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LSData changelog

cryptanon

cryptanon

HLS 2L and LSData creator

This post contains boring, unorganized changelogs with some rambling thoughts.

I'm just gonna stuff all changelogs into this single blog post because no one wants to read multiple separate changelogs.

Feb 7, 2021 update#

BundleBee is picking up steam and LSData seems to be in a reasonably good place. My focus in the coming months will probably shift towards BundleBee as the cycle closes out, although LSData development will continue. Definitely going to add personal statement sharing before the cycle is over. I want to add a bunch of features to encourage user data entry (e.g. decision date estimators if dates are put in, full private profile if data entered, predictors) but the work itself isn't very attractive to me so they'll stay on the todo list for now.

From my conversation with friends, there are also a ton of interesting options open on the legal education/docs side. The law school admissions process is exploitative in a way that many other processes (bschool, undergrad?) aren't and it really rubs me the wrong way. LSData has a unique data set and could become a platform to try to fight against what I perceive as flaws in the legal education system... but I'm not much of an activist. Things to think about.

Added#

  • Chat moderators, mute/delete
  • Stat twin search
  • Basic GRE support
  • Featured section to improve visibility of articles
  • Search short urls are persisted through server restarts
  • Profile link copying
  • Styling improvements

Coming soon-ish#

  • Personal statement sharing (this is the last big feature planned, for now)
    • Maybe collated scholarship negotiation tips?
  • GRE graphs (and maybe other graphs) -- I hate working with the js for graphs
  • BundleBee updates
  • Better color blind support
  • UT, Yale, UC Davis status checkers

Jan 31, 2021 update#

Finally fixed the chatroom crash issue. Root cause was the Linux file descriptor limit -- default is only 1024 and each websocket connection uses a new file descriptor. Multiple users w/ multiple tabs = way more than 1024 websocket connections. Errors were silently failing behind nginx too. Drove me crazy and annoyed a bunch of users, which wasn't great. Most people were very positive though!

Added#

  • Chat, chatrooms, democratic 'moderation' in the form of a downvote nuke
  • Live status reports and reacts
  • Sortable user status table
  • User notes field
  • Fixed login/logout issues
  • Added captchas to avoid email spam
  • Changed email providers so yahoo users can receive verification emails
  • Automated CSV data dump
  • dependency upgrades
  • improved deploy process
  • CSS restyling

Jan 19, 2021 update#

Started working on a bunch of stuff and got totally derailed by crashes caused by the chatroom.

Jan 11, 2021 update#

Lots of stuff going on in background with BundleBee as well. Plan to reach out to banks next week.

Added#

  • Documentation and search
  • Site-wide search for schools, also keywords for abbreviations
  • scholarship, military, C&F details
  • Statuses can now be set to "hold" and naked "withdrawn"
  • Part-time law school programs
  • Clarify exactly how wonky soft tiers are
  • Improve 'edit stats' links
  • Fix screen vibration caused by scrollbar
  • Added fun popup for acceptances
  • linkify links in chat
  • disable private profile clicking
  • lots of minor styling and bug fixes

Coming soon#

  • Personal statement sharing
  • Color-blind mode
  • Status checkers for UT Austin, UC Davis, and Yale
  • Live status updates and reacts

Jan 4, 2021 update#

Coming soon#

  • Guest blog posts from current law students and alumni
  • Thorough how-to documentation on how to navigate the law school process
  • Personal statement sharing
  • Color-blind mode
  • Status checkers for UT Austin, UC Davis, and Yale
  • Aliases for school search

Added#

  • Early Decision, priority track, fee waiver, in-state residency
  • granular URM entry
  • before/after status comparison
  • collapsed statuses by default, which expand when going red
  • formatting cleanup of status table
  • removed ability for people to put dates in the future
  • clicking user link on the school page opens in a new tab

I'm struggling to fit all the status content within a single table. If there's too much stuff or the content is too wordy, the table gets really wide, users have to scroll, and UX suffers. The technically easiest solution would be to make the tables the full width of the page but then the tables collide with ads, and we need those. It really sucks to sacrifice UX for ad revenue though -- feels slimy. Hopefully the icon and ellipsis changes I made will be a decent middle ground.

There's a lot of other stuff going on in the background with LSData and BundleBee. It's nice to think about something that isn't black letter law but the freedom and problem scope is also a bit overwhelming. Good luck with your cycles y'all.