6Originally posted by
igrick, dude in charge of lj design, has posted the following today:
New LJ. Step one: comments.
Folks, as the first step of a major design change me and Tyoma (lj user tema) were talking about we’ve rolled out the new comments system onto the beta-testing servers. I wanted to say “rolled out the new design” but it’s really is a completely new system, not a simple design change. It’s only available to beta-users for now (you can become one by joining the![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=87.4){kind=small}
lj_ru_beta community and enabling beta-mode here) and to journals that have default commenting design enabled (like mine does).
Better see once than read this text a hundred times, but I’m going to talk about my impressions and major changes anyway.
– new comments can be added without page reload;
– comments could be posted by pressing ctrl+enter shortcut – this is genius;
– comments no longer have Subject field and this is non-negotiable;
– mass comment actions are made simpler: you only need to select one comment and you’ll see the actions panel (we’ll add more options later);
– marking new comments option – the juiciest part for people who get many of them. It’s very simple: adds “new” mark to comments that were added since you’ve last visited the page. I’ve got a new habit because of it: I open the comments page, mark the first comment, select “mark all” and “collapse all” and then scroll down looking for new comments which I then expand and reply to. That means that all new comments get replies in one go without page being refreshed. Then I refresh the page and repeat the process. It’s much more useful for me than email because I get a lot of comments.
– Because of the new method of selecting userpics I’ve started using them more.
– It’s much easier to add a link, a picture or a video into a comment (we’ll add selecting/adding to and from the ScrapBook).
– All actions are now animated and that looks much nicer.
And many other nice things. Anyway, if you’re interested – try out the beta-mode, discuss, criticize, suggest.
My thoughts:
So I’m definitely not thrilled with this. The whole removal of subject lines will totally mess up kink/comment memes/comms. I kind of foresee a mass migration to Dreamwidth.
Going through the comments people don’t seem happy. In one reply igrick says that less than 1% of commenters use the subject line, the person resorts by asking for backing for that statistic and what about the communities that rely heavily on the use of subjects, and then igrick says I already gave you the statistic… Also is seems like this will affect ALL PREVIOUS COMMENTS not just new ones. Taking a moment to consider email notifications, if you’re following a post with a lot of comments that would have previously been separated by subject, there will now be no way to differentiate them in emails because of the lack of a subject line.
It seems like the site is being pushed to be like facebook. If I wanted to use facebook I’d be there… seeing as this isn’t facebook I don’t want it to work like it. Comments also say that with this system the page loads slower than refreshing upon the addition of a comment (as if LJ wasn’t slow enough already). The addition of animations and transitions will not make this browser friendly and will significantly hinder people with slower computers… As someone that normally has dozens of LJ tabs open at a time and a browser that uses too much memory as it is, this does not seem like a good thing.
Oh look and we have some English comments popping up that show how much igrick doesn’t care:
Commenter: It is absolutely unacceptable to remove subject lines. You can say goodbye to fandom if you implement that.
igrick: Is it just a copy-past from some other place, or your thoughts?
Commenter: Why are subject lines being removed? Please explain.
igrick: Just because of 99% of comments have no subject and displayed as “no subject” in threads. It is not make sense to have a subject for comment.
Do the 99% that don’t use subjects really care? Does it offend them in some way? Does it inconvenience them to see it? So the 1% don’t matter? The hundreds of communities that have hundreds of thousands of posts where subject lines are immensely important don’t matter? Yes, this is most likely to effect fandom communities, but if a mass exodus of fandom communities happens, the individuals are likely to follow. If this is implemented (without the option to opt out) it will not be a good thing for LJ’s fannish userbase.
Can we please stop fixing stuff that’s not broken?
ETA: So it seems since shit has hit the proverbial fan on igrick’s journal, he added: “By the way — for the moment, and nearest half a year or even a year, we talking only about S1 commenting page. Journal, where comments are in design of journal, still will have subject lines both in commenting form and threads.” Then someone asks “Does it mean that after that ‘half a year or even a year’ the same changes will come to journal designs as well?” and he replies “I can’t tell definitely now, but probably yes. As well as probably now. It depends on many things, especially on how S2, as system to design journal, will be developed.” So this won’t affect the majority in the near future but still…
Also if you’re going to post on his journal, he can’t see subjects.
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D: I can think of more than a handful of comms this will kill! Even if they want to implement it, it should be for – at worst – personal journals only. Leave the communities alone. How are people supposed to browse +1000 comments in an entry otherwise?
Related Posts:
- I Live! – from October 15, 2010
- It’s Official. – from October 14, 2010
- Celebrate the Times! – from May 3, 2012
- 365th Post – from June 28, 2011
Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever even used a subject line, but I can see how it’s going to totally wreck almost any fandom which has a comment meme. It will pretty much put an end to my meme trolling, for one, because if I can’t see a clear warning for crap I don’t want to read then I’m not going to visit memes at all. :[ Yet again, I wonder why I’m paying for a service which has a nasty trend of rolling out ‘improvements’ which are not optional, as they should be for users. *sigh*
I only use them when posting comment!fic in comms or when specifically specified by a mod, say for easy idenification. I like, in fandom community, when I can easily find the section I’m looking for (some posts break their comments into different subject threads) or the comment that is fic rather than just a plain comment. Disabling the subject field for all users is simply ridiculous, and I do not expect that the mods are going to learn S2 journal design just to keep those fields a while longer. They shouldn’t have to. :(
Ugh that’s extremely disappointing. I’ve been on livejournal for years, and have been extremely disappointed in “changes”. I’m currently getting ticked at Google/Google+ for all the changes since my blog is hosted through blogger. I’m on so many sites I still forget to go to some with bookmarks. I am ALL for some of these sites to merge (of course that would just make a percentage pissed off as well).
I’ve been on LJ for 7+ years, I think, and you are definitely right about them changing things in that period of time. I wouldn’t exactly miss subject fields in my journal but it simply won’t work for fandom communities. That’s like taking away one of their major functionalities. The meme comms would either have to switch to Delicious archives completely or move away to Dreamwidth or something (or die, but I don’t like that possibility). This igrick clearly doesn’t belong to any fandoms or he’d know this already.
…so we haven’t figured out how to deal with the DDoS attacks, but we CAN snatch away a design element that isn’t bothering anything for the people who don’t use it, and is VITAL for those who do? . . . This is why I don’t host my fanfic here. FUCK LIVEJOURNAL. FUCK IT WITH SOMETHING HARD AND SANDPAPERY. eta: also, I went to the journal that has the actual preview up. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO omfg, why does it have to be all bubblicious and grapical and whyyyyyyyyyyy is it so ugry? WHY? Why? Why. WHY. WHY?! Seriously, it looks really bad.
You are telling me. Some of the LJ team don’t have a thought in their oversized heads. They just want to screw with things. I wouldn’t be surprised if a petition doesn’t start going around. Non-negotiable, my ass. Let’s see how LJ likes it when it withers up and dies like MySpace.