Ideas for ILX

avatars

just a wee joke

You have posted 4.263 messages

WAH? In the seven years? That's about 1,6 posts per day. I R FAIL.

while I'm here, someone please tell me how to access that titleless NOT WORKSAFE topic before my head explodes in frustration. I thought I was being smart going to blog view but I still can't work out how people are posting in it.

― Akon/Family (Merdeyeux), Monday, 3 August 2009 17:24 (Yesterday) Bookmark

Why oh why...

29 logged in users active in the past five minutes

I love this but at the same time I wonder who the users are. I know Ned's here. And Kenan. And I (duh).

I am not here, and I resent the implication.

7 users have entered the room.

Now it's up to 43. Coffee break?

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.