

My weekend hack postmortem: Iterating - ecto
http://blog.oak.io/post/23812010432/iterating-my-weekend-hack-postmortem-part-1

======
jimminy
I love the idea of realtime anonymous forums by accident some months ago. I
was writing an updated library for Friendfeed's API and decided to write a
client for testing, but while rushing through I had left out identifying
information from the client.

It was one of the most interesting experiences I've had online; I noticed that
I was liking/not-liking things specific people would say, that I normally
wouldn't. I had somehow managed to surpass the internal biases I had built up
about specific people. Obviously doesn't answer the question of how I'd change
if I was acting anonymously, since everyone else could identify me. But for me
looking out and interacting largely anonymously with people I already knew was
profound.

Personally, I find the color's annoying and cluttered, but it is a decent idea
to add some common identity inside a thread. I like the idea in general, and
would love to see more things like it.

You're writing was great. I laughed several times during the "Then all hell
broke loose" section.

~~~
ecto
Thanks! I spent a couple of days on the article and was pretty nervous having
not written anything but specs in a year or two.

I also am starting to find the colors cluttering, mostly because they're the
first thing my eyes are drawn to on any given page. I'm not sure what the
solution is here. If I make them any smaller, they look even worse.

~~~
cocoflunchy
I think you only need the colors inside a thread and not really on the front
page... and then in one thread you could just add a unique picture/avatar per
participant (but maybe something subtle, not like a usual avatar - I was
thinking of replacing the color rectangle by a random picture of the same
format)

~~~
tar
This could be used with the poster's IP address. <https://robohash.org/>

------
prosody
I don't know if you were influenced by it, but anonymous text boards are
somewhat common on the Japanese internet, and there are a small number of
English (and Spanish and German) language derivatives. Unfortunately, even
though there are several pieces of text board software, they're all very
similar. Seeing something like this which is highly divergent is quite a
treat.

Are threads ordered by most recent post or something more complicated?

~~~
ecto
The threads are ordered by if they are sticky and then the most recent item.

I've looked into ("chan"?) text boards, but they're all in PHP and usually in
some huge file with no separation of concerns.

------
egwor
If you hash the ip and then use that for colouring the hash function is likely
to be surjective (rather than bijective) but perhaps you could still work back
to "it was probably one of these x (255?) ips"? If you then open source the
code too, do you make it more susceptible to working back to the original ip?
Perhaps you'd need some form of salt too?

~~~
icehero
The hash should be salted with the id of each thread. Anonymity on all
threads.

------
cmwelsh
Hey there mate. I'm the one who was linking to the Underscore.js annotated
escape function:

[http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/docs/underscore.h...](http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/docs/underscore.html#section-118)

If you use something like this when displaying messages, it should not allow
any XSS.

~~~
ecto
That is a very tall claim :) Thanks though, I'll read the code!

~~~
cmwelsh
Also you need to watch out for Unicode control characters messing everything
up! Certain characters (up to you to figure out which) should actually be
stripped as they have no useful function for Western languages...

------
Jarred
I wonder what the cultural impact would be if realtime anonymous forums forced
everyone to use proper spelling/grammar.

~~~
ecto
Interesting thought. How would you implement that in an algorithm? Maybe a
Bayesian filter?

~~~
Jarred
It doesn't have to be enforced algorIthmically. It can just use a client-side
spellchecking library that makes spelling errors very visible. When it detects
> $THRESHOLD errors, then it shows a warning saying, "Your post will be
partially hidden if you don't fix your spelling/grammar errors." Then, on the
client-side, it changes the opacity to something like 0.5 for posts with >
$THRESHOLD spelling/grammar errors.

------
tshadwell
Please, please do not use ragefaces while writing. In addition to being an
utterly exhausted internet meme, they take something out of the prose- it
would be more compelling, better flowing writing if you were to try and
describe your own feelings. I should add that, as prosody said, imageboard
discussions are working anonymous communication models. Take 2channel, with
the slogan 「ハッキング」から「今晩のおかず」まで (From "hacking" to "side dishes for tonight's
dinner"): it generates revenue of around 100 million yen per year; or perhaps
4chan, which has either scarred the internet, or broadened it depending on
your viewpoint, having once (I believe) produced those images you used in your
post. I'd be really interested to see how you use similar projects to inspire
yours, and as I've tried to show, innovation in this area could be influential
or lucrative.

~~~
ecto
Ragefaces are one of my favorite parts of Internet culture, and I did think
about it before I inserted them into the post. I think they give it a certain
feeling, that this is an experiment and I'm playing around.

I've tried to take the good parts of every service I could find, and leave out
the rest. I don't intend to make any revenue from this site. It's only for fun
:)

------
mikesurowiec
instead of the color (which personally I like), you could use numbers, so the
first person who replies is #1, next is #2, and they re-use that number for
the extent of that thread. That way if you're having a discussion with
someone, you know it's still them

------
ecto
If you guys have any feedback on the site or my writing, I'd love to hear!

~~~
cocoflunchy
It's a really interesting concept! And nicely executed too.

That being said, I don't know if I'll come back after having played with it
for 5 minutes...

~~~
ecto
That's totally fine. I'm only intending this to be an experiment, and honestly
something to hack on in my spare time.

I'm curious though, what would compel you to return?

~~~
cocoflunchy
That's an interesting question, and I don't think I have the answer... And if
I did I wouldn't tell you and launch my own website ;)

Seriously though, I think it would be hard to get a sense of community on a
website where you can't identify the persons that are interacting with you...
But of course the whole point is to be anonymous.

PS: what about the pokeball there ?

~~~
ecto
What gives 4chan a sense of community? I agree, just wondering.

~~~
cocoflunchy
You're right, I don't know. oak.io is indeed starting to look like 4chan a
little...

