New A2K annoyances

This is not an annoyance, it's a low-priority feature request, to be addressed when the first wave of corrections is over.

I like A2K's existing option of sorting threads by their quality, as measured by people's votes about them. But when in doubt, I trust my own judgment more than the community's. Consequently, I'd like to get the ability to sort the threads I see by the number of positive votes I have cast in them.

From a community-building standpoint, this would also have the desirable side effect of giving people a direct benefit from their votes. This is an incentive to vote, and vote responsibly (as opposed to wasting their votes in narcicissistic popularity contests)

0 Replies

@Craven de Kere,

1. OK
2. Then give me a threaded message view. 'Cause right now, I have one monolithic thread.
3. Didn't Jespah just talk about titles that ya'll have added? One specific to Noddy, for example, and the RIP title for deceased members? You're turning into the sysadmin from hell, when you just keep doing things w/o regard to letting folks know.
4. It's all about what you want, eh?
5. Er... where?
6. I've lost track of what the original complaint is, SINCE I CAN'T SEE IT WHEN I'M REPLYING.
7. Ditto.
8. Ditto.

2 Replies

@Craven de Kere,

OK, I've gone back two posts, copied the original message, and here are the items I'd lost track of:

Quote:

5. "My Posts" view only shows the posts, not the threads in which they were posted (Thomas mentioned this, and I actually agree with him for once);
6. Really, really need a "quote" function;
7. Was it some sort of malicious prank to put the "reply" button on the left and the "preview" button on the right, when the "reply" button used to be on the right in the old format and the "preview" button used to be on the left?
8. I liked having a window showing the most recent posts while in "draft reply" mode. Any way of getting that back?

OK, now I've highlighted the paste, clicked BBCode Editor, re-highlighted the paste, since the message box lost focus, and clicked "Quote."

Now then:
5. Addressed where?
6. I'm not following your reason. It will make trivial quoting less common, but a lot more difficult for power users.
7. Sounds good.
8. Either previous posts, or the thread of the replies.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

Quote:

6. I've lost track of what the original complaint is, SINCE I CAN'T SEE IT WHEN I'M REPLYING.

As a temporary (or permanent) fix, if you are using IE, do what I'm doing. Right click and open a new tab when you want to reply to something. Then you can just swap windows when you want to refer to the content of that post, quote from it, etc. When done, close the tab.

It also works well using the Reply to All feature. While reading a thread, right click on Reply to open a new tab for each post you want to refer to in your reply to all. As you're composing your reply to all you can refer to the post on each tab, quote from it, etc., then close the tab and move on to the next tab for an additional response in your Reply to All post.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

joefromchicago wrote:

5. "My Posts" view only shows the posts, not the threads in which they were posted (Thomas mentioned this, and I actually agree with him for once);

DrewDad wrote:

5. Addressed where?

Addressed in Craven's response to me. Here's what he said:

Craven de Kere wrote:

This has some significant technical challenges. Not to make poorly like the last site but to make well and fast like our standards here.

1 Reply

@JPB,

It's sorted by the most use. So politics, for example, is the most popular subject on this site.

But we do need to make a paginating way to browse search tags and that's been on our todo list.

0 Replies

@Butrflynet,

Quote:

Re: DrewDad(Post 3357956)
Quote:
6. I've lost track of what the original complaint is, SINCE I CAN'T SEE IT WHEN I'M REPLYING.

As a temporary (or permanent) fix, if you are using IE, do what I'm doing. Right click and open a new tab when you want to reply to something. Then you can just swap windows when you want to refer to the content of that post, quote from it, etc. When done, close the tab.

It also works well using the Reply to All feature. While reading a thread, right click on Reply to open a new tab for each post you want to refer to in your reply to all. As you're composing your reply to all you can refer to the post on each tab, quote from it, etc., then close the tab and move on to the next tab for an additional response in your Reply to All post.

That sounds like my definition of hell.

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Quote:

There needs to be a link to 'my preferences' on the top bar.

Seriously, the key to navigation is making the stuff that's important prominent. So when people say X needs to be in the header they need to realize we can only put so much there and keep it simple and that there are more things desired there than can fit.

So I personally don't think users need to edit their preferences that often, and think the profile links from which they can get there are enough and the link is also in the footer for one click access for all.

Thing is, I'm not interested in convincing you that my navigation is best, and in keeping with everything else we do this will eventually be determined by you. You'll have your own quick navigation that you can use for whatever you want.

Quote:

BBcode editor needs to be expanded as default, many of us use it every single post and it's annoying to have to expand it every time.

Something similar is on our todo list. It would work like this: when you click that link the first time, it would then show up till you removed it. Right now it just stays through your posting but what we have planned is for that to be a preference and clicking it would set it.

The toolbar doesn't make sense to most new users so it helps us keep the posting form less intimidating, but I definitely agree that it should be there for users who want it as a preference. Just not as a default.

0 Replies

@Thomas,

I HAVE ASSUMED A NEW IDENTITY
-------------------------------------------------

rather than starting a separate thread , i'll just post my comments here and see how things work out .
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
since i couldn't remember the e-mail address under which i originally signed up - never thought of updating it - the new a2k refused to recognize me .
rather than trying to jump through some hoops and perhaps stumbling , i decided that i'll be known as HAMBURGBOY from now on - and under my new e-mail address .
you may still call me "hbg" - smiling - no more "emotions" permitted ?
HAMBURGBOY - formerly "hamburger"

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

There is actually not read tracking. The orange underline just means it was posted after your last login and any other slight change is just based on your browser history.

We have yet to nail the read tracking flow.

2 Replies

@Craven de Kere,

Yeah, I figured that out. It's just a link, and my browser tells me if I've followed it yet.

0 Replies

@JPB,

I think he's talking about how on the old topic lists pages for those topics used to be displayed. It was a lot to display in a simple way and I'm not sure how it was useful except for the first and last pages.

But we'll do more to give navigation options (e.g. a "jump to page" on topics). But the best navigation is acheived not when you can't think of what more to add, but when you can't think of what more to take away.

We have to strike a balance between bells and whistles and simplicity of use. An easy way to reconcile the differences is to make stuff optional and you'll certainly see more personal options to customize site navigation.

0 Replies

@Craven de Kere,

A-ha.

Definitely missing read tracking. One of those things that I didn't realize how often I used until it wasn't around anymore.

Hi there burgerboy! Glad you made it. :-)

Craven said he'll be sending a mass email to the addresses used on the old A2K, so if you still have access, that might help you.

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Quote:

There's no way to reply to the entire thread; having to reply to the last person who posted specifically is annoying, especially when you want to introduce new info.
- Can't edit the name of who you are replying to in the reply screen, should be able to pick a 'reply to thread' option'

Reply to all button. Big tab on the left.

Quote:

- Posts can now be edited after the fact; is there a note showing the post was edited at a certain time? This is important.

They still can't be edited if someone has replied. But the edit notification is something we had planned, it's important enough that we may do full revision history on it and that's why it's not yet here.

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Quote:

- In the sig line, Carriage returns are not recognized; my sig should be on two separate lines instead of just one.

One man's meat is another man's poison. I like the simpler, no formatting sigs, and I used to have a really cool image one that doesn't work here either.

0 Replies

@old europe,

The redirection of these threads is planned (I think it may be halfway done already) but we intend to redirect the old urls to new urls in specific cases where we can (and topics are the priority).

1 Reply

@fbaezer,

Quote:

Does the gravatar thingie work automatically for all your weblogs?

If they use gravatars it will display if you have it tied to the same email. You'd have to use different email addresses to have different avatars.

Quote:

White background is boring.

The site design is not finished, but it's intentionally plain. The idea is for the content to stand out more than the design and for things to load very fast.

Quote:

It's also a bore to constantly clic the "fit" button, and you don't get the idea of the whole discussion at a relatively short glance (for those of us fast readers) Some posts are longer than others, can't we just face that?
I wonder. In some cases, a personal reply can be very interesting, but we don't get to see it if we don't clic the "fit" button (which I know I'm going to hate).

You can change this in your preferences. I hate it too because of the way I use my scrollwheel on the mouse.

1 Reply

@old europe,

Quote:

It would be nice if the site would at least remember the last setting I had.

Exactly, that's the original spec but Nick did a quick and dirty solution for the mean time.

1 Reply

@Craven de Kere,

"Popular Tags"
---------------------
i find that the "Popular Tags" are a much too scrambled - and not in any particular order , as far as i can tell .
i would MUCH prefer just ONE tag per line , but that will probably take up too much space i imagine .
perhaps i'll get the hang of it - or just twiddle my thumbs for entertainment .
hbg

0 Replies

@Eva,

Quote:

Seems to me the "Reply" and "Reply to All" buttons should be next to each other. "Reply to All" is not obvious.

This is actually much more complicated than that. They are different but we like to settle into a rhythm and use the same post button over and over. On the old site, some would just always use quote for e.g., even if they had no need to quote.

It's going to take a bit to nail this navigation and I'll have to see how habits settle but it's not as easy as just puttin extra buttons on all the posts. That would confuse more and be used worse (ideally replying to specific users would be the most common, and that would allow us to do better things like email updates for just your posts and not a whole thread etc).

Quote:

Also, I agree with others that the "Popular Tags" box is a mess. The tags should be listed one per line and alphabetized. It's much too difficult to find what you're looking for.

This isn't finished, but if we don't sort by popularity we need to manage them and if they were one per line we could display less and make it harder to use.

We have some more tag navigation planned but this isn't a simple forum listing anymore because it grows with the community. If it were alphabetical, for example, I could fill it with a, aa, aaa, aaa tags and you'd see none of the relevant ones. The sort by popularity is the user's editorial control over tags.

Quote:

And...what happened to "General"? That's where I usually hung out.

They were imported with no tags, so whatever people tag them is where they'll show up in tag views.

0 Replies

New A2K annoyances

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know