In our usual fashion, we've given AT a minor refresh this Sunday evening before the masses visit tomorrow morning. We've moved away from the beige into something a bit more blue/grey, just trying to stay neutral while updating the look a bit. You'll notice that the tabs up top have a new font and are condensed quite a bit. The new font makes its appearance on the left nav as well.
The comments system has been heavily revamped, here are the changes:
1) First and foremost, anonymous posting is no longer allowed. You can choose not to show your email address but you need to post from an account you've created (registration is free, we won't spam you, etc...)
2) We've moved to a threaded comment system; it's a request we've gotten from quite a few users, so no more typing the # before the post you want to respond to, just respond to that individual post and you'll branch off of it.
3) You can now rate individual posts based on their content, the higher the rating, the better the content. The system works like this:
- You can either post or rate in a thread, not both. We do this to prevent people from changing the direction of a thread by posting a comment and then rating up or down those who agree/disagree with their point.
- If you rate one or more comments and then decide later that you want to post/reply, you may. When you do so, your votes are simply subtracted out.
- Each post/reply starts with a rating of 2. The highest you can rate a post is 5, the lowest is -1. Each vote either increases or decreases the rating of a post by 1 point.
- Everyone gets the same number of votes per thread. For every 10 posts/replies in a thread, each user gets 1 vote. We may change this as time goes on.
The system is inevitably going to need some tweaking, but we've tried our best to work out the major kinks before launching it. We'll be watching the way it's used over time and make the appropriate changes.
So give it a try, give us your feedback and I'll chime in tomorrow morning with the i-RAM piece and an update from the weekend.
Take care.
The comments system has been heavily revamped, here are the changes:
1) First and foremost, anonymous posting is no longer allowed. You can choose not to show your email address but you need to post from an account you've created (registration is free, we won't spam you, etc...)
2) We've moved to a threaded comment system; it's a request we've gotten from quite a few users, so no more typing the # before the post you want to respond to, just respond to that individual post and you'll branch off of it.
3) You can now rate individual posts based on their content, the higher the rating, the better the content. The system works like this:
- You can either post or rate in a thread, not both. We do this to prevent people from changing the direction of a thread by posting a comment and then rating up or down those who agree/disagree with their point.
- If you rate one or more comments and then decide later that you want to post/reply, you may. When you do so, your votes are simply subtracted out.
- Each post/reply starts with a rating of 2. The highest you can rate a post is 5, the lowest is -1. Each vote either increases or decreases the rating of a post by 1 point.
- Everyone gets the same number of votes per thread. For every 10 posts/replies in a thread, each user gets 1 vote. We may change this as time goes on.
The system is inevitably going to need some tweaking, but we've tried our best to work out the major kinks before launching it. We'll be watching the way it's used over time and make the appropriate changes.
So give it a try, give us your feedback and I'll chime in tomorrow morning with the i-RAM piece and an update from the weekend.
Take care.
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Spacecomber - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
Looks like the associated links got mislabeled in the process of updating the look of the front page tabs.Space
Spacecomber - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
Actually, as I look at this more closely, it appears that where I need to point my cursor on the main page, where the tabs are, to bring up the sections like, motherboards, video, etc. doesn't properly line up with where I see the tabs. It seems like all the links are shifted over to the left of where I see the tabs themselves.This is with IE 6, 1024x768, medium text size, if that can be of any help.
Space
Bubbacub - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
wtf was wrong with the original system. Just ban anon posters and go back i say. This is the "winamp 3" of commenting systemsSpacecomber - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
I kind of like the ability to rate comments. Seems to make more sense than the back and forth about which was more lame, the original (usually first) post or the subsequent criticisms of that post.More importantly (to me), I like the easy buttons for inserting things like hyperlinks.
If I were to ask for anything more, it would be the ability to go back and edit a post, since there almost always is some glaring typo or mis-spelling when I get done.
Space
anselhelm - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
I like most of the new layout (though Firefox had a fit initially and I had to refresh the page to put the flash in the right position), but this new commenting is overly complicated. I don't like having to bring up a new window (or tab) just to comment on a post. Sure, I COULD get used to it, but I'd rather not. If anything this will probably stop many people from commenting.Maybe the commenting system needed changing, but not to this.
Sunbird - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
New layout and colours okay, but dammit, you cant right click to open a seperate windows for reading comments from different news subjects. When you click comments anywhere, its only opens it in this one damn window! I like to multitask my comment reading, not even a A64 X2 will help with this problem!Sunbird - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
And what about having different ways of displaying then the comments like timebased/threadbased? I want to read the last comment posted last, not have to read through the whole page just to see if anything new has been added, its very difficult and time consuming, I love reading whatever people say even if what the last poster said doesn't even interest me.Cuser - Wednesday, July 27, 2005 - link
I agree with the previous post. I would like to be able to switch to a timebased view so that when I come back to a thread, I could go directly to where I left off without filtering through all the posts to find the most recent.Keep up the good work. The new look is gonna be hard for some of us who have been here so long to get use to, but it is looking really good.
dmfcomputing - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
sorry anand, but i have to say the new comments system is just a pain in the @ss. a new window to type a reply? who needs that? a registered account? who needs that? seeing the posts in order of replies rather then chronologically, takes away all the fun of an argument or a sense of a development in conversation.And i thought the forums here were bad... lol
If you cant reply and rate a post, then dumb posts will never be rated down. as weve seen, when someone sees "first post" and doesnt like it he is likely to scream and yell etc, and maybe even say something off topic... not rate it.
not that i would miss the first posters, but i did enjoy watching people whine about first posters.
and nobody makes communist russia jokes anymore.
Anton74 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
I understand Anand's idea of not wanting people to rate down opposing points of view, but I fully agree with the point about rating down dumb posts. I'd say at least, let people vote in all _threads_ they didn't participate in.I suspect that on the whole, if everyone could rate all posts including in threads they participate in, it'd still work out alright. Even if someone stoops low enough to vote someone down just because they disagree, that one vote will likely be outnumbered by everyone else's, which now can't happen as much because those that are involved in the discussion can't vote at all. And even as it is now, people can still rate down posts simply based on disagreeing with that particular post(er). I say let everyone be able to rate all posts (except of course their own).
Also, I do also miss the flat, non-tree layout, just to see what posts are new. Wouldn't it be possible to offer both?
The new site layout is very pleasing by the way, does look perfectly fine for me in Opera 8.01 and Firefox 1.0.6 after refresh.
Anton