Editors, I am a long-time reader (like many, I lurked for years before signing up for an account), so I'm relatively used to/.'s somewhat quirky interface. But even I am often baffled. Do you ever just sit down with someone unfamiliar with Slashdot, and ask them to navigate around and accomplish certain tasks? Or explain to you, as best they understand, what certain things are, the logic behind the structure, etc?
Someday, I hope Slashdot adopts some kind of left-pane threaded view (like taking Google Group
We do, but apparently not frequently enough. Part of the problem, I think, is that we've changed our design scheme several times, deprecating certain pages along the way, without automatically pointing people to the new "correct" URL instead. Then, as the design drifts further away, things break on pages we don't expect people to be using anymore.
For a long while we were pretty starved for engineering time, but that's changed lately, and we're making more progress. I will say this: any time you find a bug, or have a question about how something works, or find a specific bit of design that strikes you as unintuitive, feel free to email us and let us know. We get fewer bug reports than you'd think, but we fix 'em when we know about 'em.
What would help is a button on the site somewhere that says "Squash bugs" or something more mundane like "Site feedback". Hide it somewhere so that the trolls won't get to it so easily (e.g. put it behind the login wall, make only accessible with a certain level of karma, etc.).
The thing is, most of us are either not comfortable with directly communicating any of our gripes with you, the editors (this is Slashdot after all, where all the awkward, anti-social, communication-challenged individuals congregate
Can somebody figure out what happened to the old preferences page that let you set the score adjustments for karma bonus and moderation types? I can't find it anywhere in the D2 system, nor any other page to adjust those settings. I used to be able to access it directly via URL. Now even that has been removed. I don't remember what the URL was, but I think I have it saved at home in my e-mail somewhere. It also has a "reset account" button that reverted all settings to their defaults.
My score adjustment for
"Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at
speeds faster than 85 MPH (140kph)."
-- 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.
Editors, non-snarky question: usability testing (Score:3)
Editors, I am a long-time reader (like many, I lurked for years before signing up for an account), so I'm relatively used to /.'s somewhat quirky interface. But even I am often baffled. Do you ever just sit down with someone unfamiliar with Slashdot, and ask them to navigate around and accomplish certain tasks? Or explain to you, as best they understand, what certain things are, the logic behind the structure, etc?
Someday, I hope Slashdot adopts some kind of left-pane threaded view (like taking Google Group
Re:Editors, non-snarky question: usability testing (Score:4, Interesting)
We do, but apparently not frequently enough. Part of the problem, I think, is that we've changed our design scheme several times, deprecating certain pages along the way, without automatically pointing people to the new "correct" URL instead. Then, as the design drifts further away, things break on pages we don't expect people to be using anymore.
For a long while we were pretty starved for engineering time, but that's changed lately, and we're making more progress. I will say this: any time you find a bug, or have a question about how something works, or find a specific bit of design that strikes you as unintuitive, feel free to email us and let us know. We get fewer bug reports than you'd think, but we fix 'em when we know about 'em.
Re: (Score:2)
What would help is a button on the site somewhere that says "Squash bugs" or something more mundane like "Site feedback". Hide it somewhere so that the trolls won't get to it so easily (e.g. put it behind the login wall, make only accessible with a certain level of karma, etc.).
The thing is, most of us are either not comfortable with directly communicating any of our gripes with you, the editors (this is Slashdot after all, where all the awkward, anti-social, communication-challenged individuals congregate
Re: (Score:2)
Can somebody figure out what happened to the old preferences page that let you set the score adjustments for karma bonus and moderation types? I can't find it anywhere in the D2 system, nor any other page to adjust those settings. I used to be able to access it directly via URL. Now even that has been removed. I don't remember what the URL was, but I think I have it saved at home in my e-mail somewhere. It also has a "reset account" button that reverted all settings to their defaults.
My score adjustment for