patrick.net

BayArea says

Patrick, just a thought...

For new posts, have you considered changing the order of the title and the image when using cell-phone?

It just seems intuitively, I would prefer to read the title then see the related image, and not vice-versa?

@BayArea yes, it's a good idea, but i have not been able to get that to work on mobile devices. the formatting goes badly wrong if i try to put the image after the title.

maybe if you know css/html you can figure out a method that works and show me. you could just use the browser developer tools to change things around, or save the page and muck with it statically.

Patrick says

maybe if you know css/html you can figure out a method that works and show me. you could just use the browser developer tools to change things around, or save the page and muck with it statically.

The trick is to use the @media css tag to override styles based on width breakpoints. I threw together a JS Fiddle. I've only tested it in Firefox though. No bets on I.E. I never use that browser.

You can do time ranges on YouTube videos, for example:

that was done with a url like this: https://www.y outube.com/v/chElHV99xak?start=53&end=59

i put the space in the url to break it so it wouldn't actually get converted.

Patrick says

You can do time ranges on YouTube videos

I was following the first paragraph until I came to "clear critical thought."
We'll not be having any of that shit!
And apparently it's not a problem.

This is a major non-damning improvement...

Patrick says

You can do time ranges on YouTube videos

@Patrick, what's with all the spammers? Have they broken the captcha you are using? Maybe it's time to switch to another.

Chances are these spammers aren't targeting PatNet specifically, but rather have bots that target common platforms like PHP. Maybe a simple speed bump in which the user has to play a little "guitar hero" game with arrow keys to register a username.

Patrick says

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.

--Justice William Brennan, speaking for the majority

Maybe you should add something along the lines of:

We also have some free thinkers on this forum that understand that an idea being offensive or politically incorrect does not in and of itself make it good.

you got spam

spam deleted.

marcus says

an idea being offensive or politically incorrect does not in and of itself make it good

also true.

Google should have a public way of hurting the page rank of spammers. If someone spams a forum, send the link to Google to reduce the advertised website's page rank. Granted, we'd have to deal with saboteurs, but the benefits would outweigh this cost.

Ah fuck. Yes, I did make some changes this morning.

Ironman says

It looks like the "quote" function isn't posting the name of the poster quoted,

Quote thing seems to work ok for me.

Please tell me which threads with long titles are not found!

OK, made a little progress. It seems to happen on Safari, but not Chrome. At least I have a starting point to look at.

Hmmm, confusing because I didn't change anything about the code that does that stuff:

https://github.com/killelea/patrick.net/blob/master/html/functions.php#L2217

OK, I think it's fixed now. Quotes should always have "(user) says" in them. Thanks for telling me about that.

Ironman says

Trying from my phone (Droid), doesn't quote the name either.

Ah yes. Also fixed as of now. Please check.

@Ironman you're right.

That is also fixed now.

Please tell me more bugs and suggestions.

Ironman says

Hey wait, when did I become your technical guinea pig? :)

When you started volunteering. Thanks!

If you want to write a post totally anonymously, just enter it while logged out, and when it asks for an email address put in some crap email like this@that.com. The post will go into moderation and I'll get notified that it needs approval. There's a delay for approval, but then your post is anonymous.

Patrick, just curious...

What server are you using for this site?

Your own private server, third party domestic server, third party international server, Hillary's private server?

It's a single virtual server on Digital Ocean. So essentially my own private server. I'm happy with them, much more pleasant to use than AWS:

https://www.digitalocean.com/

Patrick says

If you want to write a post totally anonymously, just enter it while logged out, and when it asks for an email address put in some crap email like this@that.com. The post will go into moderation and I'll get notified that it needs approval. There's a delay for approval, but then your post is anonymous.

Or just use an alt like every other troll. Do people really need more anonymity than an account not at all associated with your real identity anyway?

Patrick says

Ironman you're right.

Name something you never hear.

Ironman says

Dan8267 says

Name something you never hear.

CIC had sex with a human.

Your site is being perused and critiqued by the dreg cohort of the finest e-biz board within the Web, (redacted link)

WTF? Un-redact the link!

iwog says

WTF? Un-redact the link!

Why? It's pure spam to use a site only to post a link to promote a different site. Did he contribute any content, or does he only want to take without giving?

Logan, on the other hand, also uses the site to promote himself, but that's fine with me, because he actually takes some time and contributes thoughtful comments.

Patrick says

Why? It's pure spam to use a site only to post a link to promote a different site. Did he contribute any content, or does he only want to take without giving?

Oh I didn't realize it was spam.

I thought another site was making you famous. I'm so naive.

Patrick says

In other words, patrick.net exists to protect offensive speech,

Fuck Yeah!

If I make a new post and it drifts down the list it disappears.

IOW the posts do not appear to be in chronological order?

Ironman says

Example: HEY YOU comes back as HEY20YOU if you click on his user name.

I'm insulted! It should be HEY100%YOU!

indigenous says

If I make a new post and it drifts down the list it disappears.

IOW the posts do not appear to be in chronological order?

By default they are in chronological order of activity (creation or new comment), and you eventually have to go to the second page to see a post if no one has commented on it lately.

But there are tabs for sorting other ways: number of comments in last week, number of likes, newest post creation time.

Thanks

Has there been any discussion recently of of username histories? I do find it laborious and confusing with all the people that change their names. Another problem with changing usernames is that old posts are harder to understand since the user is now known by a different name.

Hmm, I wonder if I edit and put @patrick in after the fact, will he still get an email?

Hi @justme yes, I got an email when you edited and put that in.

Should there be some limit on the ability to change usernames? It does get confusing when they get quoted under one name, but have since changed it so that the old quote and new comments appear under different names.

This site was a lot better when all of CIC's post were redirected to his goat porn collection.

Patrick says

Should there be some limit on the ability to change usernames?

I think one username ever per email address is a good idea. By the way, are you as admin able to retrace the changes of usernames? I history of usernames on the user "homepage" is work but would be very informative.

I cannot easily trace changes of username, because the previous name is overwritten in the database when a user changes it.

It would be possible to trace some name changes by looking at quotes of user comments, but it would be a lot of work, and still not reliable because the quotes could be edited at any time. I suppose I have backups and could look at the state of the database over time, but that would also be hard.

It would be easier to create a new table of names which shows changes over time from now on. Is it worth the work?

What does gmail do? Can you change your gmail address and retain the same account?