Slashdot Mirror
Designer on Slashdot Overhaul Plans
EdwardianDandy writes "Web designer Khoi Vinh, whose firm Behavior is responsible for the redesign of the Onion, argues on publish.com that an upcoming contest to overhaul Slashdot's look will yield interesting results, but the outcome will suffer because the underlying architecture is off limits." Normally I don't post stuff "About" Slashdot here since I find meta naval gazing very boring, but this article has many good points about architecture and design, even if his whole premise is based on a contest that we haven't spent more than about 5 minutes thinking about, and is mostly just meant to be a fun way for users to contribute themes to Slashdot. If Khoi wants to enter the contest, we'll consider his designs along with everyone else's. (I'm sure we can't afford him tho). And if he (or anyone) wants to make changes more substantial than cosmetic CSS, I'd consider them too. The upcoming Slashdot Redesign contest is intended to be more about design than architecture, but good ideas are good ideas.
A small request: whatever we finally decide to do, let's keep Slash Light.
I hope this guy keeps his hands off of /. because the new Onion design gives me a headache. Swapping a clean, streamlined design for a USA-Today ripoff isn't my idea of progress.
Seriously, this guy needs something else to worry about.
As I see it, the founders didn't decree anything: There are rules to any contest. And given how much backend work el founders probably wanted to do ( ie: none. If it ain't borked, don't fix it ), this makes perfect sense.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
So he's the one responsible for befouling my precious Onion.
:(
I realize the debate over homogeneity and efficiency of content/ad presentation is one that will never die, but there's something to be said about the sentimentality attached to site layouts. It's like that old pub you love going to getting remodeled with gear from Ikea or something. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, but it also doesn't feel right, either.
When I stopped being a nub and actually edited my prefences and figured out what everything is, I made /. good for me and now I have no problems or confusion. :)
In spite of what this site looks like and acts, this site is run by paid professionals and paid by a for-profit company.
So why in the world would you need readers to submit redesigns for you? At the company I work for, we wouldn't ask clients to help us with our business for free. It's not productive and is just being cheap.
If Microsoft or any-big-evil corp ran a contest with a negligible prize to help line their own pockets, they'd get ripped to shreds on slashdot. Taco, stop being a cheapass and pay for professional designers.
"isn't very good" is a kind, kind way of putting it. It went from a simple and easy to navigate site to an overgrown mess in the course of a couple months. One of the greatest tragedies of moden web design is the endless need to make sites more complicated and seemingly "busier." A vast majority of what I see on webpages could be just as effective with simple HTML rather than the mess of flash/java/shockwave, etc... that is needlessly being thrown around these days. I agree that it is time to shake things up a bit here at slashdot, I only hope that the powers that be opt to stick with a relatively simple design so that content does not get mired down in window dressing.
They call themselves "the definitive authority on web publishing and print", and yet their own site uses teeny tiny 10px fonts? Free clue: design is about balancing form and function. When you use tiny fonts, you sacrifice function. If you forget the balance, it's not design, just art wanking. A 10px font size for the main body of text is not acceptable for something to qualify as well designed.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The ASCII-goatse guys need to be IP-banned for life. The GNAA guys need to get a life. The "overrated/underrated" metamod loophole needs to be closed. Storys need to be checked for duplicates, at least a week back. Summaries should summarize. Third grade rules of grammar and spelling should be observed in summaries. Storys should be assigned to the category they belong to. Corel cache links should be supplied for sites that obviously can't take the strain - particularly if they have shown that they can't in the past. Roland Pipaquele (sp) and the Amazon recommendation link trolls should be executed. Storys should be accepted/rejected in a timely manner, and we shouldn't be seeing people posting "I submitted this 20 hours ago, and was rejected".
I could go on, but I'm sure I've said enough already to be scored a troll-for-life, so I'll quit now.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The subnet banning isn't new, the editors know what they're doing and they aren't changing it.
It's just typical hypocrisy from the editors when they bitch and scream how DRM technologies annoy and frustrate legitimate fair users, while the piracy will still go on. It's exactly what slashcode is doing now. Their filters, timers, bans, blacklists have been expanding all the time, and entrapping more legit users every day. Meanwhile, trolling, and crapflooding still exists.
Subnet bans are ridiculously amateurish with all the different proxies real trolls can use. And don't get me started with their idiotic comment filters. Talk about kiddy stuff.
Great post, first rate!
I think most of the issues people have with Slashdot have nothing to do with the design, but rather the underlying mechanics that run it.
The CSS upgrade was a great idea, if long overdue. An upgrade to the professionalism of the site owners is also long overdue.
No this isn't a personal attack on the editors; rather it is a challenge to them to improve Slashdot by paying closer attention to the important details that the parent so thoroughly pointed out. Slashdot is good; but they can make it great with a little diligence and effort.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
This is a terrible customer service experience you're detailing, and it's the exact type of customer experience that is frequently mocked here on Slashdot when the (other) big corps engage in it.
You subscribed to a paid service but you can't get the free part of it. How lame. I'm sorry, but they don't deserve to have your money anymore. You should ask for a refund.
I'm not trying to pick on Slashdot here. I'm being fair. Even if there is a technical problem, you owe it to your customers to be direct and accommodating about it. I know this is an isolated incident, but this is no way to run a business. It's completely unacceptable and unprofessional.
Agreed, I used to read The Onion religiously, but now I don't bother anymore. The new site is a disaster, and it's all about generating revenue through obtrusive ads. The "new" Onion is a corporate shill. I'd be ashamed to be associated with that site, let alone advertise that I created that trainwreck of a perfectly good (great!) site.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
The Onion's previous format really fit; now - well, yuck.
It's another case of a self-proclaimed expert forcing their own perceived expertise on the end-user without bothering to take the end-user into account. I've run into a couple of these. While the good ones can be good, the bad ones lack insight and just move on making the same mistake. Unfortunately, they also have a tendency to move up the corporate ladder.
No. XML is a set of syntax rules, not a document format itself. When people say "XML" when the context implies a document format, they invariably mean "an ad-hoc data format I've just made up on the spot that uses XML syntax". It's meaningless data. <myspecialheading> means nothing to anybody but you. Everybody knows what <h1> means though. Do Google apply XSLT? Do all browsers? No and no. They are left with the XML, which means nothing.
If you really want to manipulate your pages with XSLT, publish XHTML so that at least there's a decent fallback and your documents actually mean something on their own without being translated into whatever format your XSLT produces.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Slashdot could easily fix this by using a username whitelist in addition to the ip blacklist. But I won't hold my breath.
Anyway, regarding TFA, that was the biggest load of "Web Designer" horse crap ever shoveled into HTML. Slashdot has been ASS UGLY since 1997. Yet, it's been hugely successful. Why is this? Gosh, it COULDN'T be because of the CONTENT--could it? Not only has Slashdot continued to provide what it's here to provide, it's remained remarkably stable, UI-wise.
"Rethinking" the architecture is daft. Slashdot has a codebase built to encourage good comments and hide bad ones, but to accept everything that's not scripted spam. That's the architecture. "Rethinking" that is like "rethinking" the design of the nuclear reactor in a submarine while crusing at 20 knots 800 feet down.
Please keep your Web Designer hands off Slashdot, thanks.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Lack of awareness that Slashdot is expected by its subscribers and would-be subscribers to behave like the professional corporate concern which it is, and not an unpaid hobby blog which it may have been in the distant past.
You (the subscribers) knew, or should have known, what Slashdot was when you subscribed, and have no grounds for complaint. You sound like those women who marry someone despite their known flaws, then after living with said flaws for a while, it's all "boo hoo, i thought I could change him."
Slashdot is what it is - like it or don't. If it changes in a way you like, great. If it doesn't, too bad. But you don't have any reason to expect jack from it, other than unfounded reasons you invented yourself.
Rollover effects aid usability by giving instant visual feedback the moment the user can activate the link. It has the greatest effect on people who aren't that comfortable using the mouse (newbies, people with arthritis, etc), but it affects everyone to some small degree.
Not true. I can spend all day listing stupider things that people do.
Why the special attention to the underline? The user already knows it's a link, they've already navigated to it with the mouse and are geetting ready to click it. It's not the same as removing the underlines when you aren't hovering over the link.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Slashdot needs a theme that is very neutral... and looks like a legitimate business website...that an IT person might visit. this turquois stuff really stands out at work... shooot... here comes the boss....
Lack of ethical caching of small sites.
They give a valid reason for not caching all the links. Your UID is low enough that I expect you know about the FAQ. Did you know that they address this?
Lack of basic story duplication review.
There's an open invitation to solutions. As it is, though, a lot of "dupes" are really followups, or revists to old subjects from years past.
Lack of basic grammar review.
They have a copy editor. At the very least, that's "basic."
Lack of basic journalistic fact-checking.
Slashdot is a meta-news site; They don't originate much content. However, they do (usually?) follow links before posting a story, weighing it against what they know. At the very least, that's "basic."
Besides, I've seen worse out of "respectable" news media.
Troubling comments that charge karma backlash to those who defy the editors.
Obviously you don't really care, or you wouldn't have posted.
Lack of awareness that Slashdot is expected by its subscribers and would-be subscribers to behave like the professional corporate concern which it is, and not an unpaid hobby blog which it may have been in the distant past.
You're right, it's no longer an unpaid hobby blog. It's now a paid hobby blog. Slashdot was most likely bought to provide additional customers for commercial services.
Personally, I think you're taking it too seriously. Slashdot was bought because of what it was: A popular tech community with a huge potential audience for tech ads. Changing the community risks alienating the audience, regardless of whether you think the changes are for good or ill.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Probably because I'm an amature but the articles linkage between 'skin' and information architecture is unclear. Without mentioning the functionality he'd like to play with, he comes off like a graphic designer who dips his toe in php every now and then but wants to be running the show. Which reminds me of half the graphic designers I've worked with. The job is, for instance, a shopping cart - and they've done some serious thinking about SQL (or scarier, Actionscript or OOP) so there's an hour or two wasted as they pontificate and then I go home and figure it out. I think it's bred in ad agencies where everyone is trying to build an empire.
I wanted to pay a guy back by waiting till the end of the project and then saying 'I have some ideas about the fonts' but I'm too nice (lazy)
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
I blame cable news.
A few years ago, some cable news channel (probably CNNfn) decided to put a little stock ticker at the bottom of the screen all the time. A little distracting, but easy to ignore. Then, news channels decided to put a news ticker there. More distracting, and difficult to pay attention to the anchor while reading the ticker.
Then, some genius decided to put TWO tickers, and some other crap on the side of the screen. Headline News is the worst at this that I've seen. Now, every time you turn on Headline News, it's like a bomb went off on your screen. It's completely impossible to absorb all of the information they're trying to throw at you all at once.
This trend toward excessive busy-ness has migrated to the web. On news channels, it's primarily a way to cram in more useless information. On the web, it's primarily a way to cram in more useless advertisements. All of it sacrifices usability.
Rob - you are right that "navel gazing" is bad. But looking down and saying "Dayum - I need to lay off the beer and do some sit-ups" is not.
/. servers could see from that.
Being so focused upon your navel that you DO NOTHING about it is bad. But stepping back once in a while and saying "now, how can I make things better - anybody have any good advice", then implementing that advice is the only way to improve.
For example - what if you added extra CSS classes to comments, reflecting the moderation adjectives applied and the moderation level - such as
<li class="comment, level_5, karma_bonus, insightful, interesting, overrated">
Then, without a server fetch, I could change my displayed comment threshold just by changing my CSS. Think about how much savings the
You could even add the zoo modifiers, then I could have my friends posts highlighted by changing the background, again, without a server fetch.
In short, Rob - if you put more of the information the back-end has into the generated HTML, then that would increase the amount of cool stuff WE can do at the browser end.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Web designer Khoi Vinh, whose firm Behavior is responsible for the redesign of the Onion,
And what a horrible job you did:
1. Smearing ads all over the place. I remember seeing not one, but TWO banner ads toting NBC's "The Office" on the same page. you know, in case we didn't see the first one. It's IGN or *insert video game news site here* bad.
2. The oh-so-classic time-honored tradition of putting ALL the links humanly possible on the main page. If i have to hit Ctrl+F to find something obvious, there's something wrong.
3. Very little new content. A lot of the bottom of the main page is just links to older content, none of which is available to free users.
4. Inconsistent overall look compared to the older site.
Can websites jump the shark?
- Disable Anonymous posting from the subnet
- Disable posting for the specific user if they were logged in
- Disable user registration from the subnet so the troll can't just get new usernames
It still might be a little heavy handed (other users from the subnet wouldn't be able to register--but the only real reason to register is to post which they wouldn't be able to do anyway as it currently is), but it would be better and (I think) still solve the problem.There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
"The "you share a subnet with a troll" was pretty direct. As for accomodating, you have to consider the big picture. What's better, to lose half the users due to crapflooding, or lose a handful as collateral damage while blocking bad apples?"
Why not allow registered user accounts to post regardless of IP/Subnet bans? And if the User Account is used to spam/flood/troll ban the account. That way, the IP/Subnet ban will block AC's from posting crap, the user account bans will block spam accounts, and valid users will still have full access. It doesn't seem like rocket surgery to me.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If they have a userid and password, the logic to block a subnet to AC's but leave it unblocked to accounts older than the block, or at least paid subscribers should not be difficult.
It might even attract paid subscribers, imagine that!
Yeah, that's what we need, lots of bells and whistles to detract from the main focus of the site, which is discussion. Did you ever think that maybe some features are deemphasized by design? It's not important to have the intricacies of moderation and the friend/foe system stabbing one in the eye every time you load the page. There's a "Help" link to the left of the text box in which I'm typing that documents most of the lesser known features.
Slashdot's interface is perfect for its intended use, which is reading and posting comments. If you still can't wrap your mind around that and feel that there needs to be more emphasis placed on graphical smileys and other garbage, well, that's your problem I guess. And Slashdot's overall layout and design may be outdated but it's still completely functional. The only thing I'd add at this point would be "quote" functionality to make it easier to quote another blob of text, similar to phpBB's [quote="someone"] tag. I've had to <blockquote><i></i></blockquote> an annoying number of times.
rooooar
The front page of the onion looks like a bomb went off in the middle of some content. You have stories all over the place.
The Onion is laid out like it is because it's a news parody site. As such, it would make sense to mimic other news sites (CNN, ABCNews, CBS, etc) with a featured story on the left, shorter summaries on the right, nav bar to the far left, and so on.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Actually, I think it is: comparing the typical Mac fonts (Geneva and the like) with the typical Windows fonts (Arial and the like) at the same point size, they certainly look significantly different to me, with the Windows fonts rendering significantly smaller on average. I've always assumed this was something to do with Macs historically using different physical screen resolutions, though I don't have any numbers to check whether that makes sense.
This is a very good argument for what we all seem to agree on around here: the main body text of a page should be set to the default font size configured by the user's browser, not x-small, 90%, or (God forbid) an absolute pixel value like 10px. This is usability 101 stuff, and any professional web designer who's still getting it wrong doesn't deserve the title. Setting text in a small font that many users can't read isn't stylish or clever, it's thoughtless and inconsiderate.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.