> I don't understand the big deal with reducing/simplifying the number of menu options Z has. It's not about eliminating content, just reclassifying and re-categorizing it.

As far as I can see, there is no big deal - not much has been said, by not many people...

The issue, however, would seem to be about how easy, or hard, it is to find or even to know that certain things are present.

If we reduce the number of items, or links, anywhere on the site - tab menu or whatever else - we increase the likelihood of people examining what is left visible, as is there is less "competition for attention" - but we reduce the likelihood people will find or often travel to what is no longer so evident. So that's the trade off.

In fact, reducing what is easily visible, so to speak, increases the editor's power and role, and diminishes that of the user, particularly the more casual user.

On the other hand, piling up more and more visible options, can obstruct people from seeing anything, or getting to things they want, once familiar with the site, if you have to wade through it to do so.

The ideal we attempted to attain, in other words, is to let people, particularly new users, find what they can benefit from, when looking for it, without much or even any difficulty - but to then continue using the site without what they are uninterested in getting in their way.

I have already mentioned that we have major changes coming that will let each user literally determine their own arrangement of site content, obviating the whole discussion - but, setting that aside and talking about what is here now... as noted above, we try for a happy medium - not to have so much visible at one time that each item is buried and invisible in a long list - but also not to have so little visible, or easily visible, that we are effectively deciding for users among our options which they will overwhelmingly attend to.

To do all this we have a clever wrinkle - the sub menus of the tabs...

> Mike presses the point by asking how many we might go down to from the current 13- 10, 8, 5? But we could just as easily go in the other direction. How about 20, or 30? I'm sure some people want to see lyrics, and quotations, and pen pals, and... right on the top page. Right?

Yes. We could.

How many links, don't look, Marcus, do you think there are in the tabbed menu system?

20? 40? - how many?

Well, there are actually 130.

In other words we managed to get 130 different aspects of the site within one rollover of any user's attention... so that users can see what is available, test their interests, find something they vaguely remember, etc., and yet not have to wade through all those links every time they come on the site. In fact, a user can even roll up the top menu so it is only the 13 tabs, if they want.

In other words, despite having so much easily accessible content, nonetheless at any given moment, the "clutter effect" is much much lower, due to the tabs being individual...

> The point is, Z has a ton of content, in several different content types. Most users seem to be in agreeance that the number of options now displayed actually decreases their ability to use and enjoy the site.

I am curious how you deduce that.

We have heard from maybe three users. More, not one has given even the slightest indication of HOW having 13 instead of say 5 top tab items, much less having 5 instead of 130 readily available indicators of different types of information and features, would make the site even an iota easier to use.

> It seems like Mike likes the 13 content types now displayed with rollover menus. But, I would argue that doesn't matter. ZCom is supported by thousands of people, and the programmers have to meet their needs, not the other way around.

Actually - thousands is not three...

And actually, what workers want does matter... all the more so in an editorial operation.

I say that with seriousness. There is a tendency, often, particularly on the left, to quote an anecdote, or a particular person's opinion, often one's own, and to then extrapolate from that as if somehow it is representative of a whole audience.

That's the first point.

The second point is, well, there is a judgement problem too.

Suppose that we actually could take a poll of 500,000 users, and suppose the majority, perhaps even a large majority, said, we don't need the vision section - or we don't need the venezuela coverage, or the race coverage - or the mideast, and so on. They may say, we don't need top page links to that stuff, or we don't need a box with that content featured, or we don't even need that content, it just makes it harder to find what we find most useful, essays on U.S. foreign policy. Or maybe they literally say, get rid of all of it. Or the 500,000 say, overwhelmingly, make it all free. or just get rid of ZSpace, you are spending too much time on interactivity, go get us another good article on Afghanistan...

Does it follow that self management says we should follow these instructions - even if they were overwhelmingly felt by our users, which in fact some probably are?

No. Not even close.

And please note, I am taking time with this issue because this is not in fact an abstract hypothetical matter. When Z Magazine started there was an overwhelming cry from readers, the people actually reading the magazine, that it was too long, we should leave out the gender coverage, the race coverage, the vision stuff - and have only chomsky and herman on international relations, plus the best other antiwar stuff we could find to go with his - so the thing wouldn't be so many pages, so people wouldn't feel guilty not reading it all, which oppressed people, and so on. I am not making this up, it was a constant refrain.

Our reaction was, honestly, go do your own journal of that sort - that's fine, no problem. But we are doing a magazine that is about the totality of oppressions, about all sides of social life, and heavily about vision and strategy. We are not a service organization for a random population nor even for the population that buys the magazine - we are a publication, with an agenda, that we pursue. Our criteria of success isn't having the largest possible audience - but accomplishing certain aims with as substantial an audience as we can build for that.

The same thing applies to the site. There are more people out there who are progressive but who want liberal content, and certainly not class conscious discussions, and who want primarily war and peace content, even now (though there has been a whole lot of progress in receptivity to more diverse content) than who want the array of material that we offer.

So, Marcus - would you like to have that larger community decide that we should dispense with links to vision content, and even that we should stop wasting time on generating vision content at all?

All that said - there is no accounting of the views of an audience in this discussion - and tabulations of views have some importance but are certainly not definitive - honestly, I am still waiting to hear someone say WHY he or she, even as a single individual, thinks that, say, the top tab layer has too many items, and which one or more he or she would like to see removed...and how that would improve things, for him or her, and for others.

You know, we haven't figured out exactly how we will implement the "my top page" technology we are creating - do we let users literally pare down what they access entirely, or do we make some content unavoidable, if you want to use the content at all... it is a tricky question... actually, once we have technical means to convey either option.

> So, that means reclassifying and folding in certain content types with others in order to make a smoother user experience while still retaining content and pathways to that content. I have offered an illustrated idea about how this might be done (yes, I drew that, not an 8 year old).

I am not sure what you are referring to, I don't see a picture.

> Let's get a bit more specific, first with a sub-menu. Under the ZSpace tab are the following 12 links:

About, Writers, Sustainers, Members, Networks, Commentaries, Forum Arch., Forums, Quotes, Lyrics, Poems, Join.

>  After scanning it I think you could have one About/Help page for all of ZCom, and move this link elsewhere.

And this is some kind of significant gain? Maybe you are right, but I don't see it. And I certainly don't see how having an about page for ZSpace, and znet and zmag and ZVideo and ZMI, etc. - each of which are major structures unto themselves - interferes with site use? How is it problematic to have the word about in the list on this submenu? What does its presence do, adversely, for you?

> The writers, sustainers, and members links go to search pages. I would simply have a "search" link - probably just on the zspace main page and not even on the rollover - and include optional filters for writer vs. sustainer vs. member.

Which, we of course, have, as well. But here is the thing, Marcus - again, how does having those links, here too, so if some new person is looking over the site for what's available, they see them and maybe try them, and learn of the availability? Maybe a frequent user will need them only once, or rarely, or not at all. So?

> The forum archive should be linked to out of the forums, and these should be moved to ZNet.

This is just a matter of choice - clearly - but it is there because they were newly added...and they are very extensive and in our eyes deserved more attention... did you try them?

> In its place I would have a message board for less serious, faster moving conversations.

It is coming, but you know, saying what you would have is very different than working with programmers to get it done, integrated with the whole site, paid for, debugged, etc.

There is, honestly, Marcus, about this whole thing, including your post, and we are friends so I put it to you bluntly, a very odd tone. It is as if you think - you and so far two or three others, I guess, that in a few minutes of thought you have uncovered all the issues and intricacies at stake, and you have solutions, and it is all stuff we have simply overlooked or have some subjective resistance to, or something. Do you really believe anything like that. I doubt it. So I think perhaps a little more care in communication might have helped...

It would seem to me, that a better approach, in other words, might be to ask, or suggest - perhaps asking why we didn't do x, or did y, etc. But, be that as it may...

> I would keep networks but change the name to groups, and make the layout on the groups page more aesthetically pleasing and faster to scan. I would move commentaries to the ZNet tab- again, this is serious content stuff. Borrr-ing! Just kidding. Kind of. Quotes, lyrics, and poems- I think these can go to a Z library.

What you are saying is indicative of what YOU like and what you care about - but not necessarily others. Which is why there is more than one way to find various kinds of content - to suit more than one type of user. What you haven't explained is how it HURTS your use to have multiple avenues of access...

That is, there is nothing I can see in having a list of links under ZSpace, so that when you first scan the site, and you first look to see what is there - or perhaps at some later date - you can choose among pretty much all things that are available. It is as if you think a user must roll over the tabs each time they arrive, carefully reading all lists, before going where they want to go, each time. If that were the case, I would agree with you - but since it isn't the case, honestly, I have no idea why you think those menus are problematic.

EXCEPT in one sense. If a person is in such a rush that they don't want to look among options, but they just want a clear path to what they will want - that is compromised...but, that is in fact as it ought to be, I think. We want people to care a bit, to assess a bit, to rely on their own judgement, not ours...

> So after all that, what do we get? The ZSpace top level rollover menu (which itself is a link to the ZSpace top page) offers the following options: Groups, Message Board, Join. Too few? Actually, yes-- I think people need a link to their own page, where they can do any editing or uploading or content creation they need to (the Quick Edit features look good for this) as well as check out any new posts or activity from their friends and groups. Also, chat should be easily accessible to help facilitate its use. So really you end up with: My ZSpace, Message Board (clever name needed), Chat, and Groups.

And what you have is what you want and like - as a long time user - but you don't have something that is to aid a new user and mainly, you have a gain that is imperceptible, to me - a few fewer links on a sub menu that you only see if you are in the mood to look more deeply into zspace and thus rollover the tab.

There are as many ways to list things, as there are permutations of the things - and as we are in process of changing most of our features and methods, this is not a time for modest alterations which will then just be done over, in any case, with the larger changes to come, and so we are unlikely to make many such changes now. It would have been better, Marcus, honestly, if you and others had offered suggestions back when we were putting things together...when we asked over and over and over for suggestions.

Now, we are asking not about long established and soon to be altered design minutiae - but a much bigger issue - the efficacy, or not, or trying to have social networking tools...

> What about the top level menus? To do this right, we'd need to lay out every single content type and then try to categorize them in the best way possible. Can we do it? There's only one way to find out-- let's try! But not now, I'm tired.

Do you realize what you are saying here? How do you think we did it - randomly?

Ask your self what you would be accomplishing - in any case, if we kept this approach and we pushed one of the top level items, or say eight of them, into a category with some others. We would thereby reduce the number of top level tabs, yes. And I am still not sure what benefit that has. We would lose the submenu for those eight items, however...and those items would only be visible if one rolled over some other...

I will take a close look, today, at the menus, and will try to make some reductions - though, honestly, so far I think maybe three people, perhaps five, have suggested that they might like that - without, however, explaining what difference it would actually make to their own site use - and despite that in our eyes, there are countless far more important design and structural matters at hand - mainly, people actually participating as in entering their bios, pictures, and locales, people commenting, using the blogs, entering preferences, etc.