A Note.

"Roberto G." (roberto-g) 03/23/2014 at 09:30 • Filed to: KINJA OPINION

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The "Highlights" thing is dumb and useless: I open a new post and only one reply is shown, and it's not that fantastic. Note says "6 replies". According to you I'm not clicking that, to see if there's something better? According to your opinion there's someone around who really thinks: "... oh, this is the best reply for kinja, and so it must be for me. No need to see the others, that were righteously hidden by kinja because they are useless and meaningless "... really, kinja???

jkm7680 > Roberto G. 03/23/2014 at 09:32

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Agreed.

Tigeroff should be revived.

Slave2anMG > Roberto G. 03/23/2014 at 09:33

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Precisely. Have been suffering thru it on Jalopnik for a couple of weeks. It still sucks. All Denton's had done is what he has always done - move stuff around, hide it, make more clicks, and yet nothing new is added. Because moving stuff around is proven to inspire people to comment. The only 'new' in this iteration is to mess up the way comments are presented...hiding most of them. How the heck is that a good idea?

Denton's reasoning is he's trying to stimulate conversation. Somebody else made the analogy that it's like my wife having me move the living room furniture to get the kids to talk and discuss better together....in fact nothing's really changed and I'll just get mad when I bang my shin on the coffee table. And the kids are still kids and act the same damn way.

What should be done is to pick a format and STICK WITH IT. Seriously. Stop moving stuff around for the sake of moving it around. And take the chosen format and make it reliable. Somehow Reddit and dozens of other popular sites stay popular without jacking up the format every 8 months...only Gawker seems to think that change for the sake of change is good.

Why is there so much passion in the hatred for Tiger? Because so many of us have put a lot of time into making Oppo what it is. And we feel like Denton And The Gawkerites don't hear us, don't listen to us and seem to not give a crap what the user base thinks. The ratio of dislikes/likes has to be 4:1 if not higher, yet they press on with the change. It's not as shitty as the first iteration, but it's still pretty shitty. I'm not going to sit here and say I'm leaving because, well, nobody gives a rat's ass about that....but it's certainly discouraged me from making comments on the FP as they just disappear into this inscrutable format.

Roberto G. > Slave2anMG 03/23/2014 at 09:59

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Your analogy of moving the furniture, is great!

Slave2anMG > Roberto G. 03/23/2014 at 10:08

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Yeah, I wish I'd thought of it...I didn't and I don't know who did. It wasn't me :(

Slave2anMG > Roberto G. 03/23/2014 at 10:30

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Because hey, being presented with this as the 'best' discussion (out of 30!) will absolutely make me want to dive right in....

Matt Hardigree > Roberto G. 03/23/2014 at 11:19

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We're sort of in an in-between period where they're working to roll out some new features that will improve the interface (something I'm sure you've heard me say before).

What this change will do is use your behavior (who you follow, who you call out, et cetera) to determine what the conversations are that should be highlighted, in addition to the conversations you yourself call out by replying or starring (currently the only way to do so in this iteration).

In the past, I think Gawker might have rolled all this out at once and it would have surely broken all to hell. What's happened lately is the product team have realized the way they rolled out code the in past wasn't consistent with a site this big with this many readers. For all the disagreements over the design, I think most people can see that the up-time for the site has been high and the number of random bugs has slowly started to diminish compared to the past.

Therefore, we have this interim solution which isn't perfect but works, and they're not going to roll out the next iteration until that version works, as opposed to the crazy live beta testing we used to have to endure

The point about picking a format and sticking with it is absolutely reasonable and this format is basically it. What you'll see going forward should be slower, more thoughtful changes that you'll notice but won't cause you to be surprised as in the GIF above.

Basically, if you've survived this long what you'll see is shit slowly getting better as opposed to being occasionally disruptive.

As to the why: Nick's goals are the right goals. Jalopnik's conversations are among the best on the web, which flies in the face of all those people who say it's that's not possible with groups larger than one. But we're the outlier.

Does this mean that the current version of the site as you see it is going to make all discourse in Kinja perfect? Nope. If it were that easy wouldn't have someone done it already?

ttyymmnn > Slave2anMG 03/23/2014 at 11:26

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And we feel like Denton And The Gawkerites don't hear us, don't listen to us and seem to not give a crap what the user base thinks.

I'm not sure that's entirely fair. When this latest iteration rolled out, the comments a complete clusterfuck. Everybody complained, and the comments were changed—a bit. I agree that the "Highlights" thing is stupid, and the first thing I do every time I read an article is click "All replies." I wish there were a way to make that the default view.

Slave2anMG > ttyymmnn 03/23/2014 at 11:50

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I stand by my opinion - they appear to not care. The first iteration was a train wreck. And above I noted that [Tiger is] "not as shitty as the first iteration, but it's still pretty shitty". The reality is that Gawker plowed ahead with Tiger regardless of the overwhelming opinion of users that the existing system worked pretty darn well and really needed stability tweaks and not blown up. And this ignoring of the commentariat is exactly what Gawker has done with every previous change...they continue to make major changes in the face of strong majorities of users detesting the change. Users be stuffed - Gawker doesn't listen. Denton appeared in the Kinja Product blog...and he struck me as pretty dismissive of users who had the temerity to question His grand visions.

Roberto G. > Matt Hardigree 03/23/2014 at 13:03

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Thank you for the detailed information. But indeed I like more to scroll all the replies, and then decide by myself which are the ones I like more. Sincerely and for what it's worth, I don't need a software to make these choices for me. Indeed, I value too much my independence, to rely on the suggestions of an algorythm...

Matt Hardigree > Roberto G. 03/23/2014 at 13:15

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That's why you've got two ways to view. If you want to scroll through everything we give you (mostly) that choice with all replies. There's always a tension between scrolling and clicking, between showing everything and showing nothing, with some preferring a long scroll and other people preferring to click-click-click through various digests. Until there's a fundamental change in the way computer interfaces are designed we're going to have to deal with that.