Another new bug

[AwkwardMD]

The channels of communication simply don't work anymore.

I feel like this line here, in particular, has been categorically disproved today.

Things may never go back to the way they were, where Laurel might answer 20% of us some of the time and be jovial and personable, but I'd love it if we could all bring the boil of disgruntlement down to a simmer.

EDIT: Not suggesting that "everything is fixed, return to your homes" but the hyperbolic "everything sucks and nothing works" is also wrong.

 

[iwatchus]

I don’t want or expect special treatment. I’m still worried about the other stories out there that are getting the same problem. They still need to fix this bug ASAP. But at least I don’t feel the need to take this story (part of the contest) down. It’s progress. And I’m frustrated because, at least as we understand their world, this was a screwup by Manu that created extra work for Laurel, who appears to be the scarce resource already.

And, wearing my software engineer g professor hat, I am deeply offended by the shoddy engineer practices seemingly employed by Manu. I both literally wrote a fucking textbook about this and have run a half dozen groups in the wild. This shit is not okay

 

[AwkwardMD]

I don’t want or expect special treatment.

I was less suggesting that we deserve it and more reminding others that "this is what a bug looks like" so that the next time someone wants to lump AI rejection in with other actual bugs I have something to point to.

Because, broadly speaking, that  isn't happening to us and it isn't because we're special.

 

[TheLobster]

And, wearing my software engineer g professor hat, I am deeply offended by the shoddy engineer practices seemingly employed by Manu. I

This cannot be emphasized enough. Most folks here can't properly apprehend the degree of unprofessionalism that this current bug exposes.

We are talking about a severe issue in the site's most critical functionality. It's the kind of bug that gets a release rolled back within minutes, rather than languishing for days with zero communication and no prospects for a fix.

It beggars belief that a website whose traffic is probably measured in thousands of QPS employs such shoddy engineering practices in the current year. It wouldn't have been acceptable in a garage startup a decade ago.

Edit: It's bug, not big, you silly Android.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I feel like this line here, in particular, has been categorically disproved today.

I disagree to the fullest possible extent.
@iwatchus tried reporting a bug, tried PMs, anything that was within reason, and it was all futile. It was only when he thought to fix the problem by submitting an edit that Laurel reacted. It's obvious now that the only thing she looks at are story submissions.

I guess whenever we need to get her attention now, we need to submit a story or a story edit, and then explain our issue in the note to admin field?
That's not an actual channel of communication. That's @iwatchus being crafty and settling for a non-ideal solution to avoid frustration. It's not the same. There are no reasonable channels of communication with Laurel and Manu that work.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I disagree to the fullest possible extent.
@iwatchus tried reporting a bug, tried PMs, anything that was within reason, and it was all futile. It was only when he thought to fix the problem by submitting an edit that Laurel reacted. It's obvious now that the only thing she looks at are story submissions.

Asking politely was never ever the way to get a display error in a story fixed. You PM'd Laurel, and you submitted an edit with a note. Most people never heard from her, but getting updated within a day was par for the course.

That worked

I guess whenever we need to get her attention now, we need to submit a story or a story edit, and then explain our issue in the note to admin field?

Yes, which is exactly what I predicted yesterday. It's not new, and this is only to fix story problems. Abusing the submission form to get an answer to other questions is not likely to help you.

There are no reasonable channels of communication with Laurel and Manu that work.

There never were. They aren’t our friends (no matter what some people might say), and they're not likely to become so at any point.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I'm crushed, they aren't my friend? But I'm a writer of stories and surely more important than everyone else here, right? Me so special! I hear you and understand, just fucking with you!

Asking politely was never ever the way to get a display error in a story fixed. You PM'd Laurel, and you submitted an edit with a note. Most people never heard from her, but getting updated within a day was par for the course.

That worked

Yes, which is exactly what I predicted yesterday. It's not new, and this is only to fix story problems. Abusing the submission form to get an answer to other questions is not likely to help you.

There never were. They aren’t our friends (no matter what some people might say), and they're not likely to become so at any point.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

@AwkwardMD, please explain to me how are you not contradicting yourself there?

 

[AwkwardMD]

View attachment 2582209
View attachment 2582208


@AwkwardMD, please explain to me how are you not contradicting yourself there?

What you mean, what you want, is two way communication, and what I'm telling you is that it has always been, and is likely to always be, one way.

Apologies for not being more clear about that.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I'm crushed, they aren't my friend? But I'm a writer of stories and surely more important than everyone else here, right? Me so special! I hear you and understand, just fucking with you!

Surely they'll make an exception for you, Millie.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

What you mean, what you want, is two way communication, and what I'm telling you is that it has always been, and is likely to always be, one way.

Apologies for not being more clear about that.

That's clearer now. But I disagree with that assertion as well. This crafty solution that worked for iwatchus is not proof of communication. How many bugs and problems can we actually report that way? Do we need to submit edits all the time?

The problem isn't that the communication is one-way, as irking as that often is, it's that we have to resort to completely unreasonable steps to achieve even that one way communication. If we knew for sure that she at least looks at PMs and bug reports but never replies, that would be an actual one-way communication. It would be frustrating but still far better than this chaos.

 

[AwkwardMD]

If we knew for sure that she at least looks at PMs and bug reports but never replies, that would be an actual one-way communication. It would be frustrating but still far better than this chaos.

What would that look like if not exactly what just happened for @iwatchus ?

 

[iwatchus]

A very concrete problem with the unidirectional communication that more or less works here, happened around the same time as the bug that started this thread.

The css was changed so that block quote no long italicizes as well as indenting. In the global sense, I have no problem with this change — (using an em-dash, I must be an AI) @PennyThompson wanted this change. But it caused problems because the change was never announced and there was no opportunity to add edits. The first would have been trivial to provide (assuming the change was intentional, which is up for debate) and valuable to many of us. Missing italics is hardly an earth-shattering problem (unlike missing text), but it is an annoyance.

 

[AwkwardMD]

A very concrete problem with the unidirectional communication that more or less works here, happened around the same time as the bug that started this thread.

The css was changed so that block quote no long italicizes as well as indenting. In the global sense, I have no problem with this change — (using an em-dash, I must be an AI) @PennyThompson wanted this change. But it caused problems because the change was never announced and there was no opportunity to add edits. The first would have been trivial to provide (assuming the change was intentional, which is up for debate) and valuable to many of us. Missing italics is hardly an earth-shattering problem (unlike missing text), but it is an annoyance.

It is resoundingly disappointing that there is no announcements from the site about these kinds of changes in advance of their being applied to live content.

EDIT: i would fangirl tf out over a rambling changelog

 

[onehitwanda]

we need @KittyOfSteele-as-a-service

 

[AwkwardlySet]

What would that look like if not exactly what just happened for @iwatchus ?

iwatchus reporting his own story by clicking "report this story" and explaining the problem in the field, and Laurel correcting it by fixing the rendering or just manually editing section breaks if she was unable to fix the underlying problem. Or the same thing, but done through PM.

iwatchus basically threw a Hail Mary, and it just happened to work. We all know how long story edits usually take. In the best of times, it's weeks. And the fact that it worked for him this once, doesn't mean it'll work for others. Maybe Laurel just accidentally spotted this one and decided to act on it. Maybe she usually puts story edit requests aside automatically, especially considering the recent problems. One case tells us exactly nothing.

Edit: For your assertion to be true, we need a reliable one-way channel of communication.

 

[AwkwardMD]

we need @KittyOfSteele-as-a-service

 

[AwkwardMD]

iwatchus reporting his own story by clicking "report this story" and explaining the problem in the field, and Laurel correcting it by fixing the rendering or just manually editing section breaks if she was unable to fix the underlying problem. Or the same thing, but done through PM.

iwatchus basically threw a Hail Mary, and it just happened to work. We all know how long story edits usually take. In the best of times, it's weeks. And the fact that it worked for him this once, doesn't mean it'll work for others. Maybe Laurel just accidentally spotted this one and decided to act on it. Maybe she usually puts story edit requests aside automatically, especially considering the recent problems. One case tells us exactly nothing.

Edit: For your assertion to be true, we need a reliable one-way channel of communication.

That's fair.

 

[PennyThompson]

@PennyThompson wanted this change.

*Pops my head up from eating a muffin, mouth full of crumbs* wha- it's not my fault! I didn't do it!

 

[YmaOHyd]

There she is!

 

[PennyThompson]

 

[YmaOHyd]

View attachment 2582214

 

[TheLobster]

If they want to change something as fundamental as how the stories are rendered, the onus is on them to either (1) ensure backwards compatibility or (2) provide ample notice before the change actually goes live (and preferably both).

Even the blockquote change, minor though it be, could’ve been handled much better. A pass through existing stories to add <em> inside the blockquotes — you know, all seventeen stories that used them — would make the change invisible; and considering it’s an undocumented feature in the first place, it could very well be done silently.

But the centering problem is much worse, and requiring authors to fix what the site has broken is preposterous.

 

[IWroteThis]

Asking politely was never ever the way to get a display error in a story fixed. You PM'd Laurel, and you submitted an edit with a note. Most people never heard from her, but getting updated within a day was par for the course.

Editing the story doesn't actually fix anything, because the actual problem is not within the story. The bug has a very specific trigger, and the page displays correctly outside of that one circumstance. So, once again, the problem is not within the story, but within the site's code.

Bugs in the code can only be fixed by fixing the buggy code.

Anything we do is just putting a bandage on the wound.

 

[iwatchus]

Editing the story doesn't actually fix anything, because the actual problem is not within the story. The bug has a very specific trigger, and the page displays correctly outside of that one circumstance. So, once again, the problem is not within the story, but within the site's code.

Bugs in the code can only be fixed by fixing the buggy code.

Anything we do is just putting a bandage on the wound.

But I can change my story to work around the bug temporarily. A bandage on the wound is better than bleeding out.