Hey quick q. Can we bring back the reply count to each thread on the home page? e.g. (80 comments) Reason? I used to get engaged with content that didn't necessarily grab my attention in title or content. For example, if I noticed the comment count was high/a lot of people were talking about an article, I'd be curious to see what the fuss was about and join in/delve deeper. I'm really missing this.. What's the chances of a return? * Also, on a side note - as a long time user of AP - I typed 'c' instead of 'a' into my automagical address bar just now.. this was a big deal.
If you go to the article discussion forum instead, you'll find the reply count. I find myself going to that forum sometimes to do just what you're talking about.
Just read a whole ton of discussion on this elsewhere. I guess you're spot on - I just find it all a bit backward now. I'll be spending more time in the forum - getting more opinion and less article! (Which seems to defeat Jason's objective). Also (I imagine I'm in the minority), I also miss the small icons for each band. I'd scroll until I recognised one and pause on it - instant recognition. I don't know how this could be implemented more as an editorial feature but it's pretty hard to browse and pick out favourable news now.. I don't know. I'm only really spitballing here, sharing an opinion. I understand why the changes have been made but I can't lie when I say I'm finding this transition a little tough as a regular casual reader.
I won't say never, because I may change my mind sometime, but for the time being the chances are pretty slim. There's a few reasons: 1) There's a big technical hit to do it. I mean, I can do it, I can cache it, and it won't be that big of a deal, but that's a lot of overhead to add something I really, right now, specifically don't want there. 2) That functionality basically exists right here. You can see in big letters how many comments are on each news post, so if you're looking for that you can find it. 3) I really don't like being influenced by what gets the most comments on a post or be worried someone won't check something out if it doesn't get any comments. My favorite posts so far on the site have been the quick little fun posts that have gotten like 1-2 comments tops. They've gotten thousands of clicks though from the homepage. Hope this makes sense. Lemme know if you have any questions. Also, if you're not sure what to check out each day the four "required reading stories" are almost always what I think are the best stories / news of the day. The "recent features" as well. And then there's also the "top stories" modules on the homepage that looks at an average of views on each story over the past 24 hours and puts them there — I think this is a far better metric to show what people are engaging with and enjoying on the site than just comments.
Why would that defeat my objective? It doesn't really matter to me where someone spends their time - if someone is more interested in the opinion and community then they should be on the community side, that's exactly why I built it! But if someone just wants to read the news (which, by the way has always been a far higher # than those that comment) then they can do that as well. That's the definition of meeting my objective. Hahah! I think it just depends You probably missed out on a whole lot of great bands and news that way. Band names are still bold, I think they stick out pretty well on a scroll. I'll make sure to include images on the really big ones.
Appreciate the time you've given to explain. I guess it'll just take some adjusting to new browsing habits.
Of course. My goal isn't to be mean or take away functionality, but to explain my thought process behind it and why I think it's going to be much, much better in the long run.
Hey @Jason Tate , this mainly applies to some of @Craig Manning 's reviews but maybe have a "Retrospective" tag for reviews like the 10-year anniversery of Everything in Transit or the Born to Run review. Similar to the "First Impressions" tag you have for some of yours.
I really like the forums design. On mobile though there it would be nice to have some navigation or back to the top button at the bottom of a thread.
I may be missing a very obvious feature but on iOS, is there no way to upload images in a thread post yet, @Jason Tate?
Minor thing related to Encore. For the Podcast article discussion threads specific to an episode could you possibly apply the "Podcast" tag that's in the Entertainment section or at least have Encore somewhere in the title of the thread? Also potentially sticky either the specific episode thread or the Encore discussion thread as I found it a little hard to find.
Yeah, that's the plan, the title was bad for that episode. You will always be able to view the article page itself and click the quote bubble to find it if you need to - but I'll do a better job of linking to that thread for conversation in the future as well. Sorry bout that. What I need to do is make sure to come edit the title in the news article forum after as well. I retroactively put the podcast prefix on that episode though. Article Discussion • forum.chorus.fm
Prefixes do basically the exact same thing by allowing each form of entertainment to be filtered by clicking on one. That way you don't have to navigate multiple places to talk about a movie or a TV show. If the forum ends up becoming bigger with too many people and threads then I may re-evaluate and move to sub-forums for them instead.
We've got a healthy community of beer lovers here - adding Untappd to the contact options for your profile would be awesome.