| |
| Writings Discussion Authors Help Search Home |
"You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 9/10/2001; 1:29 PM Problem: The discussion area has a significant noise to signal ratio. "Noise" defined as "everything is dumped in there together and nobody can find exactly what they want without digging through everything they don't want." Draft of solution: Eliminate the discussion area as it stands. Replace it with three separate categories:
I'm thinking of completely eliminating the "threaded" view in place of a UBB/Discus flat view, or a more slashdot style of nested and threaded nested. Most of this stuff will be handled by Conversant's brand new spanking feature "custom fields", along with a lot of use of Advanced Query Pages and conditional macros. Might throw in some RSS feeds for good measure, which means I'll have to learn RSS instead of just throwing the term around at random in a vain attempt to make myself look cool. Anybody has any ideas as to what to do with the journals, y'all let me know. My goal is to refocus this site towards its original intent: a home for writers and readers. I've gotten a lot of feedback that people are frustrated with the current discussion system, and I agree. E-mail users, I'm going to try and make your life a little easier by putting keywords in subject lines so you can filter mail into categories. We should be able to get a subject keyword index up and running, too. That one will take some time. None of this is going to happen in the next five minutes, mind you. But soon, oh so very soon... Anyone interested in being an editor, I might be able to expand that role now. I still have some names on file, but I'm always looking for more. E-mail me if you're interested.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Brian Webber on 9/10/2001; 11:55 PM I like it, although I don't have enough trust in myself to be an editor.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Chie Theresa Fujioka on 9/22/2001; 6:22 PM
y e s s s s s sssssssss
BUT
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 9/14/2001; 12:40 AM Yay! How's life treating ya, Chie? We miss you. > y e s s s s s sssssssss > BUT > >Where would I post my psycho insane babblings? In the Prepress, unless you didn't want them workshopped, in which case they get posted directly to the Publications > and where would we respond to writing Depends. If it's not published yet, you respond to them in the Prepress. If they're published, in Publications (or right at the bottom of the published piece itself. > >AND > >I wouldn't be able to post my pieces in the middle of a thread!!! You would. And I'd still find them.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Chie Theresa Fujioka on 9/14/2001; 12:43 AM woooooo
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 9/22/2001; 6:18 PM Hey there! Look what I made today! It's your new discussion area a-building. It works similar to the Ultimate Bulletin Board (or Google Groups, from whom I gleefully swiped design elements). Those are the topics discussed the last week. When a topic recieves a new message, it floats to the top. So if you go back to some old story and comment on it, that will float to the top of the list. It's purty. Except for the black lines in between everything. I'm not sold on the black. And the sidebar is getting a major overhaul, since it's aimed at the other style of discussion board.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 9/24/2001; 1:52 PM Despite a stunning lack of comments on this, the discussion group will move to the new format this week. The threaded view will cease to exist then, and you'll see a variety of other changes. Any comments, suggestions, or feature requests, get them in now. Already on the list:
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Evan on 9/24/2001; 9:30 PM I like the new design. I think all you need now is a mascot, I nominate my pet fungus Bob!!!!!!!
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Brian Webber on 9/24/2001; 10:51 PM Now that I think of it I do have a sugestion. This white background is OK, but a little bland. Go off-white, like ivory or soemthing. Spice it up a little.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 9/25/2001; 1:11 PM Beyond mascots and background color, does anyone have any specific comments about the new discussion area? By the end of today it'll be your official discussion group.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Brian Webber on 9/25/2001; 10:58 PM How about a star based rating system for Fiction?
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 9/26/2001; 1:20 AM Only fiction?
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Brian Webber on 9/26/2001; 4:15 PM Well, it was just a thought.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Matthew Patterson on 9/26/2001; 5:08 PM I don't know that we necessarily need one. We already have a wonderful way for people to leave feedback on stories and essays and whatnot. I don't see the need to attach subjective number values to them. -- Listen to me, I believe that we Care about the friends we have More than our hopes, more than our dreams And possibly, more than everything we defend.... (Revolution!) - "Rinbu Revolution," Masami Okui. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Brian Webber on 9/26/2001; 5:09 PM Oh, BTW, I don't like the new format. AND I jsut checked the Fiction section. Mile High STILL isn't there. *taps foot imaptiently*
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 9/27/2001; 10:14 AM Well, now it has. What don't you like about the new format, specifically? I'm missing the text clippings myself, which means abandoning the Google Groups-inspired tabling in the design for something else.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 9/28/2001; 2:26 PM Okay, it's mostly done at this point. I might move that member signin stuff to the sidebar, I might not. I'm going to be very busy with other projects for the next week, but any comments about the discussion group redesign? I admit I really like it, but then again, I wrote it... Next up is making the home page automatically update itself every 24 hours. Woo-hoo! And I've worked out how to have editors. Woo-hoo-hoo!
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Brian Webber on 9/28/2001; 3:26 PM Suggestion: As owner of this site, why not have a side bar with links to your personal faovirtes in essays, fiction, and poetry? I expect to see all my material on that list! *kidding*
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 9/28/2001; 4:15 PM How about, instead, a bookmark sidebar you can use to put your own bookmarks? You bring up an important point. As Mark Morgan, writer and reader, I feel it's my job to provide feedback and commentary. That's what this site is for. But as Mark Morgan, owner and publisher of Voices of Unreason, I prefer not to play favorites.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 10/2/2001; 12:31 PM Continuing to upgrade: if you post a new message, or reply to an old one, you'll see a couple new options: Publish This? and Genre?. They're pretty self-explanatory. On the administrative side, we can now publish things a lot easier--the publication tools are right in the thread of the message. You can't see them, but Matt and I (and the people at Macrobyte) can. Taken together, the two new features will make life a lot easier for everyone, and cut to zero the chance we'll miss any new things to publish. I wasted a morning I should have been doing other things getting this set up. When I get another chance, I'll automate the home page. No more stale front page content. Woo-hoo! Editors has run into a serious snag. I'll keep you posted.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Brian Webber on 10/6/2001; 4:24 PM Hey, how come recently Edited essays and what not don't show up anymore like they did on the old style? I edited two items of mine and expected to see them in the discussion group but didn't.
RE: "You want it when?!!!" By: Mark Morgan on 10/6/2001; 5:23 PM If you edit a piece with the specific desire to have feedback on the edited piece, the simplest thing is to add a new reply to its talkback saying so. I rather found it a waste to fill the discussion group with messages every time someone put in carriage returns for their poetry, or every time I added a new label to a message. If you're trying to just get attention for an old piece, asking for specific types of feedback in a reply is another good idea. Would you like each published to have a time stamp on it, for when it was last edited? Me, I'd like to see revision tracking (oh, I didn't mean to make that change, I'll back up to *this* version) but I haven't figured out how to do that, and Conversant doesn't support it directly, far as I know.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright Notice | Privacy Policy | Contact | |
 |
|