Recent feature changes to the Codidact software

November 2022

We've deployed a large backlog of changes made to the code since March:

• Post lists now show a question preview. We're aware that this might require some further adjustments. Preview length can be set per-community if desired (0 to disable).
• When editing a post, you can now paste images in directly. (That is, if your clipboard holds an image, you can paste it into the editor.)
• Comment improvements:
  • The existence of deleted comments is more obvious.
  • Comments now show when they were last edited, if they were.
  • Syntax highlighting in code works.
  • You can follow future new comment threads on a post ("follow new").
• Profile editing now shows a preview for the "about" text, and fixed a bug with image uploads in profiles.
• Added a network preference to make the top bar sticky.
• Improvements to tag-matching when adding tags to a post.
• Moderators can create new tags from the "tags" page. All fields (name, summary, description, parent tag) are editable in a single form. Rationale.
• Email subscriptions: fixed a bug that caused repeated notifications, added tag subscriptions (from the tag page).
• Search now includes some syntax hints. Also fixed a bug with searching for answers:0.
• Keyboard shortcut d opens the dashboard.
• The "hot" list excludes posts that are closed or locked.
• Small layout changes to comment thread pages (title at top, expanders below), user profile votes summary (wording, daily net change), mod tools (backlinks).
• Fixed some of the server 500 errors.

There were also a bunch of fixes and improvements that don't affect existing deployments (like this one) but make it easier to set up new ones. Examples: removing hard-coded references to codidact.com, allowing the tour to be customized, updates to database seeding, not assuming files are stored on S3, infrastructure changes to docker and ruby.

March 2022

• Fixed a potential server error with the "account" tab on user profiles

February 2022

• Wrap long usernames in user cards to prevent card overflow
• Show only a single column user list on mobile
• Category page default sort order is now the same as the site navigation header

January 2022

• Moved the dashboard link to the header to make it easier to access

posted over 2 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

2y ago by Monica Cellio‭

sau226‭ staff

5 11 52 35

December 2021

• Show when a post has been edited on the post itself
• Only render HTML tags that we support in post previews
• Allow access to deleted post histories only if the user can see the deleted post
• The react button is removed if there are no enabled reactions

November 2021

• Flag escalation for moderators
• Admins can delete tags
• Only show profile field for SE account if the community has imported posts (more info about these)
• Tag descriptions on hover
• Trying to view the abilities page as an anonymous user no longer shows a server error.

October 2021

• Reactions
• (probably other things)

August 2021

• Vote summary (votes received, by day by post)

• Search now supports "user", "category", and "post_type" filters

• Threaded comments:

  • notifications are less noisy
  • more markdown support (code blocks in particular)
  • auto-delete the thread if there are no more undeleted comments

• Small display improvements:

  • length limits for posts/titles
  • post list now shows author along with last-activity info
  • sorting answers by activity now actually sorts by activity (not age) like it says on the tin

• Answer links didn't used to work right if the question had more than one page of answers and the answer wasn't on the first page. Now the link takes you to the answer (by displaying that answer first, out of order). Also improved the URL format for answer links (maintaining backward-compatibility).

July 2021

• Communities can now set rep (up/down) per post type per category (previously it was per post type across all categories)

• Comment improvements: more context for thread pages, auto-follow preference

• More stats on user profile pages

June 2021

• Threaded comments
• Code Golf leaderboard
• (probably more things)

Gap in log

February 2021

• Inline search (instead of having to go to a separate page), search by tag, negation operator.

• Community switcher

• Link for pending suggested edits (but we'd like to make this better)

• Support for new post types; added Wiki type (like articles but with easier editing and without voting), and we can add more on request. Communities get to decide which post types they use.

• More user preferences

• Communities can now nominate posts for network-wide promotion. The goal is to make it easier for Codidact participants to notice other communities or specific questions that might interest them.

• Usercards now show more information, configurable per community.

January 2021

• 7th: better support for new post types, including an admin tool to create or edit post types (example 1, example 2)
• 4th: more user preferences, and better support for them
• 2nd:
  • Added dashboard link to site switcher.
  • License selector now includes short summaries of the options.
  • Youtube embeds.
  • Many small usability improvements and bug fixes.

posted almost 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

2y ago by sau226‭

ArtOfCode‭ staff

9 151 811 244

December 2020

• 19th:
  • Added community switcher (right side of the top bar).
  • Added link to pending suggested edits to the category nav.
  • Added more information to usercards, which are now configurable per community.
  • Made search inline instead of having to go to a separate page.
  • Added the ability to nominate posts for network-wide promotion (cross-community advertising).
  • Added wiki post type.
• 16th: Updates to the core logic for posts, which makes it more flexible. URLs change from /post-type/:id (example: /answer/39540) to /posts/:id (example: /posts/39540); but redirects should apply from the old URLs.

November 2020

• 29th:
  • New abilities system.
  • Improved user profile page.
  • Improved flag dialogues.
• 23rd:
  • Added "mark all as read" to notifications.
  • Improvements to signup flow.
  • Moderators can now see a list of flags that have been recently handled.
• 13th:
  • Added table of contents to questions (summary of answers). (Known bug in sorting, being worked on.)
  • Added support for Markdown tables.
  • Misc small UI improvements (Permalink -> Copy Link, better tooltips in places, etc).

Gap in log

Stuff happened but we fell off the wagon here, sorry. (Feel free to help back-fill.)

August 2020

• 17th: Moderators can now see a list of recent comments.
• 8th: Fixed hot posts links.
• 6th: Added staff indicators.
• 4th: Enabled syntax highlighting.
• 3rd:
  • Added comment timestamps.
  • Added read/unread buttons in notifications.

July 2020

• 31st:
  • Moderators can now feature posts, events, or other links in their site's sidebar. Global moderators can feature things everywhere.
  • New users will be directed to a new tour that will show off the basic mechanics of the site.
• 21st: Added a proper diff view in post histories, and started tracking title and tags changes.
• 20th:
  • Added more anti-abuse systems (spammers, trolls etc)
  • Added public user activity log (example)
  • Added audit logs for all admin/mod actions, user annotations, and abuse blocks.
• 16th: New tool to allow mods to disable comments on posts.
• 11th: Added community ad templates for site promotion.
• 6th: Added a reference suggest addition to the Sefaria linker for Judaism.
• 3rd: Post Validations JS API & you'll now be given a warning that images are missing alt text if you try to post without any (you can still post, but alt text is encouraged).
• 1st:
  • Tags now have a hierarchical view to more easily show how tags are related. Also a bunch of new help center articles thanks to our Docs team.
  • Judaism now has the Sefaria linker plugin, to link automatically to sections of scripture.

June 2020

• 30th:
  • Tags refresh. Proper tags lists, tag information & posts pages, and tag hierarchies are available, with options to see posts from a full hierarchy or only the current tag.
  • Spammers and trolls beware. You can now be warned or suspended.
• 26th: Search now has qualifiers for votes as well as score.
• 25th: Categories can now have moderator-only tags that nobody except moderators can use or edit.
• 20th: Posts drafts are saved as you type and restored when you refresh or come back to the same page if you haven't posted them.
• 19th: Sign-in and sign-out are now network-wide; signing in on one site will sign you in everywhere.
• 17th: Post scores are now displayed as up/down and answers are sorted by a calculated score instead of a simple sum.
• 16th: Post "tools" menu available containing moderation tools (convert to comment, change category)
• 11th: It's now possible to suggest edits if you don't have the necessary privileges to edit directly. Users with editing privileges can approve or reject them.
• 8th: Article post type (no answers, but has comments)
• 3rd: Markdown engine changes to make posts align more closely with previews, and to support CommonMark better
• 1st: Bugfixes and feature tweaks

May 2020

• 28th: Email-based two-factor authentication
• 23rd:
  • Sites can enable MathJax in site settings
  • Sites can add an optional Note section at the top of the sidebar
• 19th: Finished customizable data import process is available.
• 17th: Email addresses must now be confirmed before the account is enabled.
• 12th: Sites can now link to a chat platform of their choice in the sidebar.
• 10th: Categories now can have "required tags" (posts must have >= 1 of these) and "topic tags" (which get special markings). The question list now has more prominent notices for answered/unanswered state.
• 7th: The order of categories in the bar at the top is now configurable.
• 5th: Two-factor authentication is now available in users' Account settings. Also added a proper interface for Markdown editing.
• 4th: Post authors can now specify under which license each post they write is available from a set of CC licenses. Categories also have default licenses.
• 3rd: QR code-based mobile login; post close/delete notices are now at the top of posts.
• 1st: Categories subscriptions and new-post indicators (and a bunch more automated tests).

April 2020

Much of April was sunk into figuring out the data import process for a new site, Outdoors, which launched on the 23rd.

• 30th: Categories customization and some display changes to allow for easier display on pages with wider content.
• 28th: Trinkets Tuesday: #40, #42, #43, #44, #45
• 27th: Categories header UI to aid in category discoverability.
• 25th: Base Categories implementation - every post now belongs to a category, and its tag set and other rules are governed by the category. This is a preliminary to some more work around categories to expand the features.

March 2020

• 23rd: Spam-protection measures have been introduced to user signup after spammers started mass-creating accounts.
• 22nd: Main and meta tags have been split by the introduction of "tag sets". Questions may only use tags from one tag set; main and meta have separate tags.
• 16th: Site design has been updated to use the Co-Design framework: Design changes are a-coming!

posted over 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

4y ago

ArtOfCode‭ staff

9 151 811 244

October 2024

• The user profile now includes the "all communities" tab, which links to all of the user's profiles on the network. Along with each link it shows the total number of posts and reputation on that community, and if the user is a moderator there, shows that information. This is "version 1" of what we hope will be more personalized in the future.

• The author of a question that has been closed now sees some additional guidance, beyond the specific close reason. This is part of our goal to have better contextual help.

• Users who have only posted spam (as indicated with helpful spam flags) are now soft-deleted after a waiting period.

• Post types that have the "freely editable" setting (that is, wiki posts) can no longer be deleted by the original poster. These posts are intended as community-owned resources, though they are still associated with their creators. We didn't intend those creators to have privileged control.

June 2024

• When viewing your own profile, you now see the date you created the profile (in the right column with the other stats). This information is not public. (Moderators and administrators can see it.)

• Users with the Edit ability can now approve any of their own still-pending suggested edits. If we'd trust you to create that edit now, we should trust you to click the button on the edit you already suggested.

• Not a feature, but this is as good a place to report it as any: the reason we've just pushed those changes is that we've also just pushed a fix to a new Javascript vulnerability (polyfill.io).

April 2024

• When viewing all of your posts from your profile, you can now see your deleted posts.

• Added a flag type: "generated by AI (without attribution)".

February 2024

• Answers can now be sorted by age, in addition to score (default) and activity.

• Flag pages for moderators and on the user profile now show when the flags were raised and handled. The (moderator) page of handled flags is now paginated.

• The page for a tag now shows if you are already subscribed to that tag.

January 2024

• Made pending edits more visible, parts 2 and 3: pending edits now show on the dashboard if there are any and you can review them, and the category "edits" pages are cross-linked and show the number of pending edits to everyone.

• Made it easier to generate links for posts: titles are now links, and the "copy link" control now offers raw and Markdown options.

• Paginated the user activity page (and moderator "full log" view). For very active users these pages were previously very slow to load.

• Fixed some problems in Docker configuration that don't affect this network but can affect others.

• On communities where MathJax is enabled, added an editor button ($).

posted 10 months ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

1mo ago

Monica Cellio‭ staff

64 372 2259 824

December 2023

• Editor preview now alerts you to HTML that will be stripped out before posting. (The preview renderer and the final rendering sometimes do not match because the client and server necessarily use different libraries; now the editor lets you know what's not going to work.)
• Users with the Edit Tags ability can now create new tags from the tags list (without having to attach them to a post).
• Added indicators of minimum and maximum character limits in many places.
• Assorted improvements to the filter controls.
• Assorted small UI changes (tooltips, comment controls below posts, made RSS feeds more obvious, profile tweaks, probably others).
• Not a feature, but we also found and fixed some uncaught server errors (HTTP 500).

August 2023

• 2FA recovery codes.
• Improvements to mobile sign-in so the QR code is not as easily shoulder-surfed.

July 2023

• Minimum lengths for post titles and bodies are now configurable per category.
• Deleted posts no longer cause the "new activity" dot to appear. ("Last activity" still reflects the event, so those who can see deleted posts can still audit deletions.)
• Improved validation of edits.
• You can now redact sensitive information (like PII) in posts (further improvements are pending).
• Various accessibility improvements (details on GitHub).
• Wiki posts can now have reactions.
• Fixed/added some tooltips.
• Performance improvements, mostly of the "don't fetch stuff more than you need to" variety.

June 2023

• Added support for tag synonyms.
• Added "copy" control to code blocks (on hover or long press).
• Improvements to post history pages, including links for individual revisions.
• Improved search layout and in-page help.
• Made follow/unfollow styling consistent between posts and comment threads.

May 2023

• Filters for the category list
• fixed that bug in the inbox and community list; I am so sorry it took us this long to get a change from our design framework to the qpixel code to production, and we have taken steps to make this easier in the future
• the "edits waiting" silver dot now only shows if you have the ability to review edits

January 2023

• improvements to the password-change page
• various bug fixes

posted over 1 year ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

11mo ago

Monica Cellio‭ staff

64 372 2259 824