It seems to me that the one unifying opinion of those critical of the changes is that *no changes are necessary*. So, clearly this is NOT something that is meant to benefit the users - it's more likely part of some monetization plan.
Just admit it and move on - stop blowing smoke up our asses like our opinion actually matters. Maybe it did once, but that hasn't been the case for quite a while now.
Can someone from the/. team explain what exactly is wrong with the Classic site and why it can't be fixed? I just don't see why you had to start over with a completely new design when the old one works so well. A few tweaks is all that is needed.
I just don't see why you had to start over with a completely new design when the old one works so well. A few tweaks is all that is needed.
Well, those few needed tweaks never stop piling up. On top of that, UX research and (more importantly) user expectations continue to evolve.
To keep up with that, websites either need to constantly change in small increments, or to do it in big chunks. We'd been doing the former for a while, but the decision was made to start fresh. I totally understand how jarring it is
I'm pretty sure contemporary ideas about UX design are inappropriate for Slashdot. The one or two sentences that Twitter/Facebook/WhatsApp accommodate won't work here. This place indulges people that like to write, and people that don't mind lengthy posts.
The beta site shows a serious indifference to that; the amount of wasted space is just amazing. Fully 45% of the comments view is just empty, half of it gone to the infinitely long side bar that Beta fails to wrap into. No one that understands what this site is for could possibly have made that basic mistake for as long as Beta has been in the works.
Bootstrap et al. don't deal with "long form" threaded forums, so that design mentality won't work.
Here is a possibly novel idea that will actually be appreciated by at least this contributor, and probably most others; comment editing with revision control (a la Wikipedia.) It has to be revision controlled or the trolls will abuse editing. Allow readers to punish such trolls with moderation while the rest of us get the benefit of correcting minor mistakes.
There. That wasn't hard. A real improvement that caters to actual contributors, as opposed to hypothetical users that want to scribble a grammatically challenged half sentence 20 times an hour and don't read.
Anyhow, thanks for the step backwards on this and your participation in the conversation. You all could have gone bull-headed and made this situation even worse. So good on your for that.
I'm pretty sure contemporary ideas about UX design are inappropriate for Slashdot.
Sure, I can certainly agree that not all current design trends belong on Slashdot. I mean, I have my own personal preferences for the look and behavior of the websites I use.
That said, while I'm no UX expert (and before anyone asks, no, I wasn't one of the designers of the Beta site), I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve. You may disagree on the particulars -- and clearly, a lot of people do -- but I'm surprised so many attribute that to malice.
Anyway, regarding your suggestion: comment editing is something we've gone back and forth on for a number of years. The immutability of reader comments has always been a prized feature. I don't think we ever discussed versioning/revision control, though, and I really like that idea. I can't make any promises, particularly with the amount of work that's ahead of us with the beta, but I'll run it up the totem pole.
but I'm surprised so many attribute that to malice.
My accusation was limited to a lack of understanding; never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by... a lack of understanding, as they almost say.
The immutability of reader comments has always been a prized feature
Amen. Accountability. It's always been obvious to me why simply revising comments isn't tolerable and I'm glad that view predominates.
And AC isn't a counterpoint to accountability either, for whomever might want to throw that one back at me; AC elevates attributed comments, on several levels.
As a UI/UX lead with education in human interaction, its really weird that you claim UX "tests" show people want what Beta offers.
It is more than possible to get a clean "trendy" updated UI and UX without sacrificing readability, content spacing or threaded replies. I would love to know exactly who worked on the beta, and what tests they did, because after seeing it and the mess that is mobile and remarks like "we could only test it on a few devices", I'm fairly confident Slashdot does not have senior UI/
The Beta design team doesn't need a UX lead. It needs some cranky, low UID asshole who has complete and utter veto power over everyone else. My suggested test for whether someone is qualified is to look at their moderation history and note how much of it is bashing down the goddamn trolls. No UI redesign is going to matter one bit if you drive that crowd off.
Nope, because UI/UX training doesn't necessarily help. If you target the lowest common denominator, as "good" UI design principles today tell you to, you're going to throw the power users under a bus so that 0.5% of your users get a little less confused. With slashdot, power users are the majority, people who want options, control, no WYSIWYG, and similar, relatively simple, constraints.
Let comments be edited for 24 hours or until the first reply to them is posted, whichever comes first. Store just the original version and the latest version. Show the latest version, plus a "See earlier version" link/button when applicable.
Okay, you want it to evolve, so why kill it and start again from scratch? Evolution is incremental upgrades, trying out new ideas and letting the good ones stick.
The reason for the attribution to malice, I think, is a general distrust of Dice as a newcomer to/. ownership (a worry they may not get the culture and may just want the brand) combined with the sweeping nature of the changes and the general experience a lot have in the tech industry with the all the former directly preceding the destruction of something great. People are worried that a place that really has been a haven for intelligent and technical discussion as well as one for geeks in general is being
I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve. You may disagree on the particulars -- and clearly, a lot of people do -- but I'm surprised so many attribute that to malice.
It's not about malice and never was. (a few idiots think everything is a plot but they self-identify and are easy to ignore) It's about fundamentally and badly misunderstanding what makes this site work. It took me about 15 seconds on the beta site to realize it was alpha quality at best. Virtually everything that makes slashdot worth visiting was missing. Commenting and (just as important) the ability to read comments and see what others thought of them on the beta is broken badly and at the end of th
That said, while I'm no UX expert (and before anyone asks, no, I wasn't one of the designers of the Beta site), I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve. You may disagree on the particulars -- and clearly, a lot of people do -- but I'm surprised so many attribute that to malice.
I think people are turning to explanations of malice because nothing else is making sense to them. You will hear a few refrains over and over again from the users of Slashdot here. First, that Slashdot users are not the audience, they are the content creators. Slashdot can not survive by duplicating Reddit, Digg, et all. It survives because no other site on the Internet has the sort of discussion and moderation support that Slashdot has. This could be a bitter pill for Slashdot editors to swallow, as they mi
I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve. You may disagree on the particulars -- and clearly, a lot of people do -- but I'm surprised so many attribute that to malice.
Sure, but evolution needs to come in response to some kind of need. i think the thing that people here (or maybe it's just me) don't understand is what is the need this redesign is intending to meet? From my point of view, it looks like all loss and no win.
It shouldn't surprise you that the change is attributed to malice. In the first place, as a much smarter guy than I once observed, all UI changes are acts of hostility. Good changes are those that result in a better experience, but the change itself is st
This place indulges people that like to write, and people that don't mind lengthy posts.
Even the updates to/. Classic have been slowly stripping away the detailed options we used to have to format the website to our personal preferences.
For example: I can no longer find the options for adjusting post length or the # of posts per page. The only thing I can still adjust is the size of the comment box. What's up with that?
Just be honest - it's not for *US* (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that the one unifying opinion of those critical of the changes is that *no changes are necessary*. So, clearly this is NOT something that is meant to benefit the users - it's more likely part of some monetization plan.
Just admit it and move on - stop blowing smoke up our asses like our opinion actually matters. Maybe it did once, but that hasn't been the case for quite a while now.
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone from the /. team explain what exactly is wrong with the Classic site and why it can't be fixed? I just don't see why you had to start over with a completely new design when the old one works so well. A few tweaks is all that is needed.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Well, those few needed tweaks never stop piling up. On top of that, UX research and (more importantly) user expectations continue to evolve.
To keep up with that, websites either need to constantly change in small increments, or to do it in big chunks. We'd been doing the former for a while, but the decision was made to start fresh. I totally understand how jarring it is
Re:Just be honest - it's not for *US* (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure contemporary ideas about UX design are inappropriate for Slashdot. The one or two sentences that Twitter/Facebook/WhatsApp accommodate won't work here. This place indulges people that like to write, and people that don't mind lengthy posts.
The beta site shows a serious indifference to that; the amount of wasted space is just amazing. Fully 45% of the comments view is just empty, half of it gone to the infinitely long side bar that Beta fails to wrap into. No one that understands what this site is for could possibly have made that basic mistake for as long as Beta has been in the works.
Bootstrap et al. don't deal with "long form" threaded forums, so that design mentality won't work.
Here is a possibly novel idea that will actually be appreciated by at least this contributor, and probably most others; comment editing with revision control (a la Wikipedia.) It has to be revision controlled or the trolls will abuse editing. Allow readers to punish such trolls with moderation while the rest of us get the benefit of correcting minor mistakes.
There. That wasn't hard. A real improvement that caters to actual contributors, as opposed to hypothetical users that want to scribble a grammatically challenged half sentence 20 times an hour and don't read.
Anyhow, thanks for the step backwards on this and your participation in the conversation. You all could have gone bull-headed and made this situation even worse. So good on your for that.
Re:Just be honest - it's not for *US* (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, I can certainly agree that not all current design trends belong on Slashdot. I mean, I have my own personal preferences for the look and behavior of the websites I use.
That said, while I'm no UX expert (and before anyone asks, no, I wasn't one of the designers of the Beta site), I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve. You may disagree on the particulars -- and clearly, a lot of people do -- but I'm surprised so many attribute that to malice.
Anyway, regarding your suggestion: comment editing is something we've gone back and forth on for a number of years. The immutability of reader comments has always been a prized feature. I don't think we ever discussed versioning/revision control, though, and I really like that idea. I can't make any promises, particularly with the amount of work that's ahead of us with the beta, but I'll run it up the totem pole.
Re: (Score:2)
but I'm surprised so many attribute that to malice.
My accusation was limited to a lack of understanding; never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ... a lack of understanding, as they almost say.
The immutability of reader comments has always been a prized feature
Amen. Accountability. It's always been obvious to me why simply revising comments isn't tolerable and I'm glad that view predominates.
And AC isn't a counterpoint to accountability either, for whomever might want to throw that one back at me; AC elevates attributed comments, on several levels.
Re: (Score:2)
"I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve."
Evolution involves adaptive changes, changes that improve the function of an organism to enable it to better survive.
It's obvious that slashbeta impairs function in many ways. Is there any way you can cite in which it improves function?
Re: (Score:2)
I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve.
We've uncovered your problem. It is this axiom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The Beta design team doesn't need a UX lead. It needs some cranky, low UID asshole who has complete and utter veto power over everyone else. My suggested test for whether someone is qualified is to look at their moderation history and note how much of it is bashing down the goddamn trolls. No UI redesign is going to matter one bit if you drive that crowd off.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, because UI/UX training doesn't necessarily help. If you target the lowest common denominator, as "good" UI design principles today tell you to, you're going to throw the power users under a bus so that 0.5% of your users get a little less confused. With slashdot, power users are the majority, people who want options, control, no WYSIWYG, and similar, relatively simple, constraints.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve.
Ahhh. Are you trying to evolve a larger Creationist userbase?
-
Re: (Score:2)
Let comments be edited for 24 hours or until the first reply to them is posted, whichever comes first. Store just the original version and the latest version. Show the latest version, plus a "See earlier version" link/button when applicable.
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, you want it to evolve, so why kill it and start again from scratch? Evolution is incremental upgrades, trying out new ideas and letting the good ones stick.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Beta isn't evolution. It's devolution, the opposite of evolution.
By the way, I really love the comments immutability and even the Slashdot explanation for it.
Worried that we have to explain so much (Score:2)
I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve. You may disagree on the particulars -- and clearly, a lot of people do -- but I'm surprised so many attribute that to malice.
It's not about malice and never was. (a few idiots think everything is a plot but they self-identify and are easy to ignore) It's about fundamentally and badly misunderstanding what makes this site work. It took me about 15 seconds on the beta site to realize it was alpha quality at best. Virtually everything that makes slashdot worth visiting was missing. Commenting and (just as important) the ability to read comments and see what others thought of them on the beta is broken badly and at the end of th
Re: (Score:2)
That said, while I'm no UX expert (and before anyone asks, no, I wasn't one of the designers of the Beta site), I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve. You may disagree on the particulars -- and clearly, a lot of people do -- but I'm surprised so many attribute that to malice.
I think people are turning to explanations of malice because nothing else is making sense to them.
You will hear a few refrains over and over again from the users of Slashdot here. First, that Slashdot users are not the audience, they are the content creators. Slashdot can not survive by duplicating Reddit, Digg, et all. It survives because no other site on the Internet has the sort of discussion and moderation support that Slashdot has. This could be a bitter pill for Slashdot editors to swallow, as they mi
Re: (Score:2)
I do think all websites, even sites like Slashdot, need to evolve. You may disagree on the particulars -- and clearly, a lot of people do -- but I'm surprised so many attribute that to malice.
Sure, but evolution needs to come in response to some kind of need. i think the thing that people here (or maybe it's just me) don't understand is what is the need this redesign is intending to meet? From my point of view, it looks like all loss and no win.
It shouldn't surprise you that the change is attributed to malice. In the first place, as a much smarter guy than I once observed, all UI changes are acts of hostility. Good changes are those that result in a better experience, but the change itself is st
Re: (Score:2)
This place indulges people that like to write, and people that don't mind lengthy posts.
Even the updates to /. Classic have been slowly stripping away the detailed options we used to have to format the website to our personal preferences.
For example: I can no longer find the options for adjusting post length or the # of posts per page.
The only thing I can still adjust is the size of the comment box. What's up with that?
Am I nuts? Check it out yourself.
https://slashdot.org/prefs.pl [slashdot.org]