Improving the site

by snolls on Apr 14, 2011 8:09 PM EDT

As the community has grown, the sheer amount of content has become more difficult to navigate. I have a couple of ideas below for improving the site, and I suspect that other people might have better ones.

First - I love how much more content we have, and how many more voices. However, it dilutes the site to some extent. I've also noticed the sheer number of words posted (in each post and comment) is growing. Here are a few ideas to improve the experience, and hopefully encourage more high-quality content and discussion.

Get gamethreads off the wall/post list. Create a new section for these, as they clutter up the front page, instead of "content" stories, which are more interesting to look back and read, and should be highlighted longer.
Shorter "executive summaries". The portion of the post above the jump should be limited (50-100 words, and small graphics?).
Systematic way to "rank" favorite posters.
More "categories" or "themes" to posts. For instance, "analysis", "scouting", "hot stove", "game review", etc. (we may also need "humor", and "complete trash").
Some good mechanism to split comments (which are getting unwieldy) into sub-discussions. Perhaps a good way to "mute" or collapse discussions, and ways to split discussions into a new post.
Generally some clean-up to the front page. For instance, the right side is very complicated, and changes depending on which screen you are at.

Alright Twinkietown - what do you think? Is it the best it could possibly be? Do you have any good ways to improve the site? More pop-ups, viruses, subscription fees, and paid ads posing as content?

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4 can't be done by Twinkietown I think,

I’m pretty sure commenting features are standard throughout SB Nation. What would rating posters accomplish, is one person more important than another, I thought everybody having equal say was one of the basic successes of SB Nation?

"Brian Cardinal left Purdue being the only Boilermaker to receive both the "Mr. Hustle" Award and the "Courage" Award four years in a row"

by B.C. 4 MVP on Apr 14, 2011 10:16 PM EDT reply actions

Also 5 can't be done as well

However, I wouldn’t mind seeing game threads on the front. We don’t care if they “clutter” the page because it is most likely the current game of the season. Besides, Jesse and the rest of the writing crew are very good at putting game recaps up on the site as soon as possible. At the same time there is really nothing to improve except to add a humor and Minor League section with a special section focusing on our annual Top 50 Prospect lists.

by Jessy S on Apr 14, 2011 10:54 PM EDT reply actions

Thanks for your feedback.

This is really interesting, actually. I’ve been so involved with the site for so long, thinking about general functionality and flow isn’t really something I can objectively think about in the span of a few minutes. But I will take a couple moments to address what you’ve brought up here.

1 – I certainly understand the sentiment, because I used to think the same way. But our gamethreads are one of the biggest community-building aspects of not just TT, but SBN as a whole. What separates TT from the rest of the Twins blogosphere is the sense of community that we have, and the ability for people like you to write posts like this, and to really own/start your conversation.

2 – For longer posts, I certainly agree. This also encourages people to get involved in the discussion, since once you click on “read more” you’re also landing on the page where you can comment. Breaking up longer posts with the jump is encouraged, but we don’t have a hard-and-fast rule about how many words you can leave before the jump or how many words a post has to be before you use the jump. Worth thinking about, definitely.

3 – I’m torn on this idea. On one hand it gives the community an idea of who the more frequest or quality commenters are, but on the other hand I don’t like the idea of that turning into a “well I’ve been around longer than you, so your opinions are less important” kind of thing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we’d have too much of an issue with that on our site, but I’m not sure I want to go down that road. Ultimately this would be a developer issue for SBN, but yeah, I’m not sure I’d be on board with that one.

4 – I can create more categories, absolutely. A lot of times these are created out of necessity. Some of the things you bring up are covered already. Game Review is already covered under Game Recaps. Hot Stove is usually covered under Speculation or News. A lot of analysis is either filed under Opinion or By the Numbers. But it’s certainly a valid point, and I’ll run it past the rest of my crew.

5 – Jessy S is right on this one, I can’t help you on this one. It’d be another issue for SBN developers. I feel like this is something we used to be able to do on previous incarnations of the platform, but I might be thinking of something else.

6 – Again, this isn’t really something I can control. I can control layout to an extent, but on each page (front page, story page) there is only so much I’m allowed to move around.

I know pop-ups and viruses shouldn’t be as much of an issue by this point. If you’re still having problems, email support at sbnation dot com, but SBN has hired a firm to watch the codes that run in our ads to ensure that nothing untoward gets written in. It’s an expensive service, which is where some of the revenue for sponsored posts will go, but I know that I’m not alone in that the baseball site managers want to leave the sponsored posts to be as unobtrusive as possible. There’s a lot of line-straddling to be sure, but for example with our weekly Fan Confidence posts I don’t think the Gilette sponsorship is too bad. I don’t have to hoc the product, which is nice.

The number one thing I’m taking away from your ideas, snolls, is that you’d like to improve layout and a couple of minor things in regards to functionality. I’ll email the guys and girls who write here with me about a couple of these things, and I know the SBN development team are always discussing the next incarnation of the platform—how it will look, function, etc. Maybe some of what you’ve brought up can be handled there.

Anyway, good thoughts. If anyone else has any questions or ideas, drop them here and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Thanks!

by Jesse on Apr 15, 2011 4:44 AM EDT reply actions

I think the site is great. I come here a lot, and enjoy it. I’ve been here since it filled the twinsterritory void, and I also think it has steadily improved over time. I was more trying to open a discussion, both for things that TwinkieTown has control of, and I’m assuming there is a way to submit suggestions to SBN.

I was also trying to open a discussion; I doubt I’m the only one who has some ideas (and I bet there are some much more creative and tech savvy people in our community than myself).

A bit more detail on a couple of my suggestions:
1 – My main complaint about gamethreads is that they take up so much space on the front page. One solution would be having them in a different place (people know when the game is going). Another would be to take it off the front page after the game, or limiting the words and tables before the jump. My main focus here is making the original content that people post more higlighted, and for longer.
3 – One solution would be to make the “recommended” posts include more of the top articles. Another would be to have a “most liked” set of articles (say in the last 2 weeks) A third would be for SBN to add functionality for people to individually rank their favorite posters (or the ones they want to track)
4 – Maybe I’m not aware of this. How do I look for articles by type?

My last comment about the viruses/etc. was just a joke. I was trying to discourage site bashing in comments, in favor of construction suggestions. I

by snolls on Apr 15, 2011 11:28 AM EDT up reply actions

I like #3

The front page articles don’t get propagated to the lists of FanPosts and FanShots in the sidebars, which means that in a busy week they’re off the radar within three or four days, doomed to Archive Purgatory, regardless of whether there’s still active discussion going on. Adam Peterson’s last Total Run Accounting post, for example, might still be getting a bit of discussion, but it dropped far enough down the front page that it’s a pain to find – once it gets into the archive section at the bottom, it doesn’t list whether there are new posts, and I’m not dedicated enough to just keep checking it, especially since any comment I make is unlikely to be answered. On the flip side, my far-less-interesting joke stats post made the “Recommended FanPosts” list, and it still got a couple comments yesterday, after Adam’s post had basically gone dormant.

Also, and I don’t think there’s really any way to improve this, FanShot that don’t get Front Paged tend to get largely ignored for discussion, because the FanShot sidebar is far enough down the page that it’s a minor pain to get to. I favor putting FanShots above FanPosts, because I think they’re generally more interesting to read and discussion-worthy, so I don’t know whether this is something that should really be changed.

"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

by BeefMaster on Apr 15, 2011 11:46 AM EDT up reply actions

FanPosts/FanShots/Featured Posts

I want to keep the FanPost section on the top, because it’s one of the things that makes our site unique, and if people are going to put in the effort to put themselves out there and start their own conversation, then I want that noticed. FanPosts promote discussion too, but I’ll always put the best ones on the front page anyway.

At any rate, I’ve moved both the FanShot and Featured Posts section further up so they’re easier to access. Hopefully this helps a bit.

by Jesse on Apr 15, 2011 12:03 PM EDT up reply actions

I thought you'd been around forever.

There are a lot of names I used to recognize as being carry-overs from the old TT site, but after so long I start to forget if they’re old TwinsTerritory names or just names that have been with Twinkie Town for years.

And I hope I came off as open, because I certainly don’t mind that you opened this up for discussion. It’s a fine idea.

1 – With the threads, we can probably limit what goes before the jump. That’s probably the best way to handle this one, because I doubt there’ll come a day where we’ll be allowed to take them off the front page.

3 – We already can do your second option. After 4 rec’s, a FanPost will be promoted to the top of the FanPost section on the right-hand side of the page, where they stay for either 10 or 14 days. Right now, for example, there are five of them. For Front Page articles I can “feature” certain ones, and then bump the feature widget further up the page. But again, I don’t want to shove the FanPost section down too far either. And it doesn’t look right on the left hand side, because the margins are different sizes.

4 – On the left-hand column you’ll find a list of Sections. Click on any of them to find articles filed there, and conversely each article on the front page is tagged in the same way. But I think we can add sections so our posts can more accurately be tagged.

by Jesse on Apr 15, 2011 11:51 AM EDT up reply actions

x<--For muting my comment

1- I like game threads.
2-What is this, a fan blog or a medical journal?
3-Pointless. Everyone has their faves, leave it at that.
4-“Complete trash?” Really?
5-Not necessary. Use the “z” key to zip past those comments.
6-Fan posts or fan shots, it’s a brain burner, but you’ll get the hang of it!

"Don't take life for granted, because tomorrow isn't promised to any one of us." -Kirby Puckett
RT @RonGarde You can Tweet that. Just Tweet it. You don't even have to write it. Just fire it through the Internet.

by less cowbell, more 'neau on Apr 15, 2011 11:16 AM EDT reply actions

OPINION!

I really love TT.
I sometimes view it on my crappy blackberry, so I would want to keep Gamethreads on the main page as it takes forever to get to them on my [really] crappy blackberry.

The main idea I like is keeping the majority of the text in any given main page story under the break so you can scroll through multiple stories. This will also help the site load faster, I assume?

But, to reiterate, I love TT. Were it a pastry, it would be a bearclaw.

I always loved that one.

by FoulJack on Apr 16, 2011 2:23 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs