We’re working behind the scenes to bring you a new, improved We Hunted the Mammoth — at least as far as the design of the site goes. As I think I mentioned earlier, I’m not doing anything radical. The aim is to streamline and declutter the site and to make it easier to navigate and use.
Here’s what to expect:
- Less-cluttered sidebar
- Less-cluttered main bar
- Cleaner, clearer design overall
- Better navigation between pages of comments
- Buttons so you can blockquote, etc without HTML in comments. No more need to fear the blockquote monster!
Someone also suggested it would be better to do “nofollow” links for MRA sites rather than using donotlink, so I’ll be doing that.
I will now be able to use WordPress plugins, so I can add other features/options as well. I don’t want to add them willy nilly, but if they can add some useful functionality without cluttering stuff up I’m open to suggestions.
Any other features/plugins you want added? Upvotes and downvotes for comments perhaps? Polls in the sidebar?
Any stuff that gets in the way that you want moved or removed?
Any issue that you have with the design or functionality of the blog now that you think could be improved?
Let me know what you think, from your feelings about font size to possible WordPress plugins to look at.
Oh, and again: this redesign is costing me some $$, so if you’re a fan of the site and haven’t already donated, please consider donating through the PayPal button below. Thanks!
1) Add upvotes, but do not add downvotes.
2) Add a button that lets you reply to a person directly, so that your comment appears below their and to the right (like on youtube), as this helps the conversation break into separate threads. Otherwise it’s muddled.
Great kitten pic. My request is, more kitten pix.
Hey Dave, thought this might be of interest:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11821572/Small-man-syndrome-really-does-exist-US-government-researchers-conclude.html
…especially if juxtaposed with the Pokémon tourney guys.
Threaded comments? No. Nooooo, NO! A thousand times NO.
I do think a 5 minute window for editing is OK. Even with preview it’s easy to miss a stupid typo. Reading one’s own writing is a real trap. There are ways to get around it for longer writing, but a 5 minute chance to fix dopey mixups would be nice for commenting here.
“Kittens! Moar kittens!” they bellowed and brayed
And the trolls way down in the thread were afraid
Another big Darth Vader (in rubbish re-edit) NOOOOOOOO!!! for threaded comments.
They’re a nightmare. It’s impossible to keep track of a thread; especially when it goes to multiple pages.
I don’t think you need up and down votes. Just setting the ‘F1’ key to auto insert “Great point as always Al” should suffice. 😉
I don’t know about anyone else but I really need some kind of notification feature for replies to my comments. I don’t have the wherewithal to monitor the comments (can barely read posts within 24 hours) so knowing if someone replies to me would help. Especially if I make a booboo and need to know. 🙂
Is there a way to add a button that will let us shoot robot spiders through the internet at trolls?
Hi Other EJ. I’ve been having Issues. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. It’s normal for me this time of year.
Even upvotes-only causes problems. Any kind of voting system turns into a cliquish popularity contest that is alienating to new visitors, and it frequently leads to a competition to see who can make the wittiest witticism. Neither of those things is conducive to thoughtful discussion.
I actually have to come out in opposition to comment editing of all stripes. There’s something charming and honest about your first effort being written in stone, and I think it leads to people thinking more carefully about what they want immortalized. Something is lost when you can go back and revise your words, even if you have only a limited window to do so.
On the donotlink/nofollow topic, I prefer donotlink. Seeing that as the address, for me, means ‘donotclick’. It helps separate out the “Here’s somebody’s good writing” links from the “Yes, somebody actually wrote this pile of hatecrap” links.
I’m also a fan of numbered comments – they make it easier to indicate which comment you’re replying to, without having to resort to nested comments.
And finally, on the edit/no edit question, the best way I’ve seen it done is that, if yours is the last comment in a thread, you have X minutes to edit it. If somebody else comments after you, your comment is now locked (even if you still had time left on the edit clock).
If there is someway to make gif posting and quoting easier, i would be up for that.
My screen keeps bouncing back up the page to (I think) show me an ad. At its worst I can hardly scroll down at all, like I’m rubber-banded to the ad. Is that something that could go away? Or is it an unavoidable ad-artifact? Or is it just me?
I don’t mean this as a criticism. It’s a measure of how much I like it here that not even the most intrusive ad-tactic I’ve ever experienced keeps me away.
In that case I shall wish you all the patience and fortitude in the world on your journey back to fineness; and should you need a friend I would be happy to lend an ear.
It’s already here; use the tag. Sir Tim Berners-Lee added it to the original code for HTML and it’s been here ever since. Unfortunately it would also let trolls shoot robot spiders at us, due to the symmetrical nature of the TCP/IP protocol, so wordpress disables it by default.
I believe the old Angelfire sites were the last largescale hosting provider where the spider tags still worked, but I might be wrong.
Ack. My joke was ruined by the html mammoth and since we have no edit button I must respond here. That first line should be:
It’s already here; use the tags.
*sigh.
It’s already here, use the [spiders][/spiders] tags.
I would like to change my vote to be in favour of an edit button.
I know that when I was part of a community that had likes, I gave myself sads because while a lot of my comments were liked, there were comments that were liked a lot more, and I felt like I wasn’t up to snuff.
So no likes or voting, please and thank you.
Rrgh, this is what happens when I don’t read the whole conversation first. My point was made already, but more thoroughly, and with more technical understanding.
In spite of which, I agree with the no-editing idea. In an ignorant, untutored layperson kind of way.
Can we send spiders to ourselves? I need more for my
army of doomcollection of cuteness.Some thoughts in no particular order:
– One button to jump straight to the first comment of a post would be great.
– Adding numbering of comments.
– Please no up/down vote system. Like others have said, it tends to inspire people to focus more on witticism instead of quality of content. If it turns out everyone else wants a voting system, then I’m seconding Tom regarding no downvote function while upvoting would be possible.
– Less cluttered layout for the site would be great. I’m still not sure what half of the things in the side bar and on the bottom of the page are or why they are on this site. Alternatively some explanation/navigation FAQ would be a good idea.
Man you think those tags would have been included in at least one of my development classes. I knew I paid too much in tuition.
And yes you can Scented, but only because I know my army of trained attack guinea pigs will prevail.
This may seem like an odd request BUT:
Has anyone here dared step foot on 4Chan? Posts on their have a handy little group of links at the tops of them that list “replies to this post”. You can hover over them to preview posts that’ve made a response to whatever you’re looking at or click them to jump down the page to the reply itself. I really like this system and it’s about the only good thing about that site. Just wondering if it’d be at all possible here.
I second no voting stuff, we don’t need that kind of crap here, speaking as a newer commenter.
I am against up/downvoting, in principle, and given the nature of things I fear it would give MRA/PUA/assholes an easy thing to latch onto when trying to sow Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
I’d like to see a longer, “recent comments” bar, pehaps a link to the past 1,000?
@Some sort of username Not sure if wordpress would support that systems. 4chan started as a discussion board rather than a blog type set up with comments. Wouldn’t be a bad idea if it could though.
I actually used to spend a lot of time on 4chan back when it was just an anime discussion board, I ended up leaving once it started devolving.
Nth-ing the no voting of any kind. It’s like human beings are hard-wired to rank themselves against each other, and if there’s a quantitative way to do so suddenly any differences in the ranking will lead to misery.
Nth-ing support for temporary comment editing as well, and a who’s who (I didn’t realize the difference between Roosh and Roissy for the longest time).
For comment pages, is it possible to have one of those numbered navigation things (where it has something like “first prev … 3 4 5 6 7 … next last”)? That’s solve a lot of comment page issues. It’d also give a sense for how many comments there are, which would be neat.
Nth-ing support for temporary comment editing, as well, because that’d probably the best way to fix random little typos that your brain hides until your comment flies out into the world.