Mods and “old yeller” users, let’s try something to see if we can make some suggetions for modifications with what we have to work with that would help the mods make the new forum more user friendly for those of us having trouble acclimating ourselves there….I think that most of us didn’t use fluwikie as our only source of info before, nor now, but there was that “special something” that made it more comfortable for us than other places. Personally I visit several sites, although I am a contributor here, where I’m not so much at other sites, even though I’m registered.
I have to assume that the Mods recognize that there are some intrinsic things still missing (and may ultimately always be that way) from the new site that a few of us notice but are having trouble explaining, and there are some physical features on the new forum that, for some of us, are not ideal that might COULD be changed without tampering with the software.
There may not be common ground for us left here, but there might. We all here are too well aware that we are in the minority, and I think I speak for most of us when I say that we’d like to all enjoy the new forum like we do this one.
There seem to be 2 main categories of issues: technical similarities/differences & emotional warmth/connectivity
TECHNICAL: One of the issues is the ‘clutter’ of the new forum pages. We know now that you have to—
sign in to post which means registering with the site which puts ‘extra’ information at the end of whatever we type
can’t bump diaries (yet)
can recommend diaries as an ‘alternative’ to bumping (sort of)
have 3 columns, 2 narrow ones - one on each side, and one wide one in the center on any page we look at
have easier ways to create tables, links, etc.
Now if we could work with some of that structure & use some of the energy that Mods used on “old yeller” to keep this forum running quickly to update diary titles, maybe we could come to some compromises that would be beneficial to everyone.
(see also below for more input)
COMMUNITY WARMTH/CONNECTIVITY: KathyinFL said it very well: I’m still just not comfortable over at the new forum though I’m not having any problem posting … it just feels too impersonal for me to get hyper involved like I can here.
I’ve written paragraph after paragraph trying to say what Kathy has said in one sentence and I think she’s summed it up nicely. It’s a feeling for some of us that it’s harder to be ‘involved’ there than here, but we may be the only ones who pick up on that sense of disconnectedness there when we know we can feel so connected to each other here. I honestly don’t know if that could be fixed or not, but somehow I think the two issues are intermingled and if you “fix” one thing technically, it would actually make something ‘emotional’ better too. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone so to speak.
My initial questions to the Mods address the issue of our ‘feelings’ about what’s missing on the new forum that we felt we had here:
Do Mods (and others) notice any different ‘feel’ in the CLOSENESS of friendships/conversations (caring about each other might be a way to describe it) here, as opposed to there?
Do Mods (and others) feel the FLOW of conversation is different at the two sites?
Do Mods (and others) feel the LEVEL of overall conversation is different at the two sites?
Do Mods (and others) feel the focus is more to individual preparation, or county & state, or geographical, or worldwide prep here as well as on the new site? Did/are both sites covering all areas equally?
Do Mods (and others) see more VARIETY of topics (actively getting comments posted daily) there as compared to here before the new forum opened?
Back to TECHNICAL:
Concerning technical issues, Dem, you provided the link to the page below and it’s a good start and if we could tweak it some more, it would be even better, but my first question is why is that diary not on the main page or why is at least a “get started” link to that page not on the main page?
Anyway, let’s assume I come across the page somehow in my search of the new site. First of all, thinking from the viewpoint of someone signing on for the first time, why would I want to click on a link titled “sandboxes”? It seems if you have cats or are not feeling particularly childlike, you’d be especially inclined to stay away from a sandbox! :-) There’s no indication about what sandboxes are & why they should be so relevant that they would be placed directly above the “news” link.
And if you DO start to scan through the sandboxes, there’s no distinguishing one Community Open Thread from another so that there is some recognizable flow -
Is it more important than news?
Is it like threads I, II, and III on the old forum?
Is is all just dealing with technical ways to play with new features?
What’s it all about — what’s the glue that puts all those diaries under one heading ‘sandbox’? It’s not readily clear - at least to me it’s not, and probably not to other new people.
I read on that link the title COMMONLY USED LINKS and it is a good start to showing a table of contents of diaries. Underneath that heading you have Sandbox, News, Area Preppers (as a new person, what is an “area prepper”? Are they prepping certain areas like living rooms and apartments, or hospitals, or schools or are they located near me?)
Could it be called something like “Find Other Preppers by Geographical Location” so that the title clearly describes the content they’ll see when they click the link?
Then, as a new person, my next question might be “what is a Lookout Post?” What am I supposed to look out for? Is there danger? “Lookout Post” is a phrase we coined for ourselves, just like “Area Preppers” is. Can you use a better descriptive name for Lookout Posts?
WORLDWIDE…SPECIFIC LOCATIONS…..Those type words come to mind as helpful to describe the link. Maybe it could look like:
Worldwide Updates for Your Location (Lookout Posts)
That way you use the ‘coined’ phrase in brackets so those who are exploring the site could get used to the phrase side by side with the definition of what it is — a place where you’d expect to find updates for your country.
Then, following those primary links are links to various diaries….which is what a lot of us have in mind, but all I/we are asking for is the name of the thread to help eliminate some of what we call ‘clutter’…can you drop the date and the name of the poster? That would save at least one line inbetween each title and then if you ditched the space separating the lines so that the diary titles are stacked one on top of the other like things seen in the news threads, you could get more titles in the same given space. I think you can do that, because it’s done all throughout the news diary.
Pretend these are diary titles (info I copied from the news diary):
Weekly CDC Flu Info (Link)
Schools in Georgia - Closings and High Abscenses Reported (Link)
States’ flu plans vary widely (Article Link)
US could soon import poultry from China (Link)
U.S. Poultry getting bad press (Link)
PA.: Cumberland County: You too can prevent flu pandemic (Link)
Can’t you do diary titles that way, only without spaces between the lines? I know that it takes a manual effort (or maybe just setting up a ‘box’ like the news links are fed into) to get take a section of your main page & to set up a diary in the center section of the main page, and put in a header ‘List of All Diaries’ and then under it list all the diaries as they are made, like I copied from the news page - just name and link - maybe a Mod could add to the table once a day all the diaries that were started in the last 24 hours? So that at least once a day it’s totally current? You all spent so much time on Old Yeller, closing threads so the the speed of the site could be maintained and it would be so easy to instead of spending time closing them, to just spend a moment on the new site typing into a preset list, the latest names of diaries and a link out beside the name. No other info needed. That way, if we wanted to see if there was a Diary with the word ‘food’ or ‘illness’ or whatever in it, we could use our EDIT feature in our toolbars to search the page for a word we are interested in.
Oh, one other thing at least on the current diary….could you just call the list a “List of Diaries” because the title it’s carrying now sounds like it’s a list of diaries that have no information in them (no-text diaries) and that doesn’t make sense. It’s a list of diaries without showing any of the text in the list, but they are not no-text diaries. Nit-picky, maybe, but please look at some of this stuff like a newbie would see it and see if you can make a difference that helps everyone.
Link to the page Dem sent that I’ve been talking about: http://tinyurl.com/ylnjt7
Just to let you know what I ‘saw’ on my last browse to the main page…
News thread is fine but it was second behind the mitigation thread listed first with a #2 in the title indicating to me that there was a #1 somewhere, & I would expect to find a link back to #1 somewhere in the #2 diary like we have on Old Yeller…..instead, as I scroll down, I find the #1 diary in that promoted section too, so instead of promoting a totally different idea or concept in that space I have both threads on the same topic showing. Oh and the date showing on the diary is Dec 12 - 7 days ago, and what some would consider “old” if they thought they were looking at a section of the site that would have the “latest” info. ……oh and further down there’s yet another diary about this same issue…..guess we’re not supposed to get enough of mitigation stuff! :-)
Next, I find a diary about when I feel small & unimportant….maybe they’re talking about us hold-overs here over there on the new forum!!! :-) No, it’s the Times Person of the Year discussion and a copy of an article patting people who use the web on the back. I’m wondering why this is so important that it is actually promoted? Especially with only 2 comments to it so far?? And who really feels that it means anything anyway, so all you can do is pat yourself on the back for contributing somewhere on the Web, sometime in your lifetime. It’s a good adspace for Time magazine though that they didn’t have to pay for.
Further on down I find a diary about PMWiki. Why is that being promoted? It appears to be, from what I read, a lesson one how to format posts. Shouldn’t that be in one of the side columns over there with Simple HTML?? And in it’s place in the promoted section maybe something about hospitals or masks or food or social distancing or retail store responses to Pan Flu plans or some government documentation on the issues…….and so on….
Proposed Process to Populate the FluWiki sounds like a SPAM ad, but when you open it, turns out someone wants to recreate the wheel of the fluwikie and the argument back and forth about whether to do it or how.
And somewhere below that are the orphans & European assumptions, and who’s going to speak for the people, yet another broad outreach for high visibility leaders instead of regular folks like me……..then there’s “Recommended Diaries” asking people to recommend diaries.
Couldn’t a continually up-to-date List of All Diaries be equally as powerful and interesting as at least the Time magazine diary? There are people on the new site that already are proficient at doing something like I’m recommending & could make it happen in a heartbeat - -update the news thread, update the List of All Diaries thread….should be easy for those who know how especially if someone really wanted to help those of us who DON’T know how or, if not interested in hand-holding us, then what about new people trying to find their way?
Honestly, none of the topics I saw listed in the promoted area, other than news, is what I’d want my family to start out reading when first visiting this new site because none of those things address why I’m sending them to the site in the first place - to understand an aggressive illness, know how to prepare for it without getting sick and were to get supplies, help, know where to get more information to share—not how they can sign up for various meetings, discuss CDC policy or how to do powerpoint presentations or type HTML correctly. I’d want to see promoted threads that are more ‘well-rounded’ topics, of interest to everyone new or old to the site-difficult to determine I guess, but now you have lots more to choose from than originally & you could have something on supplies prep as well as the Lounge as well as the ultra-serious stuff.
I swear that helping all of us FIND threads easily would help to increase our traffic from here to the new site AND hopefully would help us add to the community feel in some way because we’d see more things we wanted to click on and contribute to.
I’m at a point where I’m hanging onto my ‘good’ spot here, but I’m not feeling the solidarity or loyalty to folks over there much anymore-I’m losing the connection, like being away from family members for a long time where you can only talk to family by long distance or something like that.
You know how when a kid goes off to college and starts taking on the attributes of the other college students and they might not talk like they used to when they were at home? Sort of like I’m at home and the college students have gone somewhere else and are taking on less ‘family-oriented’ traits and are assuming more ‘distant’ traits and personalities-they’re losing some of themselves that made them special and fun and friendly and familiar - I could almost say that I don’t recognize some of the people over there, the way I did here because they’re not showing sides of their personalities I enjoyed so much.
Growth is good and I want to grow with the new community, and I’m struggling with it just like I get up every morning and exercise a little bit - it’s not fun, but I do it because I’m supposed to, but as Kathy said I don’t feel like getting hyper-involved in either exercise or the newer forum. But, as I said, fixing one technical thing would help with other things as well that aren’t so technical, like ‘feelings’.
Am I making any sense in expressing what’s missing for some of us (am I even speaking for others who feel the same way??) and what we need to be able to see to find our way and feel good about doing it or do you guys wish I’d just shut up about it?
I go to more than 6 libraries during the week, and each has its unique qualities. Some have features I like, a japanese garden, a lit fireplace and cosy armchairs. a quiet room with wind chairs and blooming violets, a cactus garden. Yet my little town has the best of the best, warm people, and a little glassed in aclove overlooking a lake where people stop by and chat. I think that was what people are talking about. That stopping by to chat. Perhaps the old wiki isn’t technically as good or have the teaching aspects. but it had a lot of human warmth and connection.Comfortable old shoe feeling, sinking into a comfortable chair and having a bracing cup of tea and a chat.
IWOI, respectfully I think a better thread title might have been…
‘What Can We All Do To Make The New Forum Better’
I’m working on it — could not agree more with every word of your post! You have summarized beautifully every thing I do not like about the new site, beginning with the fact that it seems so “messy” and lacks logical order.
Now I also know that Dem will come back with a response that reeks of “Let them eat cake,” quoting all his stats to prove that he is right and we are less than relevant, which in itself is something that has made me WANT to avoid the new site even more. Perhaps some of those thousands of hits are people’s attempts to FIND something to read amidst all of the “mess”! Thank God for PFI, where I’m finding a new home and many of the same names that I loved reading here. With that, I’m gone so go ahead and have at it, Dem.
MAinVA — 17 December 2006, 14:37
I know that some of us don’t see the logic that others do — sort of like we see the legs of the elephant, they see some other part, etc. And we’re all trying to see the whole elepahant! I’m glad that so many people still come here — that shows that we’re all still interested in our ‘family’ here. Diana described it beautifully…old shoes, sinking into a comfortable chair, etc.
And MaMa is right we ALL need to help make it better - I’m doing my part by trying to make workable suggestions that I am pretty sure could be implemented. It’s taking all my strength just to express myself and I’m NOT the person here to actually DO the changes I’m suggesting. I’m not sure who would. Most of the people “over there” aren’t interested in being with us over here, and therefore don’t know there’s an issue still open to be solved for us to be as happy as they are. I wish cottontop would create what I’m talking about, or one of the mods, because if they don’t it’s not going to get done unless there’s someone lurking here who knows how to use all those tools over there that we don’t know about yet.
We’re going to have to accept some ‘clutter’ and certainly accept the different type of order, but to get into the house we first need a key that WE can recognize. Yep, the hot list is a great thing, but only once you find a thread you feel worthy to put on it. I put a bunch on my hotlist so I’d not lose them, but the ones I like aren’t apparently appealing to many others because there’s no new posts on many of them. Hot list is a good ‘shortcut’ but you need a decent starting point to have a shortcut from and that’s what my post is trying to address.
I don’t want to really spend space discussing what’s already over there that those of us here already know how to use. I want to look at some NEW developments that can be implimented by someone who knows how. If I had days and days to figure it out I would but I don’t — I’m behind in responsibilities to other people that I absolutely must concentrate on or I’m going to be embarrassed by not getting the stuff done and it will have bad consequences.
I’ve devoted most of my morning to putting constructive ideas on the table and I’m just not emotionally up to struggling with this whole situation much more — either there’s enough concern from the people over there to build a simple entrance for new people that’s easy to understand (not just us here) to do something about it or there’s not.
I’m to the point of tears that I can’t solve this myself or I would have already done so-that’s my nature.
I’m baldly asking for help from someone to first of all recognize and acknowledge the differences that keep the new place from feeling like a comfortable old shoe to some of us and try to fix it, but I’m not getting those kind of responses-yet-hopefully someone will come through & say they recognize what the issue is.
For weeks we just seem to get the “come on into the water” from people who don’t see that we’re already dressed in our swimsuits and dripping wet or want us to fix our own problems and then each thread deteriorates into a squabble or something and the thread ends up closed, even though the topic isn’t closed-if we were discussing freedom of speech I guess that would be different. But we’re discussing making your old friend feel at ease finding what they need to find in your new house & that’s not happening ENOUGH to make it work effectively.
If I could fix it myself, I would. In a dang heartbeat. I can’t, not without help. I can point out why something is good or bad — that’s MY best at imput in this situation. My computer knowledge is lacking for the task as I envision it.
The reason I’m not the person for the ‘writing the code to fix the weakness’ part of the problem is because it would take me weeks to learn enough to get to the point where what I did would work and by then we’d most likely all be gone from here to have split up the family and drifted off to somewhere else.
I’ll go beg cottontop to come over here and help - that’s possibly our last hope.
MaMa, I hope you see how desperately I’m trying to do my part-I’m not making snide comments, I’m not cutting people down, and I’m not being unreasonable. If you accept the difference in the two forums so easily please accept that we all aren’t like you in our understanding of how to manipulate tools to make tables and all those other things. Someone over there LOVES doing it I’m sure & could help us if they would just take the time to do so. But maybe that’s an unreasonable request.
I’ve got to go get some work done.
MAinVA, go wherever it’s best for you. I hope you can contribute wherever. But since you’re not willing to put the effort in here, I don’t have much else to say other than to wish you well.
Now I also know that Dem will come back with a response that reeks of “Let them eat cake,”
I still wish you well.
I’m-workin’-on-it
Let’s have a go at it and let’s try to explain. Start with the technical (since you did):
I have to assume that the Mods recognize that there are some intrinsic things still missing
Yes, we do. Trade-offs are part of life, but if we can have our cake and eat it too (a better sense of how I feel about cake), we will.
A feature, not a bug. No more impersonations that we got here. No more anonymous posters. Now you have the ability to find posters by name, see their diaries, see their comments and connect with them.
Are you registered? If you are not it is hard to use this feature.
nope, we hope that’s coming soon
that is not something we can alter, nor can we make the columns wider, nor make one right column. Sorry.
Very much so. And you forgot faster, supports graphics files, movies, etc.
Sure. That’s why bgw in MT started the no-text diaries to summarize the recent threads for you. And like the news summary, the format can be changed if you find the changes helpful.
and see below for more comment.
Dem, I registered over there within the first few days & move around fairly well. I thought I was right about the formatting that you can’t change. And I agree that there are many good valid changes that are to the advantage of the group as well as the individual - removing the spam is one of the big things that’s really great — makes me think I can safely send younger family members over, for instance. But once they get there, what do they see, where to go, etc. become the questions to be dealt with.
I wrote cottontop to ask for help — maybe either cottontop or someone else can sort of be an intermediary for us, testing how to ‘write’ something that would help to clean up what’s confusing us…..someone who knows how to use the tools over there AND who understands what we’re talking about who can write up, format or whatever something so you can take a look at it and see if you can incorporate it into the promoted area without it being too much for you Mods to manage on a daily basis.
I’m-workin’-on-it, it’s not unreasonable to ask for help. I never thought that your comments were snide, not for a moment. My comments were only voicing my opinion, that the mods are doing what they can-they are only human and some others in the community need to step up and help in order for some of these suggestions to be implemented, others on both of the forums.
So, on that subject- what do you think are the 2 most important things that could be done (done by any poster) to help make the new forum easier to use? I know you’ve made alot of suggestions already, but what are the best to focus on initially? I’m not making any promises(life is busy:-) and Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I’d like to help if I can.
Part II of I’m working on it’s comments:
COMMUNITY WARMTH/CONNECTIVITY:
I actually find it easier to talk to people. The nested comments mean i can direct comments to the person whom i am talking to and do so in the midst of a 300 comment thread, the recent comments section mean i can see who is saying what at a glance (and where), etc.
Ask influentia2, pugmom and CG as they chat on the Indo threads while posting updates for us all. It’s different but not worse.
To me it’s better because I can see what being said and find the parts of the conversation that are interesting. As an example, every time i see a comment (which now has a subject of its own) that says “Hey, Dem’ or ‘help’ I look at it right away. And if I leave a comment that says ‘hey cottontop’, she knows she’s got mail. You can’t do that here. It’s different. Different isn’t always bad.
But by level, there’s two things… level of interpersonal and level of sophistication. Since I’m comfortable with the new format (yes, i know that pisses off people just to say that, for whatever reason), I find it easier to talk with everyone there. Here, I have no idea what conversations are talking place in the threads I don’t have opened, and I find the long ones here dizzying to read. And most frustratingly, you can’t easily find things here you said a week or a month ago (or what someone else said) so you have to spend literally hours hunting it down.
Here (my opinion) it was always more individual. That’s terrific and important and ongoing, but much of the good stuff was not making it on to the wiki. That’s a major shortfall. there it’s everything, but less individual because much of the basics have been done by the regulars.
We want it all, and since the feds seems to be getting serious, and the states are lagging, we are making a major and concerted effort to make sure that gets covered.
Without the new upgrade we made here, you really could not tell about which were the active threads, only which were the most recently commented on. at the other site you can certainly see the comments, but in my view, the number of comments does not reflect the importance of the discussion (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t). Some discussions only get started later, so a few posts today may mean 30 by 3 days from now. Some diaries don’t have much in the initial post, but engender terrific discussions. But there’s no question in my mind there’s more variety now. We can discuss teaching videos there by showing the video. Here, few actually clicked the link to do further reading. The Indo threads are just amazing (and watched by people worldwide). We have Friday night , after midnight chat diaries.
Again if you are not registered the experience is very different because you can’t see at a glance what’s new (where there are new comments in each diary compared to when you were there last).
In a perfect world, I’d want I’m-workin’-on-it to chat with cottontop, and have some CDC person (or state person) stop by to read the Indo diary, but stop to read Pixie’s comments about how the state people need to do more. and while they’re here, read the conversation so they understand ordinary people care about this topic, can be educated, and should be included in policy discussions.
phew… trying to keep up…
Back to TECHNICAL:
Concerning technical issues, Dem, you provided the link to the page below and it’s a good start and if we could tweak it some more, it would be even better,
Sure we can. I’ll work this afternoon incorporating your suggestions., Don’t forget, all i was doing is trying to provide what people are asking, and I did it using an existing format from bgw in MT. I can try changing them to what you suggest. But it’s also a do it yourself project. You could do your own in the way you want and show us what you mean. Or you could ask someone else.
Anyway, let’s assume I come across the page somehow in my search of the new site.
Now the discussion gets to whether it’s for the regulars who came over, or for new people. No simple answers here. i like having teaching videos (ie bells and whistles) on the main page to attract new viewers. I got complaints about too many bells and whistles. we use the name sandbox because the regulars know what it means. We can use another name. They’re all under “open thread”, which is an across-the-internets designation that any new visitor would understand. But whatever you like on the main page, someone else doesn’t. It’s like having 5 (other) people set up your kitchen. Chances are, you will not like it. ;-)
Couldn’t a continually up-to-date List of All Diaries be equally as powerful and interesting as at least the Time magazine diary?
You can make one. You have to understand that it’s not an automatically appearing feature, so someone has to do it manually. You can appoint yourself in charge and I’ll put it on the main page (or I can move the one I did and people can add to it). But it already exists and is called ‘recent diaries’ in the right hand box. This is one of those ‘look, it’s already there and YOU have to learn to use it’ comments that won’t sound right, so apologies in advance. IF you want it to be automatic, it happens to already exist. And if you DO use it, you also need to know that you wouldn’t even look in the diary we are discussing or be that interested in keeping it going. ;-) That is not a slam, an insult, a belittling or anything else. It is an explanation of why it’s not already done by someone.
I, too, have problems with the new forum, and would gladly write the code to fix them if I was able, but I’m not that technologically advanced.
One of my pet peeves is that when I respond to a previously posted comment, I’m taken to a new page and so can no longer see the “old” comment that I’m responding to. If you’re like me and have a short memory, you end up forgetting half of what the other person said before you can type a reply. This seems like it would be an easy fix for someone who knew what they were doing.
I also agree with IWOI, the new site leans HEAVILY towards stuff that I have little to no interest in. What happened to titles like “Flu Prep”, “Canning Recipes”, etc? I’d much rather be sharing information on practical survival than reading a lengthy treatise on orphans or mortuary care. If there’s any of this kind of talk going on over there, I’m not seeing it. Most of the titles over there sound like the titles of masters thesis’ on some obscure subject that no one gives a damn about save an esoteric few professors. I would love to have a way to “bump” topics that interest me.
I agree that having the main page divided into 3 sections is annoying. Yes, I know I can go to the Diaries view. Yes, I’m sure that SOMEHOW I can see just the titles of the Diaries and not 1/2 page of each diary, but HOW? And where do Diaries go after they’ve dropped off the “recent diaries” section? Is there a diary boneyard somewhere, or do I just have to do a search of whatever words might interest me that day to see all there is?
I keep making an effort at the new forum but it’s like walking thru quicksand. There is absolutely nothing intuitive about the new site. I’ve fiddled with all of the “preference” settings over there that I can find and am still not very happy with what I’ve ended up with. I’ll keep checking the new forum, and maybe occasionally posting there, but unless there’s big changes there I’ll stick mostly to this place. When “old yeller” goes, I probably will too.
Kim, here’s different ways to find where the threads are.
BY TOPIC:
There’s this thing called ‘tags’ which are really search keywords. so, if prepping is your thing, hit preps, or if it’s recipes, hit recipes. Some summary diaries appear on the top of the list to make searching easier (they’re sticky and stay at the top), and then they appear in chronological order, last one first.
BY NAME OF DIARY:
Either glance at the diaries in the recent diaries box, bottom right, or go to the diaries page, or use the no-text diaries summary we have been discussing above, and help us make it more user friendly.
I also agree with IWOI, the new site leans HEAVILY towards stuff that I have little to no interest in.
Someone else is interested in it, no apologies forthcoming. The question is what else do you want to see there? I hear what you are not interested in, but what are you interested in?
And if you are interested in something and it ain’t there? Please feel free to add those topics. That’s how the other topics got there.
Dem, the “no-text diaries summary” link sounds interesting, but when I click on it I don’t see any topics listed.
BTW, I’m not on my own computer, so perhaps that has something to do with it????
Kim, it’s here http://www.newfluwiki2.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=504
I’m-working-on-it
I can tell how much you care and also how you are trying to move over to the new forum, but it just doesn’t feel right to you.
I know what you mean about a loss of feeling cozy, a community. I think in part we got that over on “Old Yellow” because we had to read through everyone’s comment to get to the end of the thread. Each aside, each rant, each ramble, was kind of given equal weight.
On the new forum, that’s different — when people reply to each other, there’s a bit of an indentation, and if they do it enough, it gets really skinny and long, and hard to read — and it is easier to skip. Or, if you just read the new comments, you can miss parts of the thread entirely. With so many (anticpated) new posters — it would have taken forever to plow through the increased number of posts. This way will work better with more posts, I am sure.
STILL — this change is needed. Can you imagine — in a few months, there are going to very likely be a LOT more visitors to the fluwiki, and there’s no doubt that “Old Yellow” would be totally bogged down. The old format would not allow the conversations to take place in the way that they need to — there would just be too many posters and it would get too bogged down.
I think the site is a bit cluttered too, but… what are you gonna do? It really needed to happen. I appreciate the time that you took to make suggestions.
As for Kim’s comment about having fewer topics about practical survival and more topics that sound like a public health PhD dissertation — I think that’s just a reflection of who chose to move over to the new forum. People there are dong a lot of work on trying to influence public policy and gather information to help their communities plan. There are threads on personal, practical survival topics, but honestly it seems a lot of them got well covered over here, so people might have moved on to other topics. There’s no reason you couldn’t start such a thread though if you wanted to.
I can’t shake this feeling that things are going to change for us pretty soon. I hope and pray it is just that the world as we know it will start talking and thinking about pandemic flu more seriously. (Not that a pandemic will actually start happening !) But in the best of all possible worlds, we’ll still have a few years to get to use this new forum, and help not just individuals prepare — but whole towns and communities to prepare. Our mods need to be able to focus on that, not splitting their time between forums.
Oh, also, Kim
The comment is there right above where you are typing, you just have to scroll up a bit to see it. ;-)
Thank you, Average Concerned Mom
We may make mistakes (all of this is uncharted territory) but we are aiming toward the future and not the past. and i agree with your summation about why the policy focus. We all feel something’s coming, and by that I mean some heavy-duty policy shifts at the fed and state level.
We have to be prepared for it, and we have to be prepared for the what-if of heavier volume on the servers, heavier traffic discussion, even if it never happens. Working the bugs out now makes sense to me.
Okay, try this…
http://www.newfluwiki2.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=504
and in return please comment in the diary as to format suggestions, etc…
bump
I like the new site. My favorite improvement it makes is the nesting on discussions so the questions and answers are together - much easier to follow. I also like that the news is separate from the other areas. BUT…I still come to this old site first because it is easier to scan for new interesting/critical items to read first. IMO, the best improvement you could make to the new site would be to add a “coverpage” - like the discussion forum Topic Listing on this site - so you can see at a glance what is available when you get to the site. I know you can go to each section area and then find what is there, but I miss stuff because I don’t know a topic is there and so don’t think to look for it. The only other change I can think of would be to maximize the center posting area and minimize the sides that are mostly empty space on the news thread, for example, (if this is even possible). Regardless of changes or not, I’ll keeping going to both sites as long as they are available. I REALLY appreciate all the hard work that went into creating (and maintaining) them! I love that there is more than one site so that when one goes down, we are not cut off. Thanks for doing them!
(if this is even possible)
Alas, it’s not.
I love that there is more than one site so that when one goes down, we are not cut off.
That’s a plus, no doubt.
As for a cover page, try this:
http://www.newfluwiki2.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=504
though I do encourage use of the “recent diaries” and “recommended diaries” boxes on the main page.
Thanks for the comments.
bump
.
bump
A suggestion for the new Forum…and I think we went over this much earlier, but here goes.
In order to get more diaries on the Front Page, is it possible to decrease the font size? The reason I ask now is that with the newer versions of most browsers, a user can increase (magnify) their own view to make the font more visible to them, and also allow for more FrontPage-worthy diaries to appear.
Or, maybe decrease the alloted number of characters that can be typed into the main Text when creating a new diary to an arbitrary number, say about 200–250? Of course, this would not be able to apply to the Daily News diary…but would it be possible to remove that Diary from the general policies on the software?
Does that make any sense at all? Or is it nothing more than “Gawd, I wish it was Friday” thinking..?
DemFromCT — 17 December 2006, 16:54 I like this format, where do I find it when I go to the new site? Is it a setting or a place to look? Thanks
NJ Jeeper — 18 December 2006, 16:54---
Here’s the link to the New Forum diary: http://www.newfluwiki2.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=504
Once you’re there and logged in, click on the + sign next to the title. That puts it in your Hot List, and it’ll always be available there.
is it possible to decrease the font size?
It was smaller by default. I was encouraged enthusiastically to make it bigger.
decrease the alloted number of characters that can be typed into the main Text
I don’t have an automated solution for this. The community will have to decide if there’s to be a “policy.” (Just remember that the more complicated the policy, the nicer you have to be to newbies until they get it.)
NJ Jeeper
It’s a handmade (by one of us) version. The easiest way to find the latest one is here:
http://www.newfluwiki2.com/tag.do?tag=diary+list
The current plan is to make one every few days. If you use that, plus the ‘recent diaries’ box on the main page, you’ll get them all.
My only real issue with THIS iteration of the forum was the speed. It simply took forever to load, refresh, etc.
I have a number of concerns with the new version but am not sure if they’re ‘valid’ - that depends entirely on how the new forum is being purposed.
First, added robustness is a plus. This version went down too easily. However if it’s not going to be well used, how bombproof it is isn’t going to matter. Imagine this - a newbie to flu who clicks on the new site. The last they want is to have to waste time trying to figure out the site & how to navigate it. They’re coming here as a matter of urgency - ESPECIALLY if pandemic seems imminent. They don’t have time to spend figuring out where to go.
Inventing a new lexicon seems pointless. ‘Diaries, sandboxes, tags’, among others? People are used to the terms ‘posts, threads, key words’ - they may already be experiencing a fair degree of discomfort trying to research a totally unfamiliar topic & that discomfort is added to by having to learn a whole new vocabulary.
When you carefully look at the front page, there’s more space dedicated to EXPLAINING & DOING. In other words lots of descriptions about cuts of meat, how to cook & eat meat, even what meat is… but it’s not readily clear where the meat is. It’s simply too cluttered & confusing. I mean, if you have to be concerned about telling people what to do if they get lost - there’s a problem.
I’m not crazy about how the diary pages are set up. I feel as though I need to carefully unwind a ball of string as I travel so as not to get lost. That’s going to be a huge issue with newbies - if they’re your ‘target market’ that’s a potential problem. It’s not clear that those new to flu ARE a major target for the Wiki - not according to the listed goals. It SEEMS to me that it’s aimed more at public health approaches & before people are prepared to tackle that - be it from inside or outside the box - they need basic knowledge of a great many aspects of flu.
Wiki by concept is a collaborative effort but how much does consensus play a part? In one diary, Bronco Bill mentions an ‘experiment’ at the new Wiki. That’s going to put off some people unless it’s explained. Is the Fluwiki doing something over & above the experimental construct suggested by Time Magazine? It could be interpreted to mean that there’s an active attempt to manage peoples’ perceptions & reactions to pandemic issues. Whether or not that’s the case, people resent being manipulated & if they feel they’re being manipulated in any way… immediate turn off.
And how genuinely ‘community moved’ is the direction of the Wiki if various diaries are being promoted by the editors? What are the criteria for recommending certain diaries?
I don’t know what to think because I’m not entirely sure what the goals stated translate into. Many appear to share my concerns that it’s too difficult & time consuming to have to learn a new format, new ways to navigate a site. The set up now is not intuitively user friendly & I treat forums as I do a new pair of shoes I may be considering buying. If I have to ‘break them in’ - they don’t fit in the first place & would be a poor purchase. The formats most commonly in use have evolved into something practical & familar & we humans crave the familiar.
Right now, I don’t have a whole lot of time to be learning much of anything new & I’m not nearly as busy as many others I know. I do know I don’t have time or the patience to be distracted by blasted formatting, unfamiliarity hiccups that distract me from what I’m trying to read about or learn.
Now if this new forum is NOT geared to the ordinary Joe wanting to learn something about pandemics & influenza, ignore everything I’ve just said. Public health/other health field types looking for outside the box public health methodologies & solutions are no doubt more than willing to take the time to learn to navigate the site.
If it aimed at direct learning for the public, especially those who may want to communicate concerns, anxieties, etc. it’s too complicated compared to other dedicated flu sites & those seem to be springing up daily. Much of the public coming here would be starting from scratch & will prefer it kept simple - at least to begin with. The next influential community leaders in terms of pandemic preparedness may be buried amongst the newbies but you’re not going to attract & hold them at any site where they’re not comfortable.
And yeah, I can’t pin it out down, but there’s a more impersonal feel at the new site. That may be because of who’s using it or how they’re using it. Heck those there most often may prefer it that way but if you’re going for public awareness, that public isn’t going to want to feel as if they’re too unlearned, too insignificant to matter.
People ARE community oriented & that’s a pretty important aspect of communication - giving them a community style venue within which to explore concerns & questions.
Hi CanadaSue---my use of the word “experiment” was simply mimicking Time’s use of the same word in reference to Web 2.0…it wasn’t meant to imply that the FluWiki is an experiment meant to bend the public’s perceptions of anything. Although, it could be said that the perceptions of Avian Flu by the general public could stand to be changed…
Time magazine: But that’s what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail.
Okay - I was hoping that was your answer…LOL
I would like to see the news that comes out of Indonesia on the News Dairies. The news that we generally see excludes what is happening in that country, you have to go into the Special Indonesian Diary (or Nepal for that matter) to access the Complete news. It ends up with a feeling that everything is hunky-dory according to the news, when Indonesia is practically screaming “Look Here.. see what new and different things H5N1 is doing!” ……
A former Lurker, the reason that Indonesian news has it’s own Diary is that there is so much material and it is so comprehensive it really does need it’s own specialized place. IMO this is an advantage both for the translators and those seeking information- alot of people like that there is a place to go just for the current picture of the situation in Indonesia.
A link is provided on the news thread for specialized areas. All this is meant to improve organization.
This is not meant as a critique. I have always connected very easily to strangers. If and when I don’t connect easily I don’t waste any charm trying,because there is always someone that appreciates whatever it is that I do offer by way of simple warmth. It’s the same with the new wiki. It suits many. It’s not the fault of the wiki if I don’t connect and participate . If that connection isn’t there for me, and me alone I don’t care how many people are connecting, I’m not. I have nothing against the new forum, someday I might join. As it is I’ll dip in here or there and if it interests me, read.. It is what it is. I’m sure it is superior to old yeller and I’m not complaining or whinging. We all have our ways and frankly I haven’t been interested enough to read there daily or even weekly. You had an unique site in old yeller and I have enjoyed it as well as learned a great deal. No flies on the new wiki, hope it’s a great sucess. All sites are merely the sum of the posters. It will always change and shift. Perhaps there is no point in trying to please. It’s chemistry. It’s either there or it isn’t.
It’s either there or it isn’t.
Referring to chemistry, it’s there for some and not for others. As Canada Sue astutely points out, there are many flu sites springing up. We - Flu Wiki - certainly doesn’t have to be everything to everyone. There are many alternatives.
Interestingly, for those used to blogs, Flu Wiki Forum even as a newbie, will feel far more at home than a bulletin board forum ever did. I don’t know why bulletin board users always assume that that’s the ‘natural’ way to do things. ;-P
What is clear is that the new place is functioning at the level of ease of administration, project diversity, speed, sustainability and traffic handling. As far as whether it’s usable for newbies, the Flu Wiki itself is used by people searching for things. That’s how they get there. If people have an interest and if there is value in the content, they learn how to navigate. I have the same attitude about the forum.
Flu Wiki Forum is a forum with a purpose and that’s always been the case. The intent is for a directed ‘working’ forum to get things done. Sometimes those things are project directed (such as populating the wiki with information, or tracking Indonesia data), and sometimes they are personally directed (such as personal or family prep info). That may not be everyone’s cup of tea; that’s not for me to say.
View of the Diaries is WAY too narrow. No other forum I am familiar with has this scaling issue.
I like this (old) forum b/c the most recently updated thread is at the top of the list. I can’t really tell when someone adds to a thread in the new one.
That said, I really appreciate Dem’s huge efforts with regard to standing up a more robust venue for communication.
Thanks!
DemFromCT — 20 December 2006, 20:49
The best way to make the new forum better is to remember the ‘loving readers’.
I understand your emphasis on ‘doing’, but try not to forget that you’re reaching out to the READERS, who far outnumber the ‘do-ers’.
I have the utmost respect (and often awe) at what information is gathered here, there and elsewhere. I salute those (like yourself, and others) who contibute so very much to our understanding (and misunderstanding) of pandemic.
But if the question REALLY is ‘How Mods Can Help to Make New Forum Better’, the answer is to make it more readable. For the readers far outnumber the do-ers (for many reasons) and are the ones who will be able to contribute most in the event a pandemic occurs, by sheer numbers.
Maybe try not to be so hard on those who come to learn. Although I understand the desire for contributors, we also, are your friends.
I screwed up and side-scrolled - sorry:( Wolf
i appreciate the above comments.
try not to forget that you’re reaching out to the READERS, who far outnumber the ‘do-ers’.
very true, although when the readers don’t post, it’s tough to tell what they think ;−0
that’s true in either forum, new or old, where in both places more people read than post.
Maybe try not to be so hard on those who come to learn.
rather, i would say ‘don’t underestimate those who come to learn’. the idea that we’re ‘being hard on those who come to learn’ is not a view i agree with ;−0.
I screwed up and side-scrolled - sorry:( Wolf
already fixed ;-)
DemFromCT — 20 December 2006, 21:34
I screwed up and side-scrolled - sorry:( Wolf
already fixed ;-) As we used to say in waitress-ville “FLAB!” (Fast Like A Bullet!) Thanks, dem. Maybe I’ve got a case of the guilts - want to do more)
>hearts<
And don’t forget, too, that the Wiki is a great place for newbies to start, in order to learn about PanFlu and how to prepare for it. There’s a lot of information there that will inevitably lead a visitor to the forum(s) to ask questions…
The Forum, whether old or new, may not be the ideal place to “get your feet wet”. Read, learn, then ask questions…
http://www.newfluwiki2.com/frontPage.do
scroll down.
if it’s not clear what the new forum is about with the commentary above, i don’t know how to better explain. readers don’t always comment at the forum, and that’s perfectly okay.
see also
http://www.fluwikie2.com/index.php?n=Forum.TranslateGoodHomeTreatment
everything leads back to
http://www.fluwikie.com/pmwiki.php?n=Opinion.GoodHomeTreatmentIndex
What I like about the new forum: I really like the ability to immediately find my comments and any replies made to me with one click, no searching/scrolling to find them. Especially enjoy using the Hot List as it enables me to immediately find “my” topics (the ones that interest me and that I intend on following)without having to search for them. There are other advantages, but those are my favorites and the ones I always access first upon logging in to the site. Beyond all of that, the beauty of it is that one can choose to use these features or not in a manner that is still similar enough to a message style forum. I’m able to search out subjects far easier that I ever could on the old forum. The more I use those ‘special’ features, the more perfect sense they make in regards to organization and I honestly don’t find other formats such as CE for example, any easier whatsoever to find what I’m looking for. Just my experience to date as a “reader”, and my way of saying that I really do like the unique, useful features…they’re great…please don’t change anything about those. :-)
when you chose “latest replies”, it only lists replies, where someone did hit “reply” and not “comment” ? Also, I don’t remember, which of the replies I already read and which not.
But the feature is certainly useful.
moving this up because I want to get back to it…I haven’t pursued the ideas I wanted to —distracted. Give me some time to get my errands done today.
Hi CSue! Thanks for input — it’s hard to express isn’t it? Diana, always glad to read your posts, you remind me so much of our Lily who used to post here….wish she were here too, or over there, just so she was still in contact.
I’m working on it. ..diana is lily. A clever but verbably insulting poster followed my posts ,insulting me on another site, so I shed lily. Felt less encumbered by someone elses unwarrented animosity that way. I disagreed with him on a number of issues, and he evidently was not used to anyone doing that. All the men I meet in life are gentlemen and most agreeable to me in person, so it is not in my normal range of interactions to deal with unpleasant or abusive people. I won’t tolerate nastiness. As lily got the flack, I shed her so as to shed that bad vibe.diana is alternate form of my own name. Lily was a character in one of my novels. So, the real lily is here.She is part of me, but only a part. I am a great deal more complex. Perhaps that is why I love the wiki, people are civil.If they have a insulting side, they are reined in.
thanks folks… do be sure to register at the new site. it really is important to be able to use the new features we describe above.
In the meantime, there continues to be a great deal being done over there… egypt post, news, etc.
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Would it be possible to eliminate the little tag lines that people put at the bottom of their messages? My eyes keep being drawn to the same comments over and over (pudding, etc) and it is very annoying. Interesting and funny the first time you read it, but annoying when read for the 20th time, etc.
It’s a community thing and individual preference. We wrote about discouraging it, but some folks like it.
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