Fisher-Price My First TPM BlogTM
Welcome to the maiden voyage of my personal blog at TPM. Since the launch of myTPM, I've been responding like mad to reader inquiries and helping people troubleshoot. So tell me your thoughts here. Are things working for you? Are you having fun yet? Talk to me!
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Love being able to edit old posts, love the additional html functionality (images, media, etc.)
Bug: A lot of forced logouts, which was a major problem during the last upgrade
Navigation is confusing, particularly the disconnect between browsing and creating/managing content, which have have different headers. For instance, if I'm reading my blog and see an error, the only way I could figure out to edit it was to click "Blog now" which then gave me a different header with the "manage" option.
I miss having the recent reader posts on the right on every cafe page. Now it's now even easier to miss hidden gems.
I'm concerned about too much transparency--who follows who, who recommended who, etc. This place is too political (no pun intended) already.
I thought that there was supposed to be functionality to follow comments on particular threads. That's what I'm really interested in. Am I missing it?
October 14, 2008 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I mentioned on another blog, there seems to be an obsession with measuring your worth against others at TPM: for example, why bother showing the top followed people? Of course, it does betray part of the social dynamics here.
On the other hand, I found the non-private voting mechanism very intriguing. There are some people here that apparently routinely hit "recommend" multiple times for their own posts and others. (I'm not talking about the occasional times where you see this happen which could easily be a glitch in the system where you think you recommended but not, etc.)
October 14, 2008 9:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Big agreement there. Makes it harder to navigate around.
I'm also not a huge fan of the comment confirmation thing after you submit a comment. I'd rather have it just reload to the blog page.
And another thing, which, maybe this is just me: the pages take forever to load, and they never finish. They're usable, but right now, for example, that little twirly circle is still going strong in my Firefox tab, and the bottom of my page still says "transferring data from tpm.." Is that me, or the site? Anyone else have that? Too many open tabs on TPM kills my browser. And I'm a big tabber.
I haven't blogged yet, but I checked out the features and they look great. I also am loving all the posts from you TPM folks with updates and tips and asking for feedback. That's really helpful.
I like being able to follow people's posts and comments, but I did that in the old site anyway just by going straight to their profile. I don't particularly care if people know what I'm rec'ing (though I might be exposed as someone who always forgets to rec!) or following or whatever, but I can see where it might lead. Same goes for that most followed list, though I confess to some interest in it. Besides. It's clearly biased, as it has some loser with no head at the top right now. ;)
October 14, 2008 10:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wondering why I get the message "This user has not started their blog yet!" when I click on "Your Blog".
October 14, 2008 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I still get that, too, but so far I can backdoor in through the most followed list.
October 14, 2008 9:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Testing. I agree with Genghis (whom I follow, but everyone knew that already, heh). The forced log outs, and losing my login name at the top of the page every few minutes, can be frustrating. That being said, I think I will love all the changes once the dust settles.
Nice videos, btw.
October 14, 2008 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Alrighty, here's a question. I never have any idea how to contact the Staff here. I see that one can send a general email to the address provided at the Comments link provided at the upper right of the screen here. But, what if we wanted to specifically contact Lila or Andrew or Josh? Can't you provide direct email links through your profiles?
Also, why do our avatars look like teeny, tiny little postage stamps? Not liking that so much.
October 14, 2008 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I had to change my avatar which was far longer than it was wide (some call that the definition of obscene). I had to go to a new one that made me feel more of a square.
October 14, 2008 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmm...longer than it is wide? Alrighty, I'll just - well, I'll just not go there.
I miss The Thinker!
But, he'd look so shrunken in our little postage stamp avatars. I feel so squished.
October 14, 2008 10:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, can't really see the smile anymore.
October 15, 2008 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not sure that I like the whole 'following' thing. Nor the details at the end of each blog - why was simply clicking on their screen name to see their profile a problem?
Too much information, overall.
October 14, 2008 7:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have to agree w/ the "too much information" school of thought. It seems almost like a bit of playground politics and creating a competitive environment. I like the idea of having a "favorites" list on my page that only I can access to make it easier to locate posts by the people that I "follow" but I'm not real comfortable with anyone else being able to see it. Guilt by association comes to mind...No one needs to know that I secretly admire the resident psychos, or that they admire me. :-)
The timeout feature is making me a little nuts, because I'm on most of the day and have to log in repeatedly, even though my cookies are operating and you should know who I am.
The edit/compose functions seem good so far, although I'm having to stumble through learning them. Getting things from composed to published are a little rocky...the tabs don't seem real user friendly.
I JUST VOTED! I'M SO EXCITED I COULD PEE!
October 14, 2008 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
There needs to be a type of comment following for people who respond to your posts. Logically, this would be the "comments" tab under the dashboard.
There also seems to be a serious lag in posting comments and seeing them show up in the "comments" tab under the "Your Blog" section.
Finally, it would be nice to see more comments/recs/etc. in the lists... maybe show 20 but allow one to keep going backwards in time as well.
But thanks for the preview feature!
October 14, 2008 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
The new format makes me want to...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thEKxFNCuT4
October 14, 2008 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
First, I'll say that I very much appreciate the new interface for posting. It's much better than the previous quasi-RTF thing that was going on. You can actually paste text without having to remember to first copy it into a simple editor first! Also, being able to preview and edit the posts is very nice indeed.
That said, I still don't understand why we have one interface for posting and another for commenting. Also, why can't we edit a comment as well? I don't really think this is the end of the world by any means, especially with being able to preview a comment, but it might be nice for the typo that got away.
Also, I have to echo Genghis and CT above about the ability to know when someone has commented on your post or responded to a comment. This feature, above all others that I could consider, would actually enhance my ability to communicate with other people. The other features are nice, but I don't need them. You could have given me the old comment interface for blogging and commenting, added preview and given me a notification system. That would have been utterly fantastic in my book.
I also don't understand what the "follow" feature is for. Does it, well, do anything? At first it seemed like it might make it a bit easier to read some of the people that I ordinarily look for, which it sort of does as it seems to function as a kind of favorites list, but is it supposed to do anything else? I'll also echo Genghis in his concerns above. I don't really have a huge problem with people knowing that I recommended a certain post, but why do they need to know? Why does anyone need to know who my favorite contributors are? I guess it seems like privacy would be a nice option here.
Finally, I believe I saw Tom Wright mention a down vote in the last day or so. This is something I've brought up as well. I think it would be very nice to be able to give some posts a thumbs down. However, if this were the case I would argue it advantageous to maintain voting privacy.
October 14, 2008 9:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Follow me" seems to assume that people may not post that much. For example, there are some posters who post insightfully, but not often. These are definitely the people that "follow me" would be advantageous for. Another class are those who are insightful, but don't have the following to get rec'ed. Again, the "follow me" works well there also.
In fact, lately, I would put you in the first category, DF!
October 14, 2008 9:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
With all the trolls it is nice to quickly find comments from those I value reading. At times, the rec list is really the most pandering or provocative list, so it is good to have another way of navigating.
Unfortunately the trolls will learn that the way to get in people's dashboards is to reply to the most followed, meaning that Genghis will have his hands full.
October 14, 2008 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Funny you replied, Donal. You were my prime example of the second class of posters: now I don't have to worry about your rec's to find your stuff. Yea!
October 15, 2008 12:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Lila:
There is a bug that is left over from the old TPM system. Apparently if you include more than 2 URL links in your post, it gets rejected by TPM (or more accurately gets "held by the blog owner for approval"). This is troublesome as it seems to discourage links in comments, where they can be very important.
Thanks for passing this back inhouse!
October 15, 2008 1:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, thanks for all the feedback guys! Passing the bugs on to our tech friends at Movable Type. In terms of transparency, etc, I personally feel like that's good for open discussion. Not quite sure what we're losing with added transparency, in other words. What do you guys think?
October 15, 2008 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink