Suggestions: Listings, Visuals, Rating System, etc.

[Vesnic]

I've been giving myself some time to let the changes on the revamped site sink in a bit, to make sure that I'm not just reacting in my typically poor Cancerian way to the c-word ("change").

However, it's been awhile, and certain things about the new site are still rubbing me the wrong way. I only like to be rubbed the right way, with lavender oil, especially when I'm paying good money for it. Oh, wait...

Anyway, there are three concerns I have at the moment:

1.) In the story listings, for instance on the Highest Rated page, the brief descriptions no longer appear next to the story title. First of all, just in terms of visuals and spacing, it was helpful to have these descriptions because they added an extra line or two of depth and prevented the listings from getting too compressed. I also thought the descriptions were fun and served as a good way to give a sense of the overall flavor of the story when the title alone wasn't too explanatory. I know that the descriptions now show up on the intro page, but that just takes me to number 2 on this list:

2.) Do we really need those intro/cover pages? It creates sort of an awkward delay without offering anything very informative or visually appealing. My impression is that the hits on my stories have actually been down since the new site started up. I'm not opposed to the idea of a cover page in general, but I think it's the sort of thing that could be opened up for some interesting art work or a brief introduction or something a bit more user-controlled. It's great to have so many statistics available, but these were always easy to access and not everyone wants or needs to see them. There just seems to be a bit of disconnect between "read story" and "research story". Except perhaps for stories with a Mature rating, I just don't think it's necessary to put a block between someone's interest in a story and the first page of that story.

3.) Finally, I'm not crazy about the stars. They give the impression that IS is now a movie review site. I rather liked having the numerical ratings, since they're more exact and made it clear that we were working with a 10- rather than a 4- or 5-point system (hence, we're terribly sophisticated).

I'm really sort of throwing this out there for group discussion. I'm thrilled by a lot of the changes on the new site, particularly by the fact that the Mature rated stories are now listed automatically. Nonetheless, I think there's still room for improvement and y'all know I'm never afraid to speak my mind.

(Note to self: send PayPal donation before X-mas!!)

[End Master]

1 & 2 I'll cover at the same time.

I think Sev's idea with the cover/intro page might've been to have all your desciption and ratings listed there so people would actually read them rather than say someone just clicking on the story without paying attention to the little rating and brief description, reading something offensive and then complaining loudly in the comments section about it.

That being said I don't think it's really necessary to have the intro page. In my experience people tend to ignore warnings/ratings regardless of how blatent you make it and will purposely read something potentially offensive and complain about it anyway (We don't have that too much here fortunately).

And I thought the old way with a simple rating with a brief description was fine.


3.

The stars are okay, but I did like the more precise number system we had. There were some oddities with it sometimes where the display would randomly round up or down. Like a story would show up in the public reading display as 8.92, but if you looked at the rating in the story stats it would show up as 9.0

The stars I guess make the place a little "friendlier" looking since when you look at them at first glance you can't tell the minor rating differences (like say a 8.4 and an 8.3) because the stars "fill up" to roughly the same area and you need a wider ratings gap to tell the difference.

I suppose the old numerical system was a little more elitist since it was giving an assigned number of EXACTLY where you stood, but yeah I liked it too.


As far as the Mature stories showing up, I never knew the difference since I always had that option checked when I glanced through stories so they'd show up anyway. I don't mind those showing up automatically in the reading list though.

[severenz]

Thanks for taking the time to make these suggestions Vesnic. Unfortunately, I've been busy with personal stuff as of late. I intend to yank the stats/intro page due to popular demand and will respond to your other suggestions when I'm able. Thanks again and happy new year everyone.