[whartung]

Everything is too big and takes up too much space. JL was more compact. weblogs.java.net is nice, information rich, an compact.

The avatars on the messages don't bother me save for the space they consume, but the "Wall of Faces" is just wrong on all sorts of levels. And the billboard sized mug on the topic threads -- just TOO big. More wasted space imho.

When you go to a topic, "updated/new"posts are flagged, but as soon as you read one post, that all vanishes. On JL I used the threaded view, and relied on the red dots to tell me what I had and had not read.

There's no navigation across posts. Once you're on a post you have to "go back" to see the tree again.

Why are the forums any different from the stories? I can't see a discernable difference functionally between the two.

SSO with the "forums", silly we have to log in, even once.

Bring back the First and Last Name monikers of JL. Roger Voss (long standing poster on JL) had a new post, but he was, as most are "rv12345". I recognized the picture, but couldn't place the name until I view the end of the story. ID Space is finite enough. I prefer the first and last names (even the contrived ones, though JL was mature enough that this was rarely a problem) compared to idzr00lz02.

Bring back post topics as well, rather than just scraping the first chunk of the content. I think those were valuable when scanning posts to see what might be interesting to read, and folks most likely will not "do it themselves" by making their first line the response title.

DZ JL "Attack of the Blogs" feels bloggish because the topics seem more bloggish. When you have folks pressed for delivering content, you get weak, casual content -- exactly what blogs are used for.

Let's look at the items.

Rogers "Spring Wins" post is a decent post to fuel discussion. That's good front page material. Note, I'm using "Front page" loosely since it was ALL on the actual "Front Page" before, but it was segregated, and the "main" section is basically what I'm referring to here.

In the past, something like Matt's "Open ID for Spring" would have been an announcement, rather than "front page" item. Easily confused with a blog post, because it's not his work he's announcing.

Guillaume LaForge' Groovy article is more of an "article" rather than a "front page" post also.

Sebastians "Flex or Java" is a blog post. It tells us about his day, talking with folks, what he's doing, and where he's going. Great. Thanx for the update. How's the cat doing? What are you doing on the front page?

3D Model interaction -- Article, not a real discussion item. It's a tutorial.

JarJar -- Article, borderline blog post because it's so short. Not "front page" material.

Rogers OSGi post is good front page material.

Scala -- blog post. "Here's Scala, it's swell." Swell.

Sun Warms a bit -- blog post. I didn't know JL had a financials zone...

DZone TV -- blog post. Seriously.

Beginning Java Book -- Book review, obviously.

Java 2008 -- borderline front page material. I didn't follow the link, the quotes weren't particularly controversial or anything.

Grinder -- another blog/announcement, that's not even by the project author.

Practical Ruby -- book review.

So, out of the content thats on the front page now (sans "JL has ..umm.. changed"), 2 I think qualify as front page main section material. One is borderline, several "bloggy" ones I don't think belong at all, and the rest belong in their respective sections.

The FEELING is that what you call "Zone Leaders" we call Bloggers. Rather than blogging on their site, they blog here. It's a fine line, there are no hard and fast rules, maybe it's the onslaught of all these authors that gives that impression. But like other "questionable content", you may not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it, and the new JL FEELS like a blogging aggregator. I don't know why we need ELEVEN zone "leaders". Too many chefs, soup, all that.

That's enough for now.

[rick]

Yep, whartung, you're right about "everything is too big." I completely agree. We will be working on that during the coming week.

I think we also need to provide indicators of content type, and we need to make it easy for you to see and filter them to just the ones you want to see.

We'll see if we can deal with this username issue tomorrow. We still have the data we had in the old database, so we should still be able to show usernames as we used to. These are, however, the usernames people have had for years - our JL templates just showed other information. I like the old JL approach better.

I disagree about the Zone Leaders - they have accepted positions of responsibility for leadership, and they deserve to be recognized. Status is an important tool in a social system, and we have chosen to make clear who these Zone Leaders are by displaying their avatars on the pages. Maybe we'll make an option for it, I don't know.

WOW, so much good stuff in your posting. It could start a half-dozen additional threads, at least. Maybe it would be good to do that? Thanks for the power-dump - there's a lot to digest here.

Rick

[whartung]

Originally Posted by rick

We'll see if we can deal with this username issue tomorrow. We still have the data we had in the old database, so we should still be able to show usernames as we used to. These are, however, the usernames people have had for years - our JL templates just showed other information. I like the old JL approach better.

I understand that the user ids are long standing, but we as users never knew what they were, they weren't a viewable aspect of the site. If they were, folks wouldn't have, effectively, meaningless IDs. So, yes, I like the old JL templates better as well.

I disagree about the Zone Leaders - they have accepted positions of responsibility for leadership, and they deserve to be recognized. Status is an important tool in a social system, and we have chosen to make clear who these Zone Leaders are by displaying their avatars on the pages. Maybe we'll make an option for it, I don't know.

But you also understand that it's simply unnerving having this wall of humanity staring at us. You understand that faces are distracting to humans. We're kinda hard wired to see them and give them attention to make sure they're not carrying a big rock or something. If this was a cat site with cat's reading it, there'd be a zillion monitors with hiss spit on them cuz the "other cat" is making eye contact. As humans, we're a bit above that -- most of us..at least a little, but still.

If you want the Leaders to be recognized apart from generic posters, then perhaps give their posts a different color (both stories and comments), or put stars next to their names, or whatever. You recognized community contributors with "Top 100" icons on JL, that kind of system would work fine for the leaders. We already get their picture on every submission. Make them stand out where they're actually doing work. The community will recognize the leaders on their own.

For example, (yes, this is grossly unfair, it's not to be taken seriously, and it's not meant as a slight to any of the folks here, it is just an example), right now, in terms of "quality" content, IMHO, Roger Voss is "leading", and he's not even "official".

Give them a summary page, "About DZone leaders", whatever that folks can click on. But that "Leader Mosaic" just doesn't work (IMHO). And it's sucking up 3-4" of margin to boot...

And, I still think 11 is too many. There's no focus with 11, no direction. It's seems like weblogs.java.net, which I like, but it's a (topical) blogging site and I don't expect focus. Maybe make the leaders specialize: Enterprise guy, Desktop guy, "Community" guy, Open Source Java guy, "Bleeding edge" Java guy..I dunno.

I don't want content for the sake of content. I don't want stories to move just to show movement. I know it's hard, I understand. But focus brings quality, and I expect quality from someplace like JL. Musings I can get everywhere.

[gdboling]

Originally Posted by whartung

If you want the Leaders to be recognized apart from generic posters, then perhaps give their posts a different color (both stories and comments), or put stars next to their names, or whatever. You recognized community contributors with "Top 100" icons on JL, that kind of system would work fine for the leaders. We already get their picture on every submission. Make them stand out where they're actually doing work. The community will recognize the leaders on their own.

...

Give them a summary page, "About DZone leaders", whatever that folks can click on. But that "Leader Mosaic" just doesn't work (IMHO). And it's sucking up 3-4" of margin to boot...

I have to say that I agree with this.

[mende]

Just a small issue:

There was a problem uploading a new profile-image. I've tried to just upload it but that doesn't work. After that I've tried to delete the image (the checkbox under the picture) and to upload a new picture parallel. That hasn't worked also, except the image was deleted. After that (the deletion of the picture) I was able to upload a new profile-image.

Regarding the whole new site: Meanwhile I came to an arrangement with this new site. But there are also some things missing, but I've read that some of them are on your todo list (If I remember correctly).

Marc

[mende]

Is it possible to have a link back to (for example) java.dzone.com?
It's annoying to edit the url everytime I wanted to go back to other *.dzone.com sites.

Marc

[matt]

Originally Posted by mende

Is it possible to have a link back to (for example) java.dzone.com?
It's annoying to edit the url everytime I wanted to go back to other *.dzone.com sites.

Marc

Do you mean from the forums? We're still working out the design of the forums so that it matches the other sites. When you're on one of the other *.dzone.com (except DZone - fresh links for developers), there is a Zones menu item that has all the active zones.

-Matt

[mende]

Matt,

yes of course. I meant the forum. Everytime I wanted to go back to java.dzone.org I have to change the url.

Marc

[fg82183]

Okay, I have a little time left today to give some comments..

I have to agree on the quality of content..

Let me cite some examples:

-Confusing what Hibernate and JPA do in a Zone leader posts..and just to tout that persons development product on top o fit..

-Confusing details that websphere has no javaee5 support..you got to be freaking joking on this..in a zone major post? websphere support of javaee5 by using Apache Geronimo code base is almost a full 18 months old..

-Confusing MyISAM with InnoDB as being transaction safe. Hint, Oracle bought InnoDB for a reason..gee what might be the reason? And to top it off MYSQL5 does not support MyISAM for obvious reasons..

if the quality does not improve you will see more drops in visitor readership..

Okay, sleep time I got to get up and start coding at 4 am...take care people..

[matt]

Hi Will. We've slimmed down the billboard sized author picture to something that is roughly half the size. Hope this helps. We're still working on some of the other issues.

-Matt