New A2K feature requests.

Besides what was already said (well, most of that), I like a 24 hours clock better than this AM and PM

I second that (and voted up your suggestion).

How's that for redundancy?

another fan of the 24 hour clock here

at one point there'd been talk of a button similar to my tags for my links. that's one of the features I still miss most from Abuzz - that you could find all the links you'd added (without having to re-read all of your old posts in the possible subject/topic area)

Re quoting, I'd also like the design to be fine-tuned (maybe it was still going to be anyway). I.e., in the old site quoted text was smaller, and on a slightly different colour background, than regular text. That was super handy, in terms of immediately seeing what you were looking at.

I think it would be helpful to add an "ignore" or "hide" link to topics (similar to reddit). I don't like voting down good content for the side effect of hiding it, just because it doesn't interest me.

Yeah, Foxfyre made the same point as Monger here a couple of times on the Thumbing up and down thread, so if she doesn't make it here to suggest it herself, consider it seconded.

(I dunno myself... my head guesses that it might make it too complicated, and that we should just get used to voting down a thread not implying an insult or something... but my heart can totally see the point.)

Here's an idea of Thomas's I heartily second, though:


Answer is you can't. But it would be nice if you could!

That's it! That's what's been bugging me.

I agree heartily!

I third that. I've voted down threads for various reasons... then they showed up again as "voted down" topic on some tagged view, I clicked on [whatever it is, "show thread"] because I wanted to see what I had voted down (yes, I know, I know...) and found that the thread was at least interesting enough to read along.

However, when you change your rating from thumb down to thumb up, the thread gains two points. I find that even more unwarranted than the thread losing one point due to being rated down initially.... when I just want to ignore it.... even though I can kinda see the point behind that...

So, yeah, occasionally, I'd just kinda like to undo my initial vote.

I'd like a tag cloud, or tag listing, under "My Tags", where I can see (and select!) any of the tags I've added. There's sort of one on the left, but it only shows the ones you've used most.

I may be mistaken, but the last time I looked at reddit's code (it's open source now) they were using that for editorial purposes too.

If they aren't now it would be very surprising, why not harness that collective info?

When you're reading along in a thread, you can always see the "Topic Tags" and "My Tags" on the left side. It would be nice to see the "Popular Tags", too.... maybe a shorter version, or even the option to have them displayed in threads...

I would like some kind of symbol or way to recognize whether I have a thread tagged without having to enter the thread. Small thing but would be useful to me and therefore I presume possibly useful to others.

I love the tags, but what I miss is the possibility to search for one. Especially important for new members, I think (or just outside visitors). Like, OK - I'm interested in, say,pyrotechnics. Or the Vlachs. There's no way those tags will appear in the "Popular tags" field. How do I get a listing of all threads tagged "Vlachs"? Or more realistically, say, "Zimbabwe"?

I tried just changing the URL - you know, I click on a ubiquitous tag like "able2know", am sent to the page http://able2know.org/tag/able2know/, and in the address box replace "able2know" by "zimbabwe". (I tried a few tags to make sure I'd hit on one that existed.) But that gives an Error page...

I guess I could add the tag "Zimbabwe" to a random thread, click it once added to find the other threads with that tag, and then delete the tag again where I put it, but I think that'd be a little bothersome :-D

you can now search for Zimbabwe on the google search bar a the top of the screen...it will search A2K for you

good find, maporsche...

You can replicate the old "my posts" view, where it lists each thread to which you have posted, by tagging every single one of those threads and then clicking on the "My Tags" link. Of course, I doubt that many members are actually tagging every thread when they post to it, but then we're all groping around in the dark right now with the new format. We'll all have to learn how to navigate around the site and which techniques work best for us.

Or, in other words, you'll get over it.

If that's true, it's a surprise to me. The membership frequently decry the use of downvoting things merely because you disagree with an opinion, or something doesn't interest you. The preferred approach in such cases is hiding the post, unsubscribing from its subreddit, etc. If merely hiding content indeed has an impact, I would expect it to at least be less than that of downvoting, or to have more of an effect on personal recommendations.

I'll admit though that this becomes less of an issue as membership increases, and more people vote on things. But to continue playing devil's advocate...

Your comments (elsewhere) that people should just get over seeing a -1 next to their posts seem a bit naïve of human nature. The majority of users will care, even if only a little. That's a good thing, since it encourages people to actually contribute something worthwhile, which then becomes more visible, and as a result more people benefit. It's in the site's best interest for people to want to play the "high score" game, so especially until voting participation increases, I think it's best to discourage inappropriate downvoting and encourage editorial participation by providing more options.

By downvoting something I am actively punishing it for being uninteresting, inaccurate, untoward, redundant, full of penises, or whatever. I mostly do this out of self interest. Not only am I hiding the content from my view, I'm also attempting to discourage people from posting similar content of little value.

But sometimes I merely want to hide something. By not giving me that option, I am more likely to do nothing, which doesn't help my experience and gives you less data to work with. Maybe a topic was interesting to me before, but I've already contributed to it all that I'm going to. Maybe my goal in hiding something is merely to see new content at the top of my default topic listing, based on whatever way I've sorted it. There could be any number of reasons, but the bottom line is that downvoting vs. hiding topics is often done with different intent, and I think the algorithm could benefit from taking such differences into account. The only downside I can see to an added "hide" link would be the additional clutter (slight, if done well). I don't think it adds to the learning curve, since I think the difference between a "thumbs down" and "hide" is intuitive to most people.

Another feature idea... allow people to hide or unsubscribe from tags. Instead of downvoting all the word game threads (including those that I've started), I'd rather just unsubscribe from the "trivia and word games" tag, and only visit those threads when I feel like it. I want them to remain active when I do trek their way, so downvoting them is not in my best interest.

This might be a bit tricky since tags are controlled by the community, but maybe there could be a user-customizable threshold at which at which a tag is accepted as accurate. E.g., if I've unsubscribed from the "fullofpenises" tag, then if I tag a new topic as such or if 10 other people do, it's automatically excluded from my main views. I could then remove this opt-out at any time, when the mood strikes.

This of course would have other implications I haven't gotten into (added complexity, potential for abuse, etc.) Just an idea.