gemini://midnight.pub/posts/122

As I'm writing these lines, the renovation crew just left the pub. Overnight, they diligently painted the place and upgraded the furnitures while the bartender kept their pint afloat and the jukebox their focus, all of that while I wrote the feedback of our dearest regulars.

My love for experimenting will probably get the best of me at some point, but I'm grateful to have people around to tell me when I'm going too far. While I feel like I'm turning in circles at time, the circle gets bigger at every rotation. So cheers to you firefliesblueskies, zampano, nsilvestri and others. Thanks for your candor. This message resonated particularly well:

> As for replies: well, here I am, doing my best to reply nonetheless. Sometimes I have nothing important to say, but I still want to sit down with a drink and chit-chat with the other patrons. With threads gone, I've had to consider how I interact with the Midnight. And that has been...well, no interaction.

What I realize is threads and letters aren't incompatible. They are different type of engagement. And what's a pub if not a social place? While I value deeply thought, carefully thought messages, a pub needs to feel alive with short burst of reactionary content. It's all about balance:

One doesn't stop from the other. It's okay to sit down at a table in the lounge and have a conversation, and it's okay to shout at the bar.

And speaking of bar. I think we’ll need to replace the beers because the crew has been very erm.. productive. let’s see what they’ve done!

> While I'm a big fan of minimalism generally, there comes a point where something can be smoothed out to the point of losing anything that makes it unique. I find that the current approach to the Midnight is one such example. Even doing away with replies isn't something that would turn me off, although I don't agree with making dialogue harder. But the lack of _any_ customization (especially a way to instill some kind of dark mode) makes reading the site not very pleasant.

I think you are right. A place that's called the Midnight should probably be darker than most places. As you'll see, the crew re-used the previous colors. The style has been built to work with all browser that support html4 and css2, and it’s entirely customizable by creating a `_theme.css` page. I will be iterating on the look in the coming days, especially on the font and editor side.

If you scroll at the bottom of the page, you'll notice a familiar text area. The replies have been plugged back in, as well as the notification page.

I'll be helping bartender clean the bar now, but before that I wanted to thank you again for your implication and feedback. This place is our place. And it wouldn't be the Midnight without all of you. By the way, if you want to reach out to me directly for any question or just discussion, don't hesitate to send me an email at my username at the name of this place.

Thanks for the very quick turnaround on my...*ahem*...complaints. Please don't take my word as the be-all end-all for the way things should be around here, I can't handle that responsibility!

Although I will say...the new decorations are making me thirsty for a drink. I'll make my way over to the bar ;)

I appreciate your openness to feedback, and the willingness to go back a bit. Currently my old _theme.css works pretty well, although it doesn't get applied to the main page.

Out of curiosity, how do you get subheadings to show up? Some of them get rendered as <h2> tags, although my _theme.css doesn't style them consistently.

Is the comment system supposed to be shown on gemini as well? At the moment it doesn't seem so, at least from amfora.

The manual has not been updated yet and I joined the pub after the commenting system was already disabled.

Sorry for bothering, tell bartender I'm paying for your next round!

The renovation crew just left

Painting crew

Furniture crew

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