[META] A word on feature requests

Submitted by emma in meta (edited )

Before you make a feature request, consider if it's possible that you could implement the feature yourself. Otherwise, please don't make the request.

Since no one else is stepping up, when you make a feature request, you are asking me to perform unpaid labour for you. This seems very much contradictory to the almost-romantic relationship many here have to free software, where one of the big benefits touted is that whoever is in possession of the software may improve upon it. And yet, other than translations, I see precious little of outside contributions--only a handful of people have touched the actual code.

Up until now, I've done my utmost to try and meet peoples' wishes, but in the long run it's alienating to keep giving and never receiving anything in return. The backlog of bugs to fix, improvements to make, and features to implement keeps growing. My calls for help with Postmill consistently go unanswered. People who promise to help out never get in touch with me again.

I ask that admins reword the sidebar to remove mention of 'features' and 'Postmill' in the same sentence. Thanks, whoever did this. I also won't take new feature requests on the issue tracker, unless they pertain to moderation tools.

P.S. For those interested in helping out, I ask that you come up with ways to improve the navigation bar with the 'hot/new/top/etc...' buttons. Otherwise, the front page will break mobile forever.

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dele_ted wrote

Thank you for your work emma. I wish i could help., but I'm not good with PHP. I'm working every day without exception on Konsent, though, which can hopefully soon blend with the community here.

I don't think the issue is that people don't want to help; most just don't have what it takes. I really hope you don't burn out. If you're losing faith in the project, perhaps you should just take a long break until you're ready again. If you don't, you'll probably come to hate it and never be able to enjoy working on it again.

11

emma OP wrote (edited )

but I'm not good with PHP.

I don't think this is the issue, though. The frontend code (HTML, CSS, JS) is completely decoupled from the PHP code, but very few people contribute to that either.

Everyone who uses computers and phones is familiar with user interfaces, and has their own expectations of how they should behave. Just being sent MS Paint mockups (like this one I made) of how something ought to look like would be of much help, since UI isn't my field of expertise.

I don't think I'm going to burn out. I just feel a bit salty after someone sent me a disrespectful email a few days ago, which made me think about the unequal relationship between maintainers and consumers of free software.

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dele_ted wrote

I didn't know front-end was something that required attention, and just assumed i couldn't help, because almost all of the feature requests were about actual features and not front-end changes.

When Konsent is in a working state, or when i get tired of it and need a break, I'll send you a message or just keep an eye on the issue tracker for something i can help with! I'm good with CSS and alright with PSD designs or mockups.

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J7383 wrote

Name and shame. Only way they'll learn.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Sidebar updated! Let me know if it needs work :)

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emma OP wrote

Thanks. If I may suggest an improvement, I'd link the repository directly in the paragraph instead of referring to the link further down.

6

leftous wrote

Thanks for all the work Emma :D

I think I have an idea for how the mobile categories should be, ill experiment with the themes

5

PerfectSociety wrote

Hi u/emma I just wanted to say thank you for the search feature. It's really helpful! :D

5

Fossidarity wrote

Hi emma, as someone who has made some requests I feel bad about it now; I appreciate everything you did for us and I don't want to pressure you or ask your time. I made the suggestions without expectations of seeing them implemented, but more as a source of inspiration if you feel like implementing something new.

Is there a way I can support you in non web-dev related things? I like to think that I'm good at programming but PHP, CSS & JS are all things I don't really do. The programming languages I use are C/C++ & Rust, so if I would love to do something for you with that. :)

3

J7383 wrote

Otherwise, the front page will break mobile forever.

The front page is broken on mobile?

2

emma OP wrote (edited )

https://coinsh.red/p/Screenshot-2018-4-15_Raddle.png

For the record, this needs to be fixed so I can add more sorting/filtering options. Without a proper UI that doesn't occupy all the space, I won't be adding things like the linear view that was discussed some time ago, or options for limiting top/controversial/most commented to the last [your selection here] days.

6

J7383 wrote (edited )

For now you could rename controversial to 'heated' (and hot to 'top' or 'busy') and rename most commented to 'Active'?

Edit: realized there's already a 'top'. Could probably make that 'Ever' instead.

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leftous wrote (edited )

So far the best I've found that works acceptably is making the overflow scroll (screenshot).

@media screen and (max-width: 767px) {
    .tabs__bar {
        overflow-x: scroll;
        overflow-y: hidden;
    }
    .tabs__tab {
       margin-bottom: 2%;
    }
    ::-webkit-scrollbar {
        width: 0px;
        background: transparent; /* make scrollbar transparent */
    }
}

The y overflow is annoying because of the way "most commented" sorting is named. Maybe u/Dunde's suggestion would help.

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