The new site pre-launch updates

This is a topic to collect posts from the development team (Nick and I) on the new software. There will be changes big and small and I am going to explain some of them and the reasoning for it. Some of these changes may be canceled and many of them may not be present at launch but since we don't yet know which we'll share the plans that are

Starting with:

CATEGORIES

On the new site, categories are subdomains and can be nested (there can be multiple levels e.g. Literature > Books > Non Fiction). This is a better information architecture that allows us to better scale to more diverse topic coverage. An even more scalable folksonomy solution will be built around this and one of the big fundamental changes we started with are more scalable and relevant organization of information.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

The new look is starting from a very plain base. In fact there are only two design graphics on the current pre-designer look: one is the logo and the other is a button that's used for all main forms.

The goals we are going for are accessibility, usability and specifically readability. We may not have the greatest typography at launch (because our css files will likely launch a bit of a mess and we'll need to organize it all) but we will strive for it at some point.

The big changes here are in a much more subdued look and feel (lots of white and space) and in the static page width. The subdued design aims to make the content more of a focus point and to be easier on the eyes when reading. As to the narrow static width, research shows that text is more readily digested if it comes in certain column widths (quickly: what's the widest newspaper text column you remember?) and the very wide post widths at some resolutions are not great for readability. Given another of our principles (user-customization and self-determination of one's use and experience) there are also plans for features allowing the user to elect a liquid layout if desired.

The end result of the design changes should be a much faster loading site that is easier to use and subsequently will be used more.

NAVIGATION

The navigation of the site is one of the bigger changes and will be a major work in progress. The big changes are in clarity of the navigation elements and in the scalability of the information architecture. At launch it will be a little awkward since the navigation takes into considerations large sections of the site that will not actually be present right away but there will still be some improvements.

Namely, the site will use very prominent navigation elements including tabs (on the side of each page large tabs will present the most relevant actions within a given context. e.g. "Read Topic" and "Reply" or "My Topics" and "All Topics"), breadcrumbs (e.g. A > B > C) that are consistent and eventually top tabs/nav and search.

It will be messy in the beginning but the basic goal we are going for is to make it more obvious how to use the site by organizing the navigation and presenting it more prominently when appropriate.

WYSIWYG

That stands for "what you see is what you get" and is a technical description of editing platforms that allow you to see the result of the formatting you apply to text on the very text that you apply it to. An example of this would be Microsoft Word, where you don't need to know and often never even see the underlying markup. Contrast that to our current editor where you have to learn a pseudo-markup (BBCode) to apply formatting that you often only see the result of after the post is live.

The new site will use BBCode, but also will provide an optional Javascript WYSIWYG editor. You will be able to format text, links and images without needing to know anything about BBCode.

THREADING

The new site will begin to treat all replies as replies to a post, not a thread. This will allow us to enable threaded or hybrid threaded/flat views that can help users follow conversations within large threads. The launched application will likely not feature any of the tools meant to help organize discussions but we will launch with the data structure in place to begin to do so.

TOPIC TYPES

The new site may or may not launch with topic types but they are a fundamental part of the technology we will build. To summarize, the site is used in various different ways. From long political discussions to short questions and an answer. We are planning to help support the different types of uses by having different topic types that behave slightly differently. Examples of topic types we have in mind are Questions, Discussions, News, Videos....

For example, the questions topic type will be differentiated from discussions in that it can be marked as "answered". Not just "replied to" which is our current very limited view of our Q&A topic filtering capabilities. News topics may be displayed with a more time-sensitive context than discussions.

TOPIC CATEGORIZATION

While the site, at launch, will have its topics moved around similarly to how it is currently done (by moderators) one of its biggest updates are in its tagging feature which will provide social indexing (folksonomy) to the topics and allow us to eventually do better content matching on the site (e.g. related topics, user-defined interest in certain topics only...).

This also extends to the way the threads are prioritized. Right now it's a "featured threads" process that few people directly participate in and consequently many find fault with. There will eventually be tools to put this in the hands of the users at large (and this is going to be a recurring theme here) which won't stop many people from disagreeing with what's featured but at least the blame can go around and is not taxing the volunteer human resources. It has the additional benefit of being able to scale beyond what a handful of individuals are able to organize as well.

There may still be user-differentiation (real simply a moderator has different access and rights on the software than a user) in future processes but it will be blended in with much more hands-on access for the end users.