well, the two-column layout would stay I think - it is a good place for the necessary menus. I was more thinking of which of the parts could stay, which should go, and which could stand to be cleaned up and simplified.

I think adding a "recent diaries" list to the sidebar would help people find them. But that makes the sidebar even longer...

I miss the spell checking, now I actually have to write everything in an external window and do some work on it before posting. I think it is a good thing that it is broken.

hah! that argument sounds surprisingly like my argument for canning the edit queue. :-)

I usually suggest that sites should add features as they grow. Some features are seldom used when the information conent is manageable, other features are used by more experienced users. I like the idea of comment ratings, but I seldom use them, and with a small community they aren't needed as much as in a larger.

Well, I'm not sure how well I articulated this in the article. The main reason I kind of want to get more people rating comments is to build up a culture of rating comments appropriately, and not as a "reward/punishment" system that some people seem to consider it (*cough*k5*cough*). The more people used to rating comments, the less likely it is that a small group of active raters can misuse them in a meaningful way. And as the site grows, there will inevitably be a few members with an infantile sense of humour and way too much time on their hands.
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Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
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