Where I bitch about TPM
I'm a very critical person of both myself and everyone around me. Simply put, I like to complain but I defy the old saying: I don't waste time complaining! Why? Because if I am doing something I don't want to do and I am complaining about it, I get upset enough to work harder and better at finishing things up and I do it faster than I would otherwise to get it over-with. In this way, complaining actually helps me get more done.
SO! Let's complain about TPM--I used to love the site and now I hate it. It's a chore going to anything but the front page so let me break it down for you. I'm not going to complain about content, but the site itself.
First, load times.
I have highspeed broad band, according to the Speak Easy Speed Test, I have a download speed of 6102kpbs and an upload of 494kpbs. That is pretty fast, and I was testing it as it measured to New York City since TPM has a base there. Yet no matter when I access the site or what part it always take for fuck ever to load. Sometimes it refuses to load at all when I know there's nothing wrong with the connection because I can access anything else just fine. Currenlty I have the latest build of FireFox and its often linked to the tribalfusion ads, but not always.
Second, Logins
No matter what, though I have browser set to accept cookies from TPM and it works with every other site it is without fail that I have to log in every hour. And sometimes even though I copy and paste my password from notepad so that I know it's right, I still get errors when I log in. Granted it's not as bad as the first 6 months after the Primary Change over but it still happens regularly. I usually have to do it 3 times.
Third Layout
When I open any of the TPM sites, the middle of the screen is a line seperating columns. In most blogs the middle is where the blog posts are at. Even where there exceptions, if I look at the middle of say, DKos or Open Left, my eyes tag the blog headline but that never happens at TPM. I always have to turn my head to the left so I never start off on the right foot. The mothership site gets around this usually by placing a big honkin' picture in the middle. Currently it's one of Palin for a video about a supporter shouting death to Obama.
Continuing on the layout on most sites you have either your user options or you have the top diaries. Instead at Muckraker we have a word cloud. It's one of those that increases the size of the words by number of times they are used in stories/diaries and I find this past useless and very very distracting. Election Central and the Cafe at least have useful stories and their blog posts are a bit wider so instead of looking the line, you are looking at the post itself.
Unfortunately the links to various stories or reader diaries just dont' work for me. I mean I can get to them (subject to the brutal loading times) but they don't stand out, they are so damn bland that they kind of run together into a mushy block of text in my eyes. I really really liked the folder-like tabs that you used to be able to use for these things.
Four, Comments
Assuming I can log in, when I hite reply I am catapulted to the bottom of the page where I enter my comment. If I want to review the original thing that prompted me to respond, I have to click and the screen pops up. Why wouldn't you just extend the little comment box right under the post so you can see where it is in relation to parent comment? Why not provide the comment itself in a quote box like many many other forums do? More over you can't rate comments. If I see a good comment I want to tell them so, if I make a good comment it feels nice to see the numbers going up and you can check the comment to try and see where you went right so you can repeat it. Moreover, the 'nesting' effect is so subtle it's often times hard to tell who is replying to what which was something the old site did leaps and bounds better. The only thing that is even remotely good about the comment system here is that it is faster than the the old one.
Five, MyTPM
Whats the deal why the hell did we all lose our pictures? Our bios? This stuff has been around for years and years (I've been a member of TPM Cafe since its inception) and now I come and find out it disappeared and we all have pictures of what? Black and white Thomas Paine? What? And what's with the huge distortion of the profile picture when you try to upload and the shrinkage of it when you actually comment. What is the right size supposed to be? It's horrible they are too small to see one minute and too big to bear the next.
The Dashboard is a nice idea but once again it suffers from slow loading and the white backgrounds always always ALWAYS pops last so I have to wait or be a bit blindsided when it happens. On the Edit Profile, whats the deal with "password recovery" being a required field to change anything? What does THAT mean? I figured out that if I put my password in there it lets me make changes but that's a really un-intiutive and unhelpful way to label things. Here again, my profile pic is perfect size but anywhere else it's either huge and pixelated or two tiny to really appreciate.
Finally the Blogging bit: This is actually good but again the loading is far far too slow. How much bigger is Kos than you? How much faster is his site? The moveable type thing is nice, but I don't have the little blinking cursor while typing the post and its hard to see where it is actually at compared to say a standard word processor.
Well there you go, that's about the size of it. Frankly TPM has mostly gotten worse at least for the last year and maybe longer. The blogging bits are far better than they were though the visual style itself is rather poor.
...can't say I didn't warn you what the title of this post would be! Well keep the good work and stop doing the bad.
SO! Let's complain about TPM--I used to love the site and now I hate it. It's a chore going to anything but the front page so let me break it down for you. I'm not going to complain about content, but the site itself.
First, load times.
I have highspeed broad band, according to the Speak Easy Speed Test, I have a download speed of 6102kpbs and an upload of 494kpbs. That is pretty fast, and I was testing it as it measured to New York City since TPM has a base there. Yet no matter when I access the site or what part it always take for fuck ever to load. Sometimes it refuses to load at all when I know there's nothing wrong with the connection because I can access anything else just fine. Currenlty I have the latest build of FireFox and its often linked to the tribalfusion ads, but not always.
Second, Logins
No matter what, though I have browser set to accept cookies from TPM and it works with every other site it is without fail that I have to log in every hour. And sometimes even though I copy and paste my password from notepad so that I know it's right, I still get errors when I log in. Granted it's not as bad as the first 6 months after the Primary Change over but it still happens regularly. I usually have to do it 3 times.
Third Layout
When I open any of the TPM sites, the middle of the screen is a line seperating columns. In most blogs the middle is where the blog posts are at. Even where there exceptions, if I look at the middle of say, DKos or Open Left, my eyes tag the blog headline but that never happens at TPM. I always have to turn my head to the left so I never start off on the right foot. The mothership site gets around this usually by placing a big honkin' picture in the middle. Currently it's one of Palin for a video about a supporter shouting death to Obama.
Continuing on the layout on most sites you have either your user options or you have the top diaries. Instead at Muckraker we have a word cloud. It's one of those that increases the size of the words by number of times they are used in stories/diaries and I find this past useless and very very distracting. Election Central and the Cafe at least have useful stories and their blog posts are a bit wider so instead of looking the line, you are looking at the post itself.
Unfortunately the links to various stories or reader diaries just dont' work for me. I mean I can get to them (subject to the brutal loading times) but they don't stand out, they are so damn bland that they kind of run together into a mushy block of text in my eyes. I really really liked the folder-like tabs that you used to be able to use for these things.
Four, Comments
Assuming I can log in, when I hite reply I am catapulted to the bottom of the page where I enter my comment. If I want to review the original thing that prompted me to respond, I have to click and the screen pops up. Why wouldn't you just extend the little comment box right under the post so you can see where it is in relation to parent comment? Why not provide the comment itself in a quote box like many many other forums do? More over you can't rate comments. If I see a good comment I want to tell them so, if I make a good comment it feels nice to see the numbers going up and you can check the comment to try and see where you went right so you can repeat it. Moreover, the 'nesting' effect is so subtle it's often times hard to tell who is replying to what which was something the old site did leaps and bounds better. The only thing that is even remotely good about the comment system here is that it is faster than the the old one.
Five, MyTPM
Whats the deal why the hell did we all lose our pictures? Our bios? This stuff has been around for years and years (I've been a member of TPM Cafe since its inception) and now I come and find out it disappeared and we all have pictures of what? Black and white Thomas Paine? What? And what's with the huge distortion of the profile picture when you try to upload and the shrinkage of it when you actually comment. What is the right size supposed to be? It's horrible they are too small to see one minute and too big to bear the next.
The Dashboard is a nice idea but once again it suffers from slow loading and the white backgrounds always always ALWAYS pops last so I have to wait or be a bit blindsided when it happens. On the Edit Profile, whats the deal with "password recovery" being a required field to change anything? What does THAT mean? I figured out that if I put my password in there it lets me make changes but that's a really un-intiutive and unhelpful way to label things. Here again, my profile pic is perfect size but anywhere else it's either huge and pixelated or two tiny to really appreciate.
Finally the Blogging bit: This is actually good but again the loading is far far too slow. How much bigger is Kos than you? How much faster is his site? The moveable type thing is nice, but I don't have the little blinking cursor while typing the post and its hard to see where it is actually at compared to say a standard word processor.
Well there you go, that's about the size of it. Frankly TPM has mostly gotten worse at least for the last year and maybe longer. The blogging bits are far better than they were though the visual style itself is rather poor.
...can't say I didn't warn you what the title of this post would be! Well keep the good work and stop doing the bad.
