Ideas for ILX

would it be an idea to turn img tags into links for posts older than (say) 7 days (with option to turn back on)? would make threads like WDYLL so much easier to open, or when you're trying to look for an old post quickly in the football thread but when you display all messages and ctrl-f you'll find the bit you want but then it gets bumped off the screen as the old images get loaded up top.

It's easy enough to get a list of names, but as someone says upthread, would be a bit odd to display it.

Ken, I think that might work for the specific case you're talking about, but would probably annoy people in most cases. Maybe there's a way to indicate it, or to easily toggle images hiding or something. I'm having to add in a new menu bar for Billy's alphabetical thing anyway, so maybe it's a place to put it.

Oh heavens. The menu bar is too long already.

Yeah, I know. Not easy and I'm not sure this is that great, but I do need space for more buttons. See here, Kenan:

http://www.ilxor.com/sandbox/SiteNewAnswersControllerServlet

Also, shouldn't you be in bed?

omg i thought this thread was lost forever!!!! this is going to be a good day
http://www.ilxor.com/sandbox/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=141&threadid=695

Did you not know the sandbox was there?

several xposts... This is one of the special cases in which I would recommend a second level of navigation. Maybe block out a "master" list that stays at the top no matter who you are, and looks like the nav at the top does now, and then a second-level list that displays things like what boards you have chosen to put in your special snowflake menu, your own bookmarks, stuff like that. A sidebar would work for that.

The top menu can only get so crazy, and it's pretty crazy. I know having a sidebar would be against everything that ILX stands for, but practicality must prevail.

Yes, I had thought it'd make sense to have the main menu always being the same wherever you are. At the moment, if you go on to an actual board, you get the new question/new poll stuff, so a secondary menu would deal with the context sensitive stuff.

A sidebar though! We're stepping into a world of difficulty there! x-post

Also many xposts... I don't get the alphabetical thing at all. I mean, I get it, but... why not a button that re-sorts the page according to the length of the title? Who said "alphabetical"? (I clearly have not read this thread.)

Ideas for ILX

I see now.

My point stands.

seriously

good job

haha, oh God, how bored was I the day of United Arab Amirites? (I had forgotten I'd even posted on it, and I'm all over it!)

if you know enough of the thread title that resorting alphabetically would help you find it, you might as well just ctrl-f, surely?

keith, did you get time yet to totally revise the suggest ban function, it's motivations and working, etc?

joeks. sterling work!

suggest mod function?

There's a lot of "coulda, not shoulda" already built in, no reason to go much further with that. A lot can be buried without loss of basic function to anyone, save maybe the occasional... um... lovely person who is a bit different from the rest. Like, I think "New Questions" can be dropped from the menu totally, if not from the site. It's not a very efficient way to see what's here at all. New questions are meaningless without new answers, right?

Also the top menu mixes boards, general prefs, and personal prefs. A hierarchy of some kind could only clarify things.

Problem is that people work in different ways. If I dropped New Questions, I'm pretty sure that I'd then find out it was the only thing that someone used.

I think this is a question of kind of rationalising the interface - kind of tidy it up, separate out the context-sensitive options from the options that make sense from anywhere in the site. I think some options I'd like to draw attention to (e.g. customise site new answers) are currently hidden. But it'll take some time to figure out how to organise it.

x-post yes agreed

If I dropped New Questions, I'm pretty sure that I'd then find out it was the only thing that someone used.

I imagine there would be that one guy. What I'm saying is, fuck that guy.

Well OK, there's where we're going to disagree.

hi i use site new questions all the time

when im checking in w/ the board after not having posted in a couple days or whatever, i can read my bookmarks first and then swing to site new questions to see whats new that i dont have bookmarked

I'm not trying to be extra dickish or anything, nor undemocratic. What I mean is, hierarchy of the navigation is going to mean making those decisions at some point anyway. Features that very few people use should be cut or else buried. Being all things to all ilxors is how the menu got a bit inscrutable.

Yeah I think buried is fine - or maybe with a simple default configuration that people can customise, but cutting them altogether likely isn't going to work.

I imagine it would be harder to cut things than leave them there, anyway. Yeah, no need for, like, spite. I didn't mean that.

To slightly shorten the bar sometimes, maybe you could not show the link to the current page? (i.e. No "ILM answers" button when you're on the ILM answers page, no "Boards" button when you're on the board list page already)?

good in theory but in practice that means the menu items are always shifting position, and i think it's better to have them fixed. also sometimes i click on a 'current page' button as a way of refreshing.

Hm... I guess I'm thinking of this from a guided interface kind of angle, but without asking the first question, which is "What does the site need to DO?" Or even "Who is the customer?" Because really, who IS the "customer" for ILX? People who are already here? They're going to bitch like hell as soon as anything is even slightly changed, that's an unpleasant given. But the "customer" isn't the general public, either. Does ILX even WANT to be naturally guiding the general internet toward its most popular boards and most used features? I don't know this.

I mean, yeah, the menu is confusing as hell, but not to ME.

(If you see what I mean.)

Yes it is a good way to think about it. I think at the moment, it's a bit of both. I do think sites need to attract new users or they just get stale, you're right about how difficult people find it dealing with change, but a little at a time works.

The other thing is that we don't really have any stats on what people do use. Although I could probably pull some of them together.

So for example, there have been 24 hits to the site new questions page since yesterday evening. Not many, but it's getting some use.

Part of my problem is that I don't know whether or not the menu is confusing or not. We're all so used to it that it's hard to tell. I mean, it might be confusing, then again, maybe it isn't - I just don't know.

guess papers link in menu plz

Hay, wehn to m33t?

There's only one way to sort this out. POLL.

for me it's not that the menu's confusing, just that the length changes (usually blog view and logout fall off the end on individual thread pages, though that does depend on how wide I've got my browser) and that's mildly... it's not even irritating, it's just a bit messy?
I dunno, I'd rather have a menu bar that's always on two rows (upper one w/ fixed items, lower one changeable), than a single always-shifting one.

how about a ticker that tells you how many times a thread has been viewed? (apologies if this has been suggested already)

an 'excelsior' link where people can click if they found post funny, and if it gets +5 score they go to a dedicated excelsior thread that may actually contain funneys?

xxp yeah I like that idea. The lower one could have e.g. My Recent Posts, Blog View, on the boards/site new answers pages, and New Question, New Poll, for the individual board pages.

Damo, you can kind of see this here: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/Pages/most-read-threads.jsp

I know it's not on all threads, but I'd be concerned about the snowballing effect it'd create - people would gravitate towards the most read threads and these in turn would get read more.

Part of my problem is that I don't know whether or not the menu is confusing or not.

Here's why I think that it definitely is.

Site New Answers -- first thing in the menu, takes you a weird hinterland that may or may not even have anything in it. Needs to be moved out of the position that's intuitively reserved for a home page.
Search -- search is search, probably ok where it is, but might be better in its own place. Maybe a thin sliver of a search field at the top of every page, above the menu even?
Boards -- If it's the home page, it shouldn't be in the third position on the menu, and if it's a list of boards, it should at least be next to the boards that are listed later in the menu.
Preferences, Bookmarks, My Recent Posts -- user-specific stuff usually all goes together in its own place on the menu or on another menu. "New Question" and "New Poll" probably should be lumped in with these, too. It's the "you're in control" section of the menu.
ILM, ILE, etc. -- see "Boards"
[board you are looking at] New Answers -- probably needs more love than it gets in the menu, since it just kind of appears there without special distinction. Sometimes I want to type "whoami".

And etc.

I'd rather have a menu bar that's always on two rows (upper one w/ fixed items, lower one changeable), than a single always-shifting one.

That would be perfect.

what c sharp said was kind of what i was thinking for a while. the menu being one row with everything on it is weird. should be kind of like

Site New Answers Search Boards Preferences Bookmarks Logout Admin
ILE ILM 1P3G IRE etc. (whatever you put there)
New Question New Poll etc.

in my opinion. having three rows isn't too much, right? if the text is small.