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Sofiechan Feature Planning

admin said in #4912 2w ago: received

Hey guys you may have noticed I haven't been around much. I got a normie job. I needed a break from being a useless diletante, you see. But it's time to start thinking again about the next big set of projects for sofiechan. You guys have been remarkably tenacious in continuing to post here while I neglect it, which is a huge vote of confidence. I'm sure if we put our minds to it we could really make something of this project. So what does that actually look like?

I have a few things in mind and I've seen a few good suggestions too. But I'm curious to get feedback from the community. Let's start with the two bigger works I have in mind:

New Indexes:
The tag/board index is a bit janky. I have ideas for improving the inference, but I think the main thing is actually taking pressure off of it by adding alternate indexes. For example we have known for some time we need a datewise index so we can systematically browse deeper than the tags allow. I'd also like to build a full text search and related "more threads like this" using the text vectorization we did for the tag inference as the distance metric for an HNSW vector search data structure. The holy grail of indexing autism is the "sofiechan atlas" which embeds threads on a 2d map such that nearby threads (again by text vector distances) are nearby, which I think would be cool and fun. The datewise index is most important, but the more ways we have of finding the conversations we like, the better.

Real anonymity with a new taste system:
I'm becoming convinced that we could actually get much better guarantees of anonymity in the event of data breaches than we're getting right now. The aspirational version is zk proofs, but short of that we could do some client-side crypto to make it so the server doesn't need to keep any records of who is who. This would require a different taste and authentication system based around proving discrete credentials rather than having floating point taste scores, but it's not fundamentally difficult. I still have to figure out how to hit the key property of "the king's eigencommunity is the definition of good taste, and self-promotion rings can't spoof taste" with the true nym anonymity system.

Otherwise, let's talk about frontend and usability improvements.

>>4901
>Sofiechan needs a way to end threads while they're ahead. Many start out higher quality and devolve.
Should we just close threads at some point so they don't just keep getting discussed at declining quality months later? Or should we have escalating bar of who can post (this is actually in the code but I have it turned way down)? "Negative" features like this are dangerous though as it's just making things harder. What we really mean there is we want people to start new threads to discuss old topics. What would make that easier?

I've heard complaints about it being hard for new posters to post new threads when they haven't posted in a thread and got any positive feedback yet. Is that a feature or a bug?

I've also heard complaints about the vote numbers being unintuitive and introducing bad social dynamics. My aim is that when a post is well regarded, you can see that, but I don't really want too much interpretation or detail beyond that. I also want to make clear that the number isn't just a number of votes. What do you guys think?

What else needs work?

referenced by: >>4914 >>4923

Hey guys you may hav received

anon_xoja said in #4914 2w ago: received

>>4912
>The tag/board index is a bit janky.
Yes, I agree. My main issue is finding past threads through navigation. Text search is definitely needed.

>What we really mean there is we want people to start new threads to discuss old topics. What would make that easier?
Perhaps close threads at some point but allow new threads to be opened from closed ones. Meaning, at the bottom of the closed thread underneath the last post, have a section/footer where it links and shows new threads that have been started in continuation from the current closed thread.

Footer example:
- This thread was closed on <date>.
- Continued threads
- RE: <Old Thread Title> → <New Thread Title>
- Button: Continue this conversation by creating a new thread

>I've heard complaints about it being hard for new posters to post new threads when they haven't posted in a thread and got any positive feedback yet. Is that a feature or a bug?
It's a feature, quality > quantity.

>I've also heard complaints about the vote numbers being unintuitive and introducing bad social dynamics.
This is a really hard problem to tackle.
>>4823
>>4827
Perhaps limiting the amount of votes users can submit on a periodical basis could help prevent voting spam? Users should be able to upvote and downvote posts without replying themselves, but there has to be a limit. If a user contributes more to discussions than that user can vote more, especially if they're quality contributions. If they're not quality contributions than that would have to be taken in account. This is all easier said than done, but I hope it gives us something to think about.

>Hey guys you may have noticed I haven't been around much. I got a normie job. I needed a break from being a useless diletante, you see.
Happy to hear from you. Sofiechan and like-minded places of discussion are much needed in this world.

referenced by: >>4915 >>4923

Yes, I agree. My mai received

admin said in #4915 2w ago: received

>>4914
>close threads at some point but allow new threads to be opened from closed ones.
What a great idea. I love it. Just change the semantics of posting to a closed thread: instead of a reply, you're posting a new thread, and prompted to make sure it's got a title, general context, etc. Good call with decorating the "closed thread" message with out-of-thread links too. I'll put it on the todo list. Might be a while until we overhaul front end though. Maybe a stopgap version first.

>Perhaps limiting the amount of votes users can submit
I'll think about this especially as I see if there's a discrete zk version of the taste system. Maybe if you hide too many replies in one thread it kicks you out of the thread because you obviously don't want to be there. Or otherwise more ways of enforcing the concept of HIDE rather than downvote. That said, if some dumbass comes into a thread and "downvotes" everything, I haven't seen that actually cause any trouble. Show me comments that got hidden and shouldn't have. That's what I care about. Otherwise it's just some guy expressing his opinion in a less than useful way, and marginally impacting post scores. Not a big deal. And hey, without further information, maybe he has a point.

One thing actually that occurs to me that might fall out of the zk taste system is that votes may not be fully anonymous anymore, but tied to a particular nym that stakes credentials on its votes. This is not necessary unless we go actually decentralized, but may be worth exploring UI options for directly passing judgement on a voter. "I stake my own cred that this one guy who voted the same way on everything in the thread is an idiot". Could also make votes a little less antisocial. Call me a fag but I do like those features on platforms like "this guy in particular emoji reacted your post". Is a like just a really short reply? There are also arguments the other way: voting should be anonymous. Not convinced yet, but let's think about it.

Consider this: instead of "referenced by:", "reactions:" and we see nonverbal reactions from particular nyms mixed in or after the replies. On 4chan you're often visually scanning for big reply lists to find the most interesting stuff. This would play into that pattern, and make reactions more social. We still compute sophisticated scores behind the scenes for indexing and reputation purposes, but socially you're making a visible statement.

referenced by: >>4936

What a great idea. I received

xmr said in #4917 2w ago: received

> What else needs work?

RSS feed links are broken, they gotta be fixed: https://sofiechan.com/p/3222#4616
When I get new posts via RSS, I click on the RSS feed's link, and it is just /p/4912. This needs to be fixed.

Other than that, maybe a way to reply to threads via email would be awesome. Lot's of times, I see good threads but the friction to login to post a reply is too much (I forget to follow-up or my attention gets overtaken by some other task on computer, etc.)

RSS feed links are b received

xmr said in #4918 2w ago: received

On the topic of RSS: another improvement would be per-thread RSS feed links. Currently, as far as I can see, I only get the new OPs (that is, "thread starting posts") in my RSS feed for sofiechan. It would be much better to also subscribe to the replies of a thread via RSS feed. Again, the goal is to allow one to read (and maybe, if you are generous) post WITHOUT the need to open a web browser, log into an account (which involve all sorts of distractions and "modal-shifts" that waste inspiration to poast great posts), yadda yadda yadda.

On the topic of RSS: received

anon_dawu said in #4923 2w ago: received

>>4914
> Perhaps close threads at some point but allow new threads to be opened from closed ones.

One simple way is to make old posts easy to reference. So you don't need a built-in reply-to-old-thread mechanism. Instead, anyone can create a new thread and link to older posts inline.

We can make those links appear nicely, too. When someone pastes a Sofiechan link inside of a post, render it as eg. "4912#4918" or "4912#4918 On the topic of RSS..." to make it scan well.

>>4912 (op)

Nuke the tags. The current set of tags is the wrong set, and to find any old thread you have to guess which tag it might've had.

We can get fancy later. The simplest replacement is an Archive. Imagine sofiechan.com/archive, and it simply lists the last 100 archived threads. Date, title, score.

For bonus points, the archive can default to Best vs Last. Best shows the top 100 archived threads of all time, preserving our best threads like the Unitarian thread for eternity.

> Consider this: instead of "referenced by:", "reactions:" and we see nonverbal reactions

I'd keep it simple.

The main place I'd invest complexity budget is the compose UI. We need better image handling. A forum lives and dies on fresh content, so posting original content should be as easy as possible.

referenced by: >>4927

One simple way is to received

admin said in #4927 2w ago: received

>>4923
>make old posts easy to reference
Do you know you can just >> link to them? What's wrong with that? Arguably it's a bit clunky to actually use from the compose page, but the feature exists. Speaking of compose features, we could have a little thing that pops up a menu with the last few posts you've liked when you type >> to give you an easy way to link to them.

>you don't need a built-in reply-to-old-thread mechanism
Well the point of that is to take the posting/replying energy that is present in old threads and redirect it immediately to posting a new thread, without having to go to the compose page in a new tab. You go to the old thread and want to respond. It should let you, but make you respond as a new thread from right there. No other special logic.

>When someone pastes a Sofiechan link inside of a post
I might have to start forcibly converting sofiechan http links to >> links. Good idea.

>Nuke the tags. The current set of tags is the wrong set
I think they're a good start, but we're still effectively a single board and it seems we need to make single board indexing better to even grow big enough to need tags and multiple boards. That means other indexing mechanisms like datewise, "more", and search.

>it simply lists the last 100 archived threads
How is this different from the current front page? Current front page lists the best/most recent 40. We could turn it up to 100 but that doesn't solve the problem. We need to be able to index an archive of an arbitrarily high number of threads, thousands to start with, millions eventually. The datewise index and other methods solves this because you can get really fine grained.

I like the idea of of an all time "best" page. This could be basically the top level of the hierarchical datewise index.

>The main place I'd invest complexity budget is the compose UI.
Makes sense.

referenced by: >>4940

Do you know you can received

anon_mabw said in #4936 2w ago: received

>>4915
> Show me comments that got hidden and shouldn't have.
>>4649
This thread where every single negative comment about Indians was downvoted to hell. Admittedly, some of the "jeet" posting was genuinely retarded, but I do not understand how multiple highly weighted posters who literally say they are indians and try to redirect all blame and hatred onto Muslims and call their debate opponents Pakistanis (which is such a typical indian target of ire) is remotely acceptable.
It may be that this forum genuinely finds hindunat subcons agreeable participants, in which case it is irretrievably worthless. Call it high standards, but I am not a fan of egregious ethnic bias towards foreigners.

referenced by: >>4938

This thread where ev received

admin said in #4938 2w ago: received

>>4936
I see a lot of people in that thread posting low quality racism and getting hidden for it. I see some misuse of the hide as a downvote (I need to make that hurt more). I see a tall highly competent white American chad (I recognize the writing mannerisms as one of my friends) getting accused of being Indian by someone who comes off as a retard. Sure I think he's too soft on foreigners but I think you all are capable of better arguments and should be less paranoid. I see very few posts actually getting hidden, and fewer inappropriately. I'll keep thinking about how to harden the system against the menacing threat of mass third world ethno-spam, but I'm not seeing an immediate serious problem. Just write more intelligently and you'll be fine.

referenced by: >>4958

I see a lot of peopl received

anon_dawu said in #4940 1w ago: received

>>4927

> How is this different from the current front page?

Front page would show all currently active threads. Maybe ~40, maybe a bit fewer.

The archive page would show the latest 100 *archived* threads, no longer replyable, in a compact form. Like this: https://boards.4chan.org/pol/archive

As an extension, the archive page could have two tabs, "best" and "latest". Best would show the top 100 all-time archived threads. This makes it easy for new Sofiechan members to get caught up on the classics. Latest would show the most recent chronologically. My guess is that effectively all old threads that people look for--currently difficult--would be easy to find one of those two lists.

referenced by: >>4943

Front page would sho received

anon_dawu said in #4942 1w ago: received

One more idea: a "poor man's privacy", faster to implement than a zero-knowledge proof-based system. As soon as a thread is archived, authorship is unlinked. Each post is assigned a new author name to preserve within-thread identity (meaning, you can still see if two posts in that thread were by the same author or not), but the posts are no longer tied to email logins at all.

This, combined with limited retention on DB backups, would provide a valuable safety guarantee for Sofiechan posters. If you run for office in 2029, nobody will be able to leak/hack your old post history.

To make this work, the score system would have to be updated; each login could have an archiveScore, a bare number representing its score as computed only over archived threads. The live score would be archiveScore + (score computed from currently active threads). So people can still accumulate or lose score, but their precise history is lost to time.

Alternatively, keep the current scoring system, but compute score *only over active threads*. Thus a great poster who leaves for a long time and comes back will have the same score as a new user. This might even be a net benefit, because it keeps the scores fresh and prioritizes active contributors. And if we maintain that threads stay active for, say, ~3 months, then the window over which we're computing scores is long enough to produce accurate results.

referenced by: >>4943

One more idea: a "po received

admin said in #4943 1w ago: received

>>4940
>>4942
Good ideas. I'll work them into the plan. In particular, I'm quite persuaded on a "best" page, and some concept of "archiving" threads (though in practice it just means you can't reply anymore, scores are fixed, and disposable nyms are de-linked.)

Good ideas. I'll wor received

anon_mabw said in #4958 1w ago: received

>>4938
It’s worth worrying about, since this forum is somewhat adjacent to silicon valley types, which includes many Indians of which many are sympathetic to hindunat talk. I can’t see any other nonwhite group becoming prolific enough here to bother thinking about, though.

Comparing the posts, I’ll concede that despite entirely true points made on the part of detractors, the rebuttals were a league higher in diction and manners.

I still insist that downvotes should be further minimized, though. I come here to debate ideas, some controversial, and I would much rather have a verbal dissection than a simple, lazy downvote.

referenced by: >>4965

It’s worth worrying received

admin said in #4965 1w ago: received

>>4958
>It’s worth worrying about, since this forum is somewhat adjacent to silicon valley types
Completely agree.

>I still insist that downvotes should be further minimized, though... I would much rather have a verbal dissection than a simple, lazy downvote.
I agree. I am unhappy with how they are being used, most recently that Liberia thread is completely civil, articulate, and appropriate but people are still hiding posts. I'll have to make it a much more exclusive privilege, and not just limited to people who have proven themselves to be good posters and judges of positive taste, which these downvoters seem to be, but more specifically people who have proven themselves to share the admin's standard for what needs to be hidden. I'll have to think about the details.

I request some patience as I figure that out and find (very scarce) time for it.

referenced by: >>4982

Completely agree.... received

anon_xogo said in #4981 2d ago: received

What language is sofiechan written in? What's the stack?

What language is sof received

xenophon said in #4982 2d ago: received

>>4965
> ... a much more exclusive privilege, and not just limited to people who have proven themselves to be good posters and judges of positive taste, which these downvoters seem to be, but more specifically people who have proven themselves to share the admin's standard for what needs to be hidden.

My guess is that, in these cases, the misuse is more sincere ignorance about the intended use of the feature than bad judgment. The problem may be solvable purely informationally, e.g., a tooltip on hover or an interstitial on selection saying "This feature should be used only for ..."

My guess is that, in received

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