66 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 5 Jan 2023 \ parent \ on: SN new editor testing playground meta
Thanks for the feedback. You make good points and I share your concerns.
There's a significant number of users that can't figure out markdown. Then there's another subset that don't even understand the point of using it over a WYSIWYG. On the other hand, literally anyone can understand a well done WYSIWYG. Do we want to keep the high contribution hurdle of learning/appreciating markdown to post here?
It's explicitly a beta. I'm merely seeking feature parity at this point. Both of these would eventually be supported.
The goal is to make an editor good enough that
- it's usable to people unfamiliar with markdown
- an easier experience even for people familiar with markdown
We aren't there yet afaict but it seems worth exploring at the very least.
(Have been sharing my thoughts on the stacker news Telegram, posting here for posterity!)
I think a deep-dive into the long-term vision is important.
Are people who are unfamiliar with markdown going to realistically contribute high-quality content and posts to a website about Bitcoin and technology? I think the vast majority of this cohort have been using Hacker News, Reddit, etc for the better part of a decade (would be a good piece of research to find out though).
I appreciate there may be a longer-term business goal to make a more general purpose website for the public that uses sats instead of upvotes. But this is a completely different design paradigm which would need to be built from the ground up. Trying to marry a specific niche forum with a broad purpose social media will just bring out the worst of both worlds I think.
Once the paradigm of WYSIWYG thinking comes in, then it is a slippery slope towards Facebookization, bringing in avatars? Then reels? This then leads to the Eternal September that has been lamented about.
I think there could be some very minor adjustments to the interface to give some better hints on markdown (Again, looking at old reddit). Simple text replies to posts are easy enough for anyone currently so there are no issues there. Nobody is being stopped from posting because of markdown.
Currently the quality of content on this site is literally a 10/10 and I am just raising the flag that any changes to core ingredients that are not fully validated and considered concerns me as it only risks making things worse!
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I hear what you say about making things overall better as a whole. Probably depends on the direction you want to take SN, which we ourselves have no grand vision insights into. If the lack of easy to use bolds and underlines turns people off, then twitter would never have taken off.
I'm arm chairing here but build something people want despite a comment box being one way or another. I'm curious where the users are in this thread that have been waiting for this. Perhaps they don't know how to comment because it's using the old editor here.
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Perhaps they don't know how to comment because it's using the old editor here.
lol ... to be fair, dissenters are usually much louder
then twitter would never have taken off
Twitter has character limits. Not exactly apples to apples.
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