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!
@kirbywarp
Uh, you… already nthed suppost for that. I’m also gonna throw in support for that too.
Also VERY highly support the Who’s Who of the Manosphere™ idea, it’d pretty useful for remembering which asshat is which.
Is there a way to see what the edits were? I know some sites let you see what was changed. Ravelry.com has a kind of unofficial policy (or did) that people would do ETA: (“edited to add”) if someone changed something, since it indicates that a post was edited, though on heated convos there was lots of screengrabbing (you could also delete posts). It might be a good way to avoid the “PC meltdowns” when someone says something unintentionally —-ist, and they could just go kill the comment and say something like “sorry, made an inappropriate comment, removed” or something. It would be a good way to show at least some effort towards fixing their language.
I agree with anti-vote sentiment. It can lead to people chasing popularity, which is often not a good thing. I write as someone who got over a thousand votes for a dick joke comment at the Guardian, so please don’t tempt me: the results wouldn’t be pretty!
@some sort of username:
That was just a joke, since I had a typo in my comment supporting an edit ability for fixing typos. 😛
I don’t think we should be able to edit comments at all, even if it’s only temporary. It would have to be a very short window of time to prevent trolls from editing their comments. A preview button will be best, or maybe some system that inserts HTML into the post for you and maybe highlights unclosed tags?
I also think it would be better if there was no way to edit comments. The ability to edit or remove comments would just make trolling too easy.
Preview function might work instead. Or if editing has to be possible, could the editing window be something like one or two minutes? That’s long enough to fix a typo, but hopefully not long enough for anyone to actually reply to the unedited comment.
Additionally, please keep the “first comment automatically goes into moderation” policy. (Speaking of which, why am I in moderation again? What did I do?)
I think a 10-20% increase in puppies would go especially far to improve the overall experience! Kittens are wonderful and I like them a lot, but not seeing puppies here gives me the sads. 😉
You know, I kind of agree with this. As long as everyone has a good attitude about typos and the like. A preview button and easier markup tools would get rid of most of the problems, anyway.
WRT threading and upvotes: Not only does the community here traditionally oppose them, but we actually consider the absence of those features a plus. Reddit and YouTube both have comment threading and upvotes. ‘Nuff said.
Nth-ing comment preview, better comment navigation, and more puppies
Not a programmer so I don’t know how viable this is but, if there’s a way to edit by adding to posts rather than changing what’s already there that would be great for those times when someone steps in it. That way they can just add an apology/retraction to the post so newcomers that see the post also see that it’s been addressed. That would help with unintentional pile-ons
I sometimes fantasize about a “Recent Necros” sidebar, for new comments on articles where the previous comment’s timestamp was more than 1 month ago. Trolls often sneak obnoxious comments onto old articles, which can drop unnoticed off the “Recent Comments” sidebar if there’s a vigorous discussion going on elsewhere.
Also nthing the support for a Preview button, not just for edits but for accidental posts. I’ve lost count of how many times the cat has stepped on the Post Comment button while I was in the middle of a sent
There’s a forum I hang out in which lets you edit your posts invisibly for 30 minutes after posting, and then for a further hour with an “Edited at x:xx” timestamp – but 90 minutes after you made the original post it becomes permanently locked. This has generally worked pretty well, and you can always quote contentious posts if you don’t trust their authors not to tweak them afterwards.
AHEM. YES. I am a graphic designer who has experience with making designs for shirts and things (see: my redbubble store. [/shameless self promotion] and I interned for a screenprinting business so I know how the process works in meatspace as well), so if David would like to make new shirts and things, I’d be happy to lend any expertise I have with the process. (And my copy of Adobe Illustrator.)
And, to further get your attention: have a kitten looking professional.
http://www.iizcat.com/uploads/2014/09/xugjo-bowtie8.jpg
I love the idea of a preview comment button! That sounds like it would be the best way to not only make sure everything works, but also makes it so we don’t have to worry about trolls editing their comments.
Ok, looks like there’s a plugin for comment preview. Would you folks prefer that to a (very time limited) ability to edit? We could also go with both because what the heck, flexibility.
I think limiting the time available for editing would largely eliminate the troll-editing issue; if it turns out to be a problem i could disable the plugin.
It looks like there are more people who prefer unthreaded comments, and that’s my very strong preference too, so I’ll stick with that. I found a couple of plugins that might make it easier to show who/what you’re responding to; I’ll keep looking for other useful comment plugins.
On the “recent comments” issue, I could move the recent comments list to the footer, which would solve the mobile problem, sort of, but would make recent comments harder to use for everyone else. Or I could put them in the footer AND the sidebar but that seems like a lot of extra clutter. I’ll talk to the web dev about this.
If you change the ads I will definitely turn off adblock. My phone has very limited adblock and video ads just start playing randomly. That a. wastes data for no reason and b. startles me every time(I realize this isn’t your fault)! I wish ad companies would realize irritating people doesn’t make them want to give them money.
Also, not sure if its possible for you, but some places have a “membership” thing where you donate monthly and get ad-free viewing, so they still get money. I would be interested in something like that but …seems like it might be complicated.
I’m sure whatever you come up with will be great and even if it totally sucks I’ll still be here everyday anyhow. 😀
Will the editing plugin also alert readers that comment was edited?
I hear you all on the video ads! They are annoying (and counterproductive in that they cause people to use adblock). They will go away when the new site goes up and I have some control over the ads.
On recent comments, how many comments should I list in the widget? I’m listing a lot now but would prefer to reduce that if it makes sense to you all.
Also: your thoughts on recent and popular post widgets? Do I need both? If not, which is more important? How many posts should I list?
Will you be hiring those kittens
I tend to use the recent comments as an indicator for which threads are busy, because I tend to want to go to the posts that are active (rather than posts that have had a lot of comments previously but now aren’t active). Therefore, I don’t personally see the use of the recent popular widget.
The recent posts widget is useful to me though, since it’s an easy way to jump around to recent posts which tend to still be active, as opposed to going back to the main page and scrolling.
When there are both, sometimes I get the two confused and start looking at the wrong list.
If there were a longer term measure of popularity (since I think the popularity widget drops off rather quickly), and were more of a ‘greatest hits’ thing, I could see that being generally useful. Maybe if it had the time-span of a month or a year or so.
TL:DR; My vote would be to keep the recent post, ditch the popular posts and replace it with a “greatest hits” thing that used a longer-term metric. Maybe find a way to expand the number of recent comments shown so it’s a little harder for comments on one post to dominate the list.
Rather than list every recent post, would it be possible just to have the last used 10 or so threads and an indicator of the time of the last post to each thread?
That way it might be easier to keep an eye out for what’s new since the last visit.
@Alan:
I personally wouldn’t go for it because I can sometimes tell from the recent comment list which comments I’ve already read and which ones are new, so I can jump right to the oldest “new” comment directly from the list. It’s handy. 🙂
I think what people (me at least) really want is to know what posts have had activity since we were here last. For instance, some forums have links for “unread posts since last visit” and “new replies to your posts.”
The sidebar I would find most useful would be a longer list of “recently-commented-upon posts” instead of recent comments, since (as people mentioned) necro’d posts or posts that only got one or two new comments don’t always show up in the top posts and quickly disappear from the most recent comments.
I rarely comment anymore (miss you folks!) but if you don’t mind me butting in anyway:
1) I only ever look at recent comments, never recent or top posts
2) My mistake-prone, phone-typing fingers would love a limited edit function (2 minutes?)
3) When you’ve got some control over ads, could you please watch out for a malicious Android ad that pops up claiming that the reader has a virus on their Android phone, and redirects them to a malicious site? That one made this site unreadable for about a week for me and it gave me the sads.
@ Kirby
The thing with that is, if there have ben more than 15 comments since I last looked I can lose track of which threads have something new.
Now, with my incessant dropping into here where I’m skiving that’s not always a problem; but sometimes I can’t put off my procrastination.
Miss you too, Viscaria!