Patrick.net

Letting Users Pick Newslinks

By Patrick   Follow   Tue, 15 May 2012, 8:59am   2,161 views   19 comments
In Menlo Park CA 94025   Watch (2)   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike  

I haven't sent out the newslinks in two days because I'm re-working it to have users vote on links directly. See the up and down arrows on the home page.

So then what should get mailed out? Links with net 3 up-votes within 3 days?

And how do I expire links from the home page list? Just drop them from the list after 3 days? How does Reddit work?

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1. Patrick Follow Befriend (54) 5,240 threads 6,175 comments 46 male Menlo Park, CA Premium

   1   7:57am Thu 17 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   OK, this seems to be working reasonably well. I mail out links with a net 3 upvotes, add them to the newslink archive ( http://patrick.net/archive.php?month=5&year=2012 ) and remove them from voting. I also remove links from voting if they did nto get a net 3 upvotes within 3 days.

2. Poop Deck Follow Befriend 6 threads 28 comments

   2   5:17pm Mon 21 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   Patrick, I've been reading your site off and on for years. I have noticed the usability has gone off a cliff in the past month or two. The best draw for me was the news links every day, but with all the forum stuff and voting for links on the front page is just cluttering up the front page with junk. Right now there's a huge picture of a hot girl in a bikini and some clip art dominating the link area. Anyway here are my two suggestions regarding the link voting area: 1) Put only the "confirmed good" i.e. links that have made the archive, on the front page. Make a prominent shortcut link on the front page to a page where you can vote for links. 2) I see you're trying to model after reddit, so I would suggest shrinking any pictures to a thumbnail when they are part of a link so they don't dominate the link area. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude or anything, I still admire what you are doing here and that you are always trying to improve the site.

3. Patrick Follow Befriend (54) 5,240 threads 6,175 comments 46 male Menlo Park, CA Premium

   3   5:26pm Mon 21 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   Thanks for the feedback. I see what you mean about the picture of the girl on the home page. OK, I will shrink pictures on the home page. That really is too much, but it is interesting what people will choose to view when you let them vote on it.

4. Patrick Follow Befriend (54) 5,240 threads 6,175 comments 46 male Menlo Park, CA Premium

   4   5:30pm Mon 21 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   Actually I like having large images when they are graphs or some image relevant to housing or politics. I just removed that image of the girl because I didn't know what else to do.

5. Poop Deck Follow Befriend 6 threads 28 comments

   5   5:36pm Mon 21 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   Yeah, I can agree with that, but I've just noticed a lot of non-housing related images come up lately. Cats, "funny" pictures, etc. I guess it's a trade off. So I was looking at the front page and I had some other observations. You have a link to the forums up top, a second link to individual forums right below it, and then the whole left side of the front page are more forums links. Basically 3 ways to get to the same place. Why not one big box that says FORUMS, maybe with the "latest activity" posts listed? Then it is a quick jump to the forums area and you get rid of a lot of text clutter on the front page. Would it be difficult to put a link to the forum comments related to the news links on the news links archive?

6. Patrick Follow Befriend (54) 5,240 threads 6,175 comments 46 male Menlo Park, CA Premium

   6   2:29pm Tue 22 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   Yup, another big cat picture today. Not sure how to filter those out automatically, or if I even should. You're right about the clutter. Top forum link removed. But I kept the invidual forum links because I know people use those. Also, I personally love seeing all the latest activity on the home page. Shows what's popular very quickly. JonnyDanger says Would it be difficult to put a link to the forum comments related to the news links on the news links archive? Not difficult, so I will do it. Thanks for the suggestion!

7. PockyClipsNow Follow Befriend 19 threads 1,536 comments Los Angeles, CA

   7   2:35pm Tue 22 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   half the internet is cats and hotchicks/pr0n. u cant fight it!

8. Patrick Follow Befriend (54) 5,240 threads 6,175 comments 46 male Menlo Park, CA Premium

   8   2:45pm Tue 22 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   OK, now the archives also have links to the forum comments about them. Check it out: http://patrick.net/archive.php PockyClipsNow says half the internet is cats and hotchicks/pr0n. u cant fight it! Yup, cats, boobs, and bacon are everywhere.

9. Poop Deck Follow Befriend 6 threads 28 comments

   9   9:28pm Tue 22 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   Patrick says Not difficult, so I will do it. Cool, Patrick. Thanks!

10. jamboree Follow Befriend 1 threads 6 comments

    10   9:35am Wed 23 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   Hi, There is too much blank space between the article title row and the next row "Submitted by ...". I first saw this new layout today, and I found the red / green arrows to be jarring. Each row is too busy and my eye is drawn away from the article title which is the most important thing. You need to de-emphasize / shrink the "Submitted by" row and maybe tone down the red/green arrows. Compare to http://news.ycombinator.com/news Thanks,

11. Patrick Follow Befriend (54) 5,240 threads 6,175 comments 46 male Menlo Park, CA Premium

    11   10:36am Wed 23 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   Good ideas. OK, blank space lessened, red/green arrows smaller, article title bold, "submitted by" credit shrunk. Better?

12. jamboree Follow Befriend 1 threads 6 comments

    12   12:00pm Wed 23 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   Yes, that's better, but I think you still have too much vertical space between the title row and the "Submitted by" row. Those two rows should be hugging each other. The "Submitted by" row is still almost standing out as it's own row. Also, do you need to use boldface on the titles? It's harder on the eyes. Also, I don't think you should show Up and Down counts "12 2". You are ranking them by net points, so you should just say "10 points" or "score: 10". The arrows are less prominent now that they are smaller but they may be harder for people to click. The other way to make tone them down is to use more neutral colors. For example, this is how slickdeals does it : reference initial: better: Thanks,

13. Patrick Follow Befriend (54) 5,240 threads 6,175 comments 46 male Menlo Park, CA Premium

    13   1:21pm Wed 23 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   jamboree says you still have too much vertical space between the title row and the "Submitted by" row. Those two rows should be hugging each other. I don't know how to do that. They are just two lines separated by a "br" tag. How do you get them closer than that? jamboree says Also, do you need to use boldface on the titles? It's harder on the eyes. OK, boldface removed. jamboree says Also, I don't think you should show Up and Down counts "12 2". You are ranking them by net points, so you should just say "10 points" or "score: 10". I think it's interesting to see both up and down votes. Tells you how controversial something is. jamboree says The arrows are less prominent now that they are smaller but they may be harder for people to click. The other way to make tone them down is to use more neutral colors. I think they're still bigger than the arrow on http://news.ycombinator.com/news I don't mind the colors, especially since I removed the "mailto" envelope icon. The garish colors draw your attention to items you haven't voted on yet. When you vote, the arrows turn grey.

14. jamboree Follow Befriend 1 threads 6 comments

    14   2:10pm Wed 23 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   There are lots of ways to layout the HTML. If you look at the ycombinator.com/news, they are using a table (border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0) where each line is a row plus an empty spacer row style="height:5px". For this patrick.net table, row1 would be the title row, row2 would be the "submitted by" row, and row3 would be a vertical spacer row. This allow you to group the title and submitted by lines tightly together. Reddit.com is another good example too look at how they groups the related lines together with a vertical space inbetween each group. I agree it's nice to see the up and down but it could still be done more subtle, e.g. "10 points (12/2)". Or, like reddit or slickdeals, etc. do is only show the net score on the front page, but if you goto the comments for the article, then you can see the up/down counts. The ycombinator.com/news arrow is at the other extreme -- too small imo. The red/green arrows are very garish. Most other sites use more neutral colors which match their website, e.g. facebook, reddit, slickdeals, etc. boldface removed: Thanks,

15. jamboree Follow Befriend 1 threads 6 comments

    15   2:27pm Wed 23 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   Unrelated, but another layout issue that annoying me is the "Latest Forum Activity". You could save vertical space if you move the title lines to the right of the picture, e.g. from reddit Thanks

16. Poop Deck Follow Befriend 6 threads 28 comments

    16   2:52pm Wed 23 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   Thanks for pointing those things out, jamboree, I was thinking the same thing about the voting links but I didn't have the chance to comment. And thanks for working on the page Patrick - it looks way better. Other than the spacing of the "recent forum activity" as jamboree pointed out, I have one other question. Do you really need to have the 18 most recent topics? Maybe 5-10 tops so it at least ends vertically alongside the link voting. Also, do you need to have the content of the recent post included? How about just the thread title? The post content makes it look cramped. Also, I think the "Essential Reading" gets lost. Though regular users have already read it, it may be useful to new users. Might want to feature it more prominently. One more thing - how about a navigation footer? Then maybe you can move some of the clutter from the top of the page to the bottom. Anyway, keep up the good work!

17. Patrick Follow Befriend (54) 5,240 threads 6,175 comments 46 male Menlo Park, CA Premium

    17   3:38pm Wed 23 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   OK, working on those. Damn tables just refuse to eliminate the space between the lines even with "border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0"

18. errc Follow Befriend (7) 30 threads 1,267 comments 31 male Premium

    18   5:24am Thu 24 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   how do you vote on links that aren't on the homepage?

19. Patrick Follow Befriend (54) 5,240 threads 6,175 comments 46 male Menlo Park, CA Premium

    19   8:49am Thu 24 May 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike   The link has to be added to the list on the right before you can vote on it. To add a link, just put it in a comment, or create a new thread and put the link in that. Then it will be at the top of "New Links" which sorts links by time: http://patrick.net/?new The default home page is "Best Links", which sorts by votes instead of time.