[beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

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I Fight For The Users
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Re: [beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

Post by I Fight For The Users » Sun Aug 05, 2012 11:42 pm

CodeZTM wrote:
I Fight For The Users wrote:
CodeZTM wrote: Out of curiosity, what is the funcationality of the quick comment and opinion system going to be like? I know it's not the most important thing right now, but it's just something that I'm curious about (as both of them are something that I use frequently).
Leaving them out for now; will probably open up a beta without them. (This doesn't mean that existing QC/opinion data will be deleted; there's no reason to delete it.)

I (with the rest of the Machine) have been tossing around an idea for alternative system that may spur greater activity: https://github.com/amvorg-underground/catalog/issues/31

That issue doesn't really describe the system in that much detail, but that's because I don't have much else concrete to write about it at the moment.
I guess what I really want to know is if there will still be a scored ranking system and area for comments about the videos. Considering the activity of the Announcement Forum, this is really the only way most people can get somewhat valuable critiques. I'd also be sad to see the top 10% gone.
The present answer is "no", because it's not on this list: https://github.com/amvorg-underground/catalog/issues

Feel free to add suggestions there. I much prefer that forum of discussion to this one.

That said:

I do think public video comments are useful. (I think hiding them is pointless: if you're going to comment, sign your handle and own up to it. The .org only does half of that and it frustrates me.)

For critiques, I am studying DeviantArt and ConceptArt.org's critique systems. They do it far better than the .org has ever done, and I want to learn why.

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Re: [beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

Post by CodeZTM » Mon Aug 06, 2012 12:16 am

Thanks for the link, I wasn't aware it was there. Then again, I haven't checked the official website for the design, mostly because it's fairly intimidating and I don't know half of what I'm reading. :lol:

I do agree that the private QC system is irritating, as recent journal entries from Fay-Sa and others have clearly pointed out. So I'm all for that, but I still hope we maintain some sort of the opinion system to some degree. As I said earlier, I still think it has a valuable application (assuming there are a few alterations to the current system) if it were more user friendly.

I'll think a little more about the system and leave a suggestion on that system once I have my thoughts more in order.

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Re: [beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

Post by Kaream » Mon Aug 06, 2012 4:44 am

I really like the direction this is headed towards. I urged for a re-design two years ago, and happy to see it happening.
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Re: [beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

Post by Nya-chan Production » Mon Aug 06, 2012 7:13 am

I Fight For The Users wrote:
Nya-chan Production wrote:
Pwolf wrote:I don't understand what the problem is with the home page and why you're saying it resembles a hospital floor.
1) It has no colors, other than the video
2) It is pretty much sterile. Like a floor. Or a beton block. Except the, well, video.
3) The creator has repeatedly said that he would like to keep it this way.
1) You are refusing to engage your imagination.
2) You are eliminating a large amount of subtlety with (3) (at this point, I think intentionally so), and I feel that I must counter your poison.

Yes, there's a lot of image placeholders right now. Think of what they can look like once they're filled in. Think of what pages will look like with additional systems not yet built: recommendations and badges (e.g. "featured video for 2012-12-21") are two such things that I'd like to explore.
I wrote: The sterility of each page depends on two things.

1. The user managing the page (e.g. profile, video pages).
2. For search pages, it is the set of users whose videos/profiles/etc. show up in the results.

The degree to which this new layout appears sterile is therefore entirely up to you.
Content (in the form of video text, supporting images, and the videos themselves) comes first; the design is a shell to organize that content. Even that drop shadow on the main container serves that purpose by separating body from links.

Shaded boxes, colored text, and divider lines are not necessary to implement that goal. They can improve organization when used carefully, but I will not add them just because someone thinks it needs to be kicked up a notch. In many cases this is due to incomplete implementation; however, in some cases (e.g. some video information pages), it is a direct reflection of the sad state of that video catalog data. And I think that's fine; it's honest design.

---

I have said this before, but it probably bears repeating:

If you do not like my design decisions, you are free to fork the codebase, add whatever you want, and deploy. You are free to leverage all the other changes I have made or will make, as I have made the entire codebase available under various free software licenses. You are even free to use the database, as I am committed to keeping it replicable by others.

You don't even need to fork the code, really. You could just start your own.
Thank you, that's what I wanted to hear, instead of "It isn't sterile, your opinion is invalid." It cleared my thoughts about it a lot and answered my questions (even those that I didn't say, in fact).
I am just curious - do I have to fork? I'd prefer some one-way (for now) branch to which I can merge code from master and work on that alternatively, mainly because I have no real place to deploy to (and I don't know what would be necessary to deploy anyway). I wonder if that's acceptable, though :3
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Re: [beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

Post by BasharOfTheAges » Mon Aug 06, 2012 8:44 am

Just gotta say, the sentiment behind "don't like the way I'm doing it? fork your own branch and change things." doesn't really mesh with having a feedback thread - especially if you want feedback from non-developers (i.e. the overwhelming majority of the user-base).
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Re: [beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

Post by I Fight For The Users » Mon Aug 06, 2012 11:18 am

BasharOfTheAges wrote:Just gotta say, the sentiment behind "don't like the way I'm doing it? fork your own branch and change things." doesn't really mesh with having a feedback thread - especially if you want feedback from non-developers (i.e. the overwhelming majority of the user-base).
Oh, hi Slashdot. Two responses.

Sanya-nya has suggested changes based on a fundamentally incompatible design philosophy that I have rejected many times. The only solution forward in that case is forking. (Unless there exists a good explanation for why the present philosophy is wrong which nobody has yet advanced.)

Additionally, I am not interested in everyone's feedback. If I seriously considered everyone's opinion, the end product would be shit. I am instead working with a small group of people who I have come to trust. (So far: Ileia, AisuzuZwei, and Brad has chimed in about typefaces.) Membership is not closed, but I do give more serious consideration to feedback that demonstrates more than superficial knowledge of my goals and design principles.

The end product here might still fail, but it won't fail from lack of focus. (You know, because the past few years of this design thing have seen so much progress.)

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Re: [beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

Post by BasharOfTheAges » Mon Aug 06, 2012 12:05 pm

I Fight For The Users wrote:
BasharOfTheAges wrote:Just gotta say, the sentiment behind "don't like the way I'm doing it? fork your own branch and change things." doesn't really mesh with having a feedback thread - especially if you want feedback from non-developers (i.e. the overwhelming majority of the user-base).
Oh, hi Slashdot. Two responses.

Sanya-nya has suggested changes based on a fundamentally incompatible design philosophy that I have rejected many times. The only solution forward in that case is forking. (Unless there exists a good explanation for why the present philosophy is wrong which nobody has yet advanced.)

Additionally, I am not interested in everyone's feedback. If I seriously considered everyone's opinion, the end product would be shit. I am instead working with a small group of people who I have come to trust. (So far: Ileia, AisuzuZwei, and Brad has chimed in about typefaces.) Membership is not closed, but I do give more serious consideration to feedback that demonstrates more than superficial knowledge of my goals and design principles.

The end product here might still fail, but it won't fail from lack of focus. (You know, because the past few years of this design thing have seen so much progress.)
Oh, I fully understand development choices have to be made and stuck to if progress is to happen. I almost feel like you're presenting a comment box that will get dumped in the trash because it's the polite thing to do and gives the illusion of interaction so you can point to it being there if people complain when it's all done. Like it's just a formality. Stuck between that and doing completely closed door design work, I can see where that might be the more palatable option.

Don't mind me - i just like pointing out things that seem silly to me.
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Re: [beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

Post by Nya-chan Production » Mon Aug 06, 2012 1:04 pm

First, I would like to state that I am writing this posts (and all of my feedback in these threads) as myself. Don't associate my posts with my role as a moderator. It hasn't happened yet, but just in case ;x
I Fight For The Users wrote:
BasharOfTheAges wrote:Just gotta say, the sentiment behind "don't like the way I'm doing it? fork your own branch and change things." doesn't really mesh with having a feedback thread - especially if you want feedback from non-developers (i.e. the overwhelming majority of the user-base).
Sanya-nya has suggested changes based on a fundamentally incompatible design philosophy that I have rejected many times. The only solution forward in that case is forking. (Unless there exists a good explanation for why the present philosophy is wrong which nobody has yet advanced.)
Point 1:
Yeah. I wonder what I can do with said fork. Present it to my future employees, maybe, telling them: "Oh, and by the way, would you be interested in running an AMV database?"

I don't want to sound ill here, but as it stands now you're the basically only person willing and wanting to program this stuff here on the Org. Yes, there are probably some people, maybe even tens of people who could do it. But they don't have time or will to do it. And of those who could learn it, it's even worse, because they would have to learn it and only THEN write it. (As for me, I have no profficiency in RoR, Couch, Lucene, Perl, nor Mojolicious. I could probably get the grasp and start helping, supposed I'd dedicate two or three months to it, as I've got the very basics of the "usual" stuff - php, Python, C#. Will I? No, most probably not.)
How do I know? Well, there's not anyone helping you write it, is there? No, discussions with people on #Grommet about what to use and tech stuff don't count. You're the only one who commits to this project.

And at this state, telling anyone to fork is just saying: "Hey, you can fork this, and play with it, but you won't be able to do anything with it until you have few months to learn to play with it. And by then my work will be done anyway (and will be ways better, because I know how to write in this) and you'll have a useless fork at your hands which you can show your friends."
I Fight For The Users wrote:Additionally, I am not interested in everyone's feedback. If I seriously considered everyone's opinion, the end product would be shit. I am instead working with a small group of people who I have come to trust. (So far: Ileia, AisuzuZwei, and Brad has chimed in about typefaces.) Membership is not closed, but I do give more serious consideration to feedback that demonstrates more than superficial knowledge of my goals and design principles.
Point 2:
You've just undermined the very three threads you've made here, congratulations. The fact that you don't even consider feedback from some people (you wrote that yourself) is highly disheartening. And at this point the question arises, why don't you just pick those few people you trust and develop showing the website to only them?
And as for the last sentence - I know that you have the most power (if not all of it), writing the code. But from that sentence it seems that you know the best what is good for the community. Aaaand... I think that's not a good thing. If I wanted to, I could make a really ugly comparison here. And you could reply with a really nice comparison in reply. Well... after all, I just want to say that I don't think it's a good thing to decide about the whole community for itself. Again.
I Fight For The Users wrote:The end product here might still fail, but it won't fail from lack of focus. (You know, because the past few years of this design thing have seen so much progress.)
Point 3:¨
My biggest fear at this moment? That even after all that mentioned above the final result will be fine. This way or that way. But no-one will be able to work with it except you and we'll get to dokidoki doing all the things again. Except it will be you and not doki. A perfectly documented and perfectly written website is kind of... useless if you want to add a new feature, or change an old one, and find out that you can't find anyone who works in RoR/Lucene and is able and willing to dedicate some considerable amount of time to it.

Hah... lots of useless words FTW. I can already see how I am losing anyway orz
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Re: [beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

Post by Nya-chan Production » Mon Aug 06, 2012 1:07 pm

(And a little useless addendum: I don't see you fighting for users in any of these threads. I see you fighting for your view of how Org should work and look like. Which is a great difference.)
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Re: [beta.a-m-v.org] Hey, we're semi-official

Post by irriadin » Mon Aug 06, 2012 1:26 pm

His point about not taking advice from everyone should be taken to mean that... if he DID take everyone's advice, he'd produce something totally worthless. Design by committee is a good way to destroy things, you've got to know what to acknowledge and what to discard. That being said, he should at least listen to everyone, and if the majority of the users suggest something, it should be worth looking at, at the very least.

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