving a list of members would build a sense of rapport between the participants.

Just so you know, although I’ve implemented the list of members, I do want to be clear that Veritula is not meant for socializing.

Tom Nassis’s avatar
Tom Nassis revised about 1 year ago·#553

I know what you mean, but Veritula unavoidably facilitates public (i.e. social) interactions, no? Of a certain kind, to be clear. Ideas, ideas, ideas.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#562

Well, discussions are necessarily a ‘social’ activity in that they involve at least two people, yes. I just don’t want Veritula to be yet another social network.

In a mixed society, people can prioritize truth seeking or fitting in but not both.

Tom Nassis’s avatar
Tom Nassis, about 1 year ago·#554

Veritula deserves to scale to the size of Wikipedia.

But it never will, unless its users innovate.

How can the global success of Wikipedia inspire Veritula?

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#628

I agree that Veritula deserves to scale to something huge.

Looking through the history of Wikipedia, I see that its core concept is that of “compiling the world's knowledge in a single location […]”. To be clear, I think the core concept of Veritula is to be a programmatic implementation of Popper’s rational discussion methodology; it then becomes a dictionary for ideas as a result. It’s also less about listing facts and more about listing ideas and their logical relationship (though criticisms do provide built-in fact-checking mechanisms). That said, with enough users, Veritula could become a place with a lot of knowledge.

The linked site traces some of the success of Wikipedia to volunteers: “The use of volunteers was integral in making and maintaining Wikipedia.” So early adopters such as yourself are crucial.

In addition, 9/11 apparently played a role in making Wikipedia famous:

The September 11 attacks spurred the appearance of breaking news stories on the homepage, as well as information boxes linking related articles. At the time, approximately 100 articles related to 9/11 had been created. After the September 11 attacks, a link to the Wikipedia article on the attacks appeared on Yahoo!'s home page, resulting in a spike in traffic.

Veritula could be a place where people break news stories and others can quickly fact-check and improve upon reports by revising them. An urgent story would draw a lot of users to the site, too.

Something like Wikipedia’s arbitration process could be interesting, too.

Something similar to Wikipedia’s page-protection feature to combat “edit warring” and “prevent vandalism” could address the issue of people posting criticisms in rapid succession to protect their pet ideas.

Your suggestion to look to Wikipedia for inspiration is spot on. Thanks.

Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin Davies, 11 days ago·#2304

Would it be possible / worth it to produce a competitor to Wikipedia based on Popperian epistemology? Larry Sanger (a founder of Wikipedia) has said that he now thinks Wikipedia should have competing articles on the same topic to allow for the fact that people disagree.

The idea of having a Wikipedia equivalent that presents high quality competing articles detailing different alternative explanations for things (with some sort of versioning and methods of criticism) excites me greatly.

I have thought of producing something like this myself, which was part of what drew me to Veritula.

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis HackethalOP, 10 days ago·#2311

Would it be possible / worth it to produce a competitor to Wikipedia based on Popperian epistemology?

Yes, sure.

The idea of having a Wikipedia equivalent that presents high quality competing articles detailing different alternative explanations for things (with some sort of versioning and methods of criticism) excites me greatly.

Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.

We ‘just’ need to get more users. As I wrote in #628, posting a breaking news story could work. If users submit ideas on events as they unfold and then criticize those ideas, visitors see what’s happening at a glance. It could be easier for them to know which ideas they can adopt than on conventional news channels or even Wikipedia, IMO.

There are also ‘timeless’ debates that have been going on for decades where Veritula can offer clarity. Like on the abortion debate. People shouldn’t have to keep debating that over and over when it’s a matter where objective truth can be found and then acted on.

I have thought of producing something like this myself, which was part of what drew me to Veritula.

I’m curious btw, how did you hear about Veritula?

Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Benjamin Davies, 10 days ago·#2312

Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.

One thing that Wikipedia articles are very good for is providing well-structured information on a given subject. Discussion threads are not so well structured (the order of information is not based on how high-level or foundational it is, like an encyclopedia entry would be, but rather on the nested chronology of whatever discussion happened to take place.)

Criticism of #2311
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Benjamin Davies, 10 days ago·#2313

Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.

Veritula emphasises making one point at a time for ease of criticism and discussion, which is useful in a forum but makes absorbing the totality of an idea a little more tedious compared to a quick glance at an encyclopedia article. (It is possible I have misunderstood some aspect of Veritula here.)

Criticism of #2311Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, 6 days ago·#2357

Veritula cautions against making multiple points at once so as to avoid ‘bulk criticism’. But people can write as much as they want in a single idea. For example, you can find several long-form articles in ‘How Does Veritula Work?’. It just depends on how confident people are in their ideas, and how much they have practiced using Veritula.

Criticism of #2313
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar

As much as I dislike LLMs, I’m thinking of using them to show summaries of discussions at the top of the page. Summaries would reflect ideas without pending criticisms.

Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin Davies, 2 days ago·#2477

I think definitely worth trying, sounds like fun

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Benjamin Davies, 10 days ago·#2314

My vision is for an online encyclopedia that contains complete articles describing the totality of a perspective, with articles for alternate explanations readily available. I see many problems with this idea but I think it is worth exploring.

Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin Davies, 10 days ago·#2315

I’m curious btw, how did you hear about Veritula?

I believe I came across it while exploring your blog. My ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea was particularly sharp in my mind in that moment, so I was very excited to see how you had set things up here. I think a tremendous amount of it is transferable.

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar

I’m happy to have you and for your contributions, but I have to ask: do you see yourself building a Veritula competitor at some point in the future?

Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin Davies revised 8 days ago·#2353

No, I think the ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea is too different to Veritula for it to be a competitor. Veritula is primarily a discussion tool. I envision more of an encyclopedia of competing ideas presented independently of each other, with no (or very little) discussion functionality.

For example, on the topic of addiction, this site would contain different articles explaining different models of what addiction is, how it works, etc. Each article would explain the given model from within its own framework, rather than from some pre-approved framework and set of sources (as is currently the case at Wikipedia).

I realise “methods of criticism” in my reply above may have confused that somewhat.

I think my idea could be made within Veritula, if you would be interested. Different explanations could be cataloged in Wikipedia-style articles (with versioning), which could then be referred to and discussed in threads here. Maybe we should open a discussion for this potential feature?

At the end of the day, I think something like that should exist in the world, and I am indifferent to how it might come about. It wouldn’t bother me if I wasn’t involved. I would also consider financially supporting someone who gave me good reason to think they had the vision, the motivation, and the technical skill to create it.

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Dennis HackethalOP, 6 days ago·#2356

I would also consider financially supporting someone who gave me good reason to think they had the vision, the motivation, and the technical skill to create it.

I’m interested. Let’s continue this discussion privately for now. Email me: dh at dennishackethal.com

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#651

To prevent edit warring and vandalism, maybe Veritula could have a reputation system similar to that of Stack Overflow, where you need to earn enough reputation before you can edit someone else’s post, say.

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Dennis HackethalOP, 10 months ago·#1125

Password reset is broken

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, 9 months ago·#1136

Workaround: have users email me for password reset for now. Re-evaluate when I have enough users to merit additional infrastructure for sending emails.

Criticism of #1125
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1753

I should revisit this now that I have email infrastructure in place.

Criticism of #1136Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1759

Done as of 9c14b22.

Criticism of #1753
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Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months ago·#1586

Need email notifications.

Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months ago·#1590

They are now implemented.

Criticism of #1586
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1752

See #595. The form for new ideas is pushed to the very bottom of the discussion page. For long discussion, that means users won’t know where to submit new ideas.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1754

Duplicate of #453.

Criticism of #1752
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1755

Newly added comments keep animating when hidden and then unhidden.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1758

Fixed as of 985430e.

Criticism of #1755
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1760

All emails have unsubscribe links, but people shouldn’t be able to unsubscribe from system emails like password resets.

Criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1761

Friendly IDs for discussions would be nice. With automatic redirects for numeric ID from legacy links.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1762

Done as of e6a90e5.

Criticism of #1761
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 2 months ago·#1775

Include (preview of) content in idea URLs: '/ideas/123-first-30-or-so-chars-of-idea-here'.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1765

That would make idea URLs more meaningful, but there’s something simple and beautiful about the shorter URLs that only have the numeric ID.

Criticism of #1775Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1766

Could have backwards compatibility for the short version and continue using the hashtag in the UI. Best of both worlds?

Criticism of #1765
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1769

That would mean fetching an idea to compute the path for each hashtag. Overhead?

Criticism of #1775Criticized2oustanding criticisms
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 2 months ago·#1771

Fetching the idea is not necessary if the feature is backwards compatible. Can still just use /ideas/123.

Criticism of #1769Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1778

As noted in #1777, fetching the idea actually helps. Well worth the overhead.

Criticism of #1771
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1773

Seems like minor overhead. It’s not like there are tons of user-generated hashtags everywhere.

Criticism of #1769
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1777

This actually helps to prevent rendering links with IDs that don’t point to any existing idea.

Criticism of #1769
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1779

Done as of fcf578c.

Criticism of #1775
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1780

Having features to both collapse an idea and hide all its comments seems like an opportunity for unification. Why not just go with collapsing and remove the ability to hide all comments?

CriticismCriticized2oustanding criticisms
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 2 months ago·#1783

Because that would mean hiding each comment individually if you ever do want to hide all comments of an idea.

Criticism of #1780
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1785

Sometimes you just want to hide the comments without collapsing the parent idea.

Criticism of #1780
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1786

Cycling through the revisions of a leaf reveals its gutter, which should be hidden since it’s a leaf.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1787

Make sure cycling between a leaf revision with children and a leaf revision without children properly toggles the gutter.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1788

Fixed as of 76b7ab4.

Criticism of #1786
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 2 months ago·#1790

Feature to collapse all criticized ideas of a discussion? Useful for todo lists.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1792

Or each discussion could have a search/filter form to filter ideas not just by criticized or not but also content and potentially other attributes.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago·#1793

Or the existing search page could be filtered by discussion. For example, I could link to that page with an additional query param discussion_id=1 or something like that.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1812

When you revise an idea to address a criticism, its author should get a notification so they get a chance to verify that the revision really does address the criticism.

Criticism
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1813

For example, I had to manually notify Edwin in #1811 of a revision I had made to address a criticism of his. Without this notification, he might miss the revision. If he disagrees that the revision addresses his criticism, that’s a potential error that might not get corrected.

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Edwin de Wit, about 1 month ago·#1814

good idea!

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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 month ago·#1845

There should be a feature similar to the ‘single comment thread’ feature Reddit has, where you start with some deeply nested child idea and render all of its deeply nested parents above it:

    G
   /|\
 P1 P2 P3
   \|/
    I

This feature would be great for seeing an idea in its proper context without having to scroll past a bunch of potentially unrelated ideas.

For parent ideas, cycle only through revisions that lead to the target idea. Communicate accordingly in the UI. For the target idea, its children, and any of its siblings’ children, cycle through all revisions.

Every idea should have a link to a separate page with the single comment thread. This could just be ideas#show. That page should also scroll the target idea into view in case its preceded by too much context that would otherwise push it below the viewport.

This feature would also allow me to remove the buggy ‘context’ feature.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1847

Implemented as of 632c0d7.

Criticism of #1845
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1865

The red ‘Criticized’ label shows how many outstanding criticisms an idea has. For example ‘Criticized (5)’ means the idea has five outstanding criticisms.

But if there are lots of comments, including non-criticisms and addressed criticisms, it’s hard to identify outstanding criticisms.

There should be an easy way to filter comments of a given idea down to only outstanding criticisms.

Criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 month ago·#1867

The red ‘Criticized’ label could be a link leading to a filtered version of ideas#show.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1869

The red ‘Criticized’ label could be clickable and filter the displayed comments ‘in place’.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1877

That would probably be stretching the capabilities of Stimulus…

Criticism of #1869Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1878

Could probably use Turbo frames instead.

Criticism of #1877
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1876

There could be a separate button to filter comments down.

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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 month ago·#1889

Should I be showing the comment form by default on ideas#show?

To avoid scrolling past content, I could remove the autofocus on the textarea unless a certain query parameter is given.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1888

The ‘Revise…’ button is hidden when the comment form is open. It makes sense to hide it because it doesn’t belong in that context. But once hidden, the user has no quick way to revise an idea. Maybe the first thing they want to do after opening ideas#show is not comment but revise.

Criticism of #1889Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 month ago·#1905

As of acb14e3, the revision button is an icon button that lives next to the collapse icon button.

Therefore, the button doesn’t need to be hidden anymore.

Criticism of #1888
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1892

That would mean the revise button would be at the top of the idea. But presumably, people would typically want to revise an idea after they finish reading it. Meaning after they reach the bottom.

Criticism of #1905Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1893

It could go both ways. Someone may have already read an idea and just wants to revise it, in which case having to scroll to the bottom is cumbersome.

Criticism of #1892
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1907

Done as of b423e18.

Criticism of #1889Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1928

Reverted as of f8ed700.

Criticism of #1907
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1919

Having implemented this, a problem has surfaced: when linking to an old version of an idea, the alert “You’re about to comment on an old version of this idea. Are you sure …” shows. That’s jarring if you didn’t want to comment but merely look at the idea.

Criticism of #1889
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 month ago·#1930

Add hover effects to schemed buttons so there’s consistency with the existing hover effects for links.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago·#1932

Done as of ea37007.

Criticism of #1930
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https://veritula.com/activities/1808

Since the discussions starts with an idea, there should be a reply button.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Done as of bfe04e2.

Criticism of #1953
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Bug: when clicking the link to the activity in #1953, the idea is replaced with “Content missing”.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Fixed as of 985d05a.

Criticism of #1956
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 22 days ago·#1986

Bug: when cycling through ‘filtered’ revisions (meaning there are more revisions that don’t lead to the highlighted idea), the criticism badge can change count for the same revision.

Criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 22 days ago·#2008

Any filtered idea should always display only the count of shown criticisms.

Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 22 days ago·#2001

That could mislead people into thinking a revision has no pending criticisms, which would be bad for error correction.

Criticism of #2008
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The instructions at the top of the page are clear that not all ideas are being rendered.

Criticism of #2001Criticized1oustanding criticism
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People could easily miss or forget that.

Criticism of #1992
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For all ideas, the total number of pending criticisms (if any) should always be shown, even if they are not all being rendered.

Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 22 days ago·#1995

If no criticisms are being displayed, yet the label says an idea has n pending criticisms, that might confuse people. More generally, any mismatch between rendered vs counted criticisms could confuse people.

Criticism of #1993
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See #1992: “The instructions at the top of the page are clear that not all ideas are being rendered.”

Criticism of #1995Criticized1oustanding criticism
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See #1999: “People could easily miss or forget that.”

Criticism of #1997
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 18 days ago·#2098

Any filtered ideas should show a criticism label displaying n / m for the count, where n is the number of rendered criticisms and m is the number of total criticisms.

An explanation could accompany the n / m display, like a title on hover.

That way, there should never be any confusion as to a mismatch between the total vs rendered number of pending criticisms.

In addition, when looking at a deeply nested idea on ideas#show and submitting a criticism on a parent, I need to make sure the updated badges take into account that newly submitted criticism, even though the new criticism would not show after refreshing the page.

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By the time someone receives an email notification, they will probably have forgotten whatever they wrote originally that prompted someone to reply to them.

CriticismCriticized1oustanding criticism
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Fixed as of recently. Emails now quote the parent idea.

Criticism of #2155
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 16 days ago·#2169

Veritula should have some way to indicate agreement; some way to indicate that a particular thread of a discussion is resolved, at least for the time being.

Criticism
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If there’s no criticism, that implies agreement.

Criticism of #2169Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 16 days ago·#2188

Not necessarily. Maybe somebody just forgot to reply or doesn’t know what to say.

Criticism of #2157
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How about emoji reactions?

Criticized1oustanding criticism
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People could wrongly think they have epistemological relevance. For example, they might adopt an idea that has pending criticism just because it got positive reactions.

Criticism of #2159
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Reactions could be limited to the recipient of a comment.

Criticism of #2160Criticized3oustanding criticisms
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That limits the scope of the problem but doesn’t eliminate it. A single recipient could still react in a distracting way.

Criticism of #2161
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There’s value in reacting to top-level ideas, too.

Criticism of #2161
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There’s value in others being able to react as well. Maybe an idea affects them in some way or they want to voice support.

Criticism of #2161
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There could be an explanation somewhere stating that emoji reactions do not have epistemological relevance.

Criticism of #2160Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Hardly anyone reads those, and many of those who do forget.

Criticism of #2243
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Reactions can be ambiguous. It wouldn’t always be clear which part of an idea someone is reacting to.

Criticism of #2159Criticized1oustanding criticism
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That only happens if people submit bulk ideas, and people shouldn’t do that anyway.

Criticism of #2166Criticized1oustanding criticism
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But not everyone will always use the platform in an ideal way, and I don’t want to make it easier for issues to compound.

Criticism of #2167
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I could implement reactions on a per-paragraph basis.

Criticism of #2166
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It isn’t clear what would happen during a revision. A paragraph might be changed or deleted. Too complicated.

Criticism of #2458Criticized2oustanding criticisms
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But presumably, the same is true for reactions to ideas as a whole. Reactions would have to be removed for revisions.

Criticism of #2461
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For reactions to paragraphs, at least you could tell if the content someone reacted to has changed, and only then remove the reaction.

Criticism of #2461
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Benjamin Davies, 2 days ago·#2468

Why should reacts persist through revisions?

Criticism of #2461Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Benjamin Davies, 2 days ago·#2469

Nevermind, this was addressed by #2462

Criticism of #2468
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Then what does somebody do who wants to react to an idea as a whole? Do they react to the last paragraph?

Criticism of #2458Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, 2 days ago·#2465

The way I picture it, as you hover over different paragraphs, a reaction button appears and moves between paragraphs. So it would always be clear that reactions are on specific paragraphs. The user would pick whatever paragraph they most wish to react to.

Criticism of #2464
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Those run the risk of turning Veritula into yet another social network like Reddit or messenger like Telegram.

Criticism of #2159Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Not if I do reactions on a per-paragraph basis. I think that’s a new feature none of those sites have.

Criticism of #2242
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 16 days ago·#2163

Revisions are complicated. Too many options (superseding a previous version, ‘Is criticism?’, unchecking comments). It might help to have a more guided processes over multiple screens.

Criticism
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Benjamin Davies, 11 days ago·#2305

I started a discussion earlier, and what I wrote in the “about” section of the discussion was not written well. I would like to revise it. Is this possible? If not, is there an intention to make this possible eventually?

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I went ahead and implemented this feature since it was a good suggestion.

You can edit your discussion here.

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Benjamin Davies revised 4 days ago·#2430

I notice that when I amend a criticism I have made, I’m not able to see what I am criticising. It would be good if the edit screen showed the comment I am disagreeing with similar to how it does when I first go to write a criticism.

Criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 2 days ago·#2459

Feature idea: pay people to criticize your idea.

You submit an idea with a ‘criticism bounty’ of ten bucks per criticism received, say.

The amount should be arbitrarily customizable.

Criticism
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Benjamin Davies, 2 days ago·#2467

How do you ensure the criticism is worthy of the bounty?

Criticism of #2459Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised about 16 hours ago·#2524

I’m not sure yet, but I’m playing with the idea that the criticism can’t have any pending counter-criticisms by some deadline. Each counter-criticism could reset the deadline to give everyone ample time to respond.

Criticism of #2467
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But then bad actors could always submit arbitrary counter-criticisms just before the deadline to avoid paying.

Criticism of #2524Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Benjamin Davies, 2 days ago·#2476

The timeframe to address the criticism should start counting down from the moment the criticism is made, rather than the original post. So it would be a continuous thing rather than a single deadline for everyone.

The OP could end the bounty if there are no outstanding criticisms and he no longer seeks a solution.

Criticism of #2472Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 1 day ago·#2510

I suppose that would make it a bit harder for bad actors because they’d need to monitor multiple deadlines, but they could still submit arbitrary counter-criticisms just in time to avoid paying. Or is there something I’m missing?

Criticism of #2476
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I would have it that each criticism and counter-criticism resets the countdown on the bounty deadline. This means everyone involved is given fair time to respond at each turn.

Criticism of #2510Criticized2oustanding criticisms
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Then a bounty can go on indefinitely.

Criticism of #2504Criticized1oustanding criticism
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That is simply an extension of the fact that solutions to problems don’t come reliably.

Criticism of #2506
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If you submit a criticism, you won’t want to wait indefinitely to get paid just because others are keeping the discussion going in a different branch.

Criticism of #2504
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Dennis HackethalOP revised 1 day ago·#2515

Sorry but I don’t see how that solves the bad-actor problem. Bad actors would still be able to draw out the discussion to avoid paying, wouldn’t they?

Criticism of #2504 Battle tested
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Benjamin Davies revised 1 day ago·#2522

Yes, but bad actors are a separate problem to solve (as you have alluded to in #2513, where you mention “good citizens”).

The problem we are addressing here is giving people a fair time window to respond to criticisms after they are published.

Edit: after reviewing the thread, I see that you were more focused on the bad actors problem while I was more focused on giving people fair time to respond. I believe what I am saying still stands, but maybe it belongs somewhere higher up the chain.

Criticism of #2515Criticized1oustanding criticism
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Dennis HackethalOP, about 16 hours ago·#2526

Superseded by #2524.

Criticism of #2522
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Dennis HackethalOP, 1 day ago·#2513

Idea: when you create a bounty, you set the amount you’re willing to pay per criticism and a ceiling for the total you’re willing to spend (no. of crits * amount per crit).

Your card is authorized for twice the ceiling. In addition, there’s a button to report abuse. If you’re a good citizen, you’ll be charged the ceiling, at most. But if you’re found to submit arbitrary criticisms to avoid paying, the bounty stops early and your card is charged the full authorization.

Criticism of #2472
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Benjamin Davies, 2 days ago·#2475

Yes, that was what I was thinking. Presumably the OP could set their own deadline timeframe too.

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Dennis HackethalOP, about 6 hours ago·#2529

Feature idea: private discussions only the creator and invited people can see.