How do I fix my a2k interface?

search tags can quickly be found here
http://able2know.org/popular/
http://able2know.org/unanswered/
it's a tab under the initial post of a thread.
i'm not sure how to change the setting, top replies appears to be the new default...

I'm finding the new set-up a bit distressing. I am not interested in my own tags, I want search tags back with the new posts page.

I'm not interested in featured threads. I blocked A2K news on FB for that very reason.

I know I'm, in effect, muttering to myself about this but sometimes I have to mutter out loud. Makes me want to curse.

I'd recommend taking a quick look at your preferences as well.

I wondered why I'd started getting emails from/through the site - appears a couple of options were added in preferences with the default being "yes" for contact. I've changed my settings.

every blinking time you come back to a thread you've got to reset it

I hope we'll eventually be able to change the default through preferences (that was why I went there to begin with this morning)

Hopefully, these are just minor bugs that just need to be worked out after the recent code overhaul.

I have been from the get go vocal in my disdain for the popularity sifted a2k, and have done what I could to minimize the metrics effect on my a2k experience. Now, between "top replies" being shoved down my throat in each thread and the popular threads being highlighted on the "new posts" page this popularity stupidity is really impacting me. Note to robert: if we wanted to sift by popularity we would not be going to the new post page, that was supposed to be our way to eliminate that crap a bit, so why in the world would we want to see a listing of popular threads on that page? You know darn well we dont.

What ever happened to the idea that we were to be able to tailor our experience to suit our preference? I guess that only applies if we want what Robert wants us to want. His popularity sifting only works if we use it, maybe we have not liked it enough to use it so now we are not being allowed to opt out of it.

Is it now? The featured threads widget on that page has been there over a year. You just finally noticed it so I don't think it's being "shoved down your throat" so much as you having a bit of an exaggeration problem.

I think some of the things you mention can use some improvements (e.g. we could make the tabs on the forum toolbox "sticky" so it defaults to whatever you last clicked) and we'll get around to things like that as we can. But your irrational crusade against change employs ridiculous hyperbole, and the bottom line is that things will continue to change. It's not being "shoved down your throat" if you can simply move your throat whenever you want. You signed up for a forum that promised incessant change years before you ever joined and decided to make yourself a fixture in opposition to it.

What Hawkeye means is that everytime one opens a thread, the details are always expanded now. Prior to the changes, one would have to click on the link to drop down the details. To get the details out of the way, one has to click the link to shrink the expanded drop box into its hidden position.

"Stickiness" on those tabs would definitely help (at least it'd improve my experience here)

That is the first part of what he means in what I quoted, and what I said could be improved on by making the tab selection "sticky", the second part is the "featured topics" widget on the new posts page something that has been on the site for over a year, and he finally just noticed it. So when he describes it as popularity "shoved down his throat" I point out the obvious exaggeration.

If he didn't notice it for a year it's not being shoved nearly as hard as he claims.

I like the "sticky" idea, not as much as I love sticky toffee pudding.


True, some of the latest changes are kind of annoying. But if my residence at the a2k online enclave depended on my aesthetic sensibilities like my twice or thrice mentioned displeasure on the shade of baby blue so prevalent on the this site rather then the intellectual and cultural interactions of so many friends here now and those who have not yet arrived, then my residence here would have been shortened by a self exile long ago.

I was the one who first mentioned the featured threads thing on this thread. I've been aware of it since its onset. What got me riled this morning was that now there are two things I'm not interested in on the new posts page - "featured threads" and "my tags".

I know what my tags are, and am generally more interested in searching through others' tags. It's probably only an extra step or two to get back to what I am interested in but <shrug> I found it peeving this morning.

The featured threads has always been there since I can remember. The feature though was always farther down the page since the removed tags list has been removed for the My Tags feature. You would have to scroll down a good deal to get to the Featured Threads item on the New Posts page.

I miss the tag search box.

The tag search box is now on the page labelled "popular".

I guess I'll just have to modify my approach when I come to A2K - first new posts, then popular to get at "tag search".

A bit of an annoyance, but since I'm not here as often these days it's a decreasing annoyance.

I know you brought it up, but then hawkeye quickly adopted it without thinking and started making claims about how it ruins his experience. I get the complaints about the changes, I'm just disputing the severity with which hawkeye characterizes the consequences of him not getting what he wants.

You were saying it annoys you, hawkeye was doing his prophet of doom thing again where he says discourse is doomed because of what is being "shoved down [his] throat". The irony is that he wants others not to be able to ignore him and doesn't respect their choices there. I'm just pointing out his irrationality, I get how the recent changes can be less than ideal for some but I just don't think the consequences are as dire as hawkeye makes them out to be.

There are a lot of tag improvements needed and giving you access to global tags as well as your own tags there is something I'd like to be able to nail in an interface that is usable enough, but putting people's tags on the grids they most use is something I think is very important for the social dynamics of this website.

The tags are organizational in purpose but for most users the only time they interacted with them was in the context of tagging someone's thread and with only that usecase it seemed as fit for use as graffiti as organization for many. After all, if there's not much access to the organization component of tags then it doesn't serve that purpose as well.

And it also makes for more "ownership" of one's activity here. If the tags are just going on someone else's thread then it is easier to use ugly ones as graffiti. When they are going to be on your own grids as well then any impoliteness is going to be on your own "property" on able2know as well and I hope it will reduce (not stop, I don't expect that) use of tags that way.

In any case, I'm going to work on more improvements to it, I'd been thinking of including the search of the global tags above your own, or even being able to toggle them back and forth and there are things like adding tag search to the home page that have been on our to do list for a long time. But as I've long promised things will be rough sometimes and won't necessarily have all the polish we want it to right out of the gate, right now the changes are coming in a flurry due to some big changes coming* that have time-sensitive aspects to it so some of the recent ones are a bit rushed.

* Hawkeye, get your arguments against them ready so that when you know what they are you can tell us how bad they are.

While trying to think of the ways to incorporate more individual preferences without making the overall user experience to cluttered (e.g. do we really want a preference for which tab is default?) I wondered about making a global, I-don't-like-popularity-metrics option. Something that would just hide it all for those who say they aren't interested and that is that.

Is that something you guys (who don't like the popularity metrics) might be interested in? I know there are competing interests in this thread, for example the desire for the global tags (i.e. the popular tags list) is not the same as the anti-popularity angle but do you anti-popularity people (hawkeye and unnamed "we") want a "hide all popularity" option?

I just made a tweak to the top replies box. The idea is that it can be a quick way to see the top replies in a big thread, but showing top 10 out of the first 10 posts is obviously not very useful.

So right now I have tweaked it to default to topic stats until the thread is more than one page, at which point a top replies review becomes more useful.

I like that tweak.

On global tags, my tags, and featured topics - I like being able to see global tags easily as I read the New Posts thread; I pretty much know my own tags and don't use them as a way to search for a thread, preferring global tags or the search tags box, and think they take up a lot of room; I don't care about featured topics, never have, but I don't at all mind it being there as I think it is useful for others, probably especially newbies.

On the my tags, I can also see the usefulness for others, so.. I wish having that could be a choice.

I do occasionally refer back to my own tags to find threads on particular topics (though I'm usually after a specific post and expecting to be able to tag posts is a bit much). I use the global ones more often.

I understand that you're in the midst of making a group of changes and that things aren't done. At the same time/for the same reason, I thought it was worth noting that I missed easy access to the global tags and tag search from new posts. I also understand that there's a sizable segment of the A2K community that doesn't use new posts at all, so they didn't find any benefit in those features being on the new post page.