#i'm not bothered about the recent ui changes

[viridianstarlight]

Hey tumblr, I’m scrolling through my feed and you keep putting me back up the top. Please don’t do that. If I want to go back up the top, I will refresh the page.

[tsvai]

.

like fr i keep thinking about how close i came to 'supporting the site' by buying ad-free.

i had thought, 'alright they made all these promises at the last Q&A meeting so if they hold to them instead of continuing their downward spiral, i'll subscribe in a few months'. i thought, y'know, i've been here eleven years (a few months out from twelve now) for free, so since i can afford to rn maybe i should sub for at least a bit.

and then the UI overhaul debacle happened and i got to watch in real time while a huge swath of the userbase was upset about the changes and multiple staff members were flippant, dismissive assholes on their blogs about it - some even seemed to think it was funny.

and it was the staff response that bothered me even more than the actual changes, because it made it clear that they really don't care about their userbase even a little, and also (from the claims made by staff) don't know what they're doing either. like i'd been foolish enough before that to think that they were at least trying on some level.

so i didn't subscribe. and it's just been parade of shitstorm like this most recent thing since, so we're essentially at the point where unless staff did a HUGE turnaround on a whole bunch of different things, (including the systemic problem that led to what's just happened. i'm not going to say it outright bc i don't want it in the searches for those words, bc who knows what kind of staff retribution i could face for stupid reasons right).

it's disheartening to watch like the only social media site you like using do a slow, neverending trainwreck. i imagine a lot of people felt/feel the same about twitter, even though i didn't enjoy using it myself.

i dunno where i'd go next if tumblr died or i had to leave for some reason, lmao. i don't think there's anywhere left that allows users to customize their spaces on the level tumblr currently does, and the most popular format these days seems to be the shortform twitter-style character-limited posting (with no archival tag system) that i super do not enjoy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[strawberryisreading]

I'm pretty sure that this taught me that different people prefer exploring the internet in different ways.

Reading this discussion was really interesting and I think that it would be fun to write my thoughts on this as I'm part of the younger generation of the internet.

In my opinion, algorithms are a double edged sword. While in some cases, it has introduced me to new creators that I have enjoyed for years (an example of this being Youtube).

After certain amounts of time my interests change and my recommended videos don't always reflect that. Therefore leading to the feature being sometimes useless and negative.

As a user, I have occasionally found myself unhappy because I didn't realise the videos being recommended were videos that I hatewatch.

We also have to be mindful of the many content creators (old and new) who have been pushed off a platform due to not complying with the algorithm.

I'm generally patient and not that picky when it comes to finding fics on Ao3. You don't have to know exactly what you want.

For example I recently have the habit of picking a trope (example: 5+1), order it by kudos and exclude the fandoms I'm not familiar with. It's surprisingly quick and easy to find a good story and has introduced me to many different fandoms that I love.

It was hard to get used to the UI at first but with enough patience and exploration it took me about a day or two to get used to it.

I'd compare it less to the skill of knowing how to wash your clothes or sewing but more similar to learning how to use a map or ordering a sandwich.

The Ao3 equivalent would be going to Subway and creating the sandwich.

Bread = Fandoms/ships

Toasted or not? = Completed works or not

Toppings = Tags/tropes

Sauces = Language

Cookies = Ships

You can look over the choices, say what you want or don't want and generally have a good time.

For newcomers it can be overwhelming and you might not know what you want at first. It's not for everyone but people do like it.

The Algorithm equivalent would be looking at a menu and asking the server for what's good.

You might like it. If you go to that place a lot, the servers get familiar with you and will keep serving you food similar to the ones you like.

The servers may or may not be selling your food preferences to other restaurants. It's up to you whether you're bothered. Some may not like it but others don't mind.

It's not the most accurate comparison but one that can still be applied.

Because it’s a major cultural shift

Dude, aside from people just going “ugh, kids”, the whole point is that the assumption that sites have algorithms is a sign of how the entire internet has been ruined. It’s a major cultural shift and a terrible one.

AO3 is the opposite of obscure in fanfic fandom, and its entire existence is political and an act of resistance.

No shit people react to cluelessness about how it sorts content: how it sorts content is a conscious ethical statement.

And to answer this other person’s comment:

Wattpad, dude. No separate index by fandom, no see everything by date, just a massive fic section and tags that show the 1k most recent or 1k most popular.

Nearly every major fic site has worked something like AO3 until we get to the modern app hell that is Wattpad.

[outoftheblue-if]

I'm actually using your first template and managed to transfer it into vscode! I also find vscode much easier to use than the twine app. I remember that there was a twine template I found that had these handy files in them but I forgot what is was called :')

I am nowhere as experienced as you with this coding stuff and I don't get like half the stuff I have here but I hope it might help you a bit (I'm also terrible at explaining things so I apologise in advance)

There's a Twee extension you can install in vscode I think there's a twee 2 but I use the Twee 3 extension.

↑ The CSS goes in here! You just have to tag them accordingly.

↑ The Javascript goes in here!

↑ The UI design goes in here!

↑ I actually don't know what this is for but everything works fine so I keep it there. I put this code in the setting.json file in the .vscode folder

↑ I also don't know how this works but, again, everything works fine. I'm fairly certain at the part that says "start" is the passage you want your IF to load on when you first load the game.

↑ ...again I don't know how this actually works but it does... I think all you need to do is make sure the StoryTitle and the text within <title></title> has to be the same.

↑ You won't believe this but I also don't know how this works. All I know is that the compile.bat file is handy for converting all your files into the index.html! All you gotta do is click on compile.bat in your folder and it should update your index.html with any recent changes you made.

If you want to start off a passage you add "::" and then the title of your passage. (That's what I do anyway). If you want to add a link to go onto the next passage you can use:

<<link "next (customisable)" "name of passage">>

:: name of passage

Forgive me if you already knew how to use it but I was unsure so I added it in just in case. I just think it's neat and easier to use than [link]

I think this is just about everything.

You don't have to answer this! I don't want to bother anyone with this long ask! Scrolling can be...not fun. Especially on mobile.

Anyway, hopefully, you'll be able to make better sense of what I have here. Hopefully...😅 (I really am not an expert at this)

Ooh, well done you for making it work! I believe this is for Windows, and it's a little bit different for MacOS users like myself, but I'm sharing this in case it might be helpful to someone ✨Thank you so much for sharing @moonlitsorrows-if 🤎

[boomalope-pope]

Okay that explains why I couldn't find it, when you said recent I was thinking like within the last month and america fest was last december. But so wow this led me down a weird rabbit hole trying to confirm this for myself. So first to start, Here is the link to the carlos maza video mentioned, timestamped to the part about the Q&A where he shows footage of the people asking about where to draw the line before shooting. However if you're like me, I wanted to see a bit more of the context and so went searching to find the full clips.

So to start this off, I am not at all an expert investigator or journalist and so I could have missed something obvious, but god it is hard to find those Q&As. So first I searched on the tpusa youtube channel, and they have 4 main america fest videos, one for each day, between 1-4 hours each. And so look, of course I didnt take the time to watch them in their entirety at their normal speed but I did scrub through them at increased speed and slowed to actually watch at any time it showed the audience in more than a passing glance, and the Q&As were not there. Weird, right? Well so then there was a handful of short couple minute videos of like highlights and such, not there either. Still weird, but I kept persisting, onto the actual turning point website, who's UI is absolutely atrocious I might add. But so they have each speaker broken down into highlights and their full speeches. I noticed in the carlos maza video that in the second Q&A, that ted cruz was on stage. So I found ted cruz's full speech on their website and their video player has no way for me to see time stamps, no way to skip around in the video or change the speed or even see how long I would be stuck watching it. So I went back to youtube in grand and tried searching like "america fest ted cruz" and "america fest Q&A" and didn't find it still. But like this video footage must be out there somewhere right, cause clearly carlos got it from somewhere. So Im back to the full ted cruz speech and after watching for about half an hour, (theres no time bar so I unfortunately cant say for sure or give you a time stamp for the video) I did find the second Q&A clip from the carlos video with the person asking to be on the firing squad.

Here is the video if anyone would like to waste a half hour of their life listening to ted cruz for some reason. But it is there, though with a small correction to carlos, is that it wasn't the first question asked, though ultimately that doesn't change the fact it was on their minds.

Now you might be wondering why I bothered doing this or why I'm bothering to mention how difficult this was to find. But I think thats ultimately something we should be asking about this. Sure you could argue that the terribleness of the turning point site's UI and specifically searching their video player is incompetence and not maliciousness, but then you have to ask why are these videos not on youtube, they posted plenty of other things from the conference to their brand youtube channel, why not this? What are they afraid of if these video clips showing their supporters calling for firing squads are easily accesible to the public?

Turning Point USA is a terrible organisation of course, but they intentionally hide these footage of their worst atrocities behind all these walls in order to cause people to write it off when they hear someone speaking second hand about it. I'm gonna admit, when I heard rationaismizationism say they directly called for shooting, I doubted it, I thought that sounded like an exaggeration, or some sort of hyperbole and that is exactly what TPUSA is counting on, is that they expect you to just hear something that sounds too extreme, and to write it off, or at most do a basic search on youtube or google and write it off when you cant find it within a couple minutes. And I'm not saying to take everything you see on the web at face value, thats exactly the opposite of what I want, but not every one has the patience I do to spend an hour trying to find this clip and so they're intentionally making it difficult to find their most extreme fascist arguments, specifically so people don't believe it.