What should have VG247 in terms of community features? I'm thinking along the lines of avatars, profile pages, threaded comments, karma in comments, the ability to favourite stories, an IM system, and so on.
Let me know. Tell me what you actually want and you may well get it.
Personally, I like the idea of threaded comments and thumb up / thumb down features. It would make discussion in news stories more organised, as well as effectively keeping bad comments under control (downgraded comments would be grayed out, for instance).
Avatars might be cool, but the general simplicity is something that actually tends to *work* in VG247's favour.
Profile pages would cool to have, with an obvious focus on fields for stuff like gamertags and other gaming related information.
OK, cool. Ta. If you think of anything else, stick it in here.
I like avatars and thumbs up/down, but I don't like threaded comments, because I think that it makes it more difficult to understand the comments in order.
But yeah, avatars would be nice.
I'd like an combined login for the main site and the forum. :-D
I do not want avatars. If you do have avatars, I need to be able to turn them off.
Avatars will only ever be an optional thing, innit.
- Avatars would be nice in comments to make identification of people easier (well slightly quicker than looking at names), but I will say I do like the compactness of the site/comments as they are at the moment... so if you add avatars can you keep from making the page twice as wide and each comment block twice as high?
- If you were talking of avatars just for the forums then absolutely, that would be good along with the standard stuff you mentioned like some form of reputation/time here/quality score or status type thing.
- A report Spam button in the forum would be good too.
- The thumbs up/down thing coupled with hiding/collapsing comments with a score of < -3 (or whatever) would also be pretty good.
- Have you considered doing something along the lines of making a forum for comments, as in each news story has a new thread in the dedicated forum and the comments are shown both under the story and within that forum. That would mean interesting discussions on comments wouldn't die/be lost so easily when new stories are posted - I know the 10 most recent comments attempts to do this but having a forum where the each thread was a stories comment section and are arranged by latest post would keep the comments more active.
(I hope this makes sense as it does in my head but I have a feeling it might have lost some clarity during typing... :) )
- Smilies in the Forum (as they are in the comments)
I wouldn't want thumbs up/down function. it always ends the same way.
something like bubbles on N4G would be good though.
first off that joystiq engadget bull crap is stupid. If you are going to have it where the xbots hate what the PS3 fanboys say be downgraded and less seen then you are asking for less members. (Vice Versa also) You know that's stupid and why many people like myself left those sites and came here. you might as well start banning. O'Connor and G1GA STFU because both of you have crummy blog sites. Don't try to ruin every ones fun. How about you go implement some add ons to your sites so people actually show up.
Nothing is wrong with this site. Except for a few people who love to spread lies and make it seem that they know every fucking thing. You may have won a few good awards Garratt but don't forget why you won them. You don't need to fix something that isn't broken. You want to add avatars cool, but what happens when someone post pornographic images as their avatar. Are you going to ban them? Its stuff like that, that makes things very complex because the rules of this site were there were no rules.
And I'm sure right now Pychotext and stickboy are typing 50 page essays on why this should be that and blah blah blah, but remember you got those awards for being who you are today not tomorrow.
A free go with Gemma Atkinson.
Make it happen, Pat!
"I'm thinking along the lines of avatars, profile pages, threaded comments, karma in comments, the ability to favourite stories, an IM system, and so on."
Don't need it, don't need it, don't understand them, meh, why?, dislike that feature on other sides so won't probably like here either.
If everything is optional I don't really care what you add, though.
I would like a quote button and what Blerk said. :)
pretty much Blerk hit the nail on the head....omg I agreed with Blerk! someone shoot me :)
Just one thing really (and something that doesn't need extra code)... if a news post is about a game, please tag it with the game's name. It should mean you can then find anything else related to that game which has been posted on the site.
Threaded posts or at least the ability to quote specific posts would be nice.
Although if you do go with quotes it should only quote who, when and the 1st few words of their post (similar to the latest comments box) clicking on the quote stub could expand to the full quote.
Thumb up and down doesn't work in practice imo. Look at youtube, you end up getting anyone with a different point of view or take getting thumbed down to invisibility. I also think vg247 doesn't get enough trolls for such a system to be useful for spam control either.
Profiles I can dig as long as they don't get out of hand. I don't think we need photo galleries or blogs or messaging or any of that unnecessary shit. A list of your gamer IDs and multiplayer games you have/are willing to play would be cool though. Like I click on Psychotext for example and see he has L4D on 360 then I can add him on Live and see if he wants to play - that sort of thing.
Avatars I can take or leave. I don't mind if they're nice and small, like 20x20px.
I agree with TEA on most points.
Keep it simple and user friendly.
I would say that when commenting on different articles having returned to the site it is finicky to get back to that article unless it is still hot.
So maybe a record of your last 20 comments linked to your profile might help.
Just a vague idea which may be expanded on by more PC illiterate users than me.
Also smilies would be nice in forum.
Also the log in problem been fixed would be nice. :)
- quoting posts
- avatars
- user pages
in that order.
+1 for some sort of index or list of your posts.
PT - We do tag our posts with the game title. The only thing is that if you click on the post to access the comments, you dont see the tags. Just the catagories.
Is that what you mean, adding tags after clicking on a post? Maybe I read it wrong.
Stop being such a big GIRL tea.
You're only scared of a thumbs up/down system because you think that people are going to always give you a thumbs down...
The thing is though, if you don't talk trash to people then they won't. That's what they're there for. Not to stop people having "fun", but to let people know that their comments are either unwanted, not constructive or just plain dumb.
It helps weed the annoying people out of the comment sections...
unwanted comments, umm I'm sorry I didn't know the internet was a 30x20 space. All comments are great whether its BDH,Pracer,You,me,or Santa Clause. Never have I yelled "Garratt please ban him/her". I like reading all the comments man regardless how ignorant some may be. I know half of you hate my rants and guts but even though you don't agree with me on some things we both have great respect for each. That's one of the great things about free speech. Censoring someone or downgrading someone on a level is childish.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion right? When I say the 360 is shit is that going to take food out your mouth? Are you going to lose sleep over digital words? Garratt has a no rule policy and so far this site is still in one piece dispite it being divided by the 4 fanboy factions. And sorry if you took any offense when I talked about your blog site. I had to use an example and tell the truth at the same time. That's just my philosophy.
Now if you excuse me I'm late for my 5:00 manicure :P
thumbs up (or agree/disagree) is always a pointless and annoying feature. sure every single bdh comment will be getting -10 thumbs, but so will anyone saying FFXII was a good game or MGS4 not being perfect.
currently there is very little fanfags on vg247, because there just isn't much they can do here, it's no fun for them. adding a disagree feature will only make them come in here just to click disagree every time someone says stuff they don't like.
if you really want to add that, add it to the forum but not to the comments section.
No worries, tea.
What about Gamercards? What would you think of them being implemented somehow?
Like hover over a username or click on it, and it brings up a profile card with their XBL GT and a link to their website (if they have one).
Optional, obviously.
@JC: Take this one for instance : http://www.vg247.com/2009/10/21/molyneux-announces-natal-support-for-fable-3
That should really show the tag for "Fable 3" (somewhere down around the Microsoft, Hot, RPG etc) so that you can just click it and get all the Fable 3 news.
Garratt just use this design for new improvements http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y0xyM7_Mks&feature=related
@Psychotext, it DOES have the 'Fable III' tag. If you look at it from that page only the Categories it is filed under are shown, if you viewed that story from the main page you would see the Categories AND Tags...
You can follow all the Fable III news by following:
http://www.vg247.com/tag/fable-iii/
(Not if you click that link you will see the news story you mentioned listed and will also see the Tags and Categories assigned to it)
But that's what I'm saying... just put the tags in on that page as well. It's coming across as more complicated than it actually is. :P
Ahh right, yeah I think the tags should be included on the story's page along with the categories... Always wondered why this wasn't done to start with.
Post counts! How else am I supposed to judge my own self-worth and value as a human being??
post counts encourage spam imo.
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