We’re aware that the “Show Full Post” button may not work if there’s no text in the source BB post, if the whole post is just …
a video
an image
… with no text commentary or just a sentence. I don’t think that’s fixable, because the Readability algorithm used has to have some text to work with, not just an image or video standing alone.
So what I want to troubleshoot here is posts that aren’t working with the Show Full Post button, that is, you click the Show Full Post button, and it shows zero content. I’ll start by testing the last 10 BB blog posts:
The Hardware Hacker: Bunnie Huang’s tour-de-force on hardware hacking, reverse engineering, China, manufacturing, innovation and biohacking – SFP works fine
Kissenger “simulates” kissing loved ones – SFP works fine
The 20 games you shouldn’t miss in 2016 – SFP works fine
In one take, this guy shows all the cool skills he learned in 2016 – SFP works fine
Need a cheap diffuser for your camera flash? Try a white balloon – SFP works fine
Adult site data reveals 2016’s top trends: Melania and Matures are way up – SFP works fine
No, Russia didn’t hack Vermont’s power grid – SFP works fine
White House report documents the “hidden fees” that pick America’s pockets – SFP works fine
Your smart meter is very secure (against you) and very insecure (against hackers) – SFP works fine
Are you ready for robots skinned with sensitive hairs? – SFP works fine
I’m not seeing a huge Show Full Post button problem. We are definitely aware that posts with zero content other than a video or image won’t work well, but why should they? The point is to extract text to read, the “body” of the article. An article with only a picture or a video has no body.
It seems to me the only alternative here is to have a seperate algorithm that kicks in and and takes over when you fail out of The Readability Algorhithm and just tries to dump the first picture or video in verbatim?
It really doesn’t. It shows the text, not the videos. I agree that this is not as bad as the ones where SFP just reveals a pointer to the blog, but those are most common in Mark’s posts, and we haven’t had many of those recently.
[quote=“codinghorror, post:5, topic:92038”]
That’s not what reader view does, or is designed to do[/quote]
I can’t speak to what it is designed to do; most of us would like to be able to access as much of the original post as possible without too much clicking or leaving the BBS.
I agree that it is not as bad as posts where SFP does essentially nothing.
I think there are some deep misunderstandings about what the button is supposed to do. Please click the “Reader” button on your browser (Safari, Edge, Firefox) and compare. That’s what it’s supposed to do.
Interestingly there is no reader mode in Chrome but there is this hack:
That said, I am open to a “couldn’t pull any body, so just pull the first video or image” algorithm that kicks in when readability / reader mode fails.
in the permalink, there is a pic followed by a sentence of text, a bunch of pics, and then a few more sentences of text.
from my experience, usually how it works is: videos are always removed but any text surrounding them comes through, pics usuallydo come through (I’ve noticed that comics generally don’t, though) but sometimes nothing comes through at all, like above.
My issue is not removing as many distracting elements as possible, but rather including as many pertinent elements as possible. I think this is what most people were asking for in the other thread.
One thing I noticed, and I don’t know if it’s a feature or a bug, but if I am looking at the full post, the whole page periodically refreshes, presumably to update notifications on my icon and new items added to the post, but the full post content collapses in the refresh.
I like how the Onebox of the actual article page gives a little video preview. Very slick.
And this is what Reader view on Firefox on Windows looks like.
Now here’s an interesting case.
The intro paragraph to this post shows up on the BBS even without clicking Show Full Post. Perhaps that’s because it’s a featured article and not a regular blog post?
All these minor bugs aside, I do get why the videos and sometimes other content don’t make it through. If they did, I (and many others) would only read BoingBoing through the ad-free BBS, and so no ad revenue would come from us. So I don’t really mind clicking through to the blog on those occasions.
Fair point but clicking the button and getting literally nothing kinda sucks. It is those cases I object to most not “oops missing a video but the text is otherwise there”
We’re with ya 100℅ on that, but how do we fix that? Ensure the bloggers never post video content without commentary?
Like I said, I don’t mind going the extra click to see that stuff. It’s a minor annoyance, but if that’s the price for keeping the BBS from being too much of a revenue-loser to keep around, then I’ll gladly pay it.
I’ll take this opportunity to once again voice my support for some kind of tip jar thingy to keep the BBS lights on. This community is important to me, and I want to actively support the platform.
Perhaps a default message about posts containing multimedia content and suggesting a click through. Something a little more verbose than “subscribe to the newsletter”
