Thank you for another deep and thoughtful response. But what response should I make? [Note that second person “you” here refers to Viliam, but there is risk of confusion if I say something to the broader (but unknown) audience. I’ll try to be careful… But in this discussion I am sure that I have already used “you” with reference to someone else. [I find myself wishing that English had a mechanism to avoid confusing “you” references without ponderous third person descriptions such as “Viliam in his comment of <timestamp> said...”]]
The easy part is to pick a couple of nits, but I’m trying to get deeper than that… But when I back up (and look at the context) then the volume becomes overwhelming and I’m having trouble unraveling the topics. I do feel that part of the problem is my poor and unclear writing, but it is also true that I don’t understand how to use the system well.
So I’m going to focus on two nits here, one that reflects my lack of understanding of the system and one that reflects the lack of clarity in my writing. Then I’ll try to get back up to a higher perspective, which seems to be the karma thing… (But that topic is more related to my earlier reply on the karma “research” from the end of 2019.)
At the end of your comment, what you described is an interesting example of my lack of understanding of the LW system. Or maybe an example of my failing eyesight? I definitely knew that it worked exactly the way you described it for “top-level” content, but for several days I was apparently unable to see the fifth icon on the context menu when I was working on a reply (such as this one). But this is just part of a more general lack of familiarity with the system. Another example: A few minutes ago I spent several minutes figuring out that a “5m” notation meant 5 minutes ago, not 5 months ago, even though the article had an “11y” notation for the 11 years from 2010. The section heading of “Recent Discussion” should have made it more obvious to me, but now I wonder what the notation for 5 months ago would have been… (Relative times are good, but sometimes confusing.)
The other nit involves my poor clarity. I was already quite aware of the “this” link you posted to my user page and it does list my contributions, but not in the sense of “track” that I was trying to describe. There are also the pull-down notices invoked by the bell icon at the upper right. What I am currently unable to do is combine these views to get a mental image of what is happening. Where do my own comments fit into the discussion? What is the structure of the replies?
Is there a tree graphic representation of the discussions hidden somewhere around here? I’m imagining a node diagram with one color for my own contributions, separate colors for each of the primary contributors, and then a fallback color for grouping all of the minor contributors. Now I’m imagining solid lines for direct replies and dotted lines for links that go elsewhere. (If the 80-20 rule applies to discussions here, then at least the part with colors for contributors might work well enough with a reasonably small number of colors.)
For whatever it is worth, I feel like this discussion itself is already beyond my ken. I feel like the lesson that I am learning is that I need to learn to limit my questions MUCH more narrowly. (I have only looked at a few relies, and my available time is already becoming exhausted by this one reply. But was this the best place to begin today? (And now I lack time (and musal energy) to return to the karma topic.))
Also I greatly appreciate the politeness of the replies and I feel like I am being indulged in my ignorance. In solution terms, how could I learn about the system without bothering other people? (Or is that intrinsically impossible in the context of a discussion system such as this?)
Hey, if you’re new here, it’s perfectly natural that there are some website functions you are not familiar with. I am here for years, and there are still things I don’t know. Keep reading, you will gradually get more familiar with how this all works.
A few minutes ago I spent several minutes figuring out that a “5m” notation meant 5 minutes ago, not 5 months ago, even though the article had an “11y” notation for the 11 years from 2010.
Good catch! I never noticed this one. (If you move the mouse above the abbreviation, the full date and time will be displayed.)
The UI you imagine probably does not exist. What you can get is (a) the list of all articles you posted, in chronological order; and (b) the list of all comments you made, in chronological order, with links to context. Both of them are on the same page, when you click on your name.
For me, this is quite enough, because the number of my posts will most likely never exceed three digits, probably not even two (though I wish the meetup announcements were displayed separately from the actual articles), and given the huge number of comments I wrote during the years, I don’t believe I would ever want to see them all.
In solution terms, how could I learn about the system without bothering other people?
Maybe read articles with the Site Meta tag? Not all of them are related to what you want, but probably most of what you want is covered somewhere there.
Thanks for the lead to the “Site Meta” tag. I have that one open in another tab and will explore it next. However my general response to your reply is that part of the problem is that I would like to see different kinds of “tracking summaries” depending on what kinds of things I am trying to understand at a particular time.
You introduced a new example with your mention of “meetup announcements”. If you are trying to track your activity on LW in terms of such meetings, then you want to see things from that perspective.
What I have done in today’s experiment is to open all the “recent” notifications in tabs because it is not clear which ones are actually new… It would be helpful if the notifications pulldown list also showed the notification times (though the mouseover trick for date expansion also works for the relative dates on the floating summary that appears to the left of the notification when you hover over it). Overall I’m still having a difficult time grasping the status of this question.
Thank you for another deep and thoughtful response. But what response should I make? [Note that second person “you” here refers to Viliam, but there is risk of confusion if I say something to the broader (but unknown) audience. I’ll try to be careful… But in this discussion I am sure that I have already used “you” with reference to someone else. [I find myself wishing that English had a mechanism to avoid confusing “you” references without ponderous third person descriptions such as “Viliam in his comment of <timestamp> said...”]]
The easy part is to pick a couple of nits, but I’m trying to get deeper than that… But when I back up (and look at the context) then the volume becomes overwhelming and I’m having trouble unraveling the topics. I do feel that part of the problem is my poor and unclear writing, but it is also true that I don’t understand how to use the system well.
So I’m going to focus on two nits here, one that reflects my lack of understanding of the system and one that reflects the lack of clarity in my writing. Then I’ll try to get back up to a higher perspective, which seems to be the karma thing… (But that topic is more related to my earlier reply on the karma “research” from the end of 2019.)
At the end of your comment, what you described is an interesting example of my lack of understanding of the LW system. Or maybe an example of my failing eyesight? I definitely knew that it worked exactly the way you described it for “top-level” content, but for several days I was apparently unable to see the fifth icon on the context menu when I was working on a reply (such as this one). But this is just part of a more general lack of familiarity with the system. Another example: A few minutes ago I spent several minutes figuring out that a “5m” notation meant 5 minutes ago, not 5 months ago, even though the article had an “11y” notation for the 11 years from 2010. The section heading of “Recent Discussion” should have made it more obvious to me, but now I wonder what the notation for 5 months ago would have been… (Relative times are good, but sometimes confusing.)
The other nit involves my poor clarity. I was already quite aware of the “this” link you posted to my user page and it does list my contributions, but not in the sense of “track” that I was trying to describe. There are also the pull-down notices invoked by the bell icon at the upper right. What I am currently unable to do is combine these views to get a mental image of what is happening. Where do my own comments fit into the discussion? What is the structure of the replies?
Is there a tree graphic representation of the discussions hidden somewhere around here? I’m imagining a node diagram with one color for my own contributions, separate colors for each of the primary contributors, and then a fallback color for grouping all of the minor contributors. Now I’m imagining solid lines for direct replies and dotted lines for links that go elsewhere. (If the 80-20 rule applies to discussions here, then at least the part with colors for contributors might work well enough with a reasonably small number of colors.)
For whatever it is worth, I feel like this discussion itself is already beyond my ken. I feel like the lesson that I am learning is that I need to learn to limit my questions MUCH more narrowly. (I have only looked at a few relies, and my available time is already becoming exhausted by this one reply. But was this the best place to begin today? (And now I lack time (and musal energy) to return to the karma topic.))
Also I greatly appreciate the politeness of the replies and I feel like I am being indulged in my ignorance. In solution terms, how could I learn about the system without bothering other people? (Or is that intrinsically impossible in the context of a discussion system such as this?)
Hey, if you’re new here, it’s perfectly natural that there are some website functions you are not familiar with. I am here for years, and there are still things I don’t know. Keep reading, you will gradually get more familiar with how this all works.
Good catch! I never noticed this one. (If you move the mouse above the abbreviation, the full date and time will be displayed.)
The UI you imagine probably does not exist. What you can get is (a) the list of all articles you posted, in chronological order; and (b) the list of all comments you made, in chronological order, with links to context. Both of them are on the same page, when you click on your name.
For me, this is quite enough, because the number of my posts will most likely never exceed three digits, probably not even two (though I wish the meetup announcements were displayed separately from the actual articles), and given the huge number of comments I wrote during the years, I don’t believe I would ever want to see them all.
Maybe read articles with the Site Meta tag? Not all of them are related to what you want, but probably most of what you want is covered somewhere there.
Thanks for the lead to the “Site Meta” tag. I have that one open in another tab and will explore it next. However my general response to your reply is that part of the problem is that I would like to see different kinds of “tracking summaries” depending on what kinds of things I am trying to understand at a particular time.
You introduced a new example with your mention of “meetup announcements”. If you are trying to track your activity on LW in terms of such meetings, then you want to see things from that perspective.
What I have done in today’s experiment is to open all the “recent” notifications in tabs because it is not clear which ones are actually new… It would be helpful if the notifications pulldown list also showed the notification times (though the mouseover trick for date expansion also works for the relative dates on the floating summary that appears to the left of the notification when you hover over it). Overall I’m still having a difficult time grasping the status of this question.