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mmm, new monitor

by janra
Posted to Diaries, Diary on Fri Feb 18, 2005 at 10:07:59 AM PST
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I finally got a new monitor. The old one was 7 years old, and while it was a very good monitor when it was new, well, it was very much not new anymore.

Also, a reminder for our readers on how to find new stuff on the site.

The most recent articles are what are shown on the front page, but sometimes an older article will get a burst of new discussion. Now, if you know where to go, you can find it, and that place is the stats page. (The link is up in the main menu too.) Most recent comments (and the article they're attached to), most recently joined users, most active article, most active users, and so on.

I've been thinking about a way to have the articles with the most recent comments displayed on the front page as well, so that may show up at some point, maybe in place of the "featured article" link in the right-hand column. Heck, maybe I'll even re-fit the whole front page thing, and instead of having the articles displayed by the order posted, I'll get them re-ordered by the most recent comment. That'll at least ensure that an old article can be brought back up front if somebody wants to continue discussing it...

My new monitor is very pretty. The colours! the clarity! I didn't really realize just how bad the old one was getting. Well, I did, but I didn't want to think about it I guess. It was very dark, and any high-contrast areas cast shadows to the right, which was rather odd-looking. Lines of black-on-white or white-on-black text would make a solid colour to their right look stripy.

I can even see the feather texture in this photo now. I am very impressed with my new monitor :-)

And with the new bright colours, I've set my desktop background to something suitably bright and colourful! (Space geek? Me? What makes you say that?)

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mmm, new monitor | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
cool changes (4.00/1) (#1)
by sabeth on Fri Feb 18, 2005 at 10:40:26 AM PST
I like the addition of the story link in the "Recent comments" box -- since the comment titles themselves aren't always that descriptive (especially out of context) it helps me figure out if it's something I'd be interested in reading before I click. Also I like to load the story instead of the comment view, if only because it will help me unflag the comment as "new" (and it reminds me of what the comment is replying to), so this makes that easier.

While I like the idea of highlighting stories with recent discussion, I also like the "Featured article" link, because that is likely to draw attention to an article that has been around for a while and hasn't had comments in a while -- possibly prompting new discussion!

I do like the stats page, as I've mentioned before -- maybe just re-naming it "Recent Activity" instead of "Stats" (though that's not all it is, that's mostly what it is) will make more people check out that link, and you won't have to mess with the front page too much.

--ich sage nicht, was ich will, sondern was die Sprache will--

thanks :-) (3.00/0) (#2)
by janra on Fri Feb 18, 2005 at 02:25:30 PM PST
Yeah, I was starting to get tired of clicking on all the new comments only to find out three of them were in the same thread :-)

The most recent evolution of my idea for bumping stories with new discussion up is something along the lines of having the current article-post-time-based ordering for the most recent 2 articles, so the newest ones have their time "in the spotlight", then below them a divider of some sort and then have say 5-8 articles ordered by their most recent comment activity, all displayed with the same sort of formatting (story header/intro) instead of just as a list of titles.

That way I can maintain the "Featured article" in the sidebar, although I might want to have that display its introtext too. Haven't decided on that yet. The featured article is actually a random article (sssh! don't tell!) weighted by how many registered members have read it as a rough popularity index, so it would be more likely to show articles that stay on the front page over time. If I get the listing by comment activity thing going, I may rewrite how featured articles are chosen so they weight more toward older articles that don't hang around the front page a lot.

Of course, doing all that on the front page while making sure not to mess up the section, diary, and "past" front page views (which I would want to keep in straight story-post-time reverse chronological order as they are now) could be a bit more of a challenge.
--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]

Yummy wallpaper (3.00/0) (#3)
by ana on Sat Feb 19, 2005 at 02:10:16 AM PST
Cas A is one of my favorite bits of sky.
Exploring dark places since last Thursday
mmm, new monitor | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
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