New Look Coming Soon to Uncommon Descent

_{Jack Cole

August 13, 2011

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Tomorrow (Sunday), I will be implementing a new look to the Uncommon Descent website. This will not be an instantaneous process, so there may be a period of time when the site appearance is incomplete. We appreciate your patience in this process.

In addition to the new look, there will also be some new features that we hope you will like. Comments will be threaded, so you will no longer need to refer to comment numbers when posting replies. Your comments and feedback on the changes will be welcome.

On another note, Uncommon Descent has had 5 successive record months in terms of traffic. We appreciate all the hard work of the authors who have been producing excellent content, and most of all, the 100’s of thousands of readers who visit every month.

Comments

I'll go with some other commenters and suggest that the threaded approach should probably go away; but at least one commenter suggested a reply should behave as a "quote" button, but I'll add a caveat. Instead of the threaded comments, offer links at the end of a comment that direct the reader to "replies." The replies would still appear in order of posting, but a thread could be followed by following the links. This would allow both convenient browsing of "most recent comments per thread" along with a threading-type behavior by linking to replies instead of embedding them. As to recent comments on the main page. Yes indeed, recent comments should be expanded (and excerpted). Since this now appears at the footer of the main page, there's no reason not to include 10 or 20 recent comments with excerpts, since it won't otherwise upset the flow of the page. Another suggestion (and a good one if I do say so myself). On the main page, under each article heading, display the most recent comments for that thread, spanned along the heading width, color coded according to activity. For example: [article heading and text excerpt 1] |red|orange|yellow|green|cyan|blue| [article heading and text excerpt 2] |red|orange|yellow|green|cyan|blue| [article heading and text excerpt 3] |red|orange|yellow|green|cyan|blue| Each color would indicate comments added within a span of time: red - within 1 hour; orange - within 2 hours -- etc. This way a viewer could glance at the main page and see hot topics by most recent comments. If this isn't clear I'll provide a better example. Jack, your efforts to make the site more accessible is appreciated. It's definitely not possible to please everyone, so if you'd just focus on pleasing me, we could do some wonders here. xp m.i. p.s. I noticed that comment paging is working, and I think it's a tremendous enhancement, especially considering it will take a huge load off of the server.material.infantacy_{August 15, 2011
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Upright, The new format has it's advantages and disadvantages. It's an issue of optimism. With the new format it makes responding to a particular post more convenient as I'm doing here in this reply to yours. You can't have that advantage without giving up other conveniences. If you can think of a way, please do. I actually think this new format opens up the discussion, because we can reply to someone a lot quicker, and we can see their responses directly below our own posts. It does present problems with following the debate, and I've noticed some of the same problems you have when I've tried to follow (and find) certain posts, but I think that issue will be minimized once you get used the format.CannuckianYankee_{August 15, 2011
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Yeah I didn't quite know which way to go on it but I think Upright has decided this for me. I'd like to see the old way again. I'd also like to engage in a little mystical philosophy, mystical in the sense that I believe I have direct knowledge of a fundamental law but I can't communicate why it's so. And that this law applies to a few aspects of the blog, compared to how it used to be, which I'm not going to go into. And the idea is that when you try to reach people they'll walk away. The blog is moving more towards reaching people and away from a philosophical place. But when you forget about reaching people, and concentrate on the quality of your argument, intelligent critics will show up and there'll be insights and long threads, and harmonious logic and actions will flow out from here into society, stabilizing it. I don't know how to apply this, or what to change exactly, but a change has taken place from the last time I was here a couple years ago. I don't think a whole lot has changed, so it's not something that has to be paid attention to maybe, but it's worth a comment. Also the blog goes through a cycle of action to not a lot of action so maybe I'm overreacting. I'd rather see the site stats go down and the quality go up.lamarck_{August 15, 2011
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Unless you click on a new comment from the preview pane (which will take you to it whereever its placed in the thread) then you are left to go through the entire thread to see if anything new has been added. C'mon. Think it through.Upright BiPed_{August 15, 2011
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Geez, I hope ya'll loose this format that places new posts up in the thread.Upright BiPed_{August 15, 2011
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That's because I have it set to only go 5 levels deep with threading.Jack Cole_{August 15, 2011
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Hmm...I just posted a comment and it says it is awaiting moderation. Does that mean I am now in moderation? I have been posting here for years! (On and off.) Is it the policy to give a warning? I just updated my email... Anyway, I was just on a thread and I wanted to reply to a particular person, but I did not. I went to the end instead because the post I was responding to was made yesterday, and I can't imagine she would go back and find it. So, I am weighing in against having that reply feature, even though it clarifies things in one way, it will do as faded glory says, and discourage people from engaging because their responses will get missed. I am also curious if this forum has a feature that I really value - to search for my own recent posts, so I can find responses which I might otherwise forget where to look.avocationist_{August 15, 2011
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I agree but I've also seen forums where you can easily highlight the part you want to quote. For that matter, I have not been able to figure out how to quote parts of text here. The key makes no sense to me and I tried and tried to get it to work.avocationist_{August 15, 2011
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My two cents... Having new comments appear up in the thread is a mistake. I hate to see it turn out that way. Also, expand the number of recent comments being previewed. It provides good access to ongoing active conversation, and a larger number means that comments in slower conversations are "advertised" for a longer period, giving them a chance to gain traction.Upright BiPed_{August 14, 2011
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I think this feature will be detrimental to the discourse on this site. Responses will get lost upthread, people will be disheartened that nobody notices their input, and may conclude not to bother anymore once a thread gets a bit older and longer. I think it would be much better to just append new posts at the end of the thread, as before, and maybe include in the header of the new post the number of the post one replied to, if possible. fGfaded_Glory_{August 14, 2011
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I mean as a dark contrast colour.kairosfocus_{August 14, 2011
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Colour scheme: Try a dark teal, a sort of grey-blue.kairosfocus_{August 14, 2011
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We’ll forgo the greenish color for now, because there was a bit of a clash of colors. Thank you. The goal should be ease of readability, not "eye candy".Ilion_{August 14, 2011
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JC: Pardon a further thought. If there could be a smart comment WYSIWYG feature, that might help comments: B, I, blockquote, link I am thinking. But I know that may be a headache, certainly it is for Wikis. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 14, 2011
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See you went grey and chose the dotted numbers. Okay. I would love a view comments by chronology option.kairosfocus_{August 14, 2011
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Jack Cole, I don't know if you have, but is you haven't could you add Creation-Evolution Headlines to the news feed? Here is the address: http://crev.info/bornagain77_{August 14, 2011
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I know I dont always agree with the content, but the new look is very smart. Good job guys.Graham_{August 14, 2011
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Thanks Scruffy. We'll forgo the greenish color for now, because there was a bit of a clash of colors. In the mean time I'll experiment with different colors on our testing site. I agree with your sentiments about the text in the header. I have altered it now and took away the fading borders. I'll take your suggestion about the general fonts under consideration.Jack Cole_{August 14, 2011
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"I think we will rely a lot more on the “recent posts” section at the bottom of the page." That may help someone who "camps-out" on the site, but not those who do not.Ilion_{August 14, 2011
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"One question, can someone clarify what happens if I use the reply button on a post in the middle of a thread? Will my reply be inserted at that point in the thread rather than at the end?" Yes, at that point, rather than at the bottom of the thread ... which is what I meant about it getting "lost".Ilion_{August 14, 2011
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yes, I meant to type "lost" ("i" and "o" are neighbors, after all, and I sometimes don't notice that I've confused their addresses).Ilion_{August 14, 2011
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Per discussion above, I have been able to add a comment numbering scheme.Jack Cole_{August 14, 2011
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I wrote a short post that didn't get posted -- when I'd used the backspace key, it vanished. I'm pretty sure that what happened is that before I'd tried to use the delete key I'd move the focus from the comm-box itself to the preview box.Ilion_{August 14, 2011
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Strictly speaking about the new colors of the site, they don't go together at all. If you're going to go with a pistachio-esq color for your text background (which I think is a mistake), neutral gray is not what you want on either side of it. Choosing a more monochromatic or complimentary color would look much better, imo. The old color scheme made sense, keeping a more monochromatic relationship through out. I also liked the fonts and text setup from the old site, condensed and bold. I should also note that the text on the render at the top looks very "little kid-ish" to me, like comic-sans or something. Personally, I think the old color scheme and text should have been kept, just change the formate.Scruffy_{August 14, 2011
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CY, yes I mean the block quoting of relevant section(s), and the new posts appear at the end of the thread. On another site that's how I use the quote button, but I take your point about those who abuse it to quote long posts when they are replying only to a certain part.udat_{August 14, 2011
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Yeah that quote stuff is awful. I've seen 2 pages of quotes with sub-boxes and 10 colors followed by a smiley face.lamarck_{August 14, 2011
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Another problem I foresee in relation to this is with the stepwise format of the individual threads. As more people reply to replies and so forth the posts become narrower and narrower, leaving much to be desired as far as readability.CannuckianYankee_{August 14, 2011
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I've been on forums with quote buttons and the problem with them is that they quote the entire post, making the threads tremendously large with repeated information and little new information - seriously, they're like (forgive me for this) "Junk DNA." I don't think that would work well with this blog. It might be better if we had an ability to block quote certain sections of a post simply by highlighting that section, without having to use html tags. Maybe that's what you mean? If so, I'm all for it.CannuckianYankee_{August 14, 2011
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That would be Pacific time if the times show up according to location of the poster.CannuckianYankee_{August 14, 2011
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Yes, it's on this page: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/prominent-brit-atheist-polly-toynbee-pulls-out-of-debate-with-william-lane-craig/ Comment by Elizabeth Liddle at 10:01am. No reply button.CannuckianYankee_{August 14, 2011
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