RE: Frontpage/UI Improvements?

[reptile]

Just to throw out an idea, perhaps letting the moderators write a short summary of the question (and others) when they approve it for the front page, and displaying that with a read more link. It wouldn't be so good if the question or discussion etc. aren't clear enough to summarize, but the unclear ones don't really deserve the front page anyway, do they?

I think there should be anchors on the front page too with links at the top somewhere to the different sections of the front page. Or perhaps redesign the front page to be more, um, slashdot-like so instead of different sections show them all mixed together, newest first, with the section displayed clearly on each entry. Just a few ideas of course. Feel free to disagree.

local $_ = "0A72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A";
while(s/..$//) { print chr(hex($&)) }

[jcwren]

Just to throw out an idea, perhaps letting the moderators write a short summary of the question (and others) when they approve it for the front page, and displaying that with a read more link. It wouldn't be so good if the question or discussion etc. aren't clear enough to summarize, but the unclear ones don't really deserve the front page anyway, do they?

reptile, in principle, this is a good idea. However, it's my experience that we the moderators don't go through the un-approved entries as often as we should. I try to make a pass through at least once a day, preferrably twice. The problem is that when working from the Newest Nodes page, you don't know there are un-approved entries present. One must go to the actual section, and scroll to the bottom to find them. As such, adding additional overhead to the process of approval is likely to cause them to get them done less often.

I like the idea, but unless the approval process is re-vamped, I don't think it's going to integrate well.

--Chris

e-mail jcwren

[athomason]

I'm as guilty as the next at not checking for unapproved message, and it'd take an armed holdup to convince me use the Gates instead of Newest Nodes. But perhaps NN could include the approval information as well, say by appending (unapproved) to the title. It would also help to have the ok and frontpage boxes on the node itself, though I suspect this would take a tad more work.

[monk]

As pointed out this can become quite a task, my idea
is simple, the poster make a short summary of the topic,
question,whatever, no more than $n lines, and this summary if approved can
then be posted in the frontpage, the pluses are, 1.) the monk will,
or should think hard before posting. 2.) the load for the moderators
is less. 3.) we can decide if we want to look at it.
Of course this has disadvantages, but it's just an idea.
monk