Part 2 of 2

Typing errors - I'm with the crowd who don't seem to be able to sucessfully proof read until a post has been submitted. If editing was allowed it would seem to need to be before any other responses were added but then the person who was drafting a witty response to my gaffe while I edited would look like they had lost the plot if I was allowed to correct my mistakes.

Another suggestion which might help is on the top of the comment preview page a notice letting you know that extra comments had been added while you were drafting your gem. A reminder to go check that what you have written is still relevant rather than yet another "metoo"ism. How many times have I taken some time to draft a piece, reviewed it and posted only to then notice that what I was writing had already been addressed.

R0bert

Other suggestions:

1. In the "New Article Comment" email sent out, could the link be to the particular comment instead of just the top of comments section? That might of been reasonable thing to do when the comments were always on one page, but now I find the first thing I do is click on "All", then go to the end of the page and scroll backwards until I find where I left off reading.

2. I often whinge about "dead corners" of the site and how hard it is to navigate. Fixing that would require wholesale changes. However here is a minor change that would help: replace iParliament in the top navigation bar with a link to this General Discussion area. The iParliament link is dead and is just an embarrassment.

3. If you did that you could also ditch the Forms link as well. Replace it with something useful - like the feedback link at the bottom.

With regard to being able to fix typing errors after posting, if new posts appeared in different colour print or on a different colour background or with a notice attached, for the first 15 minutes or half an hour, thus indicating that they are open to alteration, then any poster that is wanting to respond would know that they really should wait until the post becomes unchangeable, although they will still have the chance to add comments before that.

So, an opportunity to make alterations after posting really needs to be accompanied by a format change that indicates to all posters that the particular post is not yet confirmed.

Secondly, a notification of extra posts or a prominent notice on each thread to remind us to refresh the thread before posting would be most useful, in case new messages have been posted that affect your new post, which is very likely on new and popular threads.

We saw parallel threads on Bill Henson recently, both accepted at about the same time. Why? Why wasn’t the second one refused?

Graham has just started up a second thread on Dennis Ferguson, while the first one was still proceeding very well. Why didn’t he add his comments to that thread?

If the first thread had come to its natural conclusion, or close to it, then fine, but not while it was still well and truly active.

A couple of days ago I was about to submit a general thread on the nude children in art issue. But someone just beat me to it. So I posted my comments on that thread. If I had submitted a new thread, it apparently would have been accepted.

It seems as though just about anything gets accepted for general threads and that perhaps Graham just wants as many new threads as OLO can get, without worrying about the reduction in quality of OLO by presenting duplication ??

A steady rate of new discussions is good. Broad variety is fine. But I think that obvious duplication is unfortunate.

How about a change to the order in which general threads are listed? The trouble is that only five general threads appear in each category. So any thread that is below the first five doesn’t get seen on the main page, unless the reader expands the list to 20, 50, 100 or 200. How many readers think to do this? I’d reckon that a lot just don’t bother.

So if all general threads were just in one list as they are with the articles, then it would be easier to view, and find the popular and active ones.

Currently this very thread appears right at the bottom of the list. So it potentially gets missed. I recently let a friend know about one of my posts on this thread, and he couldn’t find it until he I told him exactly where it was. Then he went off in a head-spin, saying how silly it was to have an active thread right at the bottom of the list!

If there was just one list, based on the order by date of instigation of posts, then posts on elections and general support would get a better response.

Perhaps it would also be useful if older popular and active threads that slip right down the list could be brought up towards the top?

And another suggestion. When you have submitted a new comment, you get taken back to the comments section. That would be great, except it takes you to the first comment. Who wants to go there? Ideally you would like to go to the last comment displayed when you pressed submit, or perhaps to the comment you just submitted.

Oh, and an acknowledgement from someone on OLO that they are at least monitoring this thread would be nice. If nobody is then this is really a waste of time.