What just happened? Everything is different

The more I see those pithy sayings and thoughts, the more I hate them. I feel like I signed up for a subscription of f&cking Hallmark Cards! :rant:

Spoiler: I didn’t sign up for this.

Guy

Shitpost as if you are right and doomscroll as if you are wrong. :slightly_smiling_face:

I think we should submit our own quotes from our posts.

With our consent of course.

‘Here’s my lawyer. He speaks English’
@Marco - 2020

6 Likes

I got the message: you don’t like it. What I don’t understand is what you have against Hallmark (now I am not really asking, so do not feel obligated to enlighten me).

Maybe the burden you feel will seem a little lighter knowing that small things like this have a practical value: they are quick wins that encourage me towards finally setting up this website to offset its costs. I am completely defeated by Google Ad Manager and I flat out refuse to learn Ruby on Rails – but I can still manage the simple HTML and CSS that are involved in things like this.

So, the next time you feel like rage posting because you were reminded of what Laozi had to say, think about doing the opposite and let the wú wéi slip into your vertebrae.

4 Likes

So it’s a placeholder until you figure out how to put a paid ad there instead?

1 Like

It’s part of the same system as the newer ads (the tips) you may have noticed lately. I’m almost done moving out of Google Ad Manager. I wouldn’t call it a placeholder. I call it low-hanging fruit.

1 Like

I’ll leave aside my hit on Hallmark, which is really beside the point. What I’m seeing is this: on so many sites (including youtube) we can find the spread of machine-generated content—stock images, machine generated voice, generic and possibly AI generated content on whatever topic. I find this kind of content flooding the internet revolting.

Now turn to forumosa and the many people here who breathe life into this site, speaking frankly and sometimes colourfully about a range of issues that matter to us. The late Jimi Presley, for example, was exemplary at this. Maybe sometimes he was offbase, maybe at other times one could disagree with his vitriol, but I think all of us would agree it was genuine and even at time brilliant.

This now takes me to the pithy sayings and thoughts placed (often irrelevantly) at the bottom of the threads we read. Where does this fall, on the spectrum of machine generated content (on the one hand) and Jimi style missives written straight from the heart (on the other)?

My response is: it’s unambiguously closer to the off-putting, even revolting machine-generated content I see on youtube, much more so than the genuine (and yes, sometimes flawed) posting here by actual people. That’s why I don’t like it, as I think it makes this site worse, not better.

Now this is part of the equation to which I simple do not have access, or enough information to say anything meaningful. If the Jimi-style posts I appreciate are a sign of a money-losing endeavor, then I am very sorry about that. If the machine-generated pithy sayings and thoughts are by contrast money making (as I am sure youtube, for example, is money making), that is even more unfortunate.

Guy

PS This post is not machine generated, and while I never will reach Jimi levels of posting, it is posted here, straight from the heart.

I thought the fortune cookie clip art was something more provocative.

1 Like

Maybe we could mail in our suggested phrases, or post to a dedicated thread from which they are randomly picked.
I’ve already noticed rather too many repetitions

2 Likes

Please post suggestions on this QotD thread - I’ve pulled a couple from there already: Quote of the day

The aphorisms and the ad rotator are very much not-machine generated. Actually, hang on: the English descriptions of the chengyu are AI-generated. But if we select what people have shared in the QotD threads, then you have curated material right there. The ad rotator is pretty crude, and the quotes and fortune cookie stuff would need to be refreshed manually ever few months. I haven’t thought yet about a workflow that would make that simple – the focus right now is finding time to get the ads from Google Ad Manager into this built-in process.

I’ll probably put in PSA-type announcements from AIT and other embassies and communities, too.

3 Likes

I don’t understand how Laozi quotes are generating money for you. Is your local Taoist temple paying you commission to spread his gospel?

1 Like

We definitely had this feature pre discourse no?

I will look into this :wink:

What I meant to say was that small things like the HTML and CSS coding helps me set up and manage the money making things, like using the House Ads Plugin. The costs of the website are not great, but they add up.

Yes, at different times since the beginning

Screen grab from the Site Map at the bottom of every page - from May 2007 courtesy of the Wayback Machine

And this screenshot from 1999 shows what the forum looked like in the original Ubb days. No pithy quotes here, but that post from Anthony of The Skunk Works comes close

3 Likes

I AM…fuck, I don’t want to become the grammar nazi! @the_bear where art thou?

I’m tho pithed right now!

I’m not sure if it’s related to the changes or not, but now I cannot access the full gear menu on mobile!

I can’t scroll to the bottom options of the menu, for poll and spoiler tags.
This is what I see:

1 Like

Me, two. But hey, some people just don’t like change!

Hey these are two completely different things!
:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

A change for the worse
Is a
Change for the worse

1 Like

When there is not enough room on the bottom then it should move the selections higher.

Maybe some issues how the browser recognizes the view port of the phone.

@RickRoll can you change the size of the post editor to be bigger by pulling it up?

Most likely it is an issue of lack of screen space. One could detach the docked virtual keyboard from the bottom, so that the browser uses the whole screen.

Yes, this workaround seems to work everytime. And it doesn’t need to be the gear icon. Anywhere on the top of the composer does the trick.

No. When I try to pull it up it just scrolls the topic page instead.

How do I do that?

2 Likes