General discussion
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May 5, 2011 at 2:14 pm #2172957
What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
Lockedby jasonhiner · about 12 years, 11 months ago
Our sister site Gamespot recently launched a redesign:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6311924/resistance-3-demo-rising-with-battle-la-blu-rayI like the more compressed format, AND I really like the option to view “Latest Posts” or “First to Last.”
I’ve asked our product managers to look at this as we consider tweaking the format of TR forum threads.
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May 5, 2011 at 2:22 pm #2894308
that’s OK
by who am i really · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
but I like this type even better
Note the wider posts
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May 5, 2011 at 2:49 pm #2894304
But that doesn’t work with forking threads…
by ansugisalas · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to that’s OK
I don’t want non-forking threads!!! I want my split ends, dammit!
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May 5, 2011 at 4:20 pm #2894299
I’m tired of being "Forked" . . .
by who am i really · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to But that doesn’t work with forking threads…
the Gov. tried again this year and lost !
I’m just suggesting the width part of that forum, I’m not much of a white space fan
scroll down a few replies in any discussion on TR and a giant white gap about 1/3 of the screen appears on the right side of the screen
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May 6, 2011 at 12:08 am #2892860
I can see what you mean.
by ansugisalas · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to I’m tired of being "Forked" . . .
It’s the indent, but then the indent is what makes the different branches discernible.
But right now TR has impossibly bloated message spaces; that makes the whitespace problem worse. If the space around the text was trimmed down, it would help a lot.
Maybe all the “controls” (prev, next, #votes, vote+/-, reply, flag, favourite) could be grouped along the right hand side of the message box, that would cut the wasted space by about five lines. -
May 6, 2011 at 2:13 pm #2892783
not the thread indenting . . .
by who am i really · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to I can see what you mean.
but the “Right” side of the screen
see here:
http://i832.photobucket.com/albums/zz249/WhatNameShoudIUse/TR-AdGap.png?t=1304716240note 1/3 of the screen is empty
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May 11, 2011 at 2:17 pm #2893378
Right… meaning "my other right" ;)
by ansugisalas · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to not the thread indenting . . .
Now I see it, the space taken up by the social media controls and ads, which don’t scroll along down (Thank you, God!)…
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May 15, 2011 at 10:51 am #2893092
Right as in Opposite of Left . . .
by who am i really · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Right… meaning "my other right" ;)
the indent is
to the <- left and the giant white space is on the right ->they need a button like in yahoo email that collapses the right side of the screen and compresses the vertical space by spreading the thread posts to the full width of the screen
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May 15, 2011 at 11:54 am #2893091
You mean
by boxfiddler · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Right… meaning "my other right" ;)
like Print/View All? ]:)
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May 16, 2011 at 10:53 pm #2893008
re: Print / View All . . .
by who am i really · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Right… meaning "my other right" ;)
here’s a pic of the button that hides the ads frame in Yahoo- Email
when clicked the frame collapses and the in-box / mail list and preview pane expand to fill the space
http://i832.photobucket.com/albums/zz249/WhatNameShoudIUse/Y-Mail.png?t=1305611043
if the TR site had a similar function then we could collapse the white space on the right side which would expand the posts horizontally which would also compress the vertical size and necessity to scroll while reading
Cheers
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May 6, 2011 at 5:22 am #2892838
Ditto
by charliespencer · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to But that doesn’t work with forking threads…
If anything, it’s worse than what we have now. There’s no nesting at all. It’s impossible to tell who is responding to whom. It doesn’t appear to have a ‘Subject’ field, so you can’t even identify the member you’re replying to in that fashion.
I can live with a format with some white space and having to click a Sort option when I reload the page. I personally don’t care about the ‘look and feel’ or voting, as long as it stays out of the way. I understand ads pay the bills. However, not being able to follow a conversation is a deal-killer. As far as I can tell, Who Am I Really and Jaqui’s offerings suffer from the same issue. Call it nesting, threading, indenting; it ain’t there.
The inability to easily detect multiple new comments is another greatly missed feature. Just identifying the single ‘latest’ comment is tolerable on forums where the activity level is much lower than it is around here, but it’s pointless when 15 comments came while I was at lunch.
It’s the same as my inability to follow a Twitter conversation – there’s in this example to tie comments together either.
This isn’t an attempt to present something worse so we’ll say, “Well, the new format isn’t as good as the old, but at least it isn’t THAT.”, is it? 😀
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May 5, 2011 at 2:39 pm #2894306
I prefer
by jaqui · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=4347757#post4347757
the vbulliten forum script look.
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May 5, 2011 at 2:48 pm #2894305
Look at the votes!
by ansugisalas · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
They show both ups and downs, which we’ve mentioned would be nice here too.
After all, a post with a -10 total will be viewed differently if it’s +90/-100 than if it’s +0/-10… that sort of stuff can become relevant if (=when) there’s a big fanboy flamefest again.Overall, I don’t like the one-dimensionality of it. We need the threads to be indented, or we’ll be able to find things even less. If the posts are compacted more (which I think sounds good), consider upping the indentation – it will increase findability.
All kinds of options for filtering the posts are good!
The *NEW* flag is sorely missed, by the way 🙂-
May 6, 2011 at 12:12 am #2892859
Of course, they’re doing it in a silly way…
by ansugisalas · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to Look at the votes!
Ultimately the “#up – #down = total” is cluttered, confusing and superfluous.
The clever way to do it is to show the sum of the votes, and then the total#votes_cast – I think it’s safe to say that most TR users can do the math.
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May 5, 2011 at 4:03 pm #2894301
The former Discussion/Question format here
by boxfiddler · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
was quite good. Significantly less pain in the wazzoo than any other forum I frequent. That blatantly indented, tree format made forum life easy. So did that orange word ‘new’ next to new posts. Of course it was the back end of TR’s previous incarnation that we miss and that made this place stand out (besides the people, of course).
Sort options are good, though. We didn’t have those… Less blinding white space is good.
imo
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May 5, 2011 at 6:36 pm #2892887
Permalink comment to position in thread.
by seanferd · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
Instead of having a linked comment show up at the top of a thread.
You used to have the best branching and print views of any forum. The blue “greenbar” display was nice as well.
Gamespot? Much better. More room for extraneous blinking dreck alongside the tiny comment boxes with huge avatars. Fantastic! Comment list with no branching – good for some sites, but branching has always seemed to work really well at TR. Latest posts? Out of context, who cares?
Honestly, if ads were not so ridiculous, I’d click through just so a site I love would get the referral points. (I know that not all ads work that way, but I do it all the same.)
Mostly, since it has settled down, the forum design here isn’t too awful, but reading it is like being snowblind.
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May 6, 2011 at 12:16 am #2892858
Ditto on the snowblind.
by ansugisalas · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to Permalink comment to position in thread.
I also feel like I have reversed binoculars strapped to my eyes… very very near-sighted.
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May 6, 2011 at 3:42 am #2892840
i like
by purpleskys · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
the hp site seanferd posted. Yes, there may be some white space, but at least it’s better than the friggin’ bazillion ads all down both sides of the page. There’s nothing worse than kaos on a website, makes my head ache. And that’s my two cents for the day…
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May 6, 2011 at 10:52 am #2892807
That was Who Am I Really.
by seanferd · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to i like
(And the answer to the eponymous question is “not seanferd” in this particular case. :D)
So, I can’t take credit for posting that link.
I agree, though, that KAOS goes much better with Radio or The Man From UNCLE, not so much with site design.
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May 6, 2011 at 6:23 am #2892833
Worse.
by jfuller05 · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
I didn’t see nesting, which is crucial to following conversation in a discussion forum.
My main complaint is our profiles. Before, and by before I mean the previous TR, I could follow discussion/question comments via my dashboard. I logged in to TR, went to my dashboard, and I could see the latest comments to discussions and questions I was participating in. Now, I login to my profile, I see my latest comment on a discussion which I don’t care about. I can see that a TR member commented on a discussion I’m participating in, but I don’t see their subject heading like I was able to in the previous TR. Being able to click on the latest commenter’s subject heading and go the latest comment on the forum was a very nice feature. Also, seeing “new” next to the new comments was very nice.
Another annoyance is that I can’t see water-cooler discussions in my profile. Why is that?
My complaints rest firmly on the inability of following conversations via my profile. The features I mentioned in the previous TR site that are lost now were very nice and I would like to see them back in this TR.
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May 6, 2011 at 7:03 am #2892830
I still dislike it
by slayer_ · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
I really hate the 100 per page thing, especially since viewing a post on the second page takes you back to the first page, or viewing any post resets the sort order and number of posts per page settings. And though it was promised to add an “All” option to our settings for this, it has not happened. I would think this would be a pretty easy change.
I find it funny that, if you go to the water cooler from the Q&A tab, it uses the Q&A display to show the same discussions.
The old Q&A design was far better, it allowed for multiple correct answers and an easier way to track the progression of an answer.I really dislike that in discussions, the page has to reload for each post you click, why can it not simply expand when you click on it, where you click on it.
The links to the posts being the date just seems unintuitive. Why not simply add a “View comment” button?
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May 6, 2011 at 4:22 pm #2892777
take a look
by locolobo · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
at this one:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/
As a member it keeps track of where I’ve been. So I have the option to go to the first new post in a thread. It doesn’t do the forked threads though and that is a problem for some.
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May 6, 2011 at 4:53 pm #2892775
Just looked, and it does a partial fork though. . .
by who am i really · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to take a look
… when posters quote what they’re replying to
hopefully, the act of “replying” would automatically quote the post replied tothe Sonic / Roxio forums do it that way as well
(quote inside the reply)
check this thread for example
http://forums.support.roxio.com/topic/70426-problems-with-cineplayer-dvd-decoder-pack-231-esd/.
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May 7, 2011 at 3:21 am #2892756
The problem with quoting vs. nesting.
by charliespencer · about 12 years, 11 months ago
In reply to Just looked, and it does a partial fork though. . .
Is that it takes up a whole lot more space, especially if multiple people quote the same content repeatedly. It’s necessary if you’re not able to reply immediately below the comment you’re referencing. Indenting reduces the need for that, since that content is directly above.
I dislike forums that display large chunks of a member’s entire profile down the left side. This same format is used on a music site I visit. One of the fields displayed under the avatar is called “Currently Listening To”. Some members list so many artists that the text under their picture is ten or more lines deep. This takes up huge amount of space every time they post, even if they post only a single line of text in the comment space. For examples, see the fourth, fifth, and tenth comments here:
Still, I could live with it if we could get indentions back.
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May 7, 2011 at 11:13 am #2892747
Right.
by seanferd · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to The problem with quoting vs. nesting.
That is a problem even in some email threads – some lengthy description or diatribe is quoted many times in multiple posts which have only one-line responses (and sometimes no response at all that I can see).
So, no, I don’t like the auto-quote reply method, either.
I dislike forums that display large chunks of a member’s entire profile
And a huge avatar, two or more “sigs” of ridiculous size, plus a huge animated image “sig”.
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May 7, 2011 at 6:35 pm #2892728
OK this is weird . . .
by who am i really · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
when I open this discussion from the links on the front page(s) Q & A and Discussions
it opens like a Q with no titles in the replies
and when I open it from the link on the page within the water closet it opens normally with all the titles intact
weird ?
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anyone else seen this?-
May 7, 2011 at 6:46 pm #2892726
Yup.
by boxfiddler · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to OK this is weird . . .
Been workin’ that way from the outset of the new TR.
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May 7, 2011 at 7:10 pm #2892724
I wouldn’t necessarilly call that "workin’ " . . .
by who am i really · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Yup.
as the replies don’t always make sense when the title /.subject is missing from the comment
this post won’t make as much sense if the title isn’t there
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May 9, 2011 at 1:08 pm #2892608
"this post won’t make as much sense…"
by charliespencer · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to I wouldn’t necessarilly call that "workin’ " . . .
Don’t worry about it; we’re used to that from you 😀
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May 9, 2011 at 6:32 pm #2892578
that’s because . . .
by who am i really · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to "this post won’t make as much sense…"
that’s probably because,
[b]End User[/b] is not my first language
I’m a hack from way back,
I don’t just use systems
I beat them into submission !
– every install of win 2K : 18 – 20 Processes at start (depending on the system)
– every install of win XP : 20 – 26 Processes at start (depending on the system, usually 24 is the norm.)cheers
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May 9, 2011 at 7:09 pm #2892576
Ooops.
by boxfiddler · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to that’s because . . .
Wrong spot. How the heck did I do that? :0
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May 8, 2011 at 9:57 am #2892708
In all the web there was a place
by michael jay · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
where the threads were easy to follow and the layout was unique on the web, there really was none better, now all forms seem to look the same.
The forking, to show who is talking to whom is not as clear here as it was on this other site;
http://replay.web.archive.org/20090215005915/http://techrepublic.com.com/5221-6230-0.html-
May 8, 2011 at 1:13 pm #2892703
You’re making me nostalgic now
by av . · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to In all the web there was a place
The good old days at TR. The old layout was so easy to follow because it was so simple. Sometimes less is more.
AV
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May 8, 2011 at 2:29 pm #2892695
Yea, you got that right
by michael jay · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to You’re making me nostalgic now
Also, a lot of folks have gone missing, in some cases a good thing, in others, not so much.
The crazy banter back and forth combined with a lot of good tech stuff made for exciting reading, now still a lot of tech stuff, which is good, but no crazyness.
Kinda miss crazy.
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May 8, 2011 at 2:51 pm #2892694
I miss crazy too
by av . · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Yea, you got that right
It was such an outlet from everydaydom. Maybe we can get it back if TR tweaks a few things. I want to see them put some of the old functionality back in Water Cooler. In “My Stuff”, I’d like to see all of my posts listed, including Water Cooler posts. Now, I can’t find some things I posted to and its kind of annoying.
Maybe, the few of us that are left will just have to go “rogue” ]:)
AV
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May 9, 2011 at 7:10 pm #2892574
It just
by boxfiddler · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to In all the web there was a place
doesn’t get any better than that for web conversation.
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May 10, 2011 at 6:43 am #2893568
I’m getting all teary-eyed…
by jfuller05 · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to In all the web there was a place
*sobs* I love that layout!
Now I’m nostalgic too…
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May 8, 2011 at 2:27 pm #2892696
I don’t know what Gamespot looked like before, but
by av . · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
I’m not a fan of the linear quality of the comments section. It just looks like people are commenting on the article and not discussing it with each other. Maybe you can’t reply to other people there, I don’t know, but thats my first impression having never been to Gamespot. I do like the “Latest Posts” or “First to Last” tabs.
The design on TR needs some tweaking, for sure. There is so much whitespace on each side of the page that it visually interferes with reading the content. Everything kind of blends together. If I am in expanded view, which is most times, I can’t discern who is responding to whom. I sometimes have to go back and forth between collapsed and expanded views to figure out where I am.
In the past, it was easy to see the sub posts and all the different levels of a discussion, visually. They were indented. Yes, the boxes within a box are slightly indented, but everything is the same two colors, light gray or white. All the white space is killing my eyes, personally. If TR is going to continue to use this format, maybe using different colors might be a way to differentiate between levels of posts.
I really am not a fan of the newspaper-column-like setup of TR now. Everything is in boxes and nothing blends together except all of the whitespace. I miss the no-nonsense setup of TR before the upgrade. I know I’m not getting that back, but it would be a start to use color so it doesn’t all blend together.
AV
Edited: Added “before the upgrade”.
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May 8, 2011 at 3:06 pm #2892693
The white is just too white
by michael jay · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to I don’t know what Gamespot looked like before, but
a slightly off white or the blue progressive that used to be used would go a long way to make the site less eye straining.
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May 9, 2011 at 12:16 pm #2892619
Agreed
by jck · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to The white is just too white
…with a lot of the comments here.
less bright…for less eye strain…
more width…to reduce scrolling…Anywho…
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May 10, 2011 at 10:06 pm #2893475
Tech is traditionally gray…
by ansugisalas · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to The white is just too white
I guess the white is a more or less conscious nod to Apple, as they were the first to champion “white computers”… LinkedIn is also all-white, but you don’t need to read huge amounts of text on LinkedIn.
A nice brushed steel look would be good, has to be less light-intensive. Specifically, the borders along the sides have to change color, there’s so much of that space out there.
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May 9, 2011 at 8:53 pm #2892569
Maybe I’m the only one with a good memory here…
by justin james · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
… but that is what the comments here at TR were like about 5 years ago, sans the voting stuff.
J.Ja
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May 9, 2011 at 9:27 pm #2892568
The troops
by santeewelding · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Maybe I’m the only one with a good memory here…
They ain’t happy unless they’re bitching. Not to mention, alive and alert, no matter the Big Squelch.
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May 10, 2011 at 5:52 pm #2893486
Santee!
by av . · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to The troops
Do you remember this song? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=460INShy3BU
Never give up, never give in. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.
AV
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May 10, 2011 at 5:47 pm #2893487
We have gone through a lot of changes here
by av . · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Maybe I’m the only one with a good memory here…
Honestly, they aren’t easy to deal with for one reason. TR took away functionality. The design of the site (too much white) is one thing, but if you can’t find the things you posted to, thats a real problem.
You know Justin, I’ve worked in IT for over 25 years, and have always done tech support in some way. If you can’t accommodate the users in your upgrade, it isn’t an improvement. Sure you’re on version 2.X of whatever and that works for you, but what about the community? The functionality of finding what you posted to is gone and it hasn’t been fixed yet. I don’t even know if TR sees it as a problem. I have a problem with that, having been here for almost 10 years.
I realize we are small potatoes, but if TR restores a little functionality to the site and uses a little more color in their format, it could go back to its former glory.
As far as the voting, I just don’t get it. I don’t think voting means a thing anymore.
Tell me, what do you think of the redesign of TR? Do you think its useful and why?
AV
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May 11, 2011 at 5:36 am #2893455
I think that the proliferation of voting…
by jck · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to We have gone through a lot of changes here
is more of a site metric for staff evaluation of content for future use (to see what can garner more attention/participation) than a tool for users to have/appreciate.
I agree about not being able to find things, the color, and find as well that the line-and-a-half spacing of the in posts taking up more space, and the font change as well, have all reduced readability as well as usability. If users needed a bigger font, all major browsers have a means to increase/decrease font size.
Anyways, not gonna harp anymore. I’ve said these things other times before.
All I could suggest for TR vX.X next time is something we learned in computer science: The KISS Principle. Keep It Simple St…well, you know the rest.
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May 11, 2011 at 8:05 am #2893418
Voting as a metric
by justin james · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to I think that the proliferation of voting…
I can tell you that as an author, I use the votes (on articles, not comments) as a useful metric. It gives me a good idea what kind of content the readers find useful. Since I don’t write opinion pieces, I know that a thumbs up vote really means “this was useful” as opposed to “I agree”. I can’t vouch for what the TR staff does in their meetings, but I’ve never been given the impression that the votes drive the content strategy.
J.Ja
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May 11, 2011 at 8:26 am #2893415
Well…
by jck · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Voting as a metric
I don’t think they’d implement comment voting for no reason. Bad business to consume resources without ROI. Hence, I think it’s more of a way to get feedback passively on what direction is appealing to people. You can’t really get that kind of opinion detail from a page view count.
But, I’m like you. I, at times, use the thumbs up/vote for articles. I don’t see a lot of use for voting on each individual comment. But when I find something really informative or useful, I like the author (someone like you) to know that I liked it.
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May 11, 2011 at 1:41 pm #2893385
Cynical me.
by charliespencer · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Well…
I think it’s just a sop to the ‘Like This’ and ‘Friend That’ crowd. “Look, I pushed the button and the number changed!” I can’t believe the number of people who ‘vote’ via text message in response to frivolous polls mentioned during TV programs (especially sports); polls they’ll never see the results of and that will never affect anything; polls that are just there to give people a brief warm feeling, like peeing their pants.
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May 11, 2011 at 2:41 pm #2893370
Yes, but…
by jck · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Cynical me.
without the yellow sneakers and rusty zipper… B-)
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May 12, 2011 at 2:31 pm #2893255
Well here
by hal 9000 · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Cynical me.
The Voting relies on you dialing a Paid Phone Number so it’s actually a Money Making Proposition for those places running the Voting.
I would expect a similar thing happening in the US as well. 😉
Col
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May 11, 2011 at 1:37 pm #2893386
Voting on articles.
by charliespencer · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to Voting as a metric
I’ve frequently asked that the vote button on articles be moved to the BOTTOM, at the end of the content. When I finish a great article, I’m ready to jump right into the discussion. By the time I’ve read what others say and tossed in a few comments of my own, I’ve forgotten to go back to the top of the original article and give it a ‘plus’. I think the authors would receive more feedback if this button came after the article, not before. Having the button up front is like a waitress asking for a tip before you’ve ordered your drinks.
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May 11, 2011 at 8:26 am #2893414
My thoughts on the design
by justin james · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to We have gone through a lot of changes here
1) I agree with you, you never take away functionality unless that functionality was causing issues (making the UI a mess, making the code impossible to work with, etc.), the functionality was used by an extraordinarily small portion of the users, and the functionality was not a primary tool for the people who *did* use it. That’s what Microsoft does with their “Customer Experience Improvement Program”, they track what features of apps people actually use, and things like how much “hunting” people do to access features, to determine what stays and what goes. In my opinion, the current TR implementation removed a good amount of functionality that a good portion of heavy users relied upon to use the site.
2) There were a number of changes made to the site that I disagree with. For example, the new design uses something like 25% – 30% of the usable width of my monitor. That’s a huge waste of precious screen real estate. It’s like they designed the site to work on a smartphone as-is or something. While they made the fonts bigger (which had to happen), there is even less room for content per-line. For somethings, this isn’t a big deal. But it has severely impacted the kind of content I write. I’ve discovered that there isn’t a good way for me to include code samples in my articles, for example, which makes it tough to be a writer in “Programming and Development”. There’s not nearly enough room for tables of information either. I wanted to experiment with my monthly “Patch Tuesday” piece and do a chart to make the information more accessible, but the horizontal space was not available.
3) The changes made to the forum have limited my use of them. The daily emails are far less useful than they used to be (I have to copy/paste the links from one of the emails, following the email links takes me to the post completely out of context, so I have no idea what it is in response to). The editor is too small to let the text breathe and let me review my comments properly. I think that the voting in the forums, for the most part, is a contest of post popularity, not post quality, and as a such has little value to me.
That being said…
I understand the motivation for the work that was done. The big item is that the new backend is much more flexible, which means they can more easily tweak stuff. I haven’t seen the site crash or go down since the redesign, if you remember back to from about 4 years ago to about a year ago, it seemed like site crashes were a weekly event. I suspect that the site has a much better foundation for future expansion and growth. My only concern is if the development team turns their attentions to other projects and doesn’t come back to TR to make improvements until it’s time for another “redesign”. I believe that they should be using an iterative approach to constantly tweak and refine the site.
J.Ja
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May 11, 2011 at 5:18 pm #2893358
I guess its a work in progress
by av . · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to My thoughts on the design
I have no doubt that the upgrade is a better foundation for the site, but I have the same concerns that you do. TR might not be the highest of priority for the development team. Last on the list may be our fate here, but the bottom line is that TR has dealt a blow to the community that was here. I liked that we were introduced to Brandon and he was going to help, I thought, but he really probably doesn’t have the time. I did get to test out TR support through the link he provided though and honestly, it was beyond poor. They had no idea what I was talking about, gave me a crappy answer thats unacceptable and never responded to my follow up email. Here is the link to that. http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/103-344025-3445659?tag=discussion-thread
I can’t imagine what a challenge it must be for you to submit your articles like you used to. It really shouldn’t be an issue, no matter what you want to post. Thats the purpose of a site like this. Yes, there are always limitations, but not like this.
Well ok, Justin, I appreciate your answer and thank you for your honesty. I’m into an iterative approach too, and want to keep this issue alive so we can get the band back together, so to speak.
AV
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May 15, 2011 at 12:24 pm #2893087
Yes, there were issues
by nicknielsen · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to My thoughts on the design
The forums had their problems, but the layout made sense, was easy to follow, and it was infinitely easier to follow discussions and peers. The first thing I noticed after the roll-out was not the white space, not the voting, but lack of any effective means to follow my discussions without flooding my inbox or feed reader.
In an ideal world, they would simply have cut and pasted the old front end onto the new back end, then added the “social” features. Personally, I don’t understand the fascination with “social media.” I think Facebook has done more to make personal interaction less social; you don’t have to have a conversation, you don’t have to justify your decisions, you just click “Like”, all your friends get an update, and nobody thinks to ask why. What’s social about that?
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May 11, 2011 at 10:10 am #2893405
I miss the thumbs up
by markp24 · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
The voting thing doesnt seem to be used by anyone, and the old thumbs up let me get a basic feel for how relieble the posters answers were. Still not sure how the new votes work in order to show if you answer actually helped the person or not.
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May 12, 2011 at 4:20 pm #2893251
Very good point
by av . · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to I miss the thumbs up
There are the voting buttons, but they are thread specific. The thumbs did visually indicate the reliability of the person answering your question and it was very useful for any visitor. They need to put that back or do something like it to indicate what level user a poster is. Some sites just list the level of expertise instead of a visual depiction. I’m going with the visual though on this one, I like the thumbs, too. They convey so much more than just saying “expert”. Its folksy.
AV
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May 17, 2011 at 7:49 am #2892980
I like that better, but I wish there was threading
by jmgarvin · about 12 years, 10 months ago
In reply to What do you think of this discussion/forum format?
I’d like to see something like reddit or the old style digg, where it is clean and with threading.
Part of the reason I don’t comment anymore, is the new system. It is slow and clunky.
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