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

[Pwolf]

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 don't think so. He is posting these threads to get feedback and show people that something is being done instead of keeping it all hush-hush like we were doing before. David is creating a website based on the issues that have been presented in the past and has come up with what he thinks is the best way to tackle those issues. At this point there is no way to know for sure if it will work or not without having a full working website for us all to use and test. Your feedback thus far has basically suggested that it wont work and he should start over using someone else's ideas that he doesn't agree with. That's not productive at all. We can sit here and argue over what features we all want or what colors we want to see, or we can help David make something that will actually work by giving him feedback that's productive and relevant to what's actually being done.

It's been over two years and there's been nothing to show on the org's side as far as a redesign is concerned, aside from some database designs. Even then, without my intervention, there probably wouldn't be any work or thought about a redesign in the first place since the administration wanted to keep it under wraps until stuff was done, which nothing has been done to a point where they would've gone public. And, on that note, the threads I posted weren't meant to gather up all the ideas and impliment them all. They were to generate discussion which in turn would help get people motivated to do something, which David has done. I think we should all be grateful SOMEONE is doing something and at least give them the benefit of the doubt that they do indeed know what could be best for the org considering we, as a community, can't seem to figure that out ourselves anyway.

[I Fight For The Users]

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.

Have you read https://github.com/amvorg-underground/catalog/issues?

Those have all been filed by me. About half of them were actually thought up by me. If there's a closed comment box then I don't know where it is.

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?

You and Bashar are complaining about a development process because I don't like your ideas about colors and offered you the opportunity to try out your ideas.

Uh-huh.

---

I'm going to end my involvement in this thread now, as it has become counterproductive. I am not, however, going to stop posting updates. If you filter out all the noise from Sanya-nya and Bashar, there's been good comments (thanks, CodeZTM, Driftroot, and pwolf), so evidently the forum thread mechanism still works.

In the meantime, file future feature requests and bug reports at https://github.com/amvorg-underground/catalog/issues.

[BasharOfTheAges]

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.

Have you read https://github.com/amvorg-underground/catalog/issues?

Those have all been filed by me. About half of them were actually thought up by me. If there's a closed comment box then I don't know where it is.

By the tone of your responses, I'm gonna have to say this sub-forum mostly, this thread in particular. You're using a github repository - that right there should be the signal that you don't want feedback from the general org population - you want informed users, you want to segregate the development off-site and limit feedback to knowledgeable people. That's 100% cool, and I agree with that mentality entirely. I just don't see the point of this whole sub forum if that's the way things are. It seems, as i said before, kinda silly.

To be more on topic: I find the current site mock-ups to be rather empty. I dislike the lack of any real top or side menu structure for quick links to where I want to go, not that there is anywhere to go at the moment. I find the case sensitivity of user-names in the direct link examples you gave to be overly burdensome. I'm not sure how I feel about allowing javascript in general for security reasons. All in all, I think it's still too early to really be giving feedback - it seems like a skeleton of a few aspects of the site - until our current feature sets are more integrated into the design, I can't see how it all fits together.

[Nya-chan Production]

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 don't think so. He is posting these threads to get feedback and show people that something is being done instead of keeping it all hush-hush like we were doing before. David is creating a website based on the issues that have been presented in the past and has come up with what he thinks is the best way to tackle those issues. At this point there is no way to know for sure if it will work or not without having a full working website for us all to use and test. Your feedback thus far has basically suggested that it wont work and he should start over using someone else's ideas that he doesn't agree with. That's not productive at all. We can sit here and argue over what features we all want or what colors we want to see, or we can help David make something that will actually work by giving him feedback that's productive and relevant to what's actually being done.

It's been over two years and there's been nothing to show on the org's side as far as a redesign is concerned, aside from some database designs. Even then, without my intervention, there probably wouldn't be any work or thought about a redesign in the first place since the administration wanted to keep it under wraps until stuff was done, which nothing has been done to a point where they would've gone public. And, on that note, the threads I posted weren't meant to gather up all the ideas and impliment them all. They were to generate discussion which in turn would help get people motivated to do something, which David has done. I think we should all be grateful SOMEONE is doing something and at least give them the benefit of the doubt that they do indeed know what could be best for the org considering we, as a community, can't seem to figure that out ourselves anyway.

Believe me, I am very glad that something is shaping up. If I weren't, I'd just drop reading these threads and stopped contributing ideas at all. The fact that I try to see something that can be improved and try to offer it backs it up, I hope.

The thing is, I browse every release, but so far it's been all such basic things and flawlessly executed, that I just haven't found any broken functionality or things that I'd improve. I think that's a great thing, actually (and I am probably a bit lousy tester at this stage of coding). So I turn to what I think I could say something about, the graphical design, which even trythil said goes hand in hand with actual coding.

Still, every such issue is downplayed, and as you see, my ideas are not even considered anymore, instead I can pretty much fork and finish the whole page myself and then play with colors. Surely lifted my spirits.

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.

Have you read https://github.com/amvorg-underground/catalog/issues?

Those have all been filed by me. About half of them were actually thought up by me. If there's a closed comment box then I don't know where it is.

That issue log probably shows up that the Org users don't even know how to make git issues, or aren't willing to register to github just to file an issue. Maybe this idea of "The org users will file git issues" is wrong from the start - because most users won't, even those, who have good ideas and can see bugs I don't.
In fact I think 99% of the Org users even don't read these threads.

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?

You and Bashar are complaining about a development process because I don't like your ideas about colors and offered you the opportunity to try out your ideas.

Uh-huh.

---

I'm going to end my involvement in this thread now, as it has become counterproductive. I am not, however, going to stop posting updates. If you filter out all the noise from Sanya-nya and Bashar, there's been good comments (thanks, CodeZTM, Driftroot, and pwolf), so evidently the forum thread mechanism still works.

In the meantime, file future feature requests and bug reports at https://github.com/amvorg-underground/catalog/issues.

You offered me to FORK this stuff and then throw my stuff on top of it. Even if I wanted to, I don't know HOW (considering the structure and languages we've been talking about. Yes, I still haven't found the time to read about those THREE different technologies I need just to write up some CSS). I don't know WHERE would I put the fork. And nevermind that I would have to put up either a Linux dual boot or a VM, with your disc image and hope nothing gets broken (because I reinstalled an OS recently and the installation is gone).
And believe me, those 30-60 minutes you spent with me fixing various problems are nothing compared to normal user who just wants to help by saying "I think this color is ugly" and doesn't know how to run a Terminal. What are you going to tell him? Fork it? Make a github account?

I want to go and tell you "I don't think it should be this clean". More people want to, as you've seen. But it's not possible, instead the reply is "You can spend days, or even months on this thing I could try within an hour or so (though maybe later in the project, when more stuff is there). And then present it to me/people and we might consider it. Or throw it away".
I doubt anyone would want to spend months on a thing that might get thrown away in a minute.

And btw, this is exactly the problem I mentioned. Almost NOBODY here is able to do ANY technical stuff with what you're working on/with. Not now, not in the future. And if anyone outside a small circle of people isn't allowed to help or raise an idea, unless they file an issue/fork, then something is wrong (because I doubt Brad or others did that. No offense, but I wonder, how they got to that imagined inner circle of yours. Other than their idea of the page being similar to yours, that is.).

[Pwolf]

I want to go and tell you "I don't think it should be this clean". More people want to, as you've seen. But it's not possible, instead the reply is "You can spend days, or even months on this thing I could try within an hour or so (though maybe later in the project, when more stuff is there). And then present it to me/people and we might consider it. Or throw it away". I doubt anyone would want to spend months on a thing that might get thrown away in a minute.

The situation wouldn't be much different if the languages and frameworks were different. You're still going to have to learn them and that's going to take time. On top of that it's counter productive to just stop what you're doing and start making changes based on request. If you want to make changes, fork the code. If you don't know how, learn how. If it takes months, so be it, at least then you'll have a better understanding of the code and god forbid you help at that point.

You can also open up photoshop and make visual changes yourself.

[Nya-chan Production]

I want to go and tell you "I don't think it should be this clean". More people want to, as you've seen. But it's not possible, instead the reply is "You can spend days, or even months on this thing I could try within an hour or so (though maybe later in the project, when more stuff is there). And then present it to me/people and we might consider it. Or throw it away". I doubt anyone would want to spend months on a thing that might get thrown away in a minute.

The situation wouldn't be much different if the languages and frameworks were different. You're still going to have to learn them and that's going to take time. On top of that it's counter productive to just stop what you're doing and start making changes based on request. If you want to make changes, fork the code. If you don't know how, learn how. If it takes months, so be it, at least then you'll have a better understanding of the code and god forbid you help at that point.

You can also open up photoshop and make visual changes yourself.

I think I can agree with most of that (with small differences I won't bother going into). What irks me the most, I suppose, is the very harsh approach to anything that's thrown in. It kind of... keeps me down and often unmotivated to offer anything new or else, because I know it will be shot down anyway, without me really knowing why.
Maybe it's my bad understanding, maybe trythil's over-technicality, probably both, but it just makes the dialogue here very tough. He sees everything I offer as pointless, because he has some aim, and that aim can be really well-thought and good, I can see loads of work behind it. But I can't get the grasp of this aim, because he can't explain it, he always digresses into this or that technical stuff where I stop caring instead:

I just... don't know how to REALLY help with this project. I know I can't help with this timewise, with helping with 3 cons a year, managing a website and going to work. Forking is something unmanageable for me at this moment. But I DO want to help... Maybe that Photoshop work? But the fact that my ideas aren't even considered and are taken as an attack against...

Gah, I'll just go sleep instead. Oyasumi~n...

[Kaream]

@ I fight for the users

I seriously encourage you to keep doing what you are doing and don't lose focus on the re-design project in regards to the feedback.

[drewaconclusion]

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.

x2 very much so

Also...I have to say that I look at this design and see something that is highly generic and is presenting a very cold, clinical approach to the AMV hobby. This last is a reputation a-m-v.org has which we all know has turned a lot of people away from this site. It's fine to look like we have a website that knows what it's doing, but where is the fun? Where is the casual love of AMVing? Where's the personality? The current site may be troublesome, but it's got fun colors, fun images and (in certain areas) fun copywriting that all help establish the feel of this site is. Do we really have to abandon all of that personality in pursuit of a more modern, updated website that's all whites and grays? To me this looks like you are re-branding a-m-v.org on top of designing a new website, and since we've been asked to share our opinions, I do not like the way this new a-m-v.org looks or feels for the reasons stated. Maybe more personality will be added into the center, but right now I can't really see what's going to be there...and that still leaves a frame around every page that doesn't exude great personality or brand.

Along these lines, where is space being allocated to effectively branding this website AS a-m-v.org? That whole featured video space at the top...I can't even make out what those images are supposed to be or represent (Princess Tutu, I know), but how is that compelling to click on? There's no hook there than "Featured Video" and a sliced up gallery of partial images. How is a whole, website-wide string of images the most effective way to get people to check out that video? I can't see why it needs to take up that much space or be presented like that. That whole areas is where I would expect to see something that clearly establishes "HEY, You're at a-m-v.org!!"

Drift pretty much summed up what I was originally thinking on the topic, so another x2.

[Kaream]

I do agree that the beta interface is a bit bland and could use more features. Featuring one video at a time isn't a good idea, a better idea would be to follow YouTube's 2.0 technique of displaying trending videos. 4 Video thumbnails displayed in horizontal view and simultaneously transition to another 4 set of randomly trending videos.



Also the layout is a bit unusual and outdated, you should get rid of color palette and keep one simple color. In-case you were planning to scatter everything around the page, designing the new modules and features to fit inside the box module would be a good idea.

You were using Apple as an example you might as well take a little more flavor from the Apple interface. It's very sleek, beautiful and clean. But this is an AMV Site, so a little colors won't hurt. Maybe when the mouse highlights a link in the sidebar (I assume it's a side bar) you can animate it to jitter a little and the color changes; something creative and unique to an amv site.

I also believe you will be keeping the random Banner feature correct?

[Kaream]

If you do plan on keeping the 2 module color palettes than a ditto of Apple's color palettes would be a nice idea. Those two colors compliment each other very well, the one's you've chosen feel odd