Dll

Is something wrong with the new trending topic system on here, the topics showing on there don't seem like they're really going to be trending right now, since they're from 2015.

I think you're misunderstanding a little in terms of how speed and google rankings relate. Although Google have never given a definitive answer (to my knowledge), the current consensus is that as long as you pass the core web vitals tests, then speed won't be a negative factor. So, once you do pass them, you're not going to gain anything in that respect by spending more time trying to get additional small gains in speed. 
Out of the box, assuming it's hosted on reasonable servers which are appropriately resourced for the traffic the community receives, and assuming there are no modifications causing issues, from what I've seen at least, Invision's software passes the core web vitals tests. 
So, for the vast majority of sites, that's great. If your hosting isn't great, or you have a bunch of modifications which slow things down, then you may need some extra help to pass the core web vitals test. Perhaps you were in that boat, who knows. But, personally I'd still recommend you and others in a similar position look first at the root causes of any specific problems you're having and dealing with those. Going to great lengths to minimise the css is more like a sticking plaster and a time consuming one at that. 

(We're investigating)

I think you're misunderstanding a little in terms of how speed and google rankings relate. Although Google have never given a definitive answer (to my knowledge), the current consensus is that as long as you pass the core web vitals tests, then speed won't be a negative factor. So, once you do pass them, you're not going to gain anything in that respect by spending more time trying to get additional small gains in speed. 
Out of the box, assuming it's hosted on reasonable servers which are appropriately resourced for the traffic the community receives, and assuming there are no modifications causing issues, from what I've seen at least, Invision's software passes the core web vitals tests. 
So, for the vast majority of sites, that's great. If your hosting isn't great, or you have a bunch of modifications which slow things down, then you may need some extra help to pass the core web vitals test. Perhaps you were in that boat, who knows. But, personally I'd still recommend you and others in a similar position look first at the root causes of any specific problems you're having and dealing with those. Going to great lengths to minimise the css is more like a sticking plaster and a time consuming one at that. 

As I pointed out in (rather frustrating) debates years ago: someone doesn’t understand the post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy. Doing X and seeing Y afterwards doesn’t mean that X caused Y. It’s why millions believe in homeopathy, and it’s why some admins believe whatever they happen to do on their website must have caused the ranking changes they saw in the following months. But unless the causal connection is demonstrated, it is not reasonable to accept that connection. Arguments based on that fallacy can and should be dismissed and discussions using such flawed arguments as a premise will usually end up being a waste of time. 

I think you're misunderstanding a little in terms of how speed and google rankings relate. Although Google have never given a definitive answer (to my knowledge), the current consensus is that as long as you pass the core web vitals tests, then speed won't be a negative factor. So, once you do pass them, you're not going to gain anything in that respect by spending more time trying to get additional small gains in speed. 
Out of the box, assuming it's hosted on reasonable servers which are appropriately resourced for the traffic the community receives, and assuming there are no modifications causing issues, from what I've seen at least, Invision's software passes the core web vitals tests. 
So, for the vast majority of sites, that's great. If your hosting isn't great, or you have a bunch of modifications which slow things down, then you may need some extra help to pass the core web vitals test. Perhaps you were in that boat, who knows. But, personally I'd still recommend you and others in a similar position look first at the root causes of any specific problems you're having and dealing with those. Going to great lengths to minimise the css is more like a sticking plaster and a time consuming one at that. 

Errm, not wanting to spoil the snake-oil style sales pitch here. But, if you want to go and do some research, you'll find plenty of Invision based communities and websites doing very well in google. 
It's the core web vitals which can potentially have an affect on rankings due to the fact they measure things which affect user experience, and even in the apparently terrible example you posted for this site, they pass. 

Errm, not wanting to spoil the snake-oil style sales pitch here. But, if you want to go and do some research, you'll find plenty of Invision based communities and websites doing very well in google. 
It's the core web vitals which can potentially have an affect on rankings due to the fact they measure things which affect user experience, and even in the apparently terrible example you posted for this site, they pass. 

Errm, not wanting to spoil the snake-oil style sales pitch here. But, if you want to go and do some research, you'll find plenty of Invision based communities and websites doing very well in google. 
It's the core web vitals which can potentially have an affect on rankings due to the fact they measure things which affect user experience, and even in the apparently terrible example you posted for this site, they pass. 

I completely understand your position @Adlago. You are a power user with a very focused goal of attaining the highest possible pagespeed/CWV/lighthouse scores possible. This means spending days and weeks optimising CSS, JS, etc often making large amounts of changes and sacrifices to achieve your goal of a good rating from a brief audit with an automated tool.

That is what you want to do, and I understand that.

From my position, we want to deliver a very broad community platform that is capable of being used by a vast and diverse array of communities.

For example, these are both Invision Communities running the same major version.

 

Both of these websites use our base CSS. Now, if you wanted to make the Squarespace one super fast, you'd go in and remove virtually anything that is a colour, remove loads of the ipsBadge classes you won't need, all the various type styles and so on and save hundreds of bytes in the process. However, you could not then take that optimised CSS and make it work for the second example which has different needs.
My point here is that we cannot really create a very optimised set of CSS files for every potential community. What we want to do is overhaul the CSS to produce a much smaller footprint and be much more extensible but we don't have a magic wand. We have a finite number of developers with a growing list of things to do. Overhauling CSS means essentially starting a new theme from scratch and that means booking out our UI team for months.

Project planning is tough, but it's on the list to do.

I'm just suggesting that there are better ways to achieve what you're hoping to without spending hours and hours hacking about in the css. Particularly as that's now harder to do.
And on top of that, once a website is fast enough that its speed doesn't affect the user experience negatively, you're chasing ever diminishing returns for your time, regardless of how good your speed scores get. Particularly when you consider the myriad of other things which go into making a website worthwhile for a user that you could be spending your time on. 

But here's the thing, here's one for a community without your updates, not really any difference?

@Adlago - have you looked into how those changes affect actual users rather than test scores? I know you like your tests etc, but improvements are only of use when they actually positively impact the user experience and load time by a discernable amount. This is why things like core web vitals exist now, as that's specifically measuring how a site loads for a user. 
You're probably going down a rabbit hole with all this stuff which improves your scores but maybe makes <50ms difference to page load time, which in turn makes little to no difference when it comes to an actual person using your website. 
It's up to you of course, but for most website developers there are way more worthwhile and impactful things to be doing with their time. 

@Adlago - have you looked into how those changes affect actual users rather than test scores? I know you like your tests etc, but improvements are only of use when they actually positively impact the user experience and load time by a discernable amount. This is why things like core web vitals exist now, as that's specifically measuring how a site loads for a user. 
You're probably going down a rabbit hole with all this stuff which improves your scores but maybe makes <50ms difference to page load time, which in turn makes little to no difference when it comes to an actual person using your website. 
It's up to you of course, but for most website developers there are way more worthwhile and impactful things to be doing with their time. 

No, the custom CSS is still there @My Sharona. 

I don’t think that discussions going in circles is something that would require moderation. I only step in when things escalate, because that can be very damaging for a community. 

This is a great question, so I asked it on Twitter to get some advice from some experienced community managers: 
 

@marklcfc - we use this, it uses the first image in the thread as the image used on shares. Maybe not the control you may want over the images, but we find it's pretty useful. 
 

Thanks, I've alerted our team about this.

One of the pain points I see is this new found, deeper entrenchment of views and opinions that some people have gained in recent years - in part I assume it is related to social media and how easy it is to create an echo chamber for those views.
To give an example -  some people are so entrenched in their viewpoint that they don't really engage in a discussion other than to disagree with those who suggest anything different, restate their points and ultimately just go around in circles regardless of evidence, suggestions and information being fed back into the discussion by other participants. This can make discussions more fractious, and ultimately hurts engagement within them as people tire of the circular arguments being regurgitated and just step away from them. 
From a moderation perspective I think it's really tricky to know where to draw the line - different viewpoints and a bit of drama can add spice to debates, but when and how to stop that when it does start to become circular? And what to do about those with a tendency to take discussions in that direction? 
I'd be interested to know how other communities deal with this sort of thing.

Of course there is. Turning to some sort of pirated version of anything should never be an option. 

Was about to say something very similar. Sending out useful information about the service a user has signed up to isn't illegal. It  may be annoying for some but it's not breaking GDPR (that's a privacy law, not an email one). 
That said, we don't do it, as I'm not convinced it's effective. As far as I'm concerned, for every person it engages it may well drive another one away as a constant drip of emails is never especially fun if you're not wanting or expecting them. 

Could you give some specifics for which CKeditor features that doesn't function properly on a mobile device compared to the other editors you're referring to?

The layout shifts near the top of the screen in live topics when there is another user online. The space really needs to be reserved on page load to avoid it impacting CLS scores on core web vitals, I think.

I think there are a few paid for apps on iOS which plug into it, not sure about Android. But, I suppose if there were to be a plugin or something available for invision community, I'd be open to trying it.