The Cest Pit - Do you read it regularly? [Poll]

InceptionHosting · August 2020

Don't worry it's not being removed, I just want to get a handle on wants/behaviours.

InceptionHosting · August 2020

Also feel free to give any other thoughts in a post, there are no bad ideas

Iroshan464 · August 2020

What's 7$? To see if one read the poll?

InceptionHosting · August 2020

@Iroshan464 said:
What's 7$? To see if one read the poll?

yep

AlwaysSkint · August 2020

thinks things I want to say

InceptionHosting · August 2020

@AlwaysSkint said:

thinks things I want to say

lol oopsie

vimalware · August 2020

TBH, question 4 was too much to parse in my current brain state.

Forums are a bit of a formal venue in 2020.
I would only make a new Vanilla discussion if it warranted engagement from more than 3-4 members. (say a rare deal, cool new shiny thing)

The C'est pit thus becomes my no-brain-cycles-required dumping point (when I don't feel like processing the etiquette rules.)
The fact that it isn't indexed is a plus , where you don't have to worry about google rep.

There is value in the pit.
Using the wheat /chaff metaphor , surfacing the <10% of useful grain is the trick.

This is going to be controversial:
Perhaps supplement the Pit with a Zulip instance. (3.0 stable out in July)
Topic based replies lets one wade quickly through the shitposting (a 'random' discussion STREAM would accommodate all these topical/non-topical posts)

In zulip. streams consist of tens to hundreds of 'topics'.
So, a 'topic' would be the for example 'wireguard' being discussed within the 'networking' stream.
By clicking on the wireguard topic, only those posts that fit the criteria of 'replied to that topic', would be displayed.

quick description https://zulipchat.com/help/about-streams-and-topics

So, memes, BoB, would all fit happily under the random STREAM as individual threads.

Zulip is inspired by MIT's beloved internal discussion software 'Zephyr'.
It appears to remove the chaos from Slack/slack-like chats, while preserving the ability to search institutional knowledge easily.

Since the C'est pit isn't really indexed, a login-only 'lounge' place for LESbians would not be a big loss for SEO, (aside from 4GB ram, 2vcpu)

Not thought out fully : The 10% of the really good threads could be exported out by script to LES/archive to preserve+disseminate the knowledge and boost Google juice.
Some communities already do : https://github.com/leanprover-community/leanprover-community.github.io/blob/newsite/data/zulip.md

Not thought out fully : SSO, LDAP support.

/yet another 4 line post that turned into an essay.

InceptionHosting · August 2020

@vimalware said: /yet another 4 line post that turned into an essay.

Sory of my life, I probably delete more text than I post haha.

I am not sure how well I could integrate zulip into LES directly, but the core of the idea is interesting.

The real simple option here may simply be that I just start moving certain posts out of the pit and assign to the 'system' or LEST-BOT account as the OP. i.e. sometimes just using pen and paper is the quickestm most efficient and effective way to get a job done.

beagle · August 2020

@AnthonySmith said: start moving certain posts out of the pit

That's what @Wolveix do on HT. If there is an interesting discussion going on the Cest Pit he moves it to a new thread.

InceptionHosting · August 2020

@beagle said:

@AnthonySmith said: start moving certain posts out of the pit

That's what @Wolveix do on HT. If there is an interesting discussion going on the Cest Pit he moves it to a new thread.

How is that received and does he leave it in the OP's name or a general system account?

beagle · August 2020

@AnthonySmith said: How is that received and does he leave it in the OP's name or a general system account?

I've never seen anyone complaining so I assume it's well received. I like it because it's easier to track an interesting discussion that may get tangled with other unrelated posts in the Cest Pit.

The new thread and the transferred posts keep the OP names. Maybe Discord already has this feature. @Wolveix and @Mason may be the best ones to give a better insight about how it works on the admin side.

Mason · August 2020

@beagle said:

@AnthonySmith said: How is that received and does he leave it in the OP's name or a general system account?

I've never seen anyone complaining so I assume it's well received. I like it because it's easier to track an interesting discussion that may get tangled with other unrelated posts in the Cest Pit.

The new thread and the transferred posts keep the OP names. Maybe Discord already has this feature. @Wolveix and @Mason may be the best ones to give a better insight about how it works on the admin side.

Can confirm. Something we do pretty frequently when there's lots of replies on a certain subject. We'll set the OP to whomever initiated the discussion (Discourse makes that quite easy). If it's something we feel should be public to make others aware, then we'll first reach out to make sure the OP is cool with the discussion being indexed, otherwise it'll be thrown in off-topic to keep it off the radar.

Makes things more manageable and organized. Plus it helps get a break from Discourse's infinite scrolling a bit.

InceptionHosting · August 2020

@Mason said:

@beagle said:

@AnthonySmith said: How is that received and does he leave it in the OP's name or a general system account?

I've never seen anyone complaining so I assume it's well received. I like it because it's easier to track an interesting discussion that may get tangled with other unrelated posts in the Cest Pit.

The new thread and the transferred posts keep the OP names. Maybe Discord already has this feature. @Wolveix and @Mason may be the best ones to give a better insight about how it works on the admin side.

Can confirm. Something we do pretty frequently when there's lots of replies on a certain subject. We'll set the OP to whomever initiated the discussion (Discourse makes that quite easy). If it's something we feel should be public to make others aware, then we'll first reach out to make sure the OP is cool with the discussion being indexed, otherwise it'll be thrown in off-topic to keep it off the radar.

Makes things more manageable and organized. Plus it helps get a break from Discourse's infinite scrolling a bit.

Right I guess I will start doing that then.

sureiam · August 2020

It's not indexed?! Can we have a whole section that's not crawled by Google? That'd be great. I hate not being able to edit anything that goes off into oblivion.

P.S need option for that's where we go when want to remember @WSS legendary shit posting

Naix · August 2020

Okay so I mostly lurk, but I'm online most of the time.
"The cest pit" is the first thread I view once I login to the forums, it's because I'd like to read something off-topic first, chit-chat, random rants, etc... instead of viewing an offer thread for example.
I just enjoy the discussions more than the offers.
As for posting, I'd probably feel more comfortable posting in the cest pit rather than creating a thread, maybe because I don't get the "Is it worth a thread?" feeling.
It's being not indexed is indeed a plus.

InceptionHosting · August 2020

@sureiam said: It's not indexed?!

Anything in off-topic, rants, and exclusive offers is not indexed.

InceptionHosting · August 2020

Appreciate all the feedback, what is obvious from the get-go if the votes so far are remotely representative is that around 50% of the user base is missing some of the actually worth reading posts from the cest pit.

havoc · August 2020

I was under the impression that the thread arose from discussing LET drama?

InceptionHosting · August 2020

@havoc said:
I was under the impression that the thread arose from discussing LET drama?

What gave you that impression?

That was not my impression.

havoc · August 2020

@AnthonySmith said: What gave you that impression?

The thread title I guess. No particularly strong reason

AlwaysSkint · August 2020

@vimalware said: The C'est pit

Thank you, thank you, thank you - finally put it in context for me! :-D

[TBH, like on the other side, I start off fine in the C'est Pit but once it gets to the point where there's about 50 unread posts, I go "nah" unless REALLY bored.]

Not_Oles · August 2020

Almost missed this thread cuz it wasn't in the Cest Pit.

tetech · August 2020

How often I visit is definitely related to the signal to noise ratio, and if I start seeing threads with (e.g.) political titles then I'm out.

There should be a way of masking/muting threads. Currently they are sorted by last post and that already gets annoying when people are posting a zillion off-topic things, so anything that would result in more noise at the top of the page is a downvote from me.

willie · August 2020

I read and post to it now and then. I'd prefer keeping it as-is on the "not broken, don't fix" principle. I understand the need for search traffic to grow a community and I'm board with it but at the same time I'd rather stay out of Google's unwavering gaze. Thus I like the offtopic section best. In fact why is this thread in the general section?

vimalware · August 2020

@AlwaysSkint said:

@vimalware said

[TBH, like on the other side, I start off fine in the C'est Pit but once it gets to the point where there's about 50 unread posts, I go "nah" unless REALLY bored.]

Yes, I am currently in this state with HostedTalk 's equivalent of the 'pit'. Currently I see 2082 unread .
I took a break before the whole corona lockdown, and part of me instinctively knows at least a couple of months of posts will be political COVID shitposting.

I never summoned the will to power my way past that task.

Some kind of topical filtering would have let me get to the 5-10% of good info.

Edit: @AnthonySmith As a stop gap, maybe we just add a non-indexed new thread for those high signal-to-noise posts that MAY be of value to other logged-in members. (example : important software release, bug fixed, ephermeral flash deal, a technical hack(gists) )
I propose not using PIT in the thread title to reduce confusion

some 1min thought suggestions:

? DUMP
For immediate release ? / ?

InceptionHosting · August 2020

@vimalware said: Yes, I am currently in this state with HostedTalk 's equivalent of the 'pit'. Currently I see 2082 unread

This gives me a good idea in conjunction with the poll results.

This is what I am proposing.

The cest pit gets closed and a new one made periodically so it never gets completely out of hand and thus ignored.

interesting stuff gets pulled out but kept in off-topc so that it remained de-indexed, even if another category would work better).

That seems to be the happy medium, the cest pit stays, interesting stuff gets exposure to people that would otherwise ignore the cest pit, no one gets anything indexed they may not have wanted indexed and we never get to a point whereby anyone has 10k unread posts on a single thread

I cant see a bad side of doing it that way?

vimalware · August 2020

@AnthonySmith said:
The cest pit gets closed and a new one made periodically so it never gets completely out of hand and thus ignored.

So Cest Pit 2020-Q1 and Cest Pit 2020-Q2 are already ready for serve. (for a bored weekend)
A Nice clean start with Cest Pit 2020-Q3 ?

interesting stuff gets pulled out but kept in off-topc so that it remained de-indexed, even if another category would work better).
I cant see a bad side of doing it that way?

Yes to CurateBOT/ANT

nullnothere · August 2020

@AnthonySmith + @vimalware : yes to the above points from me as well.

Gives folks the freedom to mostly continue their existing habits with a periodic (quarterly?) cleanup.

The in betweeners (like myself, who rarely if at all have anything worthy of a separate topic of its own) will add stuff to the "good" pit (or whatever it's called) and the usual trivia/junk/hello/syn-ack-im-alive type of stuff into the (current) cest pit. Maybe once in a while anything noteworthy will get pulled into the curated-worthy-of-reading-if-youre-short-on-time thread.

beagle · August 2020

@AnthonySmith said: I cant see a bad side of doing it that way?

Sounds like a plan. The old posts are not lost and the thread doesn't get out of hand.

@nullnothere said: will add stuff to the "good" pit (or whatever it's called) and the usual trivia/junk/hello/syn-ack-im-alive type of stuff into the (current) cest pit

Unless I misunderstood, it's a single pit open for posting at time. After a certain size/time the pit is closed, becomes read-only and a new one is open for posting. For instance, as @vimalware suggested:

@vimalware said: Cest Pit 2020-Q1 and Cest Pit 2020-Q2

InceptionHosting · August 2020

https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/1552/the-cest-pit-q3-2020

mikho · August 2020

@havoc said: I was under the impression that the thread arose from discussing LET drama?

My guess was that "LET has this, to make the OG gang feel like home, there must be one here as well".
And since it is the most successful thread on LET, steal the best from others to create a better version

The Cest Pit - Do you read it regularly? [Poll]

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