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posted by on Monday March 06 2017, @10:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the post-bills-here dept.

Okay, we've all had our weekends and I at least am ready to jump back onto the coding horse. Refresh my memory of what we still have that's either properly broken or is otherwise behaving in an entirely unsatisfactory manner. I think Flat-mode links to individual comments are still broken. I know we need to replace the "noupdate" behavior with explicit "update" behavior. I'm thinking I can get the colors on "*NEW*" comments' subject bars brightened up so that you can ditch dimming and still have easy visual feedback if you like fairly quickly. I'm considering (nearly (can't do "N replies below Threshold)) precisely replicating Nested and adapting the old javascript to it if you care to run it. But what am I forgetting?

Discussion to a minimum here, please, so it doesn't distract from having an all-in-one-place list of things from this release that still need addressed.

Related Stories

17_02 Latest Bug Fixes: UPDATED 89 comments

So the Dev Team has been hard at work fixing up issues with with the 17_02 release. We compiled all of your comments from the 17_02 Meta stories into a large bug and feature request list. We have been working on getting these issues fixed as soon as we can.

You may have noticed some changes over the last week that went out to fix some issues, and we just released some more fixes today.

Here is a list of the major fixes since the last story:

  1. Comment titles now act to trigger actions as well as the buttons.
  2. New icons for the buttons that are bigger and spaced out a bit more.
  3. Removed extra spacing for some of the modes when buttons are hidden. (Still needs some more work, but much better than before.)
  4. Changed how we set states for hidden threads so that the individual comments are not set hidden as well. This will lessen the number of clicks needed to open a comment in this case.
  5. Flat comment mode will now show a comment's children when look at comment (cid is set).
  6. Temp fix for Content Security Policy eating CSS when not on https://soylentnews.org.
  7. Domain Tags now show in comments.
  8. Fixed broken messages when looking at them from messages.pl.
  9. Fixed for @user: shortcut links that would eat a character after the ":".

And here are the latest updates:

  1. Editor fixes: added new lines to story editor and fixed topic tree popup issue.
  2. Fix for black on black text boxes in Grayscale theme
  3. Added SVG icons for buttons and CSS fixes to enhance look.
  4. Mod Points now back to UTC 00:10.
  5. Add # of children to collapsed thread title.
  6. Fix comment details to bring in the correct data which broke email and journal links.
  7. Add time to collapsed comment title.
  8. Fix select all button in messages.pl.
  9. Redirect returns to correct article.pl page after moderating.
  10. Updated CSP to fix issues. We still need to search for some inline JS that may need to be purged or rewritten to work correctly.

Continuation of:
Site Update 17_2
Comments Redux
Site Update: The Next Episode
Site Update - Taking a Breather
Outstanding Issues

So if you see any new bugs that you think are related to these changes, or just want to let us know about an ongoing issue, please feel free to comment below.

Here are the currently known bugs that we are working on:

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday March 06 2017, @11:02PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 06 2017, @11:02PM (#475838) Journal

    "Select all" on Messages

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @11:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @11:13PM (#475840)

    I brought up "nested" before, and Threaded-TNG seems to do the work, keeping in mind that it uses "breakthru" rather than "threshold" as score parameter.

    Can you clarify the distinction between "breakthru" and "threshold"? And why we need two score level parameters?

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday March 06 2017, @11:47PM (1 child)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday March 06 2017, @11:47PM (#475847) Homepage Journal

    Filter error: comment too funny.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:32AM

      by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:32AM (#475856) Journal

      Posting this on a sub-comment because slightly off topic, but I think the site is great: nice job to alllll.

      And a fond hello to MDC! :)

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by isostatic on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:06AM (3 children)

    by isostatic (365) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:06AM (#475850) Journal

    If I see a top level interesting post, I used to be able to press +++ or something to expand all sub poss. Can't do that now, so I head To hackernews instead.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:36AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:36AM (#475857) Journal

      Browse at -1.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 5, Informative) by Zinho on Tuesday March 07 2017, @05:11AM

        by Zinho (759) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @05:11AM (#475907)

        Browse at -1.

        There's value is skimming the comment subjects and poster names before diving into a thread. It gives me a sense of the organization of the conversation before I dive in; that gets lost if you start with every comment expanded by default.

        Can't see the forest, standing too close to the trees.

        I browse at threshold -1, breakthrough +4 for this reason. Right now my workaround is to manually expand threads one at a time bottom-up so it takes less time to open them, then read top-down. I'm really looking forward to getting the "expand thread" feature back.

        --
        "Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:20AM

      by Arik (4543) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:20AM (#475876) Journal
      Yeah this is exactly what's driving me crazy. Every incarnation of slashcode going back decades has had threaded display, until now.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:09AM (2 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:09AM (#475851) Homepage Journal

    I find myself hitting the buttons several times because I think nothing has happened in response to my click. Darken it just a little, for a small fraction of a second.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:45AM

      by captain normal (2205) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:45AM (#475859)

      Good to see back in posts, MDC. Your unique insight into life in front of the screen and keyboard is very interesting and insightful. Hope all is well during this very wet winter.

      --
      When life isn't going right, go left.
    • (Score: 2) by dbe on Tuesday March 07 2017, @04:49AM

      by dbe (1422) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @04:49AM (#475903)

      Please Please Please, put back the expand thread button!
      I don't want to change my threshold to see every comment, but when the GP is interesting I want to browse all the answer with one click, not 1 per post.
      Thanks for all the work of the admin/dev team!
      Cheers
      -dbe

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:15AM (#475852)

    Even after attempting to read these, I still have no idea what's going on. I always set both thresholds to -1. Am I affected? Am I the problem? Am I a public enemy? What's going on in here?

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:01AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:01AM (#475870)

    You said that much of what RedBear mentioned "is on the slate to be tweaked or entirely redone." (for reference: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=18216&cid=473029). [soylentnews.org]

    After looking through your short-term posting history, I came across this post of yours: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=18216&cid=473288 [soylentnews.org]

    I'm not sure if it is related, but when I click that post's id or the parent link I get this error:

    We can't find a comment with that ID (473288) in this discussion (18216). If this comment was posted moments ago, please wait 60 seconds for it to appear. Otherwise, if you got here through a link generated by SoylentNews, please report this as a bug. But if you got here thanks to a silly user's comment text or journal entry or something, or from an external site, this link is just invalid -- sorry.

    The error seems to only happen in Threaded-TNG and Threaded-TOS because Flat works fine. I'm an AC running Linux Mint and the same error happens in Firefox, Qupzilla, and Chromium.

    • (Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday March 07 2017, @01:33PM (1 child)

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 07 2017, @01:33PM (#475988) Journal

      This one is somewhat nasty.

      The comment IS in the discussion, but on page *2* at the moment (for me at least; TNG -1, -1, Oldest first), 100 comments per page)... but all it takes is a bunch of replies to earlier comments to possibly push the comment onto a still later page. IOW, a page number may be meaningful only for a limited period of time, and for a particular user.

      I can adjust my preferences to set my page size to, say, 20 comments. You might still run with the default (100 comments per page). I post a link to a comment that appears on MY page 3, which you click and discover that you only have 1 page. :(

      It may be even worse than that... depending on what one's sort order is: "Oldest First" or "Newest First"... what was once on page 3 (a very recent post appearing at the end of a discussion when viewed as "Oldest First") may now appear on page 1 when sorted "Newest First". :( :(

      It seems to me that page number is something that *IS* important to the comment display code, but should not be presented in the URL used to access it?

      Hypothesis: Need a function that, given an SID, a CID, Threshold, Breakthrough, display Mode, and a Sort order, returns... the number of the page on which it appears and, since one had to basically compute all this in order to compute that page number, the CIDs of the TLCs for that page.(TLC == Top Level Comment - i.e. a comment that has no parent comment as it is a Reply to the story itself.)

      Note: I woke not long ago, so take the forgoing with the proverbial portion of salt.

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:35PM

        by paulej72 (58) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:35PM (#476023) Journal

        We fixed this for flat, but need to fix it for Threaded. The issue is we should be ignoring page when cid is set. We did not think through all of the issues that this would cause, but we ill get it fixed.

        --
        Team Leader for SN Development
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bart9h on Tuesday March 07 2017, @04:44AM (3 children)

    by bart9h (767) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @04:44AM (#475900)

    The *NEW* marker only doesn't make sense for the first time I open the comments page of a story (that is, all the comments are new).

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by martyb on Tuesday March 07 2017, @01:53PM (2 children)

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 07 2017, @01:53PM (#476000) Journal

      The *NEW* marker only doesn't make sense for the first time I open the comments page of a story (that is, all the comments are new).

      This one bothers me, as well. When I know this is the first time I am reading a story, all the NEW flags are distracting. OTOH, there are times when I (being human) forgot that I had read a story before and only realize this when I start reading the comments. That said, the former occurs far more often than the latter, so I would appreciate suppressing the new comment indicator on my first read of a story.

      Separately, the NEW text indicator is presented in a larger font than the rest of the headline text on my home system (Firebug says: font size: 16px vs. 13.6px) as it is inherited from the <H4> containing it where as the rest of the headline seems to have a span and custom class around it. Maybe add a separate class just for the text of the NEW comment indicator? Maybe something like this:

      <span class="comment_new_flag">*NEW*</span>

      I have a working ability with CSS but it is not my strong suit... others might have better suggestion(s).

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by mechanicjay on Tuesday March 07 2017, @05:17PM (1 child)

        I got around this by turning off the *NEW* flag. I left the comment dimming setting on. It's actually been kind of amazing this way.

        --
        My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
        • (Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday March 08 2017, @12:10PM

          by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 08 2017, @12:10PM (#476404) Journal

          I got around this by turning off the *NEW* flag. I left the comment dimming setting on. It's actually been kind of amazing this way.

          Yes, I am aware of this option. The thing is, using Chrome on my smallish Android-based mobile phone, "Find in Page..." and entering this as the search text is a very rapid and accurate way to locate what is new. And works exceedingly well... unless ALL the comments are new, and then it is redundant.

          ISTM that whatever value is saved away after the first time I load a given story could be computed ahead of time, and then used to inform the presentation of the first time I actually view the story. Probably something along the lines of SELECT MAX(cid) FROM comments WHERE sid = '123456'; (or whatever the actual story id is.)

          --
          Wit is intellect, dancing.
  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday March 07 2017, @09:15AM (4 children)

    The issue where clicking on a link to a comment in flat mode returns a "server configuration error" is now fixed (Thanks TMB, you rock!)

    However, when clicking on a link to a comment which has replies, the replies are not shown after the comment.

    Shouldn't showing a comment and any replies be the default behavior in Flat mode? It seems to be so in Threaded-TNG.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 07 2017, @10:50AM (3 children)

      Yep, that's half-fixed not fixed-fixed.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday March 07 2017, @01:41PM (2 children)

        I can work around it so it's not a big deal.

        Just thought I'd mention it, given that's what this posting was for.

        Carry on sir.

        --
        No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
        • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:38PM (1 child)

          by paulej72 (58) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:38PM (#476025) Journal

          I decided that it was better to get the error fixed and at least show something rather than waiting for the final fix to be coded and tested. Hopefully the rest we had will allow us to figure out what is wrong with our fixed coded that will not pull up the children of a post in flat mode.

          --
          Team Leader for SN Development
          • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday March 07 2017, @03:26PM

            I decided that it was better to get the error fixed and at least show something rather than waiting for the final fix to be coded and tested. Hopefully the rest we had will allow us to figure out what is wrong with our fixed coded that will not pull up the children of a post in flat mode.

            That makes a lot of sense (no insult intended :) ).

            Thanks for the clarification and all your hard work!

            --
            No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
  • (Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday March 07 2017, @01:40PM (2 children)

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 07 2017, @01:40PM (#475993) Journal

    Using Threaded-TNG, Breakthrough -1, Oldest First.

    I marked a comment as "Interesting" and clicked on the Moderate button, I was presented with a new page which did NOT have the RHS (Right-Hand Side) slashboxes. So what? It made the width of the comments larger and the font size proportionally smaller... to the point that it was not readable on my mobile.

    Changed selection from "TNG" to "TOS" and clicked the "Change" button. Page redisplayed WITH the RHS slashboxes presented. (Haven't tried this but would be curious what would happen if I did NOT change display mode, but still clicked "Change" button... Would the RHS appear or not?)

    ISTR having seen similar behavior when I replied to an existing comment.

    Still trying to wake up; please take with portion of salt.

    --
    Wit is intellect, dancing.
    • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:41PM (1 child)

      by paulej72 (58) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:41PM (#476026) Journal

      Will look into it. Mobile device support has been a PITA for us. It mostly works, but devices like to resize text based on stuff that we do not set in our CSS. It makes it hard to debug and fix issues like this.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
      • (Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday March 08 2017, @12:26PM

        by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 08 2017, @12:26PM (#476407) Journal

        Yes, mobile support is a long-standing issue. (I looked into it a bit back when TheMightyBuzzard took a stab at it. We couldn't find a deterministic approach to determine with certainty whether a user was accessing the site via mobile or desktop system.)

        This is unrelated to that.

        Simply restoring the display of the RHS slashboxes, which for some strange reason is being suppressed in this case, would solve the small font display issue.

        Specifically, I see the NON-display of template: sidebox;misc;default for these blocks:

        1. story_info-block"
        2. user-info-block
        3. moderation-block
        4. mylinks-block
        5. related-block

        No longer suppressing the display of these (or, alternatively, restoring their display if this is custom code created to emulate the old display) would solve the font problem -- the font size is just a symptom of this suppression/non-display.

        I hope this clarifies things.

        P.S. I have watched with amazement as you have investigated these bug reports and coded up "indistinguishable from magic" ways of making CSS do things I'd never imagined possible. We are so fortunate to have you and TheMightyBuzzard and NCommander working on this site.

        --
        Wit is intellect, dancing.
  • (Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Tuesday March 07 2017, @06:11PM

    by JeanCroix (573) on Tuesday March 07 2017, @06:11PM (#476097)
    I have both threshold and breakthrough set to 0, but -1 moderated comments still show up uncollapsed. I've tried a ctrl-reload just to make sure they didn't get moderated in the brief time between my article click and the page loading, but they're still there.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday March 07 2017, @07:10PM (5 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 07 2017, @07:10PM (#476134) Journal

    The chevrons are inferior to the +/- buttons in action. I'm not talking about in appearance. I've had to switch my "don't collapse" level to 0, and the experience is quite inferior. (I originally wrote "grossly inferior", but that was overstating the case.)

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07 2017, @07:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07 2017, @07:23PM (#476139)

      I made a suggestion a few days ago that I will repeat again for your consideration:

      The chevron buttons are too small which makes mobile device use too difficult.

      Please fix by making the title of the unexpanded comment be a link like it used to be so that clicking the link expands the comment. Bringing back this old functionality would give users a much bigger click target. You can leave the new chevron buttons as they are. This means the user could click either the expand chevron or the comment title link to expand the comment.

    • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday March 08 2017, @04:18PM (1 child)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday March 08 2017, @04:18PM (#476498) Journal

      Agreed. Another problem is their use. Does it really make sense for me to have to do THREE clicks to expand an underlying comment? I don't know precisely what the coding obstacles are here, but I personally never experienced all the "slow loading times" that keep being discussed. But now if I want to read responses to a comment, I often have to make numerous separate clicks on the chevrons to see them. (And not even on the same chevron, since additional ones frequently appear when multiple messages are below threshold.)

      And no, browsing at -1 is NOT what I want, nor what I think most people want. For most threads, I want to see the top scoring comments by default (which declutters the reading experience), but be easily able to expand a thread to see lower scoring replies to a particular comment.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday March 08 2017, @04:38PM

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday March 08 2017, @04:38PM (#476515) Journal

        Okay, upon subsequent experimentation, I've discovered I can do away with some of the extra clicks by fiddling with settings. Still, it would be helpful (as other posts have noted above) to expand a whole thread of replies to a post, rather than having to click on each post.

    • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Wednesday March 08 2017, @11:48PM (1 child)

      by paulej72 (58) on Wednesday March 08 2017, @11:48PM (#476787) Journal

      A fix for this is up on https://dev.soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org]. The buttons are bigger, use + and -, and the comment title will act as a control just as the buttons do. I will be rolling this out later tonight if I get a chance.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday March 09 2017, @01:20AM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 09 2017, @01:20AM (#476810) Journal

        Thank you.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday March 08 2017, @03:31AM

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 08 2017, @03:31AM (#476305) Journal

    I ran into a problem with admin-to-user messaging when the message recipient receives messages from the *web*.

    Sent a multi-line test message to user who already had a message waiting.

    Message I sent:

    This is just a quick note to test admin-to-user messaging.
    This is on the second line.

    User sees text in RHS Slashbox:

    You have 1 new message waiting for you, and 9 old messages.

    User right-clicks on the "9 old messages" link and opens in new tab -- makes that tab current.

    User sees that message correctly displayed (YAY!)

    BUT... user deletes one of their old messages and is then presented with a different view of their messages; the view with checkboxes down the LHS.

    User now sees message as:

    Message from martyb:

    The message is not presented there, but that's okay... let's open that link and see the message...

    User right-clicks on my message to them and selects open in new tab (FWIW, Pale Moon v27)

    The only text of the message that the user sees on the new page is:

    This is on the second line.

    Huh. Where did the first line of the message go? Let's take a closer look!

    Right click on page, Select All, and then View Selection Source.

    User scrolls down to the message area and this is the HTML for the message:

        <div class="message_subject" <b="">Message from martyb:<br>
            sent by <b>SoylentNews Message System</b> on 2017.03.07 22:10
        </div>
        <div class="message_body" this="" is="" just="" a="" quick="" note="" to="" test="" admin-to-user="" messaging.="" <br="">
    This is on the second line.
        </div>

    Notice that the message_subject DIV has a strange tag starting string within the first div: <b=""

    That is strange, but it gets even more interesting.

    Look at the message_body div and notice how each of the words from the first line of the message appear as an attribute in that div (and now with a slightly different aberrant tag start, but with 'br instead of 'b', as follows: <br=""

    I don't know how long that has been there, but it is certainly reproducible, now.

    Many, MANY thanks to charon for playing guinea pig in helping me to reproduce and isolate this!

    --
    Wit is intellect, dancing.
  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:00PM (2 children)

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:00PM (#476709) Homepage

    http://i.imgur.com/k0pj1XW.png [imgur.com]

    This is just plain confusing, if you ask me. Are these two rolled up comments at the same level, or not?

    And one should not have to click twice (first on the double arrow, then on the single arrow which only subsequently appears) in order to open a comment.

    I'm still not all that clear on what the double-down arrow is supposed to do.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Wednesday March 08 2017, @11:56PM (1 child)

      by paulej72 (58) on Wednesday March 08 2017, @11:56PM (#476792) Journal

      Those are two sibling comments. The first is a hidden tree of comments. The double arrows hide and show the comment tree. The single ones hide and show a comment. If you are using a mouse based system there are tool tips on the buttons.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday March 09 2017, @05:32PM

        by wonkey_monkey (279) on Thursday March 09 2017, @05:32PM (#477023) Homepage

        It's not very intuitive at all, and the fact that you have to click twice to open a single comment should be a definite red flag for a UI.

        --
        systemd is Roko's Basilisk
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13 2017, @11:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13 2017, @11:16AM (#478360)

    The new "+"/"-" for collapsing are too big. Is it possible to make them slightly smaller (similar size as the arrows before the change)?

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