Quote by simplyjohn
Well that makes no sense
From a human perspective, maybe not. But if subscription status denotes access to certain site features (subscription and role combined) then, to the underlying tech, it does. Free, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Story/Chat Mod, Moderator, Admin. Each successive 'role' supplants the one below it.
That's my guess how it's set up. I don't know the nuts and bolts, so could be way off.
Quote by AG31
Thanks. In either case would the story appear as a new story?
Only if you submit brand new would it appear new. But we discourage that and are under no obligation to reverify complete works, even if they're a bit different.
Quote by AG31
if I took the editing route I'd just have to delete what's there and insert a whole new story. That wouldn't help you, right?
It shouldn't matter. If you hit Edit and pasted in a brand new version and submitted it, we'd still only see the differences highlighted.
I mean, if you replaced it with a completely different story, it'd get mad as it wouldn't be able to work out whats going on and would likely show us a wall of "new story" in green and a wall of "old story" in red text. But otherwise it should work out okay.
You can, but we'd rather you edit the original and resubmit. That way we only need to verify the changes you made instead of the whole piece again. It also retains the original URL.
You can always pimp the modified version in the Self Promotion thread after it's been verified.
Hmmm yeah, maybe the comments remain now as Unknown User. There was a time when they were deleted along with the user account, but maybe that's changed. Good point.
It was a nice feature that was useful, especially if you spot a story you read ages ago and the title doesn't ring a bell.
The trouble is that it takes up a fair amount of of space to store a link about every story you've read.
Also, what do you mean by 'read'? If you mean 'page you visited' - which is the browser's definition of "already read" - then how does the system know you've not just clicked on the page by mistake? Or clicked to read it, didn't have time to finish it and intend to come back later? You could see a 'read' indicator and think you've already finished it.
Lush could use the act of Liking or Favouriting or commenting as an indicator. But if you don't interact with the story in that way - perhaps you didn't like it - then you would still like to know you've looked at it so you don't try and read it again and be disappointed a second time.
Or, since stories are auto added to your Reading Queue from friends and followees, the act of removing it from the reading queue could be the trigger. But if an author isn't on your friends list and you stumble across one you read, that wouldn't help leave a trail.
So, it really depends on how we define "I have read this".
Comments are removed if the author deletes their account (or it was deleted by a moderator for violating T&Cs). So yes, some older stories lose comments if readers / writers move on and delete.
Yeah, at least the reading queue is immutable and a permanent record, unlike the push/pull bell notifications that are transient and subject to either being missed or duplicated depending on what state the browser is in.
As you say, notifications are a pain to implement and a swine to debug.
Some badges may not have been migrated. Perhaps specials or one-offs were missed, or omitted intentionally.
The question now is: are regular badges (not competition entry badges - those are separate and will be dealt with independently) and their associated counters - for those where it makes sense - showing up? If not, please raise a specific ticket for the badge(s) that are wonky.
One day it would be cool if the numerical indicators alongside some badges would be links to the author's content. E.g. clicking the 'recommended read' badge would show a list of all RRs by that author. Same for EPs and for stories in general. Plus competition entrant, winner, and runner up badges jumping to show only those stories. This might all be part of the profile update coming soon, I'm not sure.
Quote by CallmeJayne
I might follow myself
Haha. Never thought of doing that.
It is possible to add your own stories to the reading queue - the floating '+' is indiscriminate - but if you find that you're following yourself (or you can do so via your profile) then I suspect that's not by design and should be raised as a ticket.
Regularly check your Reading Queue. Any new stories they post should go in there automatically.
Wow, two silvers in a row. Must be something in the water around here. I'm so happy to have made it, especially with such an 'out there' sci-fi romp.
Congratulations to sprite and JayMal who share the podium with me, and to everyone who entered. With such a volume and variety of imagination on display, choosing a top ten must have been tough, let alone judging. I echo AvidlyCurious in pimping Beautiful Evil. I loved it (among many others).
Thank you to everyone involved in the competition process: Jen, SJ, judges, readers, and fellow authors. Love this place.
Yeah, for continuity of SEO and performance reasons (an endless redirect list) I guess the URL doesn't keep in step with title changes. But since it's in draft, I'd expect the slug to keep track until such time as it is approved for publication.
Not sure there's a clean fix right now. Since it's changed radically like that, maybe raise a help desk ticket and ask if the slug can be changed to match the title?
P.s. we might be talking at cross purposes. What do you consider 'idling'? With my user hat on if I'm typing in a text area, I am not idling, I am interacting with the site. The fact there is no client-server interaction while I'm doing that is not on my radar.
Quote by Georgia_27_8
Security & privacy have to take priority over convenience, every single time.
Absolutely agree. In which case Lush should actually log us out and not just pretend everything is okay until you try to post something and lose your work because you've been soft logged out in the background. That's the real issue.
That said, the use cases between mission critical corporate systems and social sites are very different. If someone gets hold of my phone and reverse engineers my lock code, they shouldn't be able to get into any corporate accounts or sensitive stuff if I'm auto logged out after inactivity. But with Lush, all they have to do is refresh the browser page to be logged back into Lush via cookie. That's not site security!
The nature of the site is that one can be replying to a forum post, helping an author with a story mod note, or be interacting with the same page (e.g writing a story) client side for upwards of 20, 40, 60 minutes or more if life gets in the way. The system will treat that as "inactivity" and something happens, on some browsers (not all, maybe?) behind the scenes to soft log you out. Between that, and being dumped to the front page when you refresh or go to save your work, is inconvenient and a unexpected UX. Because you can't Back to restore your work. Even if you are immediately relogged in via cookie.
Some systems get around it with a client side timer that pops up a message saying you'll be logged out in N minutes if you don't save now. That's fine. It'll do. And is a truckload better than pretending you're still logged in.
I'm with noll. It's not a feature. It's a detractor.
Kicking someone out of a chatroom that has limited capacity for chat slots is one thing to give everyone a fair shot at conversing. Kicking people out of the site entirely and soft logging back in via cookie or requiring credentials to frequently be re-entered is a massive pain, and unnecessary.
In my limited capacity as user and with enough knowledge of client server architecture, since it seems it's not universal across browsers or session length, I'd call it a bug.
I am a backend developer, and there's no extra server load required to keep a session open. Every request from browser to server is stateless. In Georgia's analogy, the garage door is closed after every request. The session cookie that gets passed back determines access.
Incidentslly, user activity load is generally determined by making a request: either via discrete user interaction (page click/refresh) or a push/pull to send PM/chat data to an active session.
The Flash Photography competition closing date is tomorrow so if you have an idea near completion, now's the time to submit it!
I did, creating a rather dark sci-fi/horror-esque piece about a bunch of scientists unlocking a portal to something they can't control. Check out Embers if you dare.
For chat with a limited room capacity, kicking people out for inactivity is fine and makes a lot of sense to give everyone a fair shot. But I wouldn't expect it to log me out of the site and dump me to the front page too. Maybe that's an unreasonable expectation.
I'm not a fan of enforced session timeouts on a social site. If I've asked the site to remember my details it should do so for a reasonable time frame. Like a month or two or more. If I haven't, fine. Log me out after a period of inactivity.
Incidentally, I don't know how many reports of the logout behaviour are actually being completely logged out. As in, all the way back to the login page where you need to type in the credentials again vs being dropped to the front page or dropped to the login page but a second refresh logs you back in again automatically via the cookie. Those behaviours are very different from a debugging perspective.
I wonder if reports of people being prompted to upgrade are also a by-product of this? e.g. you're logged in, you go to do some action, it 'soft logs' you out for reasons unknown, sees you don't have enough permissions to do the action and asks you to upgrade. But maybe if you refresh the screen it logs you back in again and the prompt goes away, albeit you don't get back to the page you were on because the site dumps you back to the front page. Dunno. I've only seen the upgrade notice once so I don't know the specifics of this issue. Just guessing it might be related.
Quote by Georgia_27_8
If you are inactive for 40 minutes your progress/changes should absolutely be saved, but you simply don't need to be logged in.
Maybe on some systems. But the point is, any progress isn't saved here. And sometimes it's not even 40 mins. I can be skipping from page to page and get kicked off. Just can't figure any common sequence of events that triggers it yet.
It's most irritating if writing a comment or forum post to be presented with "An error occurred" because the system silently logged me out behind the scenes. And when presing Submit a second time to be dumped to the front page so I can't even recover what was typed.
I've learnt to select all and copy first, just in case, but it shouldn't be necessary if I'm actively using a session.
What's odd is that if it is session length then it should behave the same across browsers and OSs. It isnt in this case, as far as I can tell.
In a sensitive application, sure. Set a reasonable timeout and log out. Lush, however, is pretty much a social network. Imagine if Facebook or logged you out after half an hour, or even an hour. There'd be uproar!
Lush also doesn't always log people out completely. It just seems to invalidate the session and then the login cookie revalidates on refresh but loses all progress and dumps you to the front page.
That seems to imply the Remember Me switch when logging in is being honoured (cookie/localStorage) it's just that whatever is invalidating the session in some environments isn't retaining previous page state.
Bit of a conundrum.
Logs me out regularly on both desktop (Firefox on Mac) and phone (Via) after approx 40 mins of inactivity or when there's an update pushed. The latter is understandable, the former isn't.
But the timed logout doesn't happen on Safari (same Mac). Nor Chrome (any OS). Maybe Blink/WebKit are immune to this phenomenon? Edit: although other reports conflict with this finding.
To be clear, sometimes I'm dumped to the login screen and a second refresh logs me back in automatically. Other times, a refresh will drop me to the home page rather than the page I was previously on. Which is usually the Comments and Likes page or message windows.
I think the phrase is "go figure".
Quote by KimmiBeGood
You gonna tackle the Noir comp, WannabeWordsmith?
Hell yes. It's my thang.
Well, assuming I can beat this kernel of an idea into shape and still keep it sexy. I've written maybe 4K and it's going okay so far. Just gotta not trip myself up with too much plot.
Not sure I'll need the full word limit. Hoping to get everything I want to say in quite a bit less, but make it feel bigger. Time will tell.
For anybody who has read my rather dark tale into the mind of the scary cum-junkie protagonist (For The Taste Of It) you should check out her sequel: Reflection.
The second tale delves further into her mind and the compulsion that drives her lust. It's rather full on, sustained action and not for the weak-hearted. You have been warned!
There's still just under two weeks to get your entries in. With such a short word count, there's no excuse not to dust off your storytelling mojo and construct a tale around one of the photos in the head of this thread. I did!
There are some outstandingly creative entries so far including wonderfully dark tales from long-time members such as Stormdog all the way to newcomers like Toreador.
Loads of genres have been represented to date. Can you think up something to wow the judges? Get writing...
Not sure it's possible. Yet? I tried hacking the URL in various ways and didn't have any luck.
If and when it is implemented, it'd be cool to let people decide whether to match all the tags or any of them.
One day we'll get the tags hammered into shape as well. There are too many right now with odd punctuation or weird word combos that need reassigning to real tags and then the old ones axing. That'll make tags more useful and faster to use/search for, wooo.
I've thrown my digital effort into the ring with Embers. If you like your sci-fi a bit twisty horrors then feel free to check it out.
I've read pretty much all the rest so far and love the diversity of how authors are interpreting the images. Such a creative bunch.
Still plenty of time to get your entries in, so if you haven't done so already, get scribbling!
Quote by sprite
for those of us not photoshop/uploading cover images savvy
If boss says yes and you don't have anyone else lined up, drop me a line.
Wow, how did that happen? Very unexpected but super stoked to be nestled between two other smoking stories on the podium.
Congratulations to Dronette56 and Quill, and of course all the others in the top 10 and beyond. I read as many as time permitted and was thoroughly entertained by the standard of entries and how much summer heat was on display.
Thank you to the shortlister, judges, fellow mods and Team Lush for keeping this place humming. Everyone who devotes their time to the site is a total star.
Looking forward to the next competition.
saunters over to the popup juke box and deposits a quarter
A pool party ain't a pool party without Club Tropicana by Wham!
