The new Members brings an overhaul of how interests work on the site. Try editing your Music, Movies, TV Shows, Books or Games to see it.
How do you guys feel about this? It's a pretty radical change. On interest pages we currently have a list of users interested and an image gallery. Is there something else you'd like to see tied to interests, such as a comments section or possibly a forum? Group owners; how do you feel this works with your existing groups?
Personally, I'm really liking the change. The images are fine, but would it be possible to be able to watch an interest, so we are alerted when a new one is uploaded? As for forums/comments, I think that they would take away from groups that are dedicated to the certain interest. It would be better if there was a tab that displayed groups that are related to the interest.
I think it's an okay idea, but other than making the page more visual, how much does it really add? From the userpage point of view, it feels like an update for the sake of an update to me.
Now, setting the profile page aside and focusing on the new Interests pages, I think that's a definite improvement. Seeing a visual representation of who else shares the interest, as opposed to just being sent to a search page, is huge, and the ability to add pictures to them makes them really interactive. I like them.
But putting the pictures on people's profiles doesn't really add that much, in my opinion, especially when we're just presented with line after line after line of pictures; it's overwhelming, in the bad way.
Let's be honest though, don't you think it makes more sense to have conversations about a show located in the interest, for everyone who likes it, rather than in a group that you only know about if you've gone looking?
I think it would kill those certain groups, that's all. But I guess you do have a point, it does make more sense, and more convenient if it's all in one place.
The only thing I don't like about the new change is how many empty spots I have. I understand why you'd only want a mod to be able to edit stuff like the thumbnail for Halo but only 6 in 25 of my bands have images and not a single one of my books. Maybe you could set it so video games can only be edited by mods but a Sponsor or Level 10+ user could upload for the rest. Or incorporate a semi-protected feature for anything liked by more than 10 or 20 people where only Moderators can change the image.
Other than that I like it. Much easier to see at a glance than the old one.
Anyone who has the interest in their profile can upload an image, mods can set images as primary, and we merge Facebook profile pictures whenever someone syncs from their profile and we don't have an image for it yet. We may be more lax with image primarifying, such as automatically setting images that reach a certain mod threshold to primary.
This is the tough thing about interests. We could have a forum for every interest, but the issue there is that they can invalidate groups, with no "group admins" to keep things in order.
Turning interests from a text string to being object-based provides huge advantages far beyond just what we've implemented now. Filtering the top interests of friends and creating a community around a shared interest just makes sense.
Turning interests from a text string to being object-based provides huge advantages far beyond just what we've implemented now. Filtering the top interests of friends and creating a community around a shared interest just makes sense.
This is my fault for being vague: I was specifically talking about showing the primary pictures for the interests on profiles when I asked about the utility of the upgrade. The rest of the updates are really slick and make sense, it's just the usefulness of showing it all as pictures on someone's profile that I doubt.
I don't even know if the number of rows is the issue here, just give us some kind of visual differentiation between sections. For instance, you know how forum posts have that 10px bar between them? Something like that, to break up the layout a little.
Also, if I may suggest a layout update for the area: rather than just a row of icons with titles below them, what if you gave them a layout similar to the Groups page, where it's a smaller icon on the left, and then the name of the interest and maybe how many people share the interest, showing six per type? Then we still get the visual layout with the icons, but it looks a little more put together than just a whole bunch of icons?
Ok, so I've tried adding a few more things to my list but there is one thing that crops up and annoys me.
When you start typing and an auto-finish option pops up you can clearly see what people have written in their profiles (e.g. try searching for "Game of Thrones")
And it's a personal preference but I would like the option of choosing one that would have capitals over one that doesn't, so I don't have to follow the same horrible format that they used. I know I can create a new one but once I use the same letters I'm not given the option (this also applies to "Alias")
If you go look at my interests page, I think you'll see a combination of it working and it utterly failing in some respects. It groups some pretty random text together if you're not just making a list.
If you go to my interests and look at my music, the picture for Evanescence looks like it only loads partway. In fact, it's not a square image, and instead of being cropped it's just being shrunk. If we're going to go with square pictures, I think they should all be square, for uniformity.
Anyone who has the interest in their profile can upload an image, mods can set images as primary, and we merge Facebook profile pictures whenever someone syncs from their profile and we don't have an image for it yet. We may be more lax with image primarifying, such as automatically setting images that reach a certain mod threshold to primary.
Any idea yet of how mods will be chosen for interest groups? Also, I like the idea that the interest image with the most mod points gets set as primary- that'd be fun, esp if there was a backdoor override or something for mods, so they could make sure people weren't abusing the system.
Also- it looks like there may be a character limit on Interests? I tried adding 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and it will only go to 'Buffy the Vampire Sl.' Not necessarily a bug- the limit may well be intentional- but I ran into it so wanted to mention.
So site admins will be able to traffic the images uploaded to interests or will any individual be able to change the display picture of an interest? (question changed)
I like that you can see what your friends like and what's popular on the site and new interests. What I don't like is that I can't subdivide any of those sections by category. The top popular interests (right now) are all movies, TV shows, and music. But I want to know about games (for example). It would be cool if there were a little row of sub-tabs to each section for All and then each of the individual interest groups.
Also, a bug of sorts (FF4.01. again). When typing in an interest, sometimes the text below the text box would get stuck a few letters behind what I was typing. And if you hit enter, it goes with what's in the text below, not the text box. Hence, I was briefly a fan of Legend of Ze when I had typed Legend of Zelda. I found you can usually fix it by adding a character and hitting backspace, but I'm not sure what's causing it to get stuck sometimes to begin with. It's a problem unique to the interest addition box.
One more thought: Is it worth adding a Sports section to interests? I know we have a lot of sports fans, and it wouldn't be hard to add most all major teams to it.
I agree. Especially with the way the new interests section works, I'd love to make one click and see everyone on the site who's also a fan of the New Jersey Devils.
OK, so favorite games and games merged or something? Because here's the issues (from my perspective): 1. Games had every game I've ever played pulled from my gamertag. I don't necessarily like all those games. I liked having a section where I could note specifically games I was a fan of. 2. The process seems to have wiped out all of my non-Xbox360 games. Many of my favorite games are NES and SNES titles. 3. Tying them together, you end up (potentially) with achievement pages for games that don't have them? Not sure on this.
