Some Known Issues With The New Techdirt
from the workin'-on-it dept
Well, that’s a wrap on our first week with Techdirt running on WordPress. Overall things have been working pretty well, but as expected there have also been several issues and some things that need improvement. We’ve been tracking user feedback in the comments and via the contact form, and I want to assure everyone that we’re working through the list as quickly as we can! Today, I want to share a few of the issues that we know about and are currently working on. This is not an exhaustive list, so if you don’t see something here that you’ve been concerned about, don’t worry — that doesn’t mean we aren’t aware of it!
- Character and line break problems in posts: We know that we’re experiencing various text formatting and display problems throughout the site, especially on older posts but sometimes on new ones as well. You’ve probably noticed some ? characters and unnecessary line breaks. We’re slowly tackling this issue, moving through old content with some fix-up scripts (but not rushing, since there is the potential for breaking formatting in other ways) and examining what’s causing it with new posts.
- Problems with older comments: Some comment sections on older posts have issues with how the replies are threaded, and some have missing Insightful/Funny votes and badges. Also, some users have noticed that there are gaps in the record of comments on their profile page. None of this data has been lost, some of it just hasn’t been tabulated correctly in the new database, and we’re working on getting all of these issues resolved.
- Comment notification emails: Currently, users who subscribe to email notifications for new comments on a post are receiving emails about their own comments, or about phantom comments that don’t show up on the post. We have a fix ready to deploy soon, so these problems shouldn’t last much longer.
- User preferences and cookies: Users without accounts are having trouble getting their preferences to save, and some users are repeatedly seeing the cookie permission popup. These issues are related, and a fix is almost ready to deploy.
- Missing memberships: A small number of users have found that their active membership subscriptions did not transfer to the new site. Absolutely no membership or transaction data has been lost, just in some cases it was not properly associated with the account. We’re working to fix all such instances automatically, but if you are impacted by this, let us know and we’ll take care of it right away. If you receive a membership activation email for a missing membership, clicking the link it contains should restore your subscription features (however this also should not be necessary, as we are trying to fix all these memberships in the database, so don’t worry if you miss such an email).
- The Comment Scrubber: Reactions to the new “comment scrubber” have been mixed. Some of you feel, as we do, that it provides some great utility on longer comment threads; some are uncertain about it, and some simply do not like it. Also, people who use the variable width option to view the site are finding that it is positioned in such a way as to cover up content. We’ll be addressing this last issue first, then later adding a user preference allowing you to turn it off entirely if you don’t want to see it.
- Lost account emails: This isn’t a bug, just an unfortunate bind that some of our users are in. If you no longer have access to the email address associated with your Techdirt account, then it is of course currently impossible to reset your password and continue using your account on the new site. We’re very close to having a solution for this (allowing you to log in to an archived version of the old site and update your email there, so we can confirm your ownership of the account and let you reset your password on the new site), but we are moving cautiously in order to be responsible about security and not give anyone’s account to the wrong person. Stay tuned for a post about this when it’s ready (and if you’ve reached out to us directly about losing account access, we will get in touch directly as well).
As noted, this is not everything we’re working on, but these are some of our top priorities at the moment. Incidentally, I’m also suffering from a migration issue myself: we haven’t yet completed the system for checking the weekly comment vote totals, which is why you’re reading this instead of the normal comments post! We’ll be back in business with the comment rankings before next Sunday, so the posts will return, and then moving forward we plan to explore some new possible features like live comment leaderboards. So keep those comments coming, and thanks to all our readers for your help and feedback — and your patience! — as we continue fixing and fine-tuning the new Techdirt.
Comments on “Some Known Issues With The New Techdirt”
It’s impossible for me to read the middle of the “Antivaxxer tries to defraud Dallas court” thread.
Seems lile something with the comment nesting/scooting feature.
Re: Comment nesting
Working OK on that thread, Mozilla 97.0.2 on Mac Monterey 12.2.1
However, I really didn’t want to scroll through the thread because there is so much whitespace/emptyspace surrounding each post that I can only read one or two comments at a time, so it’s just a constant scroll.
I’ll test email notifications now.
Re: Re: Versions?
OK, I take back “disaster” if all you readers allow me. It’s NOT a diaster
There are three parts to this
– the backend database that contains content (articles) and meta-content (who posted what in regards to what and when)
– the part that tells your browser how to present it. WordPress, CSS, HTML, all of it.
– the viewer you use (browser) to display #1 in the way #2 dictates.
When debugging, it’s useful to know the version of the browser, the O/S it’s on, etc. in order to duplicate the problem. However, when that problem is on all browsers, nothing the end-user can do or provide will help.
Again my apologies for putting my emotional sleeve up for display. This is NOT a disaster. It’s not perfect either 😉 I’m a supporter and a fan of TechDirt, Mike, Tim(s), Leigh, Karl, and everyone else behind the curtain.
Ehud
More Issues
With JavaScript turned off, you cannot get rid of the cookie message
No funniest comments for the last two weeks.
Re: Jabba the Script
yeah, it’s easy to do a website Quality-Control check with JavaScript disabled, but nowadays most webmasters don’t bother; they just wrongly assume everybody uses JavaScript all the time.
However, the TD switch to WordPress has gone well overall.
It is remarkable though that TD encountered any problems at all.
In year 2022, the technology and procedures for operating a relatively simple, established website like TD should be well known and easy.
WordPress has been in successful operation a long time — surely their techs have previously encountered and solved all the same type small problems that TD now sees.
Maybe WordPress Customer-Service and management are a bit lacking ?
Re: Re:
WordPress customer service is definitely not lacking! You would not believe how much work they have done for us for two straight years to make this possible.
I know Techdirt might seem “relatively simple” but the truth is, as blogs go, it’s really not. We had added a lot of custom features over the years. Our comment voting/badges system is unlike any out-of-the-box solutions, the membership system is entirely custom tracking multiple different subscription tiers via integration with both Foxycart (for our direct purchase store) and Patreon, lots of our little features our non-standard on blogs these days (user preferences for site display, markdown in comments, the post expander) and some break common rules of modern CMS systems (infinitely-deep comment reply threads). And that’s not even getting into some of our non-standard back-end features that we’ve developed for our editorial flow over the years.
It required a lot of custom work to rebuild it all as a WordPress theme, and then there’s the other huge issue: the data migration. Our entire data structure was non-standard, and not easily mapped to WordPress – it required development of a custom, multi-stage process to move over 75,000 posts and a couple million comments and reformat/retabulate everything in a new structure.
The bugs we’re seeing now are what remains after making so, so many difficult things work properly. And they certainly do have solutions for everything we’re seeing, but some require special work due to all the aforementioned customization. All we can do now is continue to work steadily through them as best we can!
Re: Re: Re: ... WordPress
good to hear such strong, first hand validation of the WordPress crew
still seems surprising that WordPress has not previously encountered website customization requirements like those of TD.
WordPress advertising trumpets its ability to handle ‘Advanced’ website design.
Re: Re: Re:2
It is very customizable, but, we have done a lot of things with our homebrewed system that are not widely supported or done by others, and so it took a lot of work to match functionality — including allowing open commenting for people with no email or account (in a manner that doesn’t get overwhelmed by spammers). 😉
Re: Re: Re:3
My experience is that if you have a software that does almost everything you want, except the last 10%, it’ll take +90% of the time to shoehorn it in…
Re: Re: Re:2
Sometimes, the ability to theoretically handle anything makes it labor-intensive to handle each specific thing 🙂 There definitely is some stuff that seems like it should be easier – but so far, it’s capable of doing everything, with effort. And of course, the data migration needs were a big part of the challenge: it wasn’t just a matter of building these features, but building them in a way that allowed us to map everything from the old Techdirt onto the new one, with minimal disruption in the continuity of everything functioning, and the goal of a quick migration with up-to-the-minute data that wouldn’t require a lengthy shutdown of the site.
If we were building from the ground up for a new site, some things would have been easier – but we were also building for compatibility with the data (and just our user habits) from over 20 years of development on a entirely custom CMS with lots of idiosyncrasies and patchwork workarounds.
Re: Re: Re:3
See also: content moderation 😄
Re: Re: Re:2
Right you are. It is hard to believe that ``preview” is showing up for the first time with Techdirt, because I seem to recall that being a feature available on other systems for weeks, if not months, prior to the migration here. I suppose that wordpress had not seen it before, but that would be due to a failure to pay attention.
Also, you might think that the ``cookies” warning technology had been seen before, since much of Europe is said to have required something similar even prior to this migration. So there ought to be some way to make that work.
I can understand ``flag” not working, the idea of a special-purpose link with embedded params (e.g. mysite.com/do_something?func=this&arg=that) seemed new and novel back in the 1990s when I did a little bit of web work. And it is possible that the technology has gone the way of Greek fire.
Still, it is a shame to be moving backward so that we can no longer preview or flag spam.
Re: Re:
“It is remarkable though that TD encountered any problems at all”
Lol, tell me you’ve never worked on a legacy product upgrade without telling me that you’ve…
“WordPress has been in successful operation a long time”
Which means nothing when dealing with a large amount of legacy bespoke code.
Recent comments are now per-device rather than per-account.
comment scrubber
other than disliking it (not a useful tool), i’ve no other complaints.
Re:
What is it?
Aww,
The changes we have made, the excruciating Differences of 1 thing from another trying to make things better.
Would be nice if the Pentagon and the IRS would upgrade abit more. So, we can track the money.
ok
Sounds like a normal SWX to me.
Thanks TD and Leigh
TL;DR – yeah, it’s a disaster. Good thing we [me, mouse, pocket, other TD readers] love what you say and how you say it. So, like family, we shrug and bear it. Happy Easter/Pesach.
OB DISCL: It took me 2 yrs to plan moving my Plex Media Server, the LiveATC.net receiver, integrating ADS-B exchange receiver and delivery mechanism, and adding one other service. As a result, there were 3 minutes of outage. It took 2 years to engineer that.
If you said “Hey, what would it take to go to a WP front end” I wouldn’t quote it. Too many improbables to make it work right.
So, Leigh, yeah. All of that. The phantom notifications mean unsubscribe and occasionally check back to continue the conversation — if any.
No history of purchased extras so can’t see what’s coming down the road.
Login now finally stays… so I no longer have to login every single day. Thanks.
I know you are on it. That says to me “this is not the time to complain; give them the chance to fix it.”
V/r
Ehud
Re:
Personally, I would not describe it as a disaster
Re: Re: disaster?
This migration has been about as far from a disaster as I can imagine. The vast bulk of the site is still here, readable and functioning. In fact, I’d give it a 95% success score.
I’ve seen far, far worse!
Re: Re: Re: RE-re-re: disaster
Other than the fact that WordPress accounts were merged I would agree. If you have a private life and a business life and suddenly they are now connected, that’s no bueno.
Re: Re:
Yeah, but keep in mind that “disaster” is a lot less harsh than what he would have said if you’d made a minor grammatical error.
Re: Disaster?
This is far from a disaster; for a major software migration I would say it has gone pretty smoothly.
“Comment notification emails:”
I’d add here that it seems hit and miss as to what’s in the email body – sometimes it has the content of the new posts as it did before, sometimes not.
Keep up the good work, though, I know that any change of this magnitude always has some issues, and the issues this is meant to address have been around for a long time.
Expand / Collapse button works unexpectedly
The expand button works as it did previously, however following reading an expanded article the collapse button takes me to the relative position of the collapsed page as if I was on the expanded page, and puts me in the middle of collapsed articles I haven’t reached yet. It’s confusing and I have to constantly scroll up to reach where I was. This action is unexpected.
Thank you.
in re: The comment scrubber
Like others, I wouldn’t mind knowing what the hell this thing is. A simple test tells me that it would appear to want to give the user a way to scroll very quickly to some particular point in the comment section.
Problem being…. many:
a) No notification on what it’s supposed to be, or do for the user;
b) No instruction on how to use it – the user is left to “play” with it;
c) Insofar as I can determine, it’s useless. A one-word description below a poster’s name is vastly insufficient to determine if I want/need to go there;
d) It displays no demarcation of what’s new since a user’s most recent visit;
and probably the most upsetting problem of all:
e) It’s highly misnamed. It doesn’t scrub comments from the page, it simply links to various parts of the page so that one can navigate a bit more quickly…. that is, if one likes playing guessing games. For example, a poster above started out with “Awww,”, and that that was the sum total of the Comment scrubber’s alleged “help”. Another started his post with “OK”, and that was it. This is helpful how???
As a navigation tool, it should be named to at least hint as such. A truly functioning comment scrubber would actually scrub unwanted comments entirely off the page, and in fact, should be automatic. I’d base it on the number of flags a poster has earned for a given post, and I’d also track a posters “Earned Flag Ratio” across all of Techdirt’s articles, where if an idiot refuses to play nice (i.e. he keeps trolling/spamming/etc.), then he’s perma-banned from appearing at all. But that’s just me, I like to keep things tidy.
(Who else is, like me, tired of seeing S.T. Stone having to copy/pasta the same things over and over, because some bozos with the IQ of a raw carrot have more money to buy a computer than they have brains to use one in a civil manner? Can’t we please stop this harassment of harmless, peaceful electrons? Pretty please?)
I’ll have something nice to say in my next post. 😉
Re:
We’ll definitely give consideration to A through D as we make changes. One thing I can answer now, which is E: it’s named the Comment Scrubber after the tools used in audio/video software that show you a condensed waveform/thumbnail timeline and let you quickly shift to that point in the file by clicking. Those are called “scrubbers”! But – it is perhaps true that this terminology isn’t clear to a lot of people.
Re: Re: re:
Leigh,
I see now, an hour or so later, that comments are not posting immediately to the site. I’ll keep myself in check, as you (and your team) get to the bottom of it.
You’ve guessed correctly, I don’t use audio/video editing software (beyond the very occasional dabbling with Audacity), so I wasn’t familiar with the term at all. I admit, I may well be in the minority, but…. I am an old fuddy-duddy, and find it harder and harder to “allow” the next generation to re-define words that have been my friends for 3/4 of a centry.
Sadly, I can no longer do a bowl anymore to loosen up – my hypertension meds wouldn’t play nice. 🙁
p.s. This is not the “next post” where I promised to say something nice. 😉
Re:
Useful feedback, as Leigh noted, but I’ll note that (d) is incorrect. Part of the scrubber is that it does indicate which comments are new since your most recent visit (the orange lines). But, yes, obviously we can explain that better…
Re: Re: re: in re: The comment scrubber
Leigh,
Thanks!
………………………….
Mike,
I understand, and your remark about better instructions is appreciated. I’ll tend to be patient for the next several days, unless something really show-stopping comes to my attention.
Now, a wish. My request is for a “feature” we’ve never had, but now, under WordPress, perhaps we can get an Edit button for our own posts? A Delete button would also be nice, but a lower priority, in my opinion. I know they can do this, it’s offered to me for my site, should I wish to enable comments. (I don’t, it’s strictly a “For Sale” site, using a plug-in 3rd party store and payment processor.)
Overall, I have to give this an A+ for effort, and an A- for a valiant attempt at the execution of the plan. I know for a fact that there’s no way in Hell that I could’ve done nearly so capable a job!! Or in the words of a guest of the immortal Mr. Clark – “I give it a 98, Dick! It’s got a real groovy beat that makes me want to get up and dance!”
in re: The comment scrubber
Like others, I wouldn’t mind knowing what the hell this thing is. A simple test tells me that it would appear to want to give the user a way to scroll very quickly to some particular point in the comment section.
Problem being…. many:
a) No notification on what it’s supposed to be, or do for the user;
b) No instruction on how to use it – the user is left to “play” with it;
c) Insofar as I can determine, it’s useless. A one-word description below a poster’s name is vastly insufficient to determine if I want/need to go there;
d) It displays no demarcation of what’s new since a user’s most recent visit;
and probably the most upsetting problem of all:
e) It’s highly misnamed. It doesn’t scrub comments from the page, it simply links to various parts of the page so that one can navigate a bit more quickly…. that is, if one likes playing guessing games. For example, a poster above titled his comment with “Awww,”, and that that was the sum total of the Comment scrubber’s alleged “help”. Another just went with “OK”, and that was it. This is helpful how???
As a navigation tool, it should be named to at least hint as such. A truly functioning comment scrubber would actually scrub unwanted comments entirely off the page, and in fact, should be automatic. I’d base it on the number of flags a poster has earned for a given post, and I’d also track a posters “Earned Flag Ratio” across all of Techdirt’s articles, where if an idiot refuses to play nice (i.e. he keeps trolling/spamming/etc.), then he’s perma-banned from appearing at all. But that’s just me, I like to keep things tidy.
(Who else is, like me, tired of seeing S.T. Stone having to copy/pasta the same things over and over, because some bozos with the IQ of a raw carrot have more money to buy a computer than they have brains to use one in a civil manner? Can’t we please stop this unwarranted and malicious harassment of harmless, peaceful electrons? Pretty please?)
I’ll have something nice to say in my next post. 😉
It’s really cool (and one of the reasons I continue to visit) that the team here is so open about these kinds of things.
I know I’m not a major contributor or anything, but as long as I’m stuck using this older system, I’m probably not going to be posting much of anything. Besides the comments looking ugly, posting seems very much a hit and miss proposition. Sometimes the message posts immediately and sometimes it seems to get lost. It’s really not worth bothering with.
Also, I took a look at the site with a more modern browser and while the comments were formatted slightly better, there was still too much empty space.
For what it’s worth, I liked the old comment system MUCH better.
Re: be patient
Please be patient… we’re fixing this list of bugs as quickly and as carefully as we can and then we’ll be doing a bunch of improvements once the bugs are sorted out…
Re: Re:
Using the custom search to search comments no longer works. It now returns the exact same results as searching stories.
Amazing!
Well done!
Having migrated platforms myself on other sites I know how difficult it is. I don’t use WordPress anywhere but I doubt it’s any easier.
People will fuss to fuss. People will complain to complain.
Others highlight legitimate concerns, problems, and errors.
You did on a weekend, what most sites do over a week.
You did in a week what takes most sites a month.
epic quality drive in doing
Thank you for being upfront about issues.
I’ve had the email issues myself. Ghost posts, phantom posts, my own comments, and missed notifications.
As the Brits say, keep calm and carry on! You’ve done a wonderful job.
Wordpress account merge
My wordpress account and my Techdirt account were merged. This was not really desirable, and cannot be undone.
So...when you get your teeth cleaned...
…once every six months for people who don’t get anxious in dental chairs, once every four for those of who so…
…and your teeth are so beautiful…
…but your tongue immediately finds that one place that needs another scratch…
…usually 23-24 lingual.
That’s like having your favorite website change. The milions of preserved articles and comments, I won’t see today. The style list and headers, not that either.
But the “tongue” will go to those few things that don’t work right.
TD folks. I apologize again for not speaking well of your result. That in no way weights to your efforts. From personal experience I know how tough it is…
Best wishes to all of you. It’s a labor for sure.
Ehud
On techdirt and me
Look. Reality is: techdirt is awesome and I’m an enigma in the political arena.
My views are not party centric, and can’t be solidly placed in any party.
Ultra liberal conservative, or conservative far left liberal?
Doesn’t matter.
We all are who we are. Personally, I don’t see a need to hide it.
I’m a master mathematician. I have a degree in theoretical mathematical application. By hobby I’m a linguist.
And a born tech. One of those who simply has whatever genetic marker that makes 1s, 0s, hardware or software… a simple afterthought.
If you want truth you can look at my generic bio at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lostinlodos
Or read my life-long project outline at Digital Digest. The Sysop there created the wiki with the outline of my encyclopaedia as the first post.
I first started reading techdirt some time ago. I could do without the political and bias.
But on tech issues, they’re the best.
The discussions are bar none! Sure we fight. The likes of Kobe (kobi?) and the far right.
Paul, on the left. He falls of the page in US spectrums.
As Stephen has made clear with my posting results to his test pages… I’m
Unclassifiable.
All that said, show me a single entity on the net today that is so willingly supportive of discussions.
I’d call you a lier!
**Congratulations on a week post transfer. **
My own experience says you guys put A LOT of thought and effort into making this work without flaw and you’ve far surpassed my expectations.
Maybe
This will be my third attempt at posting a comment on this site. This time, I added “maybe” in the non-required fields above to see if this makes a difference.
If not, well, I guess I’ll just shut up.
The more things change, the more they stay the same…
I figured out how to trip moderation of my comments at will again.
Trending Comments
Has the trending box stopped updating again?
Re:
And could the items the same level be in time order? It seems strange that my comment went above Toom 1275’s. Even in threaded, I would go to the bottom to look for completely new responses at the first level.
Re: Re:
If you’re talking about my “spammers” comment, my comment was in reply to a spambot, amd is now drifting untethered after it was disappeared.
I got login via new passwd
Took me by surprise seeing WP. Email to see if I was me put me in the correct place and request new passwd got me logged in.
Quick look at my account showed all ok.
I am using obsolete Chrome browser on iMac 10.6.8 osx. amazing it even got login. (Netflix will not work so you guys did good,)
Can't "Click here to show" flagged
Its just text, with no attatched function.
I feel robbed of entertainment when i can’t observe some tw*ts pathetic flailings.
Mac 10.7.5, Nightly browser, I’ve tried switching user agents, to no avail
RSS feeds limited to only 10 articles now
Hi techdirt admins,
Recently after the transition, the number of articles that show up in the RSS feed, is just 10.
Before it used to be 25.
I used to be able to get away with refreshing the feed once every ~1-2 days, and still get all the articles.
Now I’m having to refresh the feed at least twice in a day.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that techdirt is blocked when I use my real IP address.
So I have to use a VPN every time, just to refresh techdirt’s RSS feed.
Please switch it back to 25(or more?) please.
Thanks!
^
Spammers are still here
Yes, and the ``flag” option still does not work, maybe our advanced 1990s technology of embeded links with “?action=flag&ref=12341234” has been lost.
It is hard to imagine that this is the first blog with a “preview” feature, but evidently that is not something known to wordpress. At any rate, preview also does not work.
Technology can be lost over time. They still have not figured out the formula for Greek fire.
Re
Maybe your system/platform.
Preview and flag work for me.
I normally run without javascript enabled. Preview and flag no longer work. Either this is a bug, which can be fixed, or some sort of truly horrifying decision to require javascript in an era when it is such a common attack vector that even children know not to allow it.
Javascript
Surely you’ve noticed before today that sometimes things don’t work right with javascript disabled.