Ideas for ILX

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.

takes you a weird hinterland that may or may not even have anything in it

Eh? When is this true?

I did deliberately put it there some time ago, to emphasize it. I think the issue here is that there is a 'home page', but that the home page isn't in itself really very useful. Site New Answers isn't the home page, but it's the most heavily used page, hence its somewhat privileged position.

Do you use Site New Answers, Kenan, or do you typically use the board you're reading's new answers?

Re: the two row thing - I did try this some time back, but it looked a bit ugly. Can try it again though.

yeah most people use it as their home page, i know i do. i barely ever look at "boards" except to check the admin log

except to check the admin log

Should probably put that in the top left and in bold.

Of course the worst thing about changing these is that I can't just do it once, I have to do it on all of the stylesheets!

Eh? When is this true?

Well... now. ANd now.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i191/fluxion23/Picture1-3.png

Do you mean you've customised it to show no boards?

Of course the worst thing about changing these is that I can't just do it once, I have to do it on all of the stylesheets!

eh? these are content not style changes surely?

Thanks to the "post count" thing and the "my recent posts" thing I just discovered my 8000th post was "grandad".

obv you would need to add a new style for a second menu. xp.

Indeed, but in changing from one to two rows, I can guarantee that a bunch of the stylesheets will not deal with that well.

Do you mean you've customised it to show no boards?

No, I didn't do that. I have never seen anything on that page. Are you serious, it's the most used page? It's blank for me!

Wow - something is wrong then!

Click the "Site New Answers" header - see what it says in it.