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ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By Michael Albert at Aug 27, 2010 |
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Note Please: If you are a regular and comfortable user of ZCom, this piece is probably not for you, save for information's sake, though it may be for people you know, who use ZCom, but not much of it. If so, please consider passing it along...or even better, just give them a little friendly push.
For a few days this week we have had a house guest here at Z - Brian, a friend from New York and a very active and effective organizer regarding participatory economics and participatory society among diverse other involvements.
I mention this because yesterday Brian was sitting here, next to me, in my "office." Actually, he was sitting at Chris Spannos' desk, since Chris is in Detroit until the end of this week, maybe even a bit longer due to serious car trouble.
Well, Brian and I got to talking about the site and Brian was telling me how hard it is to use, that it was difficult to see what he wants, etc. He liked the mobile site, utterly plain, but had trouble with the full site, too complex.
Now please understand, Brian is not ninety and just learning how to use a computer. He is twenty three. His cell phone appears to be an extension of his arm. His eyes may well be wired to chips, as far as I can tell, given his comfort with and his active use of the internet. And Brian is also close to us, a friend, a partner in struggle, etc.
So, I was a bit incredulous at what he was telling me - and I had him go to the site to show me - which, of course, he should have done two years ago, if he felt thusly. Still, this was perfect. Brian was right next to me. And if the site is really hard to use, as many still suggest, we need to know, of course, and Brian could explain why. If, instead, as I felt was likely, the site is fine but Brian was simply judging it oddly, then we would learn that.
Okay, so Brian went to the top page. Whoa, he clicked around a bit, and navigation turned out to be no problem - there was the tab menu, and he could go anywhere, easily. More, I then asked if he had used the left menu. "No."
I told him, "you can see almost any content - or at least a great deal of it - without even leaving the top page. "Impossible," he said. So I said "click the little right point arrow next to the label comments, in the left menu." He did. And he saw lots of links pop up, the most recent, right there, quick, without even leaving the top page.
I said, okay "do that for other left menu entries." He did. "Great," he said, quite impressed he could get content by topic, person, type, place, etc. And I am wondering, how could he possibly not know this was there. He has used the site for years. Sometimes he uses it multiple times a day. He has gotten a gazillion emails describing features - not from an impersonal source, even - but from a friend.
Fact: The only way for Brian to not see this navigation aid, or any other user, was to never look.
Question: Why, I wondered, if one felt things were hard to get to, would one not look for ways to get to things?
I admit, I have trouble thinking of possible answers to this question - but here is one.
Perhaps Brian assumed, implicitly, and others may be more explicit about this viewpoint, that there couldn't be any good tools on the site, therefore there was no need to look for them. If an instant reaction - not unlikely given that anything takes a little effort to discover - is I can't do X, and if I think there can be no significant features that work - then surely it would turn out, even with giving some time to seeing how to do X, that I would still be unable to do X. So there is no point to my even trying. And I don't.
Alright, at this point I am wondering why in Brian's mind, particularly since he had frequently successfully done it, even navigation was a problem as compared to his routinely saying to people the site is great, it has tons of material that is easy to find, by title, topic, author, date, place - and quick to access.
Okay, maybe we could find out why Brian had that disparaging view of the site lodged in his head by trying something admittedly slightly more complex, especially since at this point Brian said that in any event he didn't really mean that he couldn't get around and read things, rather he meant he found the more interactive features confusing and hard or actually pretty much impossible to use.
I should say that from my point of view this only raised another confusing matter to explain. Let's suppose that setting up a ZSpace page, posting a blog, customizing the site, putting up a photo album, commenting, or whatever, was in fact a little tricky or even really really difficult, and also that there was no help available, there were no videos showing you how to do it, etc. Okay, all that is contrary to what I think is true, but still, even if all that was the case, why would that translate into saying or feeling that the site was hard to navigate? Other sites have no such features, have less content, have fewer navigation tools, etc. But they are fine. Call me nitpicky, but if you can navigage ZCom as well or better - then why is the fact that ZCom offers other options - even if they were horribly hard - evidence that you cannot navigate it? I find that odd.
So, okay, not to belabor that nitpicky detail, at this point I instead said, "how about if you go to your ZSpace page." He did, no problem. After all, how hard is it to click `My ZSpace' next to text saying `Hello Brian' that is clearly and always visible at the top of all site pages, just under the tab menu, whenever you are logged in as a Free Member or Sustainer, of course?
I then asked if he had read the instructions much less viewed the help video about using the site. "No." This didn't seem to register as strange to him, and, nonetheless, as if not looking at help was irrelevant, he said gently, friendly, but still, like the mere fact was a condemnation of the site's usebility, "I don't know how to change my ZSpace page." And he added, "More, I have looked at some other people's very elaborate ZSpace pages, and it seems like they must be geniuses - how could they do that?"
I admit, I was flummoxed. To my ears, this was incredible. If others have elaborate pages - why would one assume it must be because they are geniuses rather than taking it as virtually definitive proof having an elaborate page must be rather easy to do?
Can you see our conundrum here at ZCom? We put a bunch of links on the top page of the site to some exemplary ZSpace pages that users have created. We assume that users seeing those exemplary efforts would immediately think, hey, I can do that too. It looks like fun, even. And I can show my friends and family. And so on. That's roughly the response people have, I think, on seeing innovations and features on commercial social networking sites. But not on ZCom, apparently. Here people don't take inspiration - but instead doubt themselves.
Okay, I ask, "Did you look at a help video?" "No."
"Did you click the left menu help and how to items to see what they say?" "No."
"Did you read any of the many emails we have sent with entreaties and instructions, in some cases?" "No."
And "yet you came to a disparaging conclusion - you, even though you know us?" Okay, I said, "nevertheless, and without even using the help now, do you see the content boxes?" "Yes."
"Do you see the little pencil in the upper right corner of each one?" "Yes."
"Make believe you watched the video of Chris clicking on those to show you how to make changes - or make believe you are on a mainstream site - what would you do to make a change, do you think?" "Click on one." And he did. Whoops, a big smile, a lot of surprise. It turns out it is trivial to make changes.
I showed him he could filter a box to display any content he might want, on his page. He was incredulous. Yes, now it was him, not me, who was surprised.
Okay, "what about the customization - that is way too hard," he said.
I said, "well, there are videos to show you how, but, even without them, up next to your name click Custom ZNet." He did.
I next said, "okay, even without viewing the video or reading the help, right click on tabs in the tab menu at the top." He did. He was flabbergasted that he could point and right click at all, much less that he could right click his way to a transformed version of ZNet that saves automatically, and that is there, whenever he asks to see his custom site, and that he can still see the public site too, clicking for that.
Okay, I said, "what do you see in the upper right corner of each content box?" I admit I was taking some pleasure in "pedagogically" hammering home my point that something other than objective assessment had clouded his prior perception of the site. "A pencil, and an x."
I suggested, "Click the x." "Egad I removed a box."
"Yep. Now click a pencil." "Yikes I can change what is in the boxes that easily, and I can put in graphics, text, links, and have links to site content of different kinds automatically appear and update?"
"Yes, right - you can filter for any content you might want. You can create a top tab menu, sub tabs beneath if, a left menu, and content boxes - all of your own design and choosing for your private viewing each time you return to the site." He was amazed. He could create his own version highlighting what he wanted, leaving out what he didn't want.
I said, click the `Customize' item in the tab sub menu under the tab ZNet. "See the page." "Yes." If you read the yellow box, as on most interactive pages, it is instructions, but forget that, just notice the pages listed. "Yes, they are people's customized pages?" Correct. "But I thought custom pages were only for their owner to use." They except on this one page you can see custom pages others have created, and if you find one you like, you can click on a link up near your name to copy the page - and it will become your custom page, and then you can edit it.
Brian was addled. "I can copy someone else's customization, and then further customize it?" "Yes, and, in fact, our plan was to put up a lot of templates we would create, and users could start with and then adapt them - but I have to admit, we got lazy about that. I think what happened to us was that it seemed folks just weren't using this feature. We spent tons of time, and endless hours, and yes, lots of money - making all this customization not only possible but as easy as we could get it - and then, people basically, mostly, ignore it so that now, even after months, only about a hundred Sustainers have even clicked the link to customize - and of those a much lesser number have actually created a serious custom version of the site." And i suspect no one has become a Sustainer to get this feature...
Indeed, perhaps you can understand why Chris Spannos and I are amazed at how few people take advantage of these and other features, and thus very unclear about what to do to enlarge and enhance the site. in any case, then I pointed Brian to the Groups tab and said click it. He did. I explained that a group could have an admin, and that the admin - and it could be changed who it was, and there could be more than one - could not just accept new members to the group, but could also alter the group page just as fully as she could do for her own private customized version of the site. The one difference is, in the case of a group page, whatever changes the admin made to it, everyone will see.
Brian didn't believe it, so I showed him. He quickly realized - but "that means any group could literally have its own site, with tabs that it wanted, sub menus under the tabs it wanted, left menus it entered, content boxes it cared to have - it is like you are giving people access to what would otherwise be hugely expensive to program, and, incredibly, it takes no programming or other knowledge to maintain it. And it has a blog system. And a forum."
I said, Brian, "that was exactly our thinking. We have built this framework of code and how could we make not just our content but the infrastuctural features available for people to use. And this was the way we tried to do it. It is very very slow, however, to get anywhere... and we don't know why. Publishers and local organizations could use these tools, gaining access to our audience for their ideas and writers, etc. We welcome it. But they don't come..."
I also said, "so as to the features, you now get it, but why didn't you get it before? Why didn't you get it as a result of the obnoxiously high number of times we have sent messages explaining it, or as a result of how we have displayed it in videos and help boxes, etc.?"
Skipping my question, he said, "what's this?" pointing at the stack of little icons arrayed in a vertical column to the left of the left menu?
I said, "have you even bothered to roll your curser over any of them and clicked on them?" "No."
I mean, really, yes we do have a video and instructions about it, but honestly, we thought they were overkill, arguably useful for someone who had never seen a computer and was just first get used to using one - but if, as in Brian's case, we are talking about a person who regularly uses computers, isn't the obvious thing to do to just experiment a little?
"Try it." He did.
Again, he was incredulous - "you mean from anywhere I can do nearly anything, blog, comment, upload content, whatever, this easily?' - I said, that's about right - anything you have permission to do, due to your being signed in as a Free Member or Sustainer (with still more options).
Okay, I have exploited or ZCom's benefit the only slightly elaborated description of the engagement with Brian sufficiently.
Now the thing to note is that maybe his experience isn't indicative. Maybe there are some people who honestly can't navigate the site or can't use its facilities because for them the site is harder to navigate than it ought to be, or harder to use, even after consulting help - though of course that would mean they pretty much can't use any site beyond the most trivial. Maybe - but I gotta tell you -while that's one explanation, I think it only applies to only a few folks. Here are some other possibilities I think are more operative for way more people.
1. A user assumes that nothing more sophisticated than the simplest possible site, if done by the left, much less by the very serious and very radical left, much less by the very serious and very radical and highly underfunded left, could work, so there is no point trying it. So they settle for the basics only.
2. Alternatively, a user can try something beyond the basics once, without looking at help, without viewing a video, and perhaps fail a little, and immediately give up. I should say, I think that 2 is the same as 1...different only in degree.
3. A user can be too intimidated to even try anything that isn't basic. This is different. It isn't a preconceived immutable doubt about ZCom that gets in the way of benefitting from its features, it is doubts about self. And yes, it is our responsibility to help bridge such doubts - thus we include the help screens, the videos, etc. No doubt we should do more, or other than we have - but what? We don't know.
4. Of course, so far, I have been talking about people like Brian who would benefit from the tools if they only made use of them, and all the more so if they got friends and others they know to use them. However, there are many many other folks who just want the basic daily dose of content and want no involvement beyond that. Okay, that's fine - you don't know what you are missing, but so be it. There are a whole lot of things I am missing, too, and that I don't know about, and that I don't investigate. No problem. But I wouldn't claim that the reason for my not doing those things is due to anything other than my choice...
5. Okay, one final point. A kind of Catch 22. I put up some photo albums - but then not more. Me, as a user, not as host of the site. I worked a lot on my personal ZSpace page, but then not more. Again, me, a user, not as host of the site. How come? Well, because others aren't doing their pages, their albums much less noticing mine. Some people might do their ZSpace page for fun, for a few users, even for themselves. Some might do photo albums that same way. I am more utilitarian - or whatever you want to call it. I would use those features, and others, really, honestly, only to have others somehow benefit, and therefore only if enough others are seeing and getting something out of what I do that I think it is worth doing. So that's the fifth and I suspect by far most operative and powerful reason for people to not try features, or try them and then forget about them, though all the four above add to this last reason, of course.
Thus, most importantly, I suspect, a user can feel about the interactive aspects of the site that despite their power and potential, the fact that others aren't using them in really high numbers means that the power and potential are largely unfulfilled, so, hey, I won't use them either. This is the deadly roadblock to progress we keep trying to overcome in all our endeavors, of course. We need to induce initial users despite that there aren't more already, and then we need to reach still more users, up to the point of having enough to be self perpetuating. The same problem as building movements. It is not an easy job...someone's gotta do it...how about more of us!
Recent changes
By Kolahi, Arash at Sep 16, 2010 17:27 PM
I like first and last name attribution. I think that's important given Z's goals. This isn't CNN.
Perhaps a little more space can be added to each column by making the space between columns slightsly smaller. Perhaps about half as wide as they are now. It's hard to imagine how that would look without a mock up, but i think it may gain a little more width to each column without being too cluttered.
Also, the blog post really hit home for me. I love Z, support it for many years. But don't do much on the site. For me I think the reasons are a combination of:
Having a similar attitude as Brian in the blog
Being super busy (I know, but it's true)
Not feeling the synergy with not many of my friends on Z (I think this is a tipping point problem, but one that must be overcome)
Anyways, great work!!!! The site is coming out fantastically in my opionion.
There's some really mean attacks in this thread, which i dont really understand why. Comments like "I'll go read the content in any of the other 20 places most of it appears anyway."
That just sucks.
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one question
By Pienkowski, Martin at Sep 16, 2010 04:06 AM
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Re: one question
By Albert, Michael at Sep 16, 2010 15:57 PM
You can create content boxes that pull blogs and or comments, including by topic or author, etc., on your zspace, or on your own custom version of the site. You can also get rss feeds. And you can use the forum system, though I have to admit, I have not been doing much of that, literally in the forums, and so I am not sure what possibilitles exist there. I will have to check!
As of now you can't say I want all comments on this one particular blog post to display, and nothing else.
As to how to keep up with parts of the site that interest you - the way I do it is, I think, simplest, though perhaps not most elegant. Each day, in my case, actually more often, I go the left menu on the top page of znet, and under highlighted click the right arrow for whatever I want to know about - thus, blogs, comments, etc.
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Re: Re: one question
By Pienkowski, Martin at Sep 16, 2010 18:05 PM
again, keep up the great work and thanks for all your efforts.
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I support the site.
By Pienkowski, Martin at Sep 16, 2010 03:54 AM
regarding the much nonsense above, I think Z and the sysop deserve to be criticised with a bit more respect and dignity (pull yourself out of the gutter, Brian).
I don't contribute much because of time constraints (academic job, 3 kids), but I appreciate the potential of the revamped site. There are glitches for sure, and a crappy search engine, but the interface is overall very good. I'm speaking for myself, not for thousands of potential new users, but hey, it's not that complicated to me.
Providing personal blog activity to sustainers is great, maybe sustainer active blogs could be better accessed, you know, maybe integrated into a forum system for easier interaction and viewing so that all active topics (blogs) were listed by recent activity, organized as threads, etc. (a highlighted quoting system works better than indenting thread replies).
look forward to getting more active here at some time.
- a Parecon fan
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Re: I support the site.
By Albert, Michael at Sep 16, 2010 15:50 PM
What would you change about search? Our thinking is that anyone can find anything specific on teh internet, using google, etc. Inside the site, what the search allows is finding all of various categories and types, in combination.... Do you use it that way, or some other way?
The comments on blogs actually are integrated with our forum system.... though we have not yet made much promotional noise about it, but I agree with you about the indenting of sequential comments - we need to change that because when there are lots of them, it gets way too narrow....
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Re: Re: I support the site.
By Pienkowski, Martin at Sep 16, 2010 17:53 PM
I checked out the forum (was a regular visitor for a time, many years ago). My main (and I think crucial) suggestion is to order the threads by most recent reply, not by time of creation. obviously much easier to follow the latest posts that way, which facilitates participation.
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Suggestions
By Ganchev, Philip at Sep 05, 2010 23:31 PM
The Web site is not as bad as it might seem from the comments by Tom and Brian D. Still, it is a bit overwhelming and confusing. This is partly due to showing less important information and presenting too many options at once. Certainly it's not very helpful to say "read some books about usability", though Tom and Brian say that concrete suggestions were offered. I also see that some of those suggestions (the names) were implemented. Some suggestions from me about the main ZNet page:
- Recude all the fonts by 1 unit
- Reduce the grey space in the header of the page, above the top menu.
- Separate author names from the article titles. Use another font or color for the names, different from the article title font or color. Link the author names to the author ZSpace page. Remove the "[Author]'s ZSpace Page" link from the expanded article intro.
- Consider moving the author name after the article title in the main page.
- Reduce the space between the article title and the folding article summary. Reduce the space to the edge of the column Use slightly smaller font for the article summaries.
- Remove the left menu ("Upload My Article", etc) and replace it with a submenu of an item under the menu with "Participate", "Help", etc. Maybe it can be called "Upload" or something.
- Make the content scale with the window width, that is make it wider when the window gets wider.
- Put the dates in the columns in smaller font and grey instead of black.
For the article pages:
- Increase the font by 1 unit
- Increase the font of the posting editor by 2 units
- Fix the ediror bug where entering a newline (pressing Enter) in the editor scrolls the window. Both the editor window and the browser window it is embedded in scroll so that the cursor is just above the edge of the browser window.
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Re: Suggestions
By Albert, Michael at Sep 06, 2010 12:48 PM
HI Philip,
I appreciate the suggestions, and we will look at the ideas on our test sites...but I am confused about some....
- Recude all the fonts by 1 unit
I guess that is reduce - but why? As it is, I, with horrible eyes, can manage with it - smaller, I can't. As is, it is not too large for anyone to handle...so isn't this a good compromise size... What would we gain going smaller?
-> Reduce the grey space in the header of the page, above the top menu.
But that isn't grey space - it is info about and means to quickly access new zmag and zvideo content - which is what we get revenue for. Actually, however, we have admin means to toggle it down and up - and we should do that more often, having the boxes visible when there is a new issue of video, but sometimes, not having them.
However, us doing that is for a person who is just relating, not trying to have the site as they want it. For the person who is looking at options - look at the little arrow on the right end of the tab menu...click it to reduce all the top matter.
-> Separate author names from the article titles. Use another font or color for the names, different from the article title font or color. Link the author names to the author ZSpace page. Remove the "[Author]'s ZSpace Page" link from the expanded article intro.
We could do these, and will look at them on our test site, but again, I am wondering what you think the benefit is. It would take more space on the top page, and why have the ZSpace link other than on the person's work - and two colors? Garish, no?
-> Consider moving the author name after the article title in the main page.
This one seems strange too - if you mean the link on the top page. Are you suggesting, like this:
Parecon Today and Next Week, Michael Albert
How is that better?
-> Reduce the space between the article title and the folding article summary. Reduce the space to the edge of the column Use slightly smaller font for the article summaries.
On a web site, the one thing that is inexpensive is space - and since it loosens the page a little, and makes it easier to read, etc., and is not there unless intentionally opened, why would one gain by reducing the space?
-> Remove the left menu ("Upload My Article", etc) and replace it with a submenu of an item under the menu with "Participate", "Help", etc. Maybe it can be called "Upload" or something.
This I don't see - I just don't know what you are referring to...
- Make the content scale with the window width, that is make it wider when the window gets wider.
This is technically rather difficult in an automated site, I believe - I like this approach too, anything to make things bigger, and it is actually the way things were years back, but not so much anymore, due to dynamic nature of pages... I think.
- Put the dates in the columns in smaller font and grey instead of black.
I am just confused, I guess - smaller, gray - both making it harder to read, don't you think? How would that help? We will look, but I am doubtful...
Back when the design was first being introduced, by the way, we fluctuated all this type stuff, asking folks their reactions, etc.
-> For articles: Increase the font by 1 unit
I would like to do this too, myself - I keep getting overruled! But - notice under the date off to the right near the top, there is a little icon text tool - not uncommon on the internet - to increase text size.
- Increase the font of the posting editor by 2 units
You mean the default? In many uses you can set it however you like, no?
- Fix the ediror bug where entering a newline (pressing Enter) in the editor scrolls the window. Both the editor window and the browser window it is embedded in scroll so that the cursor is just above the edge of the browser window.
We are working on this...
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Clarifications of suggestions
By Ganchev, Philip at Sep 11, 2010 08:39 AM
Hi Michael,
-> Recude all the fonts by 1 unit
Yes, I meant "reduce". Because it seems to me it is easily legible one size smaller, and takes much less space, so that everything fits more nicely into the page. But I think it used to be even larger before. Of course, individual users can increase or decrease the size in their browser to fit their eyesight and screen resolution. But (1) it should be optimized to the average user, maybe erring on the side of larger fonts to accomodate some other users. And (2), the font size on the main pages should match the fize on the article pages. Currently, the article font is too small, while the main page font too large, so I have to increase and reduce every time I switch between them. And the "+" on the article page does not help with that.
-> Recude all the fonts by 1 unit
I know it's for advertising content for sale, but maybe you can flatten and widen the content so as to better use the available space. That would allow to fit more of the web page content in one screenful. On my screen at least, there is grey space on the left of the advertized content. I also know that it can be collapsed, but there is no need to annoy the casual reader.
-> Separate author names from the article titles. Use another font or color for the names, different from the article title font or color. Link the author names to the author ZSpace page. Remove the "[Author]'s ZSpace Page" link from the expanded article intro.
It would make it easier to spot the title and author name. You don't have to put them on separate lines -- you could, but you could also just use a different font or color, smaller size. The two colors would not be garish if one is a more subdued version of the other, and especially if it matches the other colors already used on the page, such as dark blue and light blue or grey. Also, removing the link from the author name also serves to separate it visually from the article title. But linking the name to the ZSpace page means a user can visit the ZSpace page directly from the front page. (But maybe this last bit would be confusing to use.)
-> Consider moving the author name after the article title in the main page.
This one seems strange too - if you mean the link on the top page. Are you suggesting, like this:
Parecon Today and Next Week / Michael Albert
or
Parecon Today and Next Week [Michael Albert]
The advantage is that the more imporant thing, the title, is seen first. This is how it is done in most newspapers and magazines, because the reader is more interested in the topic of the article than in the author.
-> Reduce the space between the article title and the folding article summary. Reduce the space to the edge of the column Use slightly smaller font for the article summaries.
Having too few words per row is jarring to read; it feels wrong. Yes, you want to avoid making it crammed, but there is a balance with using space efficiently. So I suggest a slightly smaller margin. I am quite sure about reducing the vertical margin.
-> Put the dates in the columns in smaller font and grey instead of black.
Yes, making it slightly harder to read is desired here because the more important content should stand out. The date is less important than the title, so it should be less prominent and take less space.
-> Make the content scale with the window width, that is make it wider when the window gets wider.
The problem is that the Web page content is contained in a table of a specified fixed width. If I save the Web page to my computer and edit the HTML to remove the table width specification, the page widens with the window. The limitation is only in the software you are using to produce the ZNet content. And if it's open source, this too should be trivial to change.
-> Remove the left menu
-> Increase the font of the posting editor by 2 units
Yes, you can increase it manually by using your browser's View menu. But that scroll the page (and scrolls the editor window too)! It should be a reasonable size by default. Currently by default it is smaller even than the article font!
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Re: Clarifications of suggestions
By Ganchev, Philip at Sep 11, 2010 08:41 AM
And I didn't put those italics in my reply. That's another editor bug.
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Re: Re: Clarifications of suggestions
By Albert, Michael at Sep 11, 2010 14:50 PM
Again, it is an open source editor - and we are hoping that a new one we are examining will work better.
By the by, Philip - why haven't you uploaded a picture?
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Re: Clarifications of suggestions
By Albert, Michael at Sep 11, 2010 14:49 PM
Hi, again...
On your points ... with a few observations added for amusement...
First, we will of course again consider font sizes. I myself, however, don't fancy reducing the sizes of fonts on the top page, but I do like the option to enlarge the font in articles. Why?
Well the general point is, different people experience this and all matters of design with their own particular tastes and inclinations - and the design outcomes we opt for reflect many opinions. The default will never be, can never be, what everyone prefers - except if we allow you to make changes yourself - and even create your own version with your own preferred defaults - and of course we do just that for many aspects.
About font size, in particular, I think sites should err a bit on behalf of the poorly sighted - if font is larger than the average user wants, it doesn't prevent him or her reading it. If it is smaller than a poorly sighted person wants, he or she can't read it, or can, but gets a headache - or has to enlarge it, an extra step. Of course, we don't make it huge, for the worst imaginable eyes, we make a choice. Making good choices - not perfect ones - depends on paying attention to impact not on one user, or a small set of users, or even a large set of users, but all users - as well as keeping in mind purpose.
You have me thinking about this quite broadly now - and here is something tangentially related that crosses my mind.
Suppose you host a site that depends on attracting an audience that will buy things or respond to ads to buy things.
Suppose you believe, or have evidence, that being poorly sighted reduces the user's proclivity to buy things - by reducing budgets, or due to being correlated with age, and so on. Now, you are choosing your fonts. You may well want to choose smaller to get as many of the type users you want, younger, bigger budgets, more interested in your products, etc. - as you can. It is Just a thought - I don't know it applies much to the issues of font sizes.
However, I watch a lot of TV - and here I think maybe a version of this does apply, not to size of things, but to the audio tracks. Older folks have a very hard time, sometimes literally cannot hear dialogue. Trust me on this - it is true. I have often wondered about this. Partly it is they are muddled, require really good hearing. Partly it is even true for older folks with good hearing - though. The sound tracks mesh dialogue and music in ways younger folks can parse, but older ones - not so much. Now I think perhaps there is a reason for this situation - younger folks like the audio that is being offered - and older folks matter less to the networks... particularly for certain shows, given the likely advertisers for those shows - it is just another thought... but this time I think perverse as it might seem, it may in fact apply. It is hard to understand why else producers wouldn't bend a bit more to dialogue being hearable...
Here is a related point. Suppose some big producers opt for the above logic. Major shows now have the hard to parse dialogue, but they are also hip and popular. Other shows don't even necessarily know why they are copying the choice - they just know it seems to work - they call it aesthetic, they call it art - they call it anything they might want to, when they are talking in meetings about it...but the reality is it is in this case an ad/finance driven choice...being copied.
On another point you raise, when you personally want more of the content beneath the tab menu to be visible on your smaller monitor, please just click the little link off to the right beneath the submenu of the tab menu... It is under your control. How could you find out it is there? Well, we could make it huge - but then, if we did that to everything someone might want to access, the site would be a mess. Or we can offer help...which, if you believe the site probably has solutions for your concerns, you might consult...
I mean that very seriously. My guess is most users, due to their prevelant experiences, more or less assume that on left sites, maybe all sites, what they quickly see is all there is - a problem.
I am dubious that any change in title and author order or coloring, etc. would have much effect - BUT we will look at that too.
The more general reply is, we have an endless list of things that need work - many that folks can't see having to do with data storage, speed, billing features, etc. - others affecting new features that you will see in the future, but not yet - others correcting bugs that pop up and must be beaten back - and then some that are refinements in design. All are important, but we constantly have to apportion time among them... based on estimates of impact on the experience people have, and the site's future... If we had more funds, of course we could do more, faster, and not have to take things one at a time...
If you see an item listed in a content box as a link, and you want to know more about it before going to it, you can click the down arrow next to it and get instant additional info. Either the title, or the author's name - may cause you to do that. You happen to think the title is more important. My guess is that with us having recurring authors who people get to know, the author's name is easily as important - particularly to those in a rush.
As to margins, regarding the little descriptions that appear when you push a down arrow - soon some of those are going to be by default open, rather than all of them closed, while others are closed - and at that point we will reconsider the margins, as well... I have to look, I wouldn't be at all surprised if you are totally right about this.
You suggest that reducing the readability of the dates in the recent content column would help by "making it slightly harder to read" which you feel "is desired here because the more important content should stand out. The date is less important than the title, so it should be less prominent and take less space."
Can we agree that these are (a) small points in the experience, and (b) really not obvious at all - and very largely a matter of taste so at most a few more would like it one way than another way?
Now, on this suggestion, very nearly the first design rule anyone learns is to keep fonts and colors uniform, do not change them all over - as to do so is jarring, adds to the feeling of clutter, etc. You are saying, in this case, that making the dates less visible helps, by removing them from attention. Assuming dates are not very important, as you do, maybe you are right. However, I think such a change would actually cause them to grab more attention - because people would not only notice them more due to being more different, they would become more jarring, and many would have to work to know what they are. And that is if dates don't matter much, as you say. But what if you come to the site daily and view the new articles daily. Now the dates are helpful....you can stop perusing the list when you get to the date you have already looked at in the past.
You say "Make the content scale with the window width, that is make it wider when the window gets wider." And you add, "The problem is that the Web page content is contained in a table of a specified fixed width. If I save the Web page to my computer and edit the HTML to remove the table width specification, the page widens with the window. The limitation is only in the software you are using to produce the ZNet content. And if it's open source, this too should be trivial to change."
Well, in some situations what you say would be correct - while designers and programmers long ago decided this was a horrible idea - in older incarnations of the site, as a matter of fact, we did it - mainly because I thought the designers and programmers were wrong about it being horrible. But now, it really isn't an option - there are countless features that are affected by the page layout, widths, location of pop-ups, the console, etc. Overlays, are not least among those features - try the left menu. I don't think we can do this...with great expense and travail, but we will explore the possibility.
-> Remove the left menu
This is the kind of suggestion I find hard to comprehend. The left menu is incredibly powerful for navigation. I use it every day for - well - what I am doing now. Discovering and opening recent comments instantly...and accessing them. In a very real sense the left menu gives the main site user a kind of equivalent of EasyZ built into the main site. I use it for quick blog access, and on and on. The help and participate sections are, in my view, indispensable aids to people who need to use them, and nearly always there. On a custom page, I, or you, can actually, pretty incredibly, use it for any content we want, removing what we don't want, adding what we do want.
It is also doesn't take much space, looks okay, etc. So let's say you try it, and don't like it. Okay, no problem. But why would you think that you don't like it should cause it to be removed?
-> Increase the font of the posting editor by 2 units. Yes, you can increase it manually by using your browser's View menu. But that scroll the page (and scrolls the editor window too)! It should be a reasonable size by default. Currently by default it is smaller even than the article font!
I agree...but my understanding is, the reality is that the editors we use, that pop up, are open source and then wired into our framework. If we had built our own, this would not have been an issue. We are waiting for the next version of the editor - and with it - there will be, we hope, a number of desirable changes.
Here is another aside that I was struck by just yesterday. It turns out maintaining the Apple store - and ITunes as a means of accessing it - JUST THAT, nothing else - costs Apple just under $1 billion a year. Yes, you read that right - I was shocked too.
When people come to left sites and bring expectations that derive from their experiences on Apple, Google, and so on - partly it helps - because when the feature or capacity is a good one, maybe we can find an inexpensive approach to achieve it. But I think it also makes sense to have a sense of proportion about this - when a site has a small staff, even five or ten people working on it much less two - and a very tight budget that has them constantly struggling in all respect including paying outside programmers - folks should realize that ultimately, given what is even remotely possible, the main thing that will impact the quality of the experience is not unlikely to be small refinements that are undertaken, then changed back, then changed forward again - using up small budgets. Rather, the main thing that will largely affect the experience is going to be the extent the site hosts can somehow attract more resources and undertake innovations that impact all users...as well as finding time to generate new content....
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"Z Easy"
By D'Arcy, Steve at Sep 03, 2010 04:03 AM
I think that, even for people using a desktop or laptop, the most straightforward (not necessarily the "best") way to access recent content is via the option described on the front page as "ZEasy" (also known as "ZMobile"): http://mobile.zcommunications.org/
It might be useful to some people to have that option be given more prominence, for example, by putting a big button they could click, labelled "Simplified ZNet Site" (or whatever, maybe ZEasy) so people could check that version out, to see if it suited their needs better. Probably some people would prefer that, and some people would prefer the full range of options as they are laid out on the current front page of ZNet, and many people probably would like to choose either one, depending on their needs at a particular time.
However, what holds me back from using ZEasy -- which is especially appealing as a way to keep tabs on the most recent Comments, in order to stay on top of discussions happening on the site -- is that there seems to be no way to click from ZEasy to get to the main ZNet site.
I guess what I'm saying is that I think that both options -- ZEasy and the current ZNet -- could be made readily available to everyone (regardless of what kind of hardware they're using), but that there should be an option of switching back and forth, depending on what kind of engagement with the site you are looking for. ZEasy might be ideal for some visits, as when one just wants to pop in to the site for a few seconds, to check out what's new today, but not as ideal for other visits, as when one wants to inform oneself about some recent discussions about "PPS" organizing in different countries, or to view material more than one or two days old (both of which might be easier if you could engage with the bigger, more comprehensive site).
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Re: "Z Easy"
By Albert, Michael at Sep 03, 2010 12:58 PM
On the ZMobile top page - the last item leads to info about the site and Z Full Site.
On Z Full, links to ZMobile are in the left text box, the top menu under zcom, and the getting started box - however, honestly, we do not want to imply that we think people on desktopsor even laptops should primarily access ZCom via ZMobile.
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Re: ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By vS, R at Sep 02, 2010 15:53 PM
Hi Mike (and others),
First off, great site. It's one of the few that I visit regularly.
That said, I agree with most others here that the interface could use some improvement. For instance, trying to find the forums isn't very easy.
But aside from making the interface more intuitive, you could look into how the Sustainer program is set up.
It might be an idea to also let free members comment (if I understand it correctly only sustainers can comment). 5000 potential commenters isn't much to create a lively place, having a 100,000 could make quite a difference.
Of course there are also good arguments against it (like creating premium value for sustainers or trying to foster serious discussion instead of frivolous comments). But it's something I at least would welcome. Right now there's not much reason to comment on articles, because most likely it will just be a monologue, without any input from others (this article being an exception).
To be clear, I'm just voicing my opinion here, I'm sure you've thought about this a lot already.
PS. To Manos: There's a "Search" link, right above the left menu, which takes you to the search page.
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Re: Re: ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By Albert, Michael at Sep 02, 2010 18:08 PM
Hi,
The reason trying to find the forums is hard - is that we aren't yet sure about their use and haven't tried to promote it and thus made them a bit more visible.... It is intentional. The forums capture comments, etc. but using them directly we haven't pushed yet. It just doesn't quite feel ready. When we do push it, any ideas on how...keep in mind, that making anything really visible, makes other things that other people want to access, a little less visible - and, well, we have lots of things!
You are of course right that if we had 100,000 free members able to comment there would be lots more comments, and it might drastically escalate in use. And it would might make comments more exciting and diverse. But there are two serious problems.
First, it would also lead to much less care in commenting, and much more ad hominem behavior - we know that from experience. It is very very easy to become a free member, and then comment - with not such good motives.
Second, even as commenting might become more exciting and engaging - assuming we could somehow create a climate that curtailed nasty posts - it would no longer spur Sustainership. That is a problem because without Sustainership, no commenting at all, because no site at all. So we have to straddle that line... What we do is give commenting to ALL Sustainers, including those donating only $1 a month, to try to ensure that as best we can the obstacle isn't so much financial, as being willing to sign on, support the site at all, be in the database and accessible, etc. etc.
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my experience
By Tamburini, Matteo at Sep 02, 2010 06:06 AM
hi Michael,
i have been reading Z for a long time, and find the content very valuable, but i will admit that i have commented and customized very little - certainly less than i could.
i used to write consistently on a non-Z blog a while back, with the feeling that it was mostly a handful of friends who read it and occasionally commented (when i set up the zblog, the first question was "why can't we comment?). Shortly thereafter, i abandoned the endeavor for otehr reasons, mostly a loss of interest.
i also participated in an online discussion board in Jersey, mostly to counteract one member's frequent pro-school-voucher posts.
and i will also say that i don't use the internet very much as a social venue - i am WAY behind the societal curve in that respect.
as i think about why i do things the way i do, i come up with these reasons.
1) my attention span with anything i read online has drastically shortened. i read headlines and skim articles, and rarely spend time consistently reading things. i kind of wonder if anyone else has the same experience, of feeling their attention span so shortened.
2) most of the time i don't feel particularly moved to comment. perhaps the author is providing information or analysis, but i generally agree (and point 1 above ensures that i perhaps skim over the details), and i'm not sure what my comments would add that's valuable. So, take Paul Street's analysis of Obama. my impression is that he has been writing essentially the same thing since the election a couple of years ago, and i know what he's going to say, so i kind of skim over the beginning, scroll to the end, and stop there - knowing that i generally agree. this thread is obviously different.
3) i'm not sure who's reading, or whether it matters that i write or comment, or that i have anything in particular that may be interesting to the general community. does Znet really need yet one more musing on (insert any topic of national or international discussion here). and would anyone care if i wrote something about (insert very local issue here)?
perhaps this is just some sort of mental fatigue, or maybe it is a sense of being disconnected from the heartbeat of the work: yes, the world is in bad shape. yes, people are resisting oppression in domination. but how does this work in my day-to-day interactions?
4) Of course, there is the investment issue: if i were to put some work into publishing material, and commented more, perhaps i could create more of an online community, and begin to see more value in participating - but the beginning is always the hardest part....
perhaps the lesson that i am taking away from this is that i should prod more people locally to join Z, so that there could be more of a venue for local discussion...
a couple of final notes: the navigation may not be the greatest, but it really does not pose an insurmountable problem. and i continue to read and support the endeavor, because i think it's a worthy one.
anyway, i hope these ruminations make sense and are helpful in some way.
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Re: my experience
By Albert, Michael at Sep 02, 2010 17:46 PM
Hi,
Your comments are actually right at the heart of my feelings about the internet - and ZCom, and design too.
I think your experience regarding attention span is not only not confined to you, but is very common - and I also think it is not accidental. American media has as one of its key attributes forcing content into tiny packets - which virtually precludes serious deviation from accepted beliefs. Sometimes the trend is blatant and obvious - but other times it is much more subtle, hard to see at all, and one can even feel it isn't happening - yet it seems that it is. More, if you get used to having to relate to that kind of packaging and so on, you develop expectations and habits which makes media venues that operate differently seem out of whack, perhaps even poorly conceived, inefficient, or whatever....
I am going to write some more in blogs about this, and related matters, so I won't go on here.
The experiment with Brian K, and actually I think the most serious impediment to massive growth of the interactive aspect of the site - is directly addressed by your experience, I suspect. And like you, I hear about experiences like this and it seems one reason - not the only one but a quite powerful one - people don't write more blogs or comments, is the feeling that either they agree so why do it - or someone else will say it so why do it - or too few will relate to it, so why do it.
I think those feelings are real, and reasonable - even, to an extent, accurate. But they are also a kind of vicious circle... More on this too, shortly...
Mainly though, these points are not talking about design - which doesn't mean design can't help deal with the issue, but it does mean there is way more to it then design...
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User interface is daunting
By Sfakakis, Manos at Sep 01, 2010 17:36 PM
Hi Mike, Chris
I am a new member, just became a sustainer with the minimal amount -- it's all I can afford at this point.
Considering the content I can say that I often read the most useful analysis and insight at znet on a specific matter. the analysis on the greek economy for example was eye opening and provided in a nutshell.
On the other hand, it is hard to dissagree with Tom and Brian and other commenters on the troubles of the interface. At first it is daunting and for me it has remained that way.
If I could point out some of critique in short:
1. the top of the front page. it seems like there are many many sub divisions, and sub divisions within each sub division (I make it sound like it's a maze.. sorry! but sometimes if feels that way)
2. new content is not easily found and not nicely under a specific category. lets say I am looking for analysis on haiti it's hard to find.
3. apparently there is no search button. sorry if I failed to find it.
let me also say the good points about it.
1. the articles are as easy to read as nowhere else. and they download to pdf in a wonderfull layout.
2. surely if I could find more time to use more features I would.
got to go. all the best to all in the team.
manos from athens greece
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Re: User interface is daunting
By Albert, Michael at Sep 02, 2010 17:57 PM
Hi, thank you for your Sustainer support, and for commenting!
> 1. the top of the front page. it seems like there are many many sub divisions, and sub divisions within each sub division (I make it sound like it's a maze.. sorry! but sometimes if feels that way)
No need to be sorry, if it feels that way to you, then it does! But I am honestly not quite sure what it means. There is the top tab menu - and that does point to main site areas - such as ZMag or Blogs or the Store, and so on... And then when you highlight one of those with your mouse, there are links in the subtab menu to things you could also go to straight from ZMag or Blogs or the Store, and so on. But this way, you can do it in one step, not two. Is this what you are referring to? Do you have a suggestion that you think would make it feel less as you, yet also not cut into ease of navigation?
> 2. new content is not easily found and not nicely under a specific category. lets say I am looking for analysis on haiti it's hard to find.
New content is in the content boxes on the top page - it is really all you see... but how would you find stuff on Haiti, new or older?
Well, in the top tab one of the tabs is Places. We could remove that, but it seems like it can help people find, well, info on places. If you click it, you get to a path to all the place pages. And there is one for Haiti. However, if you roll over the Places tab, there is also in the sub menu - Haiti - which takes you to the Haiti Page. Finally, if you don't even want to leave the top page - in the left menu there is also a Places section. If you open it, there are featured ones, if I remember right, I think Haiti isn't there...but Latin America is, and so you can see all recent Latin America content even without going to a new page.
Does any of this work for you? Can you give us a suggestion how we could have the capacity to see place content as readily handy - yet not incur whatever hesitancy you felt?
3. apparently there is no search button. sorry if I failed to find it.
It is the top thing in the Left Menu. We used to have it a few times - people complained that that was redundant.
In the left menu - you see the Sections for Help. There is a Help item, and when you expand that, Search help.
Again, having this do you have a suggestion for an improvement.
Of course we could make SEARCH really so big that no one would miss it - the problem is we can't do that with everything people may want to see!
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im happy with the site
By McGehee, Michael at Sep 01, 2010 17:28 PM
i dont understand what the problem is for others but i think the site is self-explanatory and user friendly. i just posted an article and a blog lickety split. no problems.
the only problem i run into and if you see my homepage youll understand why is the posting of videos. when i post a video i have to manually size it down to fit in the columns. thats a bit of a pain but not a nightmare. i figured it out real quickly.
from what ive gathered some folks complained about the old site, you folks raised a shit ton of money to finance changes and this what we got. something i can alter to fit my preferences and use very easily.
A+ on a job well done
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Re: im happy with the site
By Albert, Michael at Sep 02, 2010 17:29 PM
Thanks Michael.
Not sure what the video problem is, can you write it up in an email if you think it is significant - indicate very carefully where you are and what happens that is a problem - and also what your fix was - and we will see what we can do!
We changed from the old site to this one for many reasons - not so much complaints as our feeling the old site wouldn't sustain future projects we wanted to undertake, etc. We raised funds, but much less than this would ordinarily cost - but we have a programmer outfit that likes us, cares about the site, and works relatively inexpensively.
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Re: ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By Arnold, James at Sep 01, 2010 10:58 AM
Dear Michael,
I am a sustainer of the site and think it's great. I have just one quibble. Why can you only post a comment on a blog if you have an account? I was going to publish my blog posts on Z, but after the first couple posts friends (who are not members of the site) told me they didn't leave comments because you have to create an account to do so, and they couldn't be bothered. As a result I just created a blog on another site instead.
Perhaps the issue is that there would just be too much traffic if everyone and his uncle can post comments on the blogs. In which case, don't mind my quibble.
Keep up the good work.
All best,
James
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Re: Re: ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By Albert, Michael at Sep 01, 2010 12:39 PM
Glad you like the site! And actually, glad you asked this question too - the policy needs to be frequently explained, revisited, etc., for new folks who haven't heard it all before.
There are a few reasons for have only sustainers be able to blog or comment...
Least, these functions take resources - have costs, so the funds pay for those. We don't take ads or have big donors.
More, the whole site has costs that must be covered and the sustainer program manages to do that - while donations without premiums don't even come into the ballpark of denting that....
Finally, suppose we received, tomorrow, millions of dollars so that there was no pressing financial reason for the policy - still - there is another reason...
When commenting and blogging, and engaging in other other interactivity, does not require a log in - and sometimes also a donation - it is done by a few more folks who are serious - which is a gain, the one you have in mind - but mostly, the gain in activity is unwanted activity. It is people anonymously and without any practical possibility of being stopped, posting ads, porn, destructive ideologically motivated attacks, etc. etc. Our most active posters would be rabid right wingers and porn robots... People with no serious relation to the site, would just exploit it with no concern for the norms and aims of the site, and in a way that crowds out others who have serious motives. We neither want to do our work to facilitate junk, nor, even more so, do we want junk to crowd out serious activity.
The internet is a great thing - but also with serious problems. One is that it reduces attention span, another is that it makes people think somehow goods really are free - when they aren't - it causes people to want quick bites and not substance, etc. etc. Of course not everyone - but these are real trends, and not positive ones.
When your friends say it is too much trouble - they can't be bothered - note they aren't saying $1 a month or even more probably, is too much. It actually isn't the money that keeps people from doing it, but the act itself - signing on - and honestly, that is a problem. We can't change the world when just the act of signing on to something we believe in, that we relate to, is too much trouble...
And I think what makes them feel it is too much trouble likely isn't even how much trouble it is, but a kind of reflex based on so many things not requiring it....
At any rate, that's a pretty full explanation - there are posts about it, even discussions of policy on the site, etc. It is a very serious issue - causes us great consternation - we would love to send nightly commentaries to everyone, etc. but it is also the policy that keeps the site operating at all...
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Re: ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By Ribeiro, Marcelo at Aug 31, 2010 10:07 AM
Well, in first place, I would like to present myself. I am the lead developer of the ZNet developers team. The one who makes the bridge between ZCommunications guys and the other developers. Also, please pardon if I don't express myself in a clear way in the next few lines - english is not my mother tongue and sometimes we just say everything we did not mean to. Still, i will try.
A lot has been said about the website, how it looks complicated, how last names take prescedence on content titles, how too many buttons create a nonsense interface or how shortened titles takes out the meaning of the content it refers to. A lot has also been said about how the website interfaces look like a Boeing 747, attribute that would make most people run away from ZNet. And a lot has also been said about Michael Albert's way of seing things, his preferences, what he chooses to put on the website, or set aside. This is not to mention problems we have with typos all over the site (from our developers), idiot bugs and problems when emailing people.
Now, is any of us a usability expert? No. Do we need one? Maybe. But truth be told, we have been doing what we can do. And when we can do. Sometimes we make it right. A lot of the times, we make it wrong. When we make it wrong, we have 2 choices: Leave it there, and it shall be optimized, simplified, on the future. Or dump it. Dump it would mean get sustainers' money and bin it. That is far from the I respect I have for sustainers collaboration over the years (I have been with ZNet 3 years now). So we keep it. Look forward, and try to improve it. Now, how can we improve it? Going after feedback. Receiving feedback. And acting. Usability studies are conducted with ordinary people, walking on the streets, and invited to come inside, receive 5 times per hour what we get, to add their inputs, one time, about the experience they have using an ecommerce website or online newspaper. We just cant get out, asking people if they are left-minded, activists, and ask them to come in and try the website. So we rely on our sustainers, and overall members.
Had Michael been totally satisfied with the website he has in hands, he would not dedicate a blog post about his concerns with the lack of social interaction between the people who actually fund it. After all, having a website with content is not the main goal - there are many out there. Having people participate and get more conscious abotu politics and the world we live in, actively understanding, discussing and acting, is the goal. And if we can'd do that with people spending money on the project, putting their faith on it, how could we do with someone else? How could we expand?
Now, what I dont think this post was intended to was to receive unprescedent criticism about the website. Or, lack of recognition of what is being done, or what we are trying to do here. We never said we were perfect. We never said people should understand our website and how it works. What we said is: we are trying to understand why wont people use it. As I mentioned before, we are no usability experts, although that's what we have been after the last months. And we will apply whatever we learn and agree with. After all, what is the point of being a can-do, and not be able to put your beliefs on your project? In other words, how many people are out there that dedicate their lives to rise against the current policies of the G8, G10, or G20? Those who do should not be obligated to abide from their percepctions, or preferences, should they?
In a more cruel way - my answer to these people is: can you do better? If you can, why don't you? You can paste your website link here. It's not a challenge, nor a threat. Anything new about what we do, radical left, would be very welcome. You are even welcome to do it your way, with your preferences. If you don't like last names on the title, don't use them. It is just hard to assume that things like that have a bad effect on a website when we have an average of 300k unique visitors a month, and less than 10 complain about it. We love to receive feedback. But it doesnt mean it would be something we would work on, right away, every time any of our sustainers suggested something. The website is already a Boeing 747, remember? We dont want it like an Airbus 330 (supposing it is more complicated, I honestly dont know).
Another thing to point out is that we have the current site structure for 3 years now. It has been using the same layouts for top pages, boxes, content, etc - despite our total back end reformulation. Still, it is a website layout that looked good at that time, before we had 70% of the functionalities we have now. We worked a lot on programming, and new tools for the website. We worked none on the website layout. Why? Well, we dont have a designer ready, right away. But, what would be the point having one, if we don't know how would people react to a new site layout, given the fact we receive little feedback on the current one? Usability would tell you, you might say. But then? Should we follow, 100%, usability rules that were designed almost entirely focusing a capitalism environment? A 'swallow everything I give you' policy? Because that is what major newspapers do online, then they choose the best article for that day, and put it there 20times larger than smaller ones.
Criticizing is easy. It's so easy, we do it every time, even where it is not requested. Doing is not that easy. It takes time, efforts, and life out of you. Suggesting, on the other hand, is not as easy as criticizing, but less harming than doing. And that is very welcoming. So welcoming, we will read the criticts right before suggestions, the ones that would make the later make sense. And suggesting also takes you out of a mere consummer, which is again, good. Mere consummers, on the other hand, just go out to another website where they will show content in a very friendly way, hierarchized, and without last names with the title. our mission is to transform, mere consummers into active collaborators. Or, activists. So, if the website is not helping us achieve it, we will find out why. And change. That is what we believe our supporters support us for - even when not even that point is very clear to me.
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Re: Re: ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By Dominick, Brian at Sep 03, 2010 19:29 PM
I want you to know that none of my (very harsh) commentary was intended to reflect on you, Marcelo. You are a paid contractor. I used to have your EXACT job at ZNet. I think I have insights that are valuable, but I guess I don't know how to present them.
Also, just for the record, I have passed along MANY, MANY concrete suggestions. I know that some of them have been passed on to you and implemented. I think the vast majority never were, but that isn't to say they were good ideas -- just that I am not the type to criticize without offering thorough suggestions. I have in fact spent MANY of hours on the site and writing emails or in discussions with Mike and Chris about possible solutions or new ideas, including VERY long exchanges with them about new features and such (for instance, most recently, hours spent parsing ideas for the mobile site theme). That's what I do for a living, so obviously I do think I can "do better" in some ways, or at least contribute. (Though I think you are better at this job than I ever was or could be, to be honest, in terms of technical skill -- my only advantage was that I was an avid user of the site and was involved in other Z-related activities and knew the audience/sustainers VERY well; insights I still think are valuable, but maybe I'm wrong there...)
Now to be frank, Marcelo, I think you're forgetting that Mike brought this whole thing up with his post. That some people would comment critically after a post of this nature shouldn't result in a challenge of "can you do better?" Why should anyone have to be able to do better in order to give their opinion here? I don't even get that. You should be BEGGING people to give their opinions, even if they couldn't DREAM of doing better. That is our job, as developers -- it's OUR JOB to do better. Not everybody has the expertise or inclination or resources to build a website. That doesn't mean we aren't responsible to do our best, just because it's already better than what they can do. I'm not suggesting you don't know this, but I'm also not sure you realize how your statement might be taken by people who can't "do better" but still might have valid critiques or ideas to contribute.
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Re: Re: Re: ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By Ribeiro, Marcelo at Sep 04, 2010 19:37 PM
Hi, Brian
It's good to have you back. Honest!
I'd like you to know I never felt your commentaries (parts of them harsh, yes) directed to me. So no harm there. All I wanted to do was to put my point of view on something that got my attention, which is also a very good point to discuss about, if we want to improve the website.
Yes, I am a paid contractor. But to be honest with you, the site and the cause has a place in my heart now that allows me to be much more than that, given the time spent, insights given and passion inputed to the website - in a total inverse proportion from what I get paid for it (considering what I could get out there in the market, as a developer, etc. Well you are a developer too, and may know exactly what I mean).
That said, I agree with you with everything you said. Yes, as developers and webmasters, it is our job, definitely, to do beg for people's comments without expecting them to do better. And that is true on a developer / end user relationship reflection. But the scope in which I asked people who don't like the site, its way of displaying content or features was that, instead of just "giving up and go read somewhere else", why not to try and demonstrate your point of view is is a better one by creating something that would instead bring more participants to the cause? in other words: ME, as a DEVELOPER, should never expect USERS to be better than me so they could come up with criticism or suggestions. But that WE, as ACTIVISTS, could yes ask for other ACTIVISTS to try to do better, and that's what I meant. That way, we all win. I myself don't agree with Michael in some points, and am willing to start something off the table to try to prove him some other implementations might yield better results.
I understand some of your valuable insights were considered to the website progress, and implemented. I also understand some of them were forgotten, or maybe even ignored. Well, I have to confess that If I say something to Michael today, tomorrow I have to say again or he will, very probably, have forgotten it :-). Still, if you think you can still be heard, I am all ears to your insights and, considering how well you know the sustainers - which I obviously have no doubt, It would be definitely interesting to hear what you have to say and try to put some of the ideas to work. So, if you aren't sick of all this yet, please do send them to me, and I will see what I can do!
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Re: ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By Kelly, Brian at Aug 30, 2010 21:01 PM
As Michael said, we're both great friends, and I was in Woods Hole on a visit from where I live in New York. If I recall correctly, we had just gotten back from lunch when we went through the site together. The piece was not a response to me, but a prod at others to actively use the site's features, and to actively suggest concrete possibilities for improvement. To put it in perspective, I was laughing at the simplicity of doing most things once he showed me.
You can edit how both your ZSpace is displayed to others, as well as how ZNet looks to you, with as much or as little content as you like. For example, if 700 links bothers you, and all those tabs bother you, just log in, click "custom ZNet". Right click on one of the tabs, and you an delete it.
Tom did bring up a few concrete suggestions I think - using clear titles; having a section at the top left with "featured stories" or the stories of the day, that is more prominent than older stories; not using last names;... maybe some others?
Tom: I don't think your last name suggestion is something that really says why ZNet has good or bad design. Common Dreams, AlterNet, and Socialist Worker.org, to take three sites, all use first and last names all over their pages, and their layout is superb.
I do think ZNet's layout can improve as time goes on. The font size issue, for example, I don't know the keys on a Mac, but on a PC, if you press control and the plus sign / equal sign key, the font will fill up your screen. This works for the NY Times site, Alternet, most sites. It needs to work on being more intuitive. But Michael is right. People spend countless hours on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Facebook changes its layout constantly and people are in an uproar. But they take the time to learn the new features. Facebook's new features might be more intuitively designed, but people spend far more than the few minutes it would take to set aside to learn how to use Z more effectively.
But that's different from the platform that Z is currently on. As far as I can tell, the features let you do a lot of really powerful things that most sites - common dreams, alternet, etc... - do not allow you to do.
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Re: Re: ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By Lane, Tom at Sep 03, 2010 18:53 PM
> Tom: I don't think your last name suggestion is something that really says why ZNet has good or bad design
Hi Brian. Just wanted to clarify that this is misattributed to me. For what it's worth I am actually in favor of featuring the author name in the title. It's appropriate for commentaries and helps differentiate the sea of information on the site.
My specifics concerned giving the main content a more prominent and clear positioning. Content is the most valuable asset on znet and probably the main reason people vist that top page -- so give it appropriate emphasis. I suggested putting the top stories up top, not squishing them inside one of four columns that forces word-wrapped titles, giving room for descriptions of the most important ones, and cutting down on link clutter.
On that point, I actually used a link counter: http://linkcounter.submitexpress.com/ that actually did count 700 links that day. I just ran it again and it looks like there is some double-counting due to companion image links, but there are still about 350 unique links. That's just too much, especially considering they are all given a similar level of prominence.
But I must also note again that these are just some suggestions I dropped along the way to making a larger point. The larger point is that these suggestions are as arbitrary as anyone else's. We could debate back and forth forever.. but what is the basis of the debate? Our own instincts? When instincts don't overlap, which is what I sense just looking at the site gestalt, we need to try to scrounge up some data and as objective a process for digesting it as we can. I saw an attitude in Mike's original post that I recognized as less than ideal, and that's what I reacted to.
Too strongly, I must add. Calling the site design a "total mess" was too harsh, and counterproductive. I apologize to all involved.. I know how hard these things can be.
-Tom
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Re: Re: ZCom Sucks - Or Does It?
By Albert, Michael at Aug 30, 2010 22:31 PM
Brian,
Thanks for weighing in, Brian...now Brian K, clearly. I appreciate it.
The font size thing - why wouldn't you tell us that earlier or did it just surface?
Believe it or not, bugs come along all the time - things that worked no longer working - it drives us crazy and Chris and I spend a lot of our time finding them, and getting the programmers to fix them. However, we have no idea there is such a font problem, and have never seen it, ourselves. What you describe isn't a design flaw or bad conception, it is a bug, and a big one, it sounds like. Please send me an email telling me what you did, on what page, and what happened so we can reproduce it and get it fixed. As you know I have terrible eyes and always have to enlarge text...but I use a mac - so maybe that is a difference for this bug and why i am not encountering it.
>Tom did bring up a few concrete suggestions I think - using clear titles;
Authors decide titles - we only change them if they are too long to fit...but of course using good ones is a good thing. I simply agree... of course.
> Having a section at the top left with "featured stories" or the stories of the day, that is more prominent than older stories;
We have recent znet at the top left - there are typically from five to ten pieces there, each day, that are new, and then some from prior days too - not least because not everyone comes to the site every day. I am not sure what this is suggesting we try instead of that, but while I agree it might be more usual to pick out one or two of the day's pieces to make quite a bit larger - like putting a book next to the cash register to get people to pay attention to it in a bookstore - we think people can pick for themselves, and, honestly, if we played favorites with authors like that, I suspect more people would be upset than happy about it, with some reason. Maybe it would help a bit, I don't know.
I just had a writer send me some emails - we went back and forth, very cordial. He likes the page on the mobile site you get when you click znet/zmag. Basically it is a list of about five or maybe seven items from the recent articles list, I think. Although not blogs and not commentaries. He wants ONLY that list and would love it if that were the top page of the full site, with link somewhere for more for anyone who wants more. Okay, I know there are people who would like that - but it really isn't why we exist, though now we do in fact have the mobile site.
> Not using last names;... maybe some others?
Maybe we both missed something - but, well, okay, if so, perhaps repeat?
But the truth of it is, we are not going to drop out last names...on principle, and, honestly, I think it would hurt, not help, navigation. We won't even experiment with that. I hope you don't consider that being dismissive of suggestions - though it does reject that one.
The irony of all this is, (a) we think there are much bigger problems, in design, functionality, and others - that we are trying to deal with than were mentioned - but that wouldn't cause us to use the harsh terminology, especially without some serious concrete examples, (b) these problems that you have relayed here really do seem a whole lot less than the accompanying adjectives suggest, not the stuff of a horrendous design that is ten years out of date and (c) MOSTLY - when I was sitting with you, and you were laughing about how easy it turned out to be to do things - I was laughing along, but actually I was not happy about it.
If you had had big trouble, and had said, I don't get this, I don't get that, I don't like this I want to shut it down - or whatever, that would have been a much better result for the site. We have whatever level of support and effectiveness we have. If there are things to fix, we can do better. If you had shown me flaws, and we could fix the flaws, maybe they would have been affecting lots of people, whose experience would then be better. That was the best possible result of checking out the site - and the one I hoped for.
As it was, we couldn't fix much of anything due to our session - so it was helpful for you, but not anyone else - except that I wrote about it - and I have no way of gently prodding everyone to click on a top or left menu item and to then tell me if it works for them....sadly. I wish I did. I still wonder, honestly, why you think you thought the site was difficult, etc. before our little session. It wasn't from trying it, it seems. So what was it from do you think?
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I have to agree with Tom
By Dominick, Brian at Aug 29, 2010 22:51 PM
I have to say, also as a VERY long time supporter of ZNet and a former volunteer/paid developer (since 1994), I think Tom is spot on in his points. I also am a little troubled that Michael would say "we are not developers - and the only ones we even know, and interact with at all, are the ones working on the site - and the occasional person like yourself, I think you said you were one."
This is weird in part because of the last clause -- Tom Lane was one of the first people to ever code an interactive application for ZNet (voluntarily, I might add), and is known well by Michael and myself to be a highly successful developer who has largely specialized in developing user-friendly software. Of course he is a developer. If it weren't for Tom and assistance he provided to ZNet in the late 1990s, it's very possible that ZCom would not exist today. (This is not an overstatement.)
But it's weirder still because I am good friends with both Michael and Chris, and I too am a website developer, and to the very limited extent I've been consulted on ZNet architecture and programming, I've (somewhat contrary to Tom's assessments about who says what when queried...) essentially echoed Tom's advice. And I've always felt my advice has been largely overlooked or dismissed. Which is basically fine, as far as I'm concerned -- in the end, I'm just one user, and my relative expertise could cloud my suggestions as much as enhance them, to be sure. But to then see a second, well-respected developer make similar remarks only to have them dismissed as a "rant" is kind of Twilight Zonish.
Like Tom's, my advice has not been so much "remove these specific items from the menu," but rather, "it's obvious this site looks and behaves nothing like the sites that have proven records of usability, so it's probably a good idea to do a usability study to determine how users want to use the site, how they're inclined to intuitively seek out such functionality, and how best to work with that," etc. My advice, that is, has been to not try to guess how they will want to use it -- which by nature always winds up imposing how the designer him or herself would use it, to some significant extent... but rather, perform a more objective analysis and wrap the site around real-world users' needs and inclinations.
(Incidentally, one thing I would like to do -- and it should be trivially easy but is not -- is to get rid of the annoying task bar on the bottom of the screen. I'm sure there's a setting for that somewhere, because the ZCom software is quite elaborate indeed, but there should be an X on the bar that just ditches it. Why is it annoying? Because every time I hit [Enter] to paragraph, the page jumps down and that bar covers my cursor. That's highly annoying. I have to use my trackpad to scroll the page back up every time I paragraph. That discourages paragraphing. That's bad for readability, and it also discourages posting.)
Now, back to my advice... It could be that my advice has always been bunk in some way... but I don't think it's because my career has been influenced by creating ad-ready sites. I'm not sure I've EVER created a site that had ads in it, let alone that revolved around driving eyeballs to advertisers, as Michael puts it here. In fact, I've pretty much devoted my career to making websites for progressive organizations that are easy to navigate. There is a LOT of interface design technique and wisdom available that has nothing to do with drawing visitors' eyes to advertisements. Believe it or not, ZNet is not the only online operation that considers its content the most or only aspect of their site deserving attention.
Anyway, I think ZCom has the prerogative to spend donors' money in the best way they know how, and I belive that Chris and Michael think this is the best course in that regard. I just find it very hard to see the dismissiveness and defensiveness displayed here, not just in Michael's comments, but also in the main post.
I have encountered many people who think ZCom looks like the control panel of a 747. Pretending otherwise just seems odd to me -- it's like a pilot trying to convince every lay observer that they are wrong in finding the controls complicated. Sure, a control 747 instrument array wasn't designed for lay usage, and ZCom was... but all that explains is the defensiveness in ZCom's case -- it does not explain the dismissiveness.
Compared to the NYT content interface, I'm sorry, but ZCom is a trainwreck. Michael, the fact that you think including authors' (last) names is a plus is telling. If the content is of high quality, authorship should be among the least important attributes to relay, except to give credit. Meanwhile, you don't realize that incomplete titles (adding a ? mark does not render a butchered headline more explicable, by the way) are a huge impediment to exploration... this is exemplary of how the site is tailored to the tastes of a very few people at the expense of broad accessibility.
Like Tom, I write this out of utmost respect. I'm not sure if that's how my criticism will be taken, but it IS constructive, despite a limited number of concrete suggestions, owing to my humility on these matters -- I don't HAVE all the answers, but if I had your budget and your ambitions, I'd be damn sure I looked outside my own skull for the answers. That's pretty much all Tom and I have said here. It's not exactly advice from outer space.
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Re: I have to agree with Tom
By Albert, Michael at Aug 30, 2010 02:34 AM
Brian,
You agree with Tom about what - that the site is horrible? And that the 300,000 people using it are fools, or what? That those donating are idiots?
Without being nasty - did the NewStandard fail to survive because of design flaws or crappy technology? I don't think so. And we aren't in fact failing to survive, we are just not yet managing to do what I don't think any other site has done - create a really large really active community of participants around very serious left ideas and mutual exchange. I believe we have more supporters/sustainers than any other left site, and than most commercial ones too - so I wouldn't call our plight failing, except by very high standards.
But those high standards are our standards since we want to win change, to contribute to doing so, not just to survive, or even just grow. So, yes, we have to figure out why more people don't comment, say, or blog, and then, very secondarily to those two, put up photo albums, or enrich their zspace pages, or even create customized versions of the site.
Of course there could be improvements - we are looking for them, but a broadly dismissive comment doesn't help... and the big problem isn't with what you developers are concerned about - which seem to be the looks when first arriving at the top page (though I admit, I don't get why you think it is so off putting) - but rather with the long time users/supporters who regularly use the site for content but don't use/benefit from service features, interactive features. This actually includes you guys. And you guys are not failing to use zspace, failing to blog, failing to create custom versions, etc. because you are put off by how hard it is. Maybe it is just being busy, for you and everyone else. Okay, then we should perhaps stop trying. Maybe it is something else.
That was the issue I was exploring with Brian...too.
> I have to say, also as a VERY long time supporter of ZNet and a former volunteer/paid developer (since 1994), I think Tom is spot on in his points.
Okay, fine - I am happy - really, in fact I would be very very happy - to be shown wrong.
But WHAT POINTS?
What is he right about?
That there are, I forget the exact number he said - 700 links on the top page? Come on. So what is it, then? The number of items in the menus? What has he said about the site - not about the need to pay attention to design texts, but about the site itself, other than simply dismissing it, that you agree with?
If I said to you about the NewStandard, some years back, its a mess - it would have been incredibly arrogant, incredibly unproductive, incredibly outrageous, honestly. Basically it would have been drivil. But if I felt that way, that is was a mess - and I felt it strongly enough to pound on you about it, then should, and I would have, tried to figure out why, and made suggestions.
Tom made none. I don't think you have made one in some time - that we could do, that we chose not to do.
If you tell me Tom is right to say the site is poor - my here turning his comment into something more congenial - well, that is useless - don't bother, because it doesn't communicate why. If you can find in what he wrote some actual points - about the site - that you think are correct and are part of causing it to be less than it ought to be, and really make a difference - okay, do please let me know.
> Tom Lane was one of the first people to ever code an interactive application for ZNet (voluntarily, I might add), and is known well by Michael and myself to be a highly successful developer who has largely specialized in developing user-friendly software. Of course he is a developer. If it weren't for Tom and assistance he provided to ZNet in the late 1990s, it's very possible that ZCom would not exist today. (This is not an overstatement.)
The truth is Brian - and I am not kidding, I did not want to assume it was the Tom you and I know. In fact, I did not think it was possible that the Tom I knew would write a post like that... I just didn't. So I just figured I wouldn't presume it was him - notice, he doesn't even say hello in the first post, he doesn't act like we know each other, etc.
> I've (somewhat contrary to Tom's assessments about who says what when queried...) essentially echoed Tom's advice.
What advice? What are you talking about? That I should read a book on design? That we should watch people with cameras and see how they use the site?
What we can do that is at least somewhat like that is to look at diverse sites for ideas, to look at some books for ideas, to talk to people about using the site, etc. Well, do you really think I haven't done all that?
> But to then see a second, well-respected developer make similar remarks only to have them dismissed as a "rant" is kind of Twilight Zonish.
The rant part was the it sucks part - but I agree we are in a weird zone here - where you guys think this is the right way to interact with me. But, okay - please tell me what "remark" Tom made that I dismissed. And tell me what not dismissing it would mean.
> Like Tom's, my advice has not been so much "remove these specific items from the menu," but rather, "it's obvious this site looks and behaves nothing like the sites that have proven records of usability, so it's probably a good idea to do a usability study to determine how users want to use the site, how they're inclined to intuitively seek out such functionality, and how best to work with that," etc.
Hmmm. I don't remember seeing that from you, but perhaps so. My response to you - a much closer friend - would likely have been, what the hell does that mean? We have a proven record. More what kind of usability study are you talking about - that we could actually do? You think we are going to sit and watch people looking around for how to blog, and failing to find it? That's what I did with Brian - trouble is, he found everything, and was able to do everything - yet he hadn't, before.
Is not ZCom a site that has a proven record - probably more support, financial and otherwise, from users, than most and perhaps even than any other left sites - including liberal ones. If so, what are you talking about? You know, this whole discussion would have been incredibly obnoxious undertaken around The NewStandard when it was in decline, without it being a proven site - but in this case, it just seems hard to fathom.
Looking at the way you guys communicate, I would assume we had no readers, no users, etc., rather than the problem being we just haven't been able to go way beyond having users to having a ton of participants engaging seriously...
But, okay, just how would we do what you suggest? There are two levels - general users, and sustainers. Please tell me what you have in mind for each that will reveal to us if there are aspects of the site that are blocking people from doing useful valuable things, which we can then work on fixing.
I would also like to know, since "it's obvious" this site looks and behaves nothing like the sites that have proven records of usability - a couple of things.
What are two or three, or more, such sites. On the left, or generally.
What is so obviously unusable about zcom compared to those other sites, specifically?
Okay, you might not get it perfect, answering those questions, as you are not 500 users - but surely you, like Tom, could say something, couldn't you?
> My advice, that is, has been to not try to guess how they will want to use it -- which by nature always winds up imposing how the designer him or herself would use it, to some significant extent... but rather, perform a more objective analysis and wrap the site around real-world users' needs and inclinations.
I am really tempted to ask if that is what you did with the NewStandard...and there was no reason you should have, by the way. Rather, the aim is to deliver something valuable, for some particular constituencies, in the best ways you can...not what a majority of all possible users want...
Lurking in this there is a subtle point. There are a gazillion users out there - and many of them would want a site we aren't interested in providing. Many who use the content of ZNet would undoubtedly enjoy it more if the content they don't like, they don't want, were not there - or even the features they don't have time to use. So? Should the daily newspaper remove the sports pages because some percentage don't read them and consider it dead weight? Or should they remove the culture pages, or front pages, again, for those reasons, until nothing is left? I suspect you know all this. So the issue is rather - for people who want the content we offer - can they get it, find it, read it. Etc. And, for people who want the functionality, can they do it? And, in our case - if there is stuff they don't want, that really bothers them, can they make a version of the site that doesn't have that?
Suppose two thirds don't want political vision to be on the site, or at least prominently on the site, for whatever reason. Do we then remove it? No. We keep it. So, okay, I asked what menu items you or Tom would have us dump. I am sure you can make some good suggestion. I doubt you can make very many...however.
We have no reason to think that there is a serious problem with Z as a provider of very very radical and in depth material - the site has outlived most sites on the left - coming well before most and lasting after many - despite often having fewer resources. It conveys far more radical and revolutionary material than any site remotely as large in number users or supporters... The site could be better, but as an information vehicle, it seems to be doing pretty well.
Functionality is quite different - the site has some pretty incredible technical tools and other tools as well that are more familiar - and in my view none of these are nearly as used as would be ideal. But why that is, is not so easy to get at, I suspect. That doesn't make me dismissive. It may mean I have thought about it more, not less, than Tom or even you.
> (Incidentally, one thing I would like to do -- and it should be trivially easy but is not -- is to get rid of the annoying task bar on the bottom of the screen. I'm sure there's a setting for that somewhere, because the ZCom software is quite elaborate indeed, but there should be an X on the bar that just ditches it.
I don't even know what this is - what task bar at the bottom of the screen? Do you mean the one that runs vertically, off to the left?
> Why is it annoying? Because every time I hit [Enter] to paragraph, the page jumps down and that bar covers my cursor.
So it is something that is there when you are adding content? Whatever this is, it is a bug that no one has reported - and I have no idea where or what you are referring to, but we would surely try to fix it if we knew. If it is bothering you, and you know it would be bothering others, why wouldn't you tell us?
> That's highly annoying. I have to use my trackpad to scroll the page back up every time I paragraph. That discourages paragraphing. That's bad for readability, and it also discourages posting.)
Okay, that's concrete - though I honestly am not sure what it is referring to - and if you could get me to understand especially if you know the cause (some kind of task bar) I figure I could probably get the programmers to fix it. Great. Please send something in an email that details this a bit more exactly...
> Now, back to my advice... It could be that my advice has always been bunk in some way... but I don't think it's because my career has been influenced by creating ad-ready sites. I'm not sure I've EVER created a site that had ads in it, let alone that revolved around driving eyeballs to advertisers, as Michael puts it here. In fact, I've pretty much devoted my career to making websites for progressive organizations that are easy to navigate.
Brian, Tom told me to read industry books on website design...not to consult you. I pointed out that the industry has very different motives than we do. If you don't think that is so, okay, we can agree to disagree. It doesn't mean there is nothing in there of value - but it does mean some of what is in there, and perhaps quite a lot, will be very strange indeed.
> There is a LOT of interface design technique and wisdom available that has nothing to do with drawing visitors' eyes to advertisements. Believe it or not, ZNet is not the only online operation that considers its content the most or only aspect of their site deserving attention.
I am really trying to be patient - but I have to tell you, you guys putting these little nasty barbs, one after another, is really annoying.
> Anyway, I think ZCom has the prerogative to spend donors' money in the best way they know how, and I belive that Chris and Michael think this is the best course in that regard. I just find it very hard to see the dismissiveness and defensiveness displayed here, not just in Michael's comments, but also in the main post.
Once again - and maybe it is no accident that you guys are developers - but somehow my asking for serious detail is dismissiveness - and my saying that I hope you are right there are technical or design problems - rather than MORE DIFFICULT obstacles, is defensiveness. Okay - that interpretation may be right, but if so, it is over my head, I guess.
> I have encountered many people who think ZCom looks like the control panel of a 747. Pretending otherwise just seems odd to me -- it's like a pilot trying to convince every lay observer that they are wrong in finding the controls complicated.
Call me dense then - but for people who think the experts should listen to the uninitiated and relate to them on their terms so as to communicate effectively - you guys aren't really doing it.
Joe looks at The New York Times and says, excellent.
Joe looks at ZCom and says - its a 747, get me outta here.
Possibilities to explain these two different reactions form the same person.
Joe is right Z looks far more daunting than NYT, is harder to navigate when Joe tries to do so, is harder to to read when Joe tries, etc. Or, perhaps Joe just wants to dismiss ZCom without saying he doesn't like the content despite not trying to navigate or read it. Or maybe he thinks it will suck up too much time, but doesn't want to say that. Or, maybe it is something else, quite different.
Okay, you guys say it is the first - you know, beyond any doubt - so much so that my having doubt is not but being defensive, etc. Well, then you ought to be able to convey that more than just by hollering it.
I look at the NYT top page. To my old eyes, it is harder to read then the ZNet top page - actually, incredibly, it is virtually impossible to read. I have to say, I am even a bit shocked by how hard it is. There is nothing personal and welcoming there because this isn't something that concerns them. In fact there is nearly nothing attractive at all. The left menu I can't even see it, it is so small, and there is no way, once one is familiar with it, to shrink it to get it out of the way when you don't need it. The top menu is much simpler than ours, but in part that is because despite having a gazillion times the resources, the Times isn't a web site, plus a magazine, plus a serious blog system that gets high visibility, etc. I just looked again. I don't see the one as far more intimidating IN APPEARANCE, than the other and honestly, I would have to say the Times is worse to look at, less inviting, than Z - quite a bit, but not overwhelmingly. I do see our site as far far far more intimidating in the sense of the content having serious implications.
Okay, you say I am delusional, defensive, whatever. That is not giving me a way to understand anything. Nor is it remotely taking my words seriously.
The top page of ZNet looks no more complex or crowded to me than the top page of most newspaper sites, in fact, and even of many left sites, etc. Except, we don't put three or four pieces way larger than the rest and handhold readers to look at just those, as some sites do. This comparison holds despite that Z not only has an information web site, but a magazine site, a video site, a personal user site, a blog system, a store, and more, all of which we wish to give similar play to.
Please - by all means - take the New York Times - or any comparable very large site - and tell me how it is way more readable, or way less intimidating (technically) or even easier to get around supposing one ever wanted to, then ZCom. I am asking.
If you tell me here is a site people can go to, read a few items, and leave, and not feel that they missed anything - I agree, that exists.
> Sure, a control 747 instrument array wasn't designed for lay usage, and ZCom was... but all that explains is the defensiveness in ZCom's case -- it does not explain the dismissiveness.
There is no dismissiveness - other than of the shotgun comments and read a book comments and personal denegration.
I am waiting for the substance about useability...
I don't know what the 747 references are Tom made often, and now you. The only thing I can think of is the console next to the left menu - is that it? Well, that is there to make life simpler. First, plain users don't even see it. It only shows icons for features you have by virtue of your donation level, or being a regular writer. Second, if you put your curser on it, you will see it just allows you to upload a blog from anywhere, or other things...in one click. It is supposed to be an ease of use feature. Maybe it fails. But really, to talk about this stuff in the way you do...I don't get it.
You guys seem to think my disagreeing at all, or even just asking for more clarity and substance is dismissive - and this from folks who are saying we need to listen....
We felt, as an example, that people having to go to their account pages to upload anything was burdensome - thus the console.
> Compared to the NYT content interface, I'm sorry, but ZCom is a trainwreck. Michael, the fact that you think including authors' (last) names is a plus is telling. If the content is of high quality, authorship should be among the least important attributes to relay, except to give credit.
Brian, saying the site is a train wreck isn't going to convince me that it is - maybe if it was dying, but it is growing....so no. And without any substance, it really is just obnoxious. Even when the NewStandard was dying, if I wrote a comment saying the top page is a train wreck, it would be incredibly arrogant and also dumb, unless I could offer something substantive.
And you comment on authors - that is an example of you listening to users?
It would be interesting to take a person by person poll of whether people like that the author's name is there or not. I don't think such polls are the be all and end all - but I suspect our approach would be preferred for a site like ours for various good reasons. For the NY Times, no one knows who the hell the reporters are - names appear on the editorial page, I would bet... - not least because they are basically interchangeable. You think ZNet users want us to post articles without author's names on the link?
In fact, I admit that I wouldn't care if it would make things a little better to leave author's names off the top page - in some way I don't get and think is clearly not the case - I still would not vote to cut out names. They help navigation. They help authors. They even situate content because our users know our writers work, often.
And if you think that saying that is dismissive then for you the word dismissive means disagreeing with anything you might say. I ask for serious suggestions about why the site is horrible, a trainwreck, a 747, and you say leave out author's names - and I say, I think not, for diverse reasons - and then I am dismissive? I am not dismissive, I disagree with that suggestion.
> Meanwhile, you don't realize that incomplete titles (adding a ? mark does not render a butchered headline more explicable, by the way) are a huge impediment to exploration... this is exemplary of how the site is tailored to the tastes of a very few people at the expense of broad accessibility.
What incomplete titles? What are you talking about?
Maybe it is in the featured boxes? Sometimes we shorten the title there, to get them on one line - (a) because the title has been visible for four or five days in the recent content area already, and (b) because it is featured, and if people like our judgement about what to feature, they will look, and if not, then they won't. If we thought it would make a difference, sure, we would change that - in a flash.
> Like Tom, I write this out of utmost respect. I'm not sure if that's how my criticism will be taken, but it IS constructive, despite a limited number of concrete suggestions, owing to my humility on these matters -- I don't HAVE all the answers, but if I had your budget and your ambitions, I'd be damn sure I looked outside my own skull for the answers.
You guys have a very funny understanding of the word respect - you seem to think saying you have respect and following that up with implying in print that I take massive budget and massive ambition and crush it under narrow mindedness - is a sign of respect. I guess I don't read it that way.
> That's pretty much all Tom and I have said here. It's not exactly advice from outer space.
You think we don't ask people? You think we don't talk to people? You think we don't put up forums for people to post in? You think we don't put up email addresses for people to write? But we do all that. And we examine and think about the results. And we have actually often acted, at great time and expense, on what people suggest, at least as best we can.
You are correct - however - we do not invite, presumably at our expense, people to come in off the street and click around the site while we watch to see if they have problems.
I did invite a house guest to do it - however - and chatted with him, and honestly reported on what happened, and this is the result...great.
Then I invited Tom to offer a list of specific things we could think about to remove, or alter, or replace, or create - to make things better.
And now I invite you also.
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Re: Re: I have to agree with Tom
By Khan, Arshad M at Aug 30, 2010 03:49 AM
Michael, one has to admire your dedication. And I do. The comments here are intended to help improve the usability of the site. You mention 300k users. Fine. So I just checked out the articles on ZNet today, Sunday August 29, 2010. The six articles posted earned two, just two comments in total. Then I checked out my own article on ZSpace. Zero comments. Perhaps it's a lousy article. But then it was published by Dissident Voice and Common Dreams and received about 50 comments. How many of the 300k users are actually reading with interest? Come to think of it, how many are actually actively using the site? These questions should be important to you.
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Re: Re: Re: I have to agree with Tom
By Albert, Michael at Aug 30, 2010 04:16 AM
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Re: Re: I have to agree with Tom
By Dominick, Brian at Aug 30, 2010 16:21 PM
Sorry, but since you insist on underhandedly disparaging the The NewStandard as part of your argument, while ignoring the fact that on nearly EVERY scale TNS was more successful than ZNet but had FAR fewer resources and privileges with which to squeak by, I have no choice but to duck out of this discussion. I know FAR too much about ZCom behind the scenes to engage this discussion in public. In order to maintain the moral high ground -- which you have foresaken by attacking my former project through ridiculously misplaced innuendo about an operation that, dollars-per-visitor and dollars-per-sustainer (despite having virtually NO walled off content or privileges) did about 3-4 times as well as ZNet; not to mention user responses about the site's design and functionality, which were night-and-day different from the response to ZNet -- I will just yield this debate.
Good luck continuing to believe that your own (peculiar) personal preferences for how a website should look and function will apply equally to all potential users, and continuing to ignore and/or disparage any friend who offers constructive criticism.
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Re: Re: Re: I have to agree with Tom
By Albert, Michael at Aug 30, 2010 17:00 PM
I didn't disparage NewStandard - not only did I endlessly support it when it existed, but in the post you are reacting to, what I said was to disparage it, in a similar fashion to what is going on here - by just saying things like it is a mess, or it is horrible, or it is a train wreck - at any point in its history would have been pretty horrible behavior and unwarranted. And if in reply you had said, okay, why - what could be better - what do you think could be removed, etc. and the person then said you are dismissing me, married to your own views, etc. etc. that too would not have been accurate, putting it mildly.
What I wrote is the exact opposite of what you seemed to read...which is hard to understand.
I repeat - far from not welcoming suggestions, I am asking for them. Real suggestions that can - if we can afford them - be implemented.
Saying the site looks like a 747, or is a mess, or whatever, is not a suggestion that I or Chris can easily, or perhaps at all, act on.
I am very aware that the same choices don't benefit all users equally. For example, I just changed the top page in a way that I think serves those who return often more than a first time person...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: I have to agree with Tom
By Dominick, Brian at Aug 30, 2010 17:26 PM
Mike, as much as you personally and ZCom organizationally supported the NewStandard, you know damn well that you were using references to its death in your previous post to undermine my expertise on any of these matters.
But the truth is, Mike, I know more than ANYONE the particular contrasts between the two projects in question. I know where TNS was far, far more successul than ZCom, and I know (at least most of) the real reasons ZCom has struggled, and how it has perservered, these many years. For you to so much as imply that anything other than who had more money on hand was the deciding difference is disingenuous at best, and probably downright dishonest. If we had had Z's access to resources, TNS would have prevailed, because we had Z beat on almost every other aspect, including frugality and integrity, but certainly including site usability, to whatever extent that actually matters. I won't go into anything further than that, but my suggestion to you is to just DROP IT right now.
To be more transparent, though, let me say that the real reason I don't want to keep this discussion going has roots in the very beginning of your previous response to me. You wrote:
"You agree with Tom about what - that the site is horrible? And that the 300,000 people using it are fools, or what? That those donating are idiots?"
This actually hurt to read. It's completely despicable and unbecoming of you. Your utter lack of humility is one thing. That's a personal trait you've always had and others have always endured about you. We get it. But that your arrogance drives you to distort the constructive criticisms Tom offered... that's just beyond the pale, and quite frankly, knowing what I do about how AMAZING Tom has been to ZNet over the years, I can't just abide this bullshit tactic you're using.
The fact of the matter is that I agree with what Tom actually said, not this ridiculous misrepresentation you present here. Seriously, Michael, pull yourself out of the gutter. The above is a reprehensible distortion of what Tom took the time to write to you in sincere hopes of helping. Even if he was wrong or did act as unhelpfully as you think he and I are both being, he would deserve the respect of not being misrepresented so crassly. Tom being a HUGE donor to ZNet, and having been since even before the beginning of the Sustainers program... the notion that he thinks donors are "idiots" or the users (300,000 my ass, by the way) are fools, is simply offensive to us all. Pull yourself together. This is actually appearing in public. People can see that Tom is not suggesting any such thing, then they can see -- because they have brains in their heads -- that you are so cravenly distorting his views. This is what you will do to someone who has been so incredibly loyal and supportive of ZNet despite long-held reservations about certain aspects of the operation? How, then, do you treat or consider people who have shown no such loyalty? My god, man, scrounge up some decency and a sense of shame.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I have to agree with Tom
By Albert, Michael at Aug 30, 2010 19:30 PM
Brian,
I feel like this is getting Kafkaesque...
> Mike, as much as you personally and ZCom organizationally supported the NewStandard, you know damn well that you were using references to its death in your previous post to undermine my expertise on any of these matters.
No, I don't know that.
And that you think that, or even take some words that way, is truly depressing and actually hard for me to fathom.
I was pointing out that to say scattershot damning things about a site, or really pretty much anything, at any time, is inappropriate and certainly not constructive. I used your work to make that point, and no other.
Saying the site is a mess, like a 747, a train wreck - etc. - especially with no clarification of what it means - much less to disparage people's motives - yes, I think that is not helpful. I don't think it is a crime against humanity. It is not something for which I would suddenly start calling you names, or him, etc. But it is also not something I can agree with.
About NS - I wrote that for me or to criticize NS to you, in the manner of you guys going after ZCom, would have been wrong - and also bad process - even if the claims were true, which they would not have been. If what I wrote doesn't say that, very sorry, but I bet it does say that, and I will stand by that. And it is virtually the opposite of what you read.
> But the truth is, Mike, I know more than ANYONE the particular contrasts between the two projects in question. I know where TNS was far, far more successul than ZCom, and I know (at least most of) the real reasons ZCom has struggled, and how it has perservered, these many years.
I don't really understand this - NS failed, as in stopped operating - but NOT because it was poorly designed, poorly run, etc. etc. which I routinely pointed out to people at the time, and wrote in letters to people, etc. etc. Rather, it was trying to do something very very hard, and despite herculean and creative efforts, it couldn't pull it off.
ZCom has been pretty successful at transferring information - at least so far - but more recently it has also been trying to create a very interactive kind of "community," and while there has been some success at that - still, the results is way short of what we hope for. So, if you like, I would say that so far ZCom has failed on that front.
And we are still trying...and still looking for ideas, etc.
Is that failure by us to create what doesn't exist anywhere that I am aware of - just like NS was trying to create something that didn't exist - partly design and technology related? Yes, I would certainly be surprised if it wasn't. But are there other factors too, at work? Well, I happen to think there are.
> For you to so much as imply that anything other than who had more money on hand was the deciding difference is disingenuous at best, and probably downright dishonest.
Actually, I didn't imply anything of the sort, or anything at all - or any comparison, for that matter - though you may have read it some way I didn't intend. I think in fact, however, as you bring it up - there was a far more basic difference between the two projects - we went earlier, which is a gigantic advantage - and, even more so, you were trying to do something much harder - probably something outright impossible - which was my opinion, you will remember, from day one, which didn't stop me from supporting the effort.
You know that was my feeling - so what we have here is you getting really really upset, because you see something in print which somehow (maybe my words were not clear, I don't know but I honestly don't think so) you interpret in a way that has nothing to do with the reality of my views, as you well know them, and also as an attack on your project, which it wasn't. Meanwhile, first Tom, and then you - and now much more so, you - not only attack ZCom, quite aggressively, without clarifications - but also attack me, quite personally, to say the least.
> If we had had Z's access to resources, TNS would have prevailed, because we had Z beat on almost every other aspect, including frugality and integrity, but certainly including site usability, to whatever extent that actually matters.
You are accusing me of disparaging your past project, and you - as Tom accused me of being dismissive, etc. All I can tell you is, sometime down the road, we can look at this again - the words you use about me and ZCom, and what I said...and see just who was actually doing the disparaging. Then one, or perhaps both of us can apologize...
Your observation here about NS makes clear, as well, that the reasons for a project's difficulty can be diverse - not only design issues - which is precisely the observation I offered, as well.
> "You agree with Tom about what - that the site is horrible? And that the 300,000 people using it are fools, or what? That those donating are idiots?"
> This actually hurt to read.
Fair enough - though I don't know why, I guess I will see in a minute - but you might look at what you have written and think about whether it hurts me to read it. And damages me and others for you to write it. Tom might have thought just a little about that too.
> It's completely despicable and unbecoming of you.
I am not sure I get that, other than that I am behaving completely despicably - which doesn't leave me much room to get any worse.
Tom said the site was a mess - and you said the same - but if the site is a mess, if it is so bad as to warrant that formulation, that it is a train wreck, then I asked, what about the people using it?
Maybe I am missing something but by intention and I think also by the actual words, that isn't saying you think all the users are dumb, it is saying the fact that they use it and are not dumb - of course - suggests that while it has problems - no doubt - it is far from being a train wreck and you are both going over the top in your language. That is all I meant. You took it, well, wherever way you took it.
At any rate, no one has said the site doesn't need improvements - far from it. I keep asking for ideas.
> Your utter lack of humility is one thing. That's a personal trait you've always had and others have always endured about you. We get it.
Very nice .... okay.
But I wonder where in this is there a lack of humility? Is it in my replying rather calmly to people I know who are saying that what I do is a mess because I am inflexible, and now you add, because I don't even have integrity? Is it in my saying, okay, if it is so bad, what might be done? Is that an utter lack of humility? Taking your ad hominem attacks, and just flying right by them and trying to get something more, something to act on?
> But that your arrogance drives you to distort the constructive criticisms Tom offered... that's just beyond the pale, and quite frankly, knowing what I do about how AMAZING Tom has been to ZNet over the years, I can't just abide this bullshit tactic you're using.
Now I am beyond the pale - using bullshit tactics. What tactic? You can say things like that as much as you want - but I am still left trying to understand what Tom has recommended, as constructive criticisms that I have tactically somehow dismissed by asking him to elaborate with specifics?
Read a book? Actually, I didn't bother saying it, was it really necessary to say it - but I have at times, yes, even about site design.
Ask people their reactions? Well, we do that all the time. In fact, that is what I did that elicted all this.
Conduct a formal user test of the site with camera watching - that is beyond our means, so not even worth a thought. But on a one person scale, it is exactly what I did with Brian and reported on in the blog.
What else is in there that I can learn from or try to act on? I am trying to tease out specific constructive criticisms - which to me means specific ideas or suggestions that we can try to act on in some manner other than committing suicide, but to me, I am sorry, they certainly aren't evident.
I suppose I could deduce that I should go to see a shrink, or I should retire - but as to improving the site, I don't see the ideas there to try to follow up on.
Maybe I don't see them because I am dumb. I just can't fathom what is really right there. Or maybe my being accused of all kinds of things by supposed friends and allies - I have shut myself off to seeing the substance that is there. OR, just maybe, in fact, there aren't so many constructive criticisms we could try to act on, after all. Maybe even, there are none.
> The fact of the matter is that I agree with what Tom actually said, not this ridiculous misrepresentation you present here.
What?
> Seriously, Michael, pull yourself out of the gutter.
Try to find anything anywhere in this whole exchange, anywhere at all, that I have written, even with weird spin that is completely contrary to my known views, that is remotely as nasty, negative, denigrating, etc., as what you are just piling on. I don't think it is there. And I don't feel it, although I admit I am starting to wonder if I should. And there is nothing tactical going on at all. I am just saying what I think...very honestly.
Telling me the site is a mess or a train wreck, say, without clarification, doesn't help. My saying so is not a tactic, it is just honestly my reaction - but I didn't say go take a leap, I said, explain. Clarify, make suggestions. That is not dismissive. Telling me some things that might be done, that I can try to act on, that could help.
> The above is a reprehensible distortion of what Tom took the time to write to you in sincere hopes of helping.
The thing you are referring to was not about Tom much less some kind of summary of his views - I quoted his exact words, and your, over and over...but, okay, fine, I will keep going over all this, and particularly what Tom wrote - because honestly what you are writing, well, I don't think rereading it over and over is going to achieve much... and despite my arrogance, lack of humility, lack of integrity, reprehensibility, and affinity for the gutter, etc., plus my inflexibility, and so on, and despite how completely obvious it is how utterly bad the site is - I will nonetheless for some completely incomprehensible reason have to work hard to understand what concretely is suggested or implied. But I will certainly try, as best I can. It would have been easier to do, if in reply to being asked to add something specific either of you had actually done so...but, okay.
> Even if he was wrong or did act as unhelpfully as you think he and I are both being, he would deserve the respect of not being misrepresented so crassly.
How was he misrepresented? Hells bells, I put zero words in his mouth, or yours - instead I quote both of you - risking being attacked for being too long.
In particular, I wish I was misreading you - in all the accusations and assertions that you are flinging about me...but sadly I think I am not. You are writing this stuff. They do say what they say. As to why, well, if you think it, okay, I have to consider that. If you don't think it, I guess you have something to consider.
> Tom being a HUGE donor to ZNet, and having been since even before the beginning of the Sustainers program... the notion that he thinks donors are "idiots" or the users (300,000 my ass, by the way) are fools, is simply offensive to us all.
This is what you mean by my reprehensibly misrepresenting him?
I didn't say he thought that - in fact, I wrote it to you, I am pretty sure - and I continue to wonder why you would search what I write to try to find a way to interpret it so harshly? But if you really felt I was saying that, why not ask me, do you think Tom thinks all the users are fools? Probably because to ask the question is to answer it. And honestly Brian if my writing that sentence registers as reprehensible in your eyes - how the hell should I regard youe way of treating me, I wonder?
A related point is that Tom himself is no fool. He is a sustainer. He is a supporter. He is a programmer. He uses the site - after all, he saw the blog at the beginning of this - yet he has not made a zspace page, not uploaded a picture or anything at all, not blogged, etc. Okay, in Tom's case I don't believe it is because he couldn't do those things quite easily if he chose to. I think he didn't do those things for other reasons - not due to design problems - and I am interested in those other types of reasons - as well as in design issues. Apparently that is not allowed. My asking him, quite sincerely, can be ignored...
That is what the blog about my session with Brian was about, as well. Brian too - the other one, is very smart, very computer savvy, etc. etc. A big site user, too, sometimes many times in a day.
But he doen't do much blogging, or commenting, and he hadn't done much of anything to his zspce page, hadn't made custom pages, and hadn't done anything for or on his group pages. I said why. He said it is hard. I said show me - exactly Tom's suggestion. He sat down to do so, and the difficulty proved not so difficult...and I found it interesting and so wrote about it. My crime. So be it, I still think it is easily as instructive as if he had, in fact, had design issues.
The phrase about our users meant only that if the site is really that bad, why is the site still alive, etc. Apparently it isn't a train wreck - dead at the side of the embankment - rather - it could be better. Which is quite true. I agree. And so I ask for suggestions about how actually to make it better, or even just the type of changes that might help, etc,...having to do with design, technology, etc. But beyond that, I do also want to understand people's inclinations, and also lack of inclinations, to do certain things online, to see if there is anything we can do to impact that.
> Pull yourself together. This is actually appearing in public.
I am well aware of that - which makes me wonder why you would act like you have...
> People can see that Tom is not suggesting any such thing,
So can I. Rather, he was suggesting I read a book on design because Z is, I think he said, ten years behind the times - and that I conduct experiments to view the use of the site by people over closed circuit tv - and that I must have tricked Brian regarding the original blog content, or something.
By the by, he, you, and all users were consulted about the upgrade that led to the current site - and much that was suggested by users was incorporated - pretty much anything we could afford, in fact.
I didn't say Tom thought everyone using the site was a dunce...the point is, he doesn't think that, nor do you, nor do I. What I was saying, is that people's reactions are often not so simple as suggested, and discerning things to do, in any case, is not simple, and shot gun criticism doesn't really provide much guidance...
Brian, you are writing comments that I think could plausibly be called venomous. You are apparently thinking, well Michael must be angry, upset, spewing - and looking for examples of it, tactics, or something. But, honestly, I am not.
> then they can see -- because they have brains in their heads -- that you are so cravenly distorting his views.
Now I am craven, too. Wonderful.
I actually think people reading this are seeing a lot of stuff, and I am, and you are - which no one should ever have had to see - because it really has no basis. But wildly flinging disparaging words does do damage, sadly.
However, my asking Tom to provide some specifics, and noting that we have nothing like a capacity to have a bunch of test users much less, to do that over and over acting on all suggestions - is not dissing him. It is just true.
> This is what you will do to someone who has been so incredibly loyal and supportive of ZNet despite long-held reservations about certain aspects of the operation?
What I will do to him? Write one sentence that doesn't mean what you took it to mean? I have not said a nasty word, a bad word, about him or about you, not one, I believe. Not before you started treating me like some kind of despicable cretin - and not after. Nor would I or will I. But that is different from agreeing without reservations, or even without asking for more clarity or substance, to anything and everything you, or he, or anyone else, might say, just because you say it. For me to do that would be paternalistic nonsense. I have simply said what I think, as best I could - no tactics, just reacting to the words placed here...is all.
> How, then, do you treat or consider people who have shown no such loyalty? My god, man, scrounge up some decency and a sense of shame.
I will seriously consider your advice. I suggest that maybe at some point you take a little introspective look, as well.
For now, however, I think we should stop - and I am not going to keep on - maybe other users will have something to add. You are hammering me, and I am saying, okay, enough. I heard you. I felt your anger.
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All I have to say is...
By Dominick, Brian at Aug 30, 2010 23:18 PM
I think it's supremely ironic that during the course of this exchange, I -- an expert Web user -- have had tremendous difficulty even following the thread of comments here. I have remarked to you on numerous occasions that it is very counterintuitive to have comments situated above previous comments. I just sent someone -- another expert Web user -- to this page who couldn't figure out what posts by Tom that I and Brian Kelly were referring to. That's because you have to do things your way, standards and intuitiveness be damned.
It's also kind of hilarious that you don't even seem to know there is a task bar of icons across the bottom of my browser window, let alone that paragraphing causes annoying problems while typing.
And the final irony is that I am arguing with someone who apparently doesn't know how to post comments to his own site in anything less than a 22-point font that makes reading very awkward and replying a pain in the ass.
There are three concrete problems for you to ignore. Add them to the dozens I've raised over the years. It blows me away that you pretend not to be familiar with the criticism of your ridiculous author last-name policy. Everywhere else on the Web, it's either no name on the index page or full name, but somehow if ZNet switches to one of those policies, everyone will get upset. Instead, you should just admit that it's YOUR peculiar preference.
Also with the titles on the top page -- you shorten them to the point of obfuscation or irrelevance. Rather than headlines, they are mere topics, seemingly as often as not. But I have told you three times now, if you feel it is crucial to have these abbreviated titles -- which I and many others find useless at best -- then AT LEAST when someone clicks on the arrow next to the title, the full headline should appear. And for the love of all things, why on earth do you shorten the titles if most of them will wrap around to the next line anyway? I have been present when people have brought up this criticism. You say you make all advised changes that you can afford. This simply isn't true, Michael. In fact, you KNOW it isn't true. You have always, since the earliest days, placed your personal, peculiar tastes and preferences above good sense. Not exclusively, but very, very often. It's ridiculous, but you simply lack the humility to do otherwise. And here is your result: a website that you love, and that you can't understand why not everyone else loves... and that even you can't use very well.
Enjoy it. I'll go read the content in any of the other 20 places most of it appears anyway.
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Re: All I have to say is...
By Albert, Michael at Aug 31, 2010 12:49 PM
About the problems and questions:
The way comments are supposed to work, in the specs, I think, is comments and replies to comments make a sequence one after the other with each reply beneath what it replies to.
When there is a new comment under an original piece, it is supposed to up top, right under the original, being more recent than other separate threads under the original, rather than beneath everything where those keeping track would have to scroll down to find it. I don't know if it is working - I just go straight to the one I get a notice about in email. I write replies in an email, or a text program, and copy them over. I am not sure if there is a bug here, or a design issue, or what. We will look into it.
Rather than hilarious I would say it is depressing that I don't know about the misplaced bar you mention - I am assuming it is the console bar only sustainers see - or the typing bug, but I don't. Neither does chris, nor the programmers. Now you have told us, sort of, because I am not sure what system you are seeing it on, and we will try to find it so we can report it to the programmers to fix.
As far as my own posts being large type, depending on where and when I write them, I have to click for larger type so I can see them to edit, etc. That is actually a personal need, because of my sight, as i think you may know. Sometimes I forget to reset the font size, I guess, though when I paste into the comment field I certainly don't and didn't see anything really large. For example, this one, now that you told me, I can see is larger than the type in yours, above. I can't read yours above - but this one is fine for me to read. My apologies for inconvenience...
Okay now you mention three specific problems. Thank you.
Actually as noted earlier I was indeed not aware, or perhaps had forgotten - another problem I think you know I have - that our name approach was a problem. I can't remember anyone being upset by this, maybe Chris can remember, but he is struggling with car problems in Detroit - I will ask him when he gets back.
No name as an option is out. I suspect you would agree with me that that isn't nice to writers and would hurt, rather than help, people find what they want. And I think that was the earlier suggestion. Two names, first and last, is fine with me and I imagine with Chris too, and the programmers. Two names takes more space, which is a debit, but apparently you think it would be better for users - rather than merely being like what others do. No problem, I will ask the programmers to try it.
As to truncating titles, Chris enters articles now, not me, and that has been so for a long time. I believe he enters full titles which always show up in articles and shorter titles that display in links when the full one is quite long and would mess up layout. The down arrow next to titles should certainly reveal the full title and also a short description. I will check to make sure it does. When I check the articles each day, I would say that perhaps once a month there will be one whose title I change because it seems too short. If I was entering them, I suspect Chris would wind up having to change more - I would make more errors than he does. I will admit that there are, however, quite a few full titles each month that convey little or nothing to me, and I often find weird.
Of course we don't do everything people suggest for the site. On the one hand, people often suggest mutually contradictory things. On the other, they suggest things that are way beyond our means. But finally, yes, they also suggest things we don't like, or we think have some positive aspects but would do harm in other ways, etc. But we try to do what we can that we feel may help. Is there some other better attitude to take?
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Re: Re: All I have to say is...
By Dominick, Brian at Aug 31, 2010 12:55 PM
I did not realize your font usage had to do with your eyesight. I figured it was just a copy and pasting problem. But I must say it does seem extremely odd to be reading comments to a blog post in such a massive type. You may want to have your devs strip size references from the HTML code that passes from this form I'm using right now. That way, someone can type in whatever font size they want, but it will get stripped out automatically when they hit [Save].
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Re: Re: Re: All I have to say is...
By Albert, Michael at Aug 31, 2010 13:23 PM
Good idea. hopefully the programmers can do it without other difficulties arising.
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Wrong attitude for a sysop
By Lane, Tom at Aug 28, 2010 20:01 PM
Hello. I have been a ZNet sustainer for about 10 years. I donate $1,700/year despite even myself and my wife being unemployed at the moment. I have attended ZMI and sat in the very chair, I think, that Mike mentions in the story. Many years ago, I even volunteered a bit of labor to help with ZNet.
I have great respect for Z. Z is the most potent and well-edited collection of content I have ever encountered on the web, to this day. I also admire the sustained commitment and great heroics by the few individuals who have keep it going all this time through thick and thin.
However, I am utterly stunned by the attitude in this post. I don't even know where to begin. It reads like a personal attack on the idiocy of users for not understanding how to use the site.
Brian is merely stating the obvious: that the ZNet site design is a total mess and violates every good practice that has ever evolved about how to design good human interfaces.
It's as though the author sat down and took every ounce of mental energy that could have gone into exploring how to make the site clearer and more intuitive, and instead spent it on developing an elaborate theory about how everything's fine and the problem lies with the "odd" mentality of the critic.
It reveals so much to me about why ZNet is in the state that it is, and will likely remain there. That is, unless there is a fundamental shift of perspective.
There are some truly awful software interfaces out there. Generally the developers of them have absolutely no clue that they are awful. As a professional developer, I have a theory about this. The developer is the ultimate expert user. They live inside of the system every day. It becomes an extension of themselves. They know exactly when and where to do what -- like a pilot who knows how to decipher the control panel of a 747. You just reach over here and pull that knob and the A/C turns on, see?
Some users get it. They become expert users too. They learn how to navigate all the knobs and buttons and 1,000 choices all within reach, and maybe even play it like an instrument. It's really not that hard, once you take the time to understand it, now is it? And here's the thing: these users constitute the bulk of the feedback that the developer hears. They are the most involved. And developers feel the most camaraderie with them, so it's very easy to skew one's perspective towards them. (I've done it.)
What you don't hear is feedback from people who checked out the site and skipped it because it looked like the control panel to a 747. People who just want to start by, I don't know, *reading some content*, which is squeezed into one of 4(!) columns below the fold, a 5 word title that even then has to wrap onto the next line, no summaries, largely undifferentiated from the rest of the SEVEN HUNDRED links on the page (I counted). Plus a tab banner that is so out of control it looks like a piano keyboard. Feedback from people who take one look at the site, "flip the bozo bit" on whoever designed it, and move on.
You don't hear this feedback, unless you go looking for it. You must have a methodologically valid process of surveying them. And an open mind. And a great, great deal of humility.
Pick up a book on interface design. Look at what's happened in software over the past decade or so. Look at what Apple or Google has done with consumer interfaces, in their products as well as their website. Consider why they've gotten so much more traction than their competitors. Consider that their greatest fans are some of the most expert computer users in the world, not just newbies. Consider why Brian preferred the mobile site to the standard one. I completely agree with him.
I always thought it was resource constraints that kept ZNet from addressing the design problem. Good design does take some time and investment to do right, and some tough decisions about what to cut. This post has crystalized my understanding. I fear more than resource constraints, this mentality will continue to hinder ZNet's true potential to gain traction with a larger audience.
-Tom
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Re: Wrong attitude for a sysop
By Albert, Michael at Aug 28, 2010 21:56 PM
Hi Tom, and thanks for the long term support!
> However, I am utterly stunned by the attitude in this post. I don't even know where to begin. It reads like a personal attack on the idiocy of users for not understanding how to use the site.
Well, it obviously can read that way, since it did to you - but it isn't written with that intention - nor do the words add up to what you indicate, I think.
Actually Brian is a close friend, and is in no way dumb much less idiotic - including not with the internet, as pointed out. If you look at the piece you will see it is very very different than you say - basically saying, instead of what you suggest, that if people try to do x with the site, they will typically succeed at doing x. Instead, however, people often don't do x, but then tell themselves, or believe, that it is because x is too hard or they can't find it, etc. - even though, when pressed, the claim turns out to be false. Is this everyone? No. But that is what happened with Brian. And what I was addressing. So you may want to look again...
> Brian is merely stating the obvious: that the ZNet site design is a total mess and violates every good practice that has ever evolved about how to design good human interfaces.
Maybe - but it would surprise me save insofar as of course we are not trying to get people to move quickly from ad to ad... and therefore do not have design features that cause that.
But look at the New York Times top page, and then look at ours. Maybe it is that I am used to ours, but I can't even read most of theirs, the text is so small - there is more clutter there, etc., despite that we have many more services, actually. I wouldn't criticize them for that failing - small type, clutter, etc. (only for being a criminally culpable abetter of injustice all over the planet) because, even if they distort news, still, they have a lot to convey, like us.
More, I don't think Brian would say what you said - but mainly, he didn't stick to what he did say. Look closely - what he said disappeared as a stance, a feeling, a view, replaced by surprise at what was easily possible once he actually tried it.... and that strange conflation - criticism of not being able to do x coupled to being able to do x the minute one tries, is what I was addressing.
> It's as though the author sat down and took every ounce of mental energy that could have gone into exploring how to make the site clearer and more intuitive, and instead spent it on developing an elaborate theory about how everything's fine and the problem lies with the "odd" mentality of the critic.
There are a few things wrong with your reading, I think, among which are these two, in particular.
A. The author, me, has spent endless time, and with others, trying to figure out how to do things better and in contrast this piece took very little time.
B. The author was actually trying to do what you suggest, right in this case. BUT when I sought from Brian actual statements of problems, actual things that bothered him as he tried to use the site, right in front of my eyes - it turned out the problems disappeared. And Brian would not have hesitated to tell me otherwise...
> It reveals so much to me about why ZNet is in the state that it is, and will likely remain there. That is, unless there is a fundamental shift of perspective.
ZCom is, I think, perhaps the largest left site, and is certainly perhaps the largest seriously anti capitalist site - to be found - or, if not, then nearly so. And it is that with far fewer resources than many other such sites. Yes, Z tries to do many many things that other left sites never bother trying - and, in so doing, problems certainly do arise - but that seems like a price of not settling for limited success.
As a conveyor of information - analysis, vision, strategy - I think we are actually doing quite a bit better than we have any right to expect to be able to do. As a "social networking" site - we are doing perhaps as well or better than most on the left that try - but not very well, objectively, in my opinion. But the question is, is that because of the site - or something else.
> There are some truly awful software interfaces out there. Generally the developers of them have absolutely no clue that they are awful. As a professional developer, I have a theory about this. The developer is the ultimate expert user. They live inside of the system every day. It becomes an extension of themselves. They know exactly when and where to do what -- like a pilot who knows how to decipher the control panel of a 747. You just reach over here and pull that knob and the A/C turns on, see?
This is quite right as a general description of some situations - I agree. But the thing is, Brian was forthrightly trying to convey a reason for thinking the site was difficult, and the minute he tried to show me reasons why - they disappeared. I was eager to hear - he wound up not having reasons left to offer. This happens often. A vague dismissal turns out to rest on not trying...and certainly on not using the videos or help for anything complex - odd, but true. Okay, if someone doesn't want to put in the time of viewing a brief video - fair enough. But to say they can't do x, and they really want to, without checking the video - does that make sense?
> Some users get it. They become expert users too. They learn how to navigate all the knobs and buttons and 1,000 choices all within reach, and maybe even play it like an instrument. It's really not that hard, once you take the time to understand it, now is it?
Which link on the tab menu, if you roll your cursor over it and see the submenu change and what is in it, is confusing? And if having fewer would, in your eyes, be better, which would you dump? Same for the left menu. When I go to sites I mostly have no idea what the hell their links are about - and I only find out if I am seriously interested. So the real question becomes I think, if one is really interested, is it confusing?
There is no reason for everyone to use everything, of course. Not everyone is really interested in pursuing that much, of course. But, okay, if you are interested, try using the left menu and then tell me if you think it is hard - open the help section - read the entries - or the participate section and its entries - and then use some part for actual content - and if you think it is hard let me know why you think it is hard. That's what I had Brian do, among other things. Though he didn't even have to bother with the help. Problem was, the minute he tried it, even without instructions and help, he mastered it, and was very surprised and pleased at its power. So what about it is hard? Try using the top menu - same thing. Try clicking a link. Tell me specific problems that aren't little trade offs or a function of one person's taste as compared to another person's.
There is a sense in which Z is more complex to the eye then many sites - I agree - but there is more content and there are more options. Okay, fair enough. But beyond that, be explicit...what is hard to navigate when you want to do some particular thing? If one wants to do a zspace page, and one watches the video on how to do it, and tries, is it really all that hard? Is it harder to do a serious custom version of the site? Yes it is. But is it really all that hard when you realize what you are in fact doing? Maybe, but I don't think so - not for anyone who would actually want to do it. Now I agree that we could simply not offer all these options - but if we do offer them, it isn't obvious how much better we could offer them even ignoring our limited resources...
> And here's the thing: these users constitute the bulk of the feedback that the developer hears. They are the most involved. And developers feel the most camaraderie with them, so it's very easy to skew one's perspective towards them. (I've done it.)
Well, yes, again, I agree this happens, but honestly this is not us. Because I and Chris are not programmers, we are not developers - and the only ones we even know, and interact with at all, are the ones working on the site - and the occasional person like yourself, I think you said you were one. We talk instead all the time to actual normal untechnical users - like Brian.
> What you don't hear is feedback from people who checked out the site and skipped it because it looked like the control panel to a 747.
Oh, no, I hear that, though of course, by what is called a selection effect, not as often as people no doubt experience it. Trust me, I know it happens. And now we have a mobile version in part for such people. But you are right that I am not very impressed with the stance. Go to the NYT online. Or to any other such entity - or the daily newspaper in print. They easily have more clutter than us up front, even though they offer fewer options for interaction (try to create your own New York Times top page - try to create your own personal page for your content, inside the NYT). I suspect there is something much more subtle at work when someone looks at a LEFT site and says it is way too much - and then looks at a mainstream site that has as much or more, and has no problem with it. I suspect it may be that people feel like if they use a LEFT site, they should pay attention to it all - or they are not being a good leftist, or something - and if there is a ton there - that doing paying attention to it all would take too long, so they don't get involved. When Z was 120 pages, years ago, this was a serious problem for us.
In fact it took no time for Brian to realize navigation was easy and fast - and even interaction was - once he clicked to try. But let's say it did take an hour or two to get acciimated. If you hear that there is a fantastic repository of daily updated essential material for someone of your inclination (let's assume one hears this) is giving it ten minutes, to be able to read any content at all, easily, and then, later, an hour or two, to become what you call a master of all its options and offerings - really too much? I actually think it takes less than that, but even if it took more, again, is it really too much if you are being empowered to have your own blog system, your own site even, your own groups, without being spied on, without ads, etc. etc.?
> People who just want to start by, I don't know, *reading some content*,
YES - those people can go to the recent content column and do so - or use the mobile site, etc. Why not? What about the top page would stop you from doing that? Call me dense, but I admit I don't get it. People are going to sites like the Times and countless others, that are easily as complex in terms of appearance, so why would anyone be put off by there being lots of links on ZNet - since the new stuff is right front and center to look at - unless, well, unless what...
> which is squeezed into one of 4(!) columns below the fold, a 5 word title that even then has to wrap onto the next line, no summaries, largely undifferentiated from the rest of the SEVEN HUNDRED links on the page (I counted).
Of course this is delusional unless you are talking about some other site...
Despite that it took me some time... I just checked the NYT site - almost every title has five words or more. 13 out of 15 above the fold or what I think you mean by the fold. Virtually every title below the fold - about 110 or so, broken into about thirty or so topics and a few other sections like a largely hidden one for blogs - has a very long title. None of them, by the way, list the author, which we do.
Their upper left column menu has over sixty entries, there are some subsections, but you cannot collapse them - and the type is so tiny I can't read it. And then there is another left column menu below the fold as well. Of course there are various ads. Now I wouldn't bother with any of those and as a result I may miss an easy way to find essays by Paul Krugman - which I might use if I found it. But mainly, I just don't care about the New York Times, beyond, at certain times. So, no problem.
Of course they display virtually nothing from any reader - no pictures of people who use the site, no content from people who use the site, no links to peoole's pages because people don't have them, etc.
Our top page has almost as many links - but they require less space though the display of author:tile uses larger type. Hmmmm - this is because the descriptions on our top page are hidden until you click a little down arrow to see them, next to a title - and then they are large enough to actually read. Our left menu probably has as many items as theirs, all together - but you can truncate it easily so you only see a section of items that you wish to see - which the Times menu doesn't allow - and, honestly, the items in our menu are worth using...
I could go on. They have sadly, about ten thousand times the resources we do...
> Plus a tab banner that is so out of control it looks like a piano keyboard. Feedback from people who take one look at the site, "flip the bozo bit" on whoever designed it, and move on.
Well, there are people who do that, sure - though I would imagine they would do it on most serious information sites, in that case - and we could I suppose have the mobile site on the main url and move the "big" site to another - but I think we will pass on doing that.
Instead of ranting at the tab menu - as above - why not be serious and tell me what you would leave off it, and why doing so would make your life, or anyone's life, easier. One of the key design rules I like is that pretty much anything should be two and at most three clicks away. I think we actually fulfill that, and the tab menu is part of doing so. Keep in mind, that anyone can in fact very easily, knock off from the menu anything they wish to in their own custom version - should it really matter to them to do so - another little feature missing from the Times.
> You don't hear this feedback, unless you go looking for it. You must have a methodologically valid process of surveying them. And an open mind. And a great, great deal of humility.
I don't know if it is humility that is needed to listen to a rant - but I have no trouble doing it. When asking Brian to indicate reasons for confusion, etc., I was more than eager to listen, not to a rant but to specifics - it is just that his reasons weren't forthcoming - just as, above, honestly, you offer none that are real - other than perhaps that the top tab menu has too many items.
> Pick up a book on interface design. Look at what's happened in software over the past decade or so. Look at what Apple or Google has done with consumer interfaces, in their products as well as their website. Consider why they've gotten so much more traction than their competitors. Consider that their greatest fans are some of the most expert computer users in the world, not just newbies. Consider why Brian preferred the mobile site to the standard one. I completely agree with him.
If our soul purpose was to rack up eyeballs there are a great many things we could and would do differently - and that is, by the way, the purpose that initially guided the logic of design - eyeballs for ads. But we have a very different purpose...involving conveying large quantities of information without consigning most of it to subordinate or near invisibility.
> I always thought it was resource constraints that kept ZNet from addressing the design problem. Good design does take some time and investment to do right, and some tough decisions about what to cut. This post has crystalized my understanding. I fear more than resource constraints, this mentality will continue to hinder ZNet's true potential to gain traction with a larger audience.
There is not a single concrete explicit suggestion here in the form eliminate that, or add this, or move that, etc. - that I can see. How about offering five. The site is an absolute horror, you say. Okay, use your own norms, make five substantive suggestions you think would really make a difference. So you understand, form my point of view, the more things you can identify that could be done better - with a clear statement of that better alternative - the more benefits accrue. If we can't afford some of what you suggest, okay, we can hold it in abeyance for later. If we can, however, we can give it a try.
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Defensive. Do a usability study.
By Lane, Tom at Aug 29, 2010 02:59 AM
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Re: Defensive. Do a usability study.
By Albert, Michael at Aug 29, 2010 05:10 AM
> Mike, I have great respect for you as a person, but there is one thing I have observed over the years: you have a tendency to exhaust critics into submission through sheer weight of verbosity.
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You're shooting the messenger
By Lane, Tom at Aug 29, 2010 20:21 PM
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Re: You're shooting the messenger
By Khan, Arshad M at Aug 30, 2010 03:28 AM
I wholeheartedly agree. For example, why so many grades of users? And what the hell is the difference between, say, a sustainer and a writer? How would you find that out from this site? Who is doing Chris Spannos' job while he is stuck in Detroit? As a new member, I have experienced considerable frustration using the site, even its method of communicating between members. These should be self-evident without long training videos that never answer the question one wants answered at that particular moment. Sites should be navigable without training videos. With all that. I will continue to suppot you and put up with the site.
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Re: Re: You're shooting the messenger
By Albert, Michael at Aug 30, 2010 13:14 PM
Hi -
I don't think Tom can answer some of your questions - so I will.
There are free users and Sustainers - donors - of which you are presumably one- thank you. The latter get additional features. Without this structure there would be no site, and at this point, no magazine, no videos, etc. It is the basis for our existence... It is also, I think, the most successful online donation system to be found on the left...maybe, per budget size, anywhere - I just don't know.
The difference between a Sustainer and a writer is that a Sustainer is a user who donates regularly. A writer is someone who is regularly published on the top page. It is not particularly major, I agree - but writers may, or may not, donate.
Chris and I do an overall job - maintaining the site, etc. etc. We share tasks. He is working while In Detroit - where you are doesn't prevent working. In October, however, I will spend about ten days, I think it is, in the UK going from town to town speaking. It will be very hard to work - and in that case Chris will pretty much carry the whole load.
I believe the site is navigable without using training videos and in any event certainly agree that it ought to be - probably for everyone - certainly for nearly everyone.
Any sustainer, I think, should have no problem just getting around - and reading/viewing stuff, without viewing any how to videos or reading any help. That said, there would be no way to know you could customize the site, something that I can't see any reason anyone would expect to be able to do - or put up your own content, etc. A video let's you know these potentials exist. Same for he Groups feature, for example. And, while I do think one could probably figure out how to open and edit a custom site without viewing the video - just noticing a link for custom, etc. - I also think it is much easier if one does view it.
You can find that there is a books facility, lyrics, quotes, and so on, just clicking around, without viewing a video, sure - but you can do it a bit faster with viewing. What you can't do, is know it is there a priori...or know there is a store, or a lyrics database, and so on and so forth - without there being visible links to them...to explore.
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Re: You're shooting the messenger
By Russell, Nathan at Sep 02, 2010 06:33 AM
Steve, Tom and Brian are absolutely right in what they write--the Z site is needlessly cumbersome and complex (I work in the field of IT but even my non-IT-working friends say similar things).
The Z site needs major streamling of the interface so that the wealth of amazing material can be easily accessed by all users and the material can be reached by more people independently/accidentally and promulgated more easily. Z right now truly feels like a maze as Manos wrote above and is frustrating.
In the way of specific suggestions:
-lose the complex overlay and changing submenus at the top in favor of static menus that redirect the user to a new, concrete web page (i.e. I never want to read "Loading..." on a web page after I've clicked a link or see the content change as I merely move my mouse around a web site; and *no one* knows you can right-click on a web site). I want to be able to send along any subpage through a real link and every page of Z should have real urls.
-tone down the amount of content per page so that the web pages load more quickly as not everyone should have a quad-core or have to wait for the page to load (we want minimum barriers to entry here)
-the comments portion of articles needs to be revised: a) so any Z user can participate in the conversation (some of the best comments will go unwritten given this arbitrary line in the sand) and b) with a changed structural layout MA's concerns will be addressed (e.g. each comment's subject could be a line that expands to reveal the substance when clicked which would also take care of these terrible margins/indentions on replies).
-to MA's question, generally, yes, I think Z should focus more on the amazing content that is truly exceptional than devising a site that includes so many interactive features (given the limitations in resources). They are nice, but not a priority nor Z's forte (historically or even present-day).
In general, I think a good policy (other than doing what Brian/Tom/Steve suggested) would be to compare Z's main page to the mobile page. If the two are radically different, then the interface needs to be changed to be easier so more people come to the site, enjoy the simplicity of the site, send links onward from the site; and the unique content is passed along as much as is possible.
Of course, now that I know a mobile site is available (and have finally found it), I may just use that to send to people given it's ease and comfort to the eyes.
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Peace
By Lane, Tom at Aug 29, 2010 23:28 PM
I just want to add that I'm not intentionally trying to be nasty. Brutally honest, yes, and probably counterproductively so. It's a personal fault of mine that I get harsher when I encounter intransigence. Sincere apologies for that.
The passion comes from the cringing feeling seeing ZNet 10 years behind the rest of the web in terms of the evolution of *usability*. I have gone through this evolution in my own work (I hope) and it's just frustrating to see stubbornness block a similar path for ZNet.
A decade ago there were a couple acronyms that were a regular part of techie vernacular: RTFM and PEBKAC. You can look them up. That was more or less the perspective back then.. I as a dev am responsible for designing working functionality and documenting it, and users are responsible for learning how to use it. If users didn't Read The Fucking Manual, then Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. That more or less captured the perspective. And explains why interfaces more or less sucked.
Since then there has been a blossoming in the realm of "usability". Devs now have a better appreciation that if users aren't naturally finding success with your interface, it's your fault not theirs. And along with that, we've learned more about our own egos and biases and how to factor them out of the equation. That is what I meant Mike when I said "I mean this in the best way" -- we are all victim to it.
Anyway, I realize it would be more helpful if I could follow this up with an offer to pitch in actual effort to run the usability study, develop specific recommendations, etc. I can't right now. I just hope I am effect a small shift in the attitude and approach regarding user experience.
-Tom
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Re: Peace
By Albert, Michael at Aug 30, 2010 02:37 AM
Tom, I think there are two more messages from you.
The first starts - since you want brevity - by you saying the site sucks, follow proper practice.
Okay, I admit that I find that communication both useless and nasty, being kind about it. You advice after your cannon shot is we - Chris and I - should set up a study watching new users on the site and also read a book?
If the problems are so obvious to YOU, given all the studies you have run and books you have read, then surely you can educate me with at least a few actual suggestions. It would take less time than what we have been doing - so why not? I have asked for them. They are not forthcoming, I have no idea why.
While you say there are no new users - how you deduce this is beyond me. Rather, the viewing side of the site does not strike me as in any kind of difficulty. The interaction aspects are another matter - but that is very very different.
Let me give you an example.
There are I think a few hundred thousand users - but they mainly read, which is fine. A hundred thousand get email, better. Now there are about 6,000 sustainers. They donate. They can all comment, post blogs, etc. etc. Now the fact is - and you would have to go a ways to get me to believe otherwise - anyone who has signed up and entered credit card information and can log in - can comment just about as easily as they can read an article. One click at the end of the article.
So - there is something to explain - that is, the relatively low number who put comments after articles. I believe the answer has virtually nothing to do with it being technically too difficult - a 747 cockpit that stops them. I even think - yes I will admit it - that regarding this particular function, it isn't even true for someone who says it is true for them. Before you go ballistic, think about it.
Suppose we had 1000 sustainers in a room clicking and reading articles - and we were conducting the test to see why they don't comment. We have them there so long they read 10 articles. I don't know the stats, but say 50 comment. Now what? Did we see anything that would tell us make the comment button bigger, or a different color? I don't think so.
I think the same impediments to commenting affect other functions AS WELL AS INTERFACE ISSUES, in some cases. I want to understand both. You think the only issue is design.
It would be technically trivial for the 1000 sustainers to each write ten comments, one on each article they read. So why not? Well there are many possible reasons, time pressures I am sure is foremost - but, after that, perhaps a more subtle one like not wanting to put words in public on a site that has very high standards across the board. In fact, on sports sites and others, people are happy to do it in pretty large numbers, though perhaps not proportionately larger - I don't know - even though people curse each other out, but not here - where there is none of that. It is worth thinking about why. That is what I am trying to do.
Yes, I asked you to deliver five, ten, fifty, or any number of actual suggestions, the high numbers to show I was eager - the low numbers to show I would take anything.
You say you are an expert. You say you used the site. You say t is a mess. If you are right, then as an expert surely you can say something about what is a mess. Why not? I am asking.
The number of links is not all that high. I asked you for changes in menus - you are silent. What do you want from me? Do I have to say - well, okay, Tom, you say it is a mess so I will simply agree - it's a mess - and we will redo it from scratch with no resources? I almost said that - as in, suggest anything - but for some reason, to you that is intransigence. You didn't start comradely, but with a shotgun - and I asked for substance anyhow. Maybe I have to say, okay, I will round up fifty new users and watch over their shoulders - really, are you serious?
Your other suggestion was that I read books on website design - sorry, but I have, and in any event, I think we could read the same book and come away with different takes. So why not provide some actual substance?
You want us to sit and look at new users using the site and to do it with a camera no like develops at your big company - well, that isn't in our universe. We can and have, over and over, given people forums and other means to give comments and suggestions. That is in our universe. To look over Brian's should was in our universe. You didn't like it that when he tried things, they worked, and he liked it. No good. I must have tricked him. I mean really...
We can also ask people, and we do. And when we can sit with someone, we do. You just keep repeating, but not hearing.
If the minimalist site is better than the big one, as you suggest - I won't even list what you can't do and what is missing, and so on - all of which arrive on the big site in response to the questionaires you think we should use - then the minimalist site would have 5000 sustainers and a few hundred thousand users if we shut down the main one. That would make my life vastly simpler, and Chris's. I have no interest whatever in spending more time than needed to promote information flow and community - so if a simpler site does better - great. Your ego may be tied up in web site design or sites - honestly, however big mine is, it isn't tied up in that. To the extent I care, it is about user experience, transfer of information, creation of ties, etc.
We added the groups feature - lots of cost, lots of time and travail - so people could create sites on topics of their own, their own way. We added customization so people could view the site their way.
You say you are being brutally honest, but if you are, then, pardon me, I have to think you are rather shallow. That is - honestly - you say you have used the site since its inception and in earlier incarnations. You say are very very practiced at interfaces, at knowing as well what things cost, etc. etc. You say you have introduced lots of people to the site and watched them fall into confusion and run. Okay, surely then, rather then say this sucks you could say WHY you think it is deficient, even horribly deficient.
I don't think these matters are trivial at all. And I don't think they are entirely matters of design or technology. Apparently I am not allowed to think such thoughts.
The truth is, it is in fact very much in my interest, and in the site's interest, that that there is a technical/design explanation for why YOU - yes, you - can use the site for ten users, donate tons of cash, but not do your zspace page - and I would bet my right arm that it is not because it is too hard for you to do it. You didn't comment on that.
You say you are harsher because you encountered intransigence - is disagreeing about some things, and asking for more substance across the board, while simply enduring the nastiness, intransigence? For the life of me I cannot see why.
You say "the passion comes from the cringing feeling seeing ZNet 10 years behind the rest of the web in terms of the evolution of *usability*
Okay, that's a claim. Maybe it is true - believe it or not I hope it is, because then we can easily make the site still better. It has x users now - if it sucks, then after improvements it would have more - and they would learn more and contribute more insights - great. But I think your claim is quite false. I believe there are many things to do - but I suspect they will have very slight impact on the number of sustainers per users. So - what am I supposed to do, say I agree with you, the problem is too much clutter - or whatever you say - just because you say it? Or should I ask you why you say it - what features cause you to say it? That's what I did. That is not instransigence.
You say, "I have gone through this evolution in my own work (I hope) and it's just frustrating to see stubbornness block a similar path for ZNet.
Is it possible you project too much - assuming your failings are our failings? What stubborness - stubborn about what? I ask for serious feedback - ideas, suggestions, concrete substance - from someone who is an expert and who has used the site for ten years - and you say go read a book. You really think that that is responsible? When users said they wanted more control over the top menu - we delivered it. When you say go read a book - I can't see how that will help.
You say, "A decade ago there were a couple acronyms that were a regular part of techie vernacular: RTFM and PEBKAC. You can look them up. That was more or less the perspective back then.. I as a dev am responsible for designing working functionality and documenting it, and users are responsible for learning how to use it. If users didn't Read The Fucking Manual, then Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. That more or less captured the perspective. And explains why interfaces more or less sucked."
It is part of it, I agree - we encounter variants on it, to be sure - but even if you are the expert - I suspect it is way too simple even explaining the problems back then. Just today I spent time with a very smart person bemoaning that photo shop was utterly incomprehensible and unusable due to the lack of any logic to its layout, etc. I bet the designers have done all you say...to the tune of millions and millions of dollars.
You'll say back - with justice - photoshop is very widely used. Well, so is ZCom - which you act as if it isn't. Very odd. Both have problems, both have virtues. But nothing comes from empty praise or empty criticism...
You say, "Since then there has been a blossoming in the realm of "usability". Devs now have a better appreciation that if users aren't naturally finding success with your interface, it's your fault not theirs."
Now, Brian - listen. I agree. Can you hear that: I agree. Which is why we keep refining, trying to get feedback, trying to fix things. But that is from users who try and fail. It is not from users who don't try at all. That is a different problem. If someone buys your software and doesn't open the box and says it doesn't work - well the problem isn't with your menus.
In other words, suppose users don't have trouble with your interface because they don't even click on it. They just don't try it at all. Now what?
You say, "Anyway, I realize it would be more helpful if I could follow this up with an offer to pitch in actual effort to run the usability study, develop specific recommendations, etc. I can't right now. I just hope I am effect a small shift in the attitude and approach regarding user experience."
So you lambast me and the site, impugning motives, etc. repeatedly, all the while so sure of yourself that you think is warranted just to try to prod a new attitude - and you think it is not necessary to actually hear what I am writing back - surely that is not the best way to do it, wouldn't you agree?
The fact is, if you listened you would see you are encountering the desired attitude - I want you, yes you, based on your use, to tell me what is off putting - at least something, anything - and if you have suggested changes that would improve that thing. The trouble is, you haven't used the interactive aspects of the site - say making zspace pages, etc. And I think it would be pretty hard for you to write on a piece of paper that the top menu or left menus are technically backward - or unfriendly - or inefficient or obscure for someone who wants to navigate - other than in one respect. They have lots of items - like many sites.
If I am missing something - honestly, I am eager to hear.
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Re: Re: Peace
By Andrews, John at Aug 30, 2010 20:36 PM
Michael
I am an IT duffer but I can still navigate the site to suit my needs. Okay, I tend to blunder around and it takes me a while to sort things out but I generally get there in the end. I have an aversion to instructions - I just will not read the manual no matter whether it is a website or a DIY project - that is my failing not yours.
I have no knowledge of website design so I can offer no technical comments. I have been an avid reader of Z-Net since the mid 1990s and consider it to be a marvellous site. I use it mainly for reading articles - Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Arundhati Roy, Paul Street and your articles to name but a few. The site has always exceeded my expectations / requirements. To be honest, if I found the site wanting I would gravitate away. I read AlterNet and Counterpunch and find them both very good in their own ways but Z-Net is my natural home.
Many thanks to you, Chris and the Team for providing such a superb educational resource. I'm looking forward to your visit to the UK later this year and hope to see you talk at the London Anarchist Bookfair.
All best wishes
John Andrews
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Re: Re: Re: Peace
By Albert, Michael at Aug 30, 2010 20:45 PM
Thanks John, and very glad the site helps you out. Clearly you are a Sustainer. Have you worked on a ZSpace page? If not, how come? If so, do you think it has potential? What about groups? For you, in other words, is all that stuff just not up your ally, or is it worthwhile?
Let me put it just a little differently - do you think we should keep investing time and money in trying to develop interactive features - or that we should stop that, and just provide the best content we can?
I look forward to seeing you In London.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Peace
By Lapinel, Elliott at Aug 30, 2010 23:17 PM
I'd like to note that the group pages are particularly exciting to me. I'd like to see a lot more people joining them.
Some people who are willing to have political discussions in person are not willing to do as much online. I don't know if I understand their feelings, but they usually seem to underestimate the advantages of online communication.
The hostility towards online communication might come from the fact that online communication often involves more people than you can keep track of, and creates a feeling of anonymity similar to when people are in their cars leading to the same kind of bizarre rages.
Z groups are different because you can control the size of the group so that you can know who you are speaking to, keep track of them, and type without getting drowned out in frenzy of typing.
I think they are even underused by groups that have time to meet once a week. There are incredible restrictions on communication if you can only meet once a week - usually to get through a specific agenda. Usually the communication time in itself is not why people choose to restrict their meeting to once or twice a week, but because of the transportation and coordination problems. These problems are overcome with Zgroups.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Peace
By Albert, Michael at Aug 31, 2010 02:15 AM
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Peace
By Krumm, John at Aug 31, 2010 02:42 AM
Hey, good to see you guys still arguing on Znet. : )
I think Znet could have long used a going over by someone with an eye for design asthetics and ease of use.
What Znet is trying to do is unusual on the interenet these days, but if parts are not working, not generating interest, dump those parts. I would concentrate on keeping the top page lively and interesting, and perhaps not so "automatically generated" looking.
I know these types of not-so-specific comments make Michael spit in his coffee, so I'll leave it there.
Hope all is well,
John
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Peace
By Osama, Barack at Sep 01, 2010 00:07 AM
ZCom doesn't suck, plain and simple. Yes there are bugs, that's why every web project has bug tracking and the ability to report them and that's what should be done, specifically, by the people who find them. But to just say the site looks like a 747 panel is not constructive. How about spelling out what exactly should be done to make it more user friendly. I myself as a web dveloper wouldn't have the main layout as it is, but that's personal preference not a deal breaker, and in no way suggests that the site is incomprehensible. The site works great that's why I am a sustainer. I personally don't have time to engage in commenting because I work full-time; spend time with family and friends. Work on projects I like that are of intellectual nature and am involved locally with a group that has their own site. But I come here to read on topics that are of interest to me. But between all of those things that require my time I just don't think I can create more time out of thin air to get involved because being involved on a site is different from being involved with actual people in the real world. With that said if you don't like what the site has to offer - move on and create your own.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Peace
By Albert, Michael at Sep 01, 2010 12:23 PM
Obviously a problem arises if there are too many replies to one piece - so, please, to comment now, start over, commenting on the main blog, not a highly indented comment already here....
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Re: Peace
By Mcfarland, Steve at Sep 01, 2010 13:33 PM
Just want to weigh in as a sustainer of a few years standing and a daily reader of the site for 7 years that I agree entirely with the constructive criticisms offered by Tom and Brian. I think particularly Tom has diagnosed the problems with the site, and the mindset that prevents it from improving, with a clarity, generosity, and equanimity that is rare in internet discussion. I am kind of appalled my the defensiveness with which these observations have been met.The attitude towards new visitors to the site seems to be "if they're to lazy to figure out all the great features we've worked so hard to offer, then we don't want them around the joint". Do us all a favor and take Tom's advice to read up on the emerging consensus about good website design, and change your design process to base it upon the experiences of actual users. The content ZNet has to ffer is too valuable to be frittered in this way.
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Re: Re: Peace
By Albert, Michael at Sep 02, 2010 17:23 PM
I am not going to belabor - but the attitude attributed so easily and confidently to those working on the site couldn't be further from the mark.
It isn't just that I can't tell you how long, how much time and energy, goes into trying to figure out problems and deal with them by making changes. Also, the site was desiigned by pros - not us - and when it was designed we did all kinds of questionairres and polling among users about features. The goal is to make it better, always - not to stand pat and smile. This is true for Chris and I, who had nothing much to do with design, and for the programmers.
Actually, an added irony is that while pros designed the main site, I designed ZMobile. There were no pros involved and no user input either. We couldn't afford the former, and didn't have time for the latter.
Finally, every time we look at users using the site, or ask users about their experiences with the site, we pray to hear about problems - not to hear how much they like it - because the more problems that are surfaced and that we can fix, the better the site gets.
I can't look over your shoulder - I wish I could - but I can ask you your ideas. I can't look over a pro's shoulder, but I can ask them, too, their ideas. It is not defensive to do so, or dismissive, it is trying to learn.
I understand that the casual or even the frequent but non professional user is unlikely to be able to make positive suggestions to solve problems they encounter - but I think pros might often be able to do so, particularly if they have read widely, done lots of user tests on lots of interfaces, and perhaps even have strong opinions about one they are viewing... and or regularly use.
I guess while we are at it, one last point.
About the Brian Kelly related blog, what Tom thought was that I heard Brian K say the site is difficult - and so then I taught him how to use it, etc. - and then I was pleased that he could. That was a typical kind of pattern in Tom's experience, so he figured it applied here, too.
And of course, Tom was right, IF I had taught Brian K how to use the site and he had then done so, that would demonstrate nothing much about doing it without being taught. However, that isn't what happened. Rather, it was almost exactly a one person version of precisely the type test Tom recommended. Brian K sat six feet away - I was working while he was viewing. I just said, use the tab menu. Use the left menu. Log in. Go to your ZSpace Page. Edit it. And in fact, when Brian said he was going to use the left menu to get help on editing I said don't bother, just do it. That was the extent of my role.
And ratter than Brian K finding fault with things - despite not being instructed - which is what I was actually hoping for, as a basis for improvements - he discovered that the reason he hadn't used various elements of the site, even the left menu and of course his ZSpace page and customization and groups, was only, literally, that he hadn't used them - not that he couldn't use them, not even that he couldn't find them, etc. He was sitting there laughing at himself - given how easily he managed.
So we are instructed that we should pay close attention to evidence and insights that arise from user experience, which we of course we knew. Well, that is precisely what I was doing in the blog piece, but without preconceptions.
Of course the site can be better - and is routinely made better, a little, nearly every week. But Brian K came to the same conclusion I did about his prior and current experience. He was not sure why he hadn't used features like blogging and commenting and the left menu and his zspace page before, but quite sure it wasn't that he tried and failed, or even that he was put off by appearances, though perhaps he was put off by expectations.
Okay, Brian K's experience, is data, not to be reinterpreted to deny the facts of it or to fit it to other expectations, but assessed in its own right.. The solution to his experience, if his experience matches those of a significant sector of other people, doesn't reside in the user functioning differently with the same site, most likely, but for us to come up with ideas that change the site to address the problem, but we do have to know what the problem is....
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