@Cycloptichorn,
Quote:- Is it necessary to use a symbol which is stigmatized in the minds of some and downright offensive to large segments of the world's population?
This is the only complaint here that I can at least understand. I'm not bothered by the thumbs, but if others are, then yeah sure - if people can think of an equally simple, but less emotive icon than the thumb, why not. Cant think of one from the top of my head (as someone versed in usability, you'll know that you want an icon, not text). But if someone comes up with one that would work, I'm sure Craven & co would happily consider it.
Quote:- In the long run, will sparsely-populated threads die as they are seen by less and less people?
This, on the other hand, is a stretch. I mean, sparsely-populated threads
always died when they were seen by less and less people. There is no difference between the old and the new site here.
On the old site, where topics were ordered simply, and exclusively, by latest post, threads that were posted to rarely would quickly sink down (and off) the first page, and once they did, would be even less likely to be posted to at all, and sink away altogether. I started plenty of threads on the old site that got zero or one response before they disappeared from the front page listing in their forum and would die.
In fact, as people will start using tagging more and more (and this is hardly an a2k thing, you will see ever more sites organised by tagging, but you know that), such threads might well stand a
better chance of surviving on the new site.
Huh, you might say - how? Well - imagine I start a thread about Dagestan. Nobody's interested in Dagestan. Well, maybe a couple of people. Three, say.
On the old site, I would post a thread about Dagestan, and I'd have to choose - Asia forum? Or International News forum? Since the Asia forum is mostly about culture and tourism, I'd go for International News. There, one or two of those three people would respond, if they would happen to come across it in time, and then the thread would die. And soon enough slip off the first page because of all the threads about Iraq or whatnot.
I could revive it if I had something new to say, but since there's only a couple of people interested, chances that they would catch it before it was pushed out again would be small. And I would give up. From then on, nobody would ever find it again unless they happened to use the search function to look for "Dagestan".
Now, new site. I start a thread about Dagestan. I tag it "Dagestan", "Asia" and "International news" and "ethnic groups" and "history". I can
do that now! I can post it, so to say, in three of the different forums we used to have. Plus, by tagging it by more specific words, I get to post it in specialist forums that would, by my act of tagging, be automatically created.
Result? It would likely remain at or near the top of the Dagestan tag list forever - the equivalent of the old search result. Anybody who at any point came across it can tag it Dagestan as well, or Asia or whatever, and forever see it pop up in their My Tags page if a new post was made - the equivalent of posting "bookmark". Except that now, you can undo your choice if you're no longer interested.
People who are not interested in any random International news thread from around the world will sooner find my thread under that tag than before, as they thumb all the ones on, say, Iraq out of the way and this one stays near the top for them longer.
People who are foolish enough to want to follow my topics, can now click on my profile and get an instant overview of them, Dagestan and all. Not possible on the old site.
I'm sure I'm still forgetting features. One thing that has to be made easier is to search and browse the tags, but Craven already said that's a priority for them.
So I dunno. It doesnt at all seem obvious to me that my thread would do worse under this system than under the old one. I think it would
benefit.
