Neverside

Not enough comments on images

More people should comment and critique artwork that people post. People submit their work, (at least I do) for the sole purpose of seeing what others think about it. I was browsing back in the digital section and was surprised at the number of awesome pieces that nobody has said anything about. It seems like work that is submitted as a joke, done in under a minute, gets more feedback than serious work that you can tell people spent time making.

I'm not really complaining or anything, I'm just surprised to see that this place isn't as lively as it could be. The system used here, although similar to DA, is great. I'm not saying it should be as busy as DA either, because IMO that site is far too huge.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you see something you like in the studio, tell the artist as oppose to just letting it sit there collecting dust. These are just some thoughts I had regarding these things. As far as general feedback for this site goes - it's freaking awesome. Great work.

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Yup I agree

I agree too... I have submitted some nice pictures and no one even commented on them. The other thing that is quite annoying is that when someone does actually comment on the picture, I have no way of knowing.

Very true. To me it seems this happened due to the switch from the Image Showoff forum to the Studio format - since the forum is the central part of this particular community, that is where the majority of activity takes place.... the Studio is easily forgotten after you have passed the front page and into the forum. I also agree that lack of notification on comments is not a good thing (as well as lack of notification for forum replies, which we don't have either). None of this is likely fixable in the present rendition of Neverside, but I'm currently working hard at developing a new system, in which all of the bugs should be alleviated, and more features will be more easily achieved.

In the new version of Neverside I'm working on, I will try to improve this situation. Some initial ideas I can think of off-hand include:
- A block or two showing randomly selected previews of recent and featured Studio entries could be included in a sidebar or somewhere else throughout the site.

- A "tie in" to the forum could be possible.... for instance, there could be a seemingly normal Image Showoff type of forum, which is actually tied to the Studio. Perhaps even the artwork could be shown in a thread in the forum reflecting the actual Studio entry, and comments to the Studio entry as well as in the forum thread are one in the same, regardless of which area they were posted from.

- I believe notifications can be provided by vBulletin or Drupal for comments on Studio entries... I will include this in my prerequisites for our future Studio when I select the software to run it (be it a plugin for vBulletin, Drupal, or custom made).

If you have more ideas, I would love to hear them.
Thanks guys

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-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Quote:

Absolute Cross: .....since the forum is the central part of this particular community, that is where the majority of activity takes place.... the Studio is easily forgotten after you have passed the front page and into the forum.

Hey, AC.
As I type this out...
On the Home page there is 1 members, me, and 0 guests.
In the Studio there is 1 members, me, and 104 guests.
In the forum, as I write, there are 2 members, samuri & i, and 13 guests.

104 guests in the studio? what do you think they are up to?

Originally posted by AbsoluteCross:

In the new version of Neverside I'm working on, I will try to improve this situation.

You're making a new version of Neverside on your own? Did you fire your developer and designer staff? ^_^

Originally posted by Lexykon:

104 guests in the studio? what do you think they are up to?

The whole "users online" deal on this site has never been really accurate, nor is it on other sites. I'd personally lean towards saying it's a bug than thinking that the studio has 100+ guests at any given time (because that's how it always is). But then again, maybe it is true. If so I have to say that the statistics of always having 150 users online, whereas only 10 are registered, is quite the disappointment since we don't see that many new faces around here.

Just my random opinion of course.

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Neversidian, your staff is broken.

Last edited by Simon, September 7th, 2006 07:23 PM (Edited 1 times)

Originally posted by AbsoluteCross:

Very true. To me it seems this happened due to the switch from the Image Showoff forum to the Studio format - since the forum is the central part of this particular community, that is where the majority of activity takes place.... the Studio is easily forgotten after you have passed the front page and into the forum. I also agree that lack of notification on comments is not a good thing (as well as lack of notification for forum replies, which we don't have either). None of this is likely fixable in the present rendition of Neverside, but I'm currently working hard at developing a new system, in which all of the bugs should be alleviated, and more features will be more easily achieved.

In the new version of Neverside I'm working on, I will try to improve this situation. Some initial ideas I can think of off-hand include:
- A block or two showing randomly selected previews of recent and featured Studio entries could be included in a sidebar or somewhere else throughout the site.

- A "tie in" to the forum could be possible.... for instance, there could be a seemingly normal Image Showoff type of forum, which is actually tied to the Studio. Perhaps even the artwork could be shown in a thread in the forum reflecting the actual Studio entry, and comments to the Studio entry as well as in the forum thread are one in the same, regardless of which area they were posted from.

- I believe notifications can be provided by vBulletin or Drupal for comments on Studio entries... I will include this in my prerequisites for our future Studio when I select the software to run it (be it a plugin for vBulletin, Drupal, or custom made).

If you have more ideas, I would love to hear them.
Thanks guys

this is all good to hear, but why should people have to dig through the forums to be kept up to date on teh neverside news?
isnt this what the news system is for?

the last update was about the "new neverside design", of which, nothing has still materialised..

bare in mind also that that news post was posted on july 18th.. thats nearly 2 months ago..

updates are key to building a community, it makes people feel like they have input into the community rather than just being users..

blogs are good also aslong as they are updated regularly!

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Last.fm | Myspace | Flickr | Virbº

Originally posted by Simon:

You're making a new version of Neverside on your own? Did you fire your developer and designer staff? ^_^

No I didn't fire anyone haha... they have simply gone in other directions or are too busy to help with development. Obviously Jeremie is no longer working on that aspect of the project, and after Scott took over in his place, he became very busy with important things in his life as well. Also in the previous development situation, I was honestly pretty much incapable of doing anything much to help (due to lack of knowledge in PHP, undocumented API, and lack of my knowledge on leading a development project). After a lot of discussion, we've decided now to move away from our custom-made solution and back to a system based around vBulletin (for the forum and user accounts) and a CMS, probably Drupal due to its flexable framework, for the front and content sections of the site (such as news, blogs, tutorials, etc). The Studio will also be included, though I haven't come to the point yet of finding the perfect solution for it (i.e. a customized gallery script that integrates into either vB or Drupal, or a tie-in of the current Studio code into the vB database, etc... not sure yet). I decided that I really want to be knowledgable in the whole process so that I can successfully continue to build and manage the system, as well as direct future paid and volunteer development - so I have been thoroughly studying Drupal's framework, investigating the possibilities, testing Drupal and vBulletin integration via vbDrupal, etc. I will gladly accept any help with the development, though I am taking responsibility to understand everything from the ground up.

Originally posted by Advocation:

this is all good to hear, but why should people have to dig through the forums to be kept up to date on teh neverside news?
isnt this what the news system is for?

the last update was about the "new neverside design", of which, nothing has still materialised..

bare in mind also that that news post was posted on july 18th.. thats nearly 2 months ago..

updates are key to building a community, it makes people feel like they have input into the community rather than just being users..

blogs are good also aslong as they are updated regularly!

I'm responding here as part of the discussion that was started here... this thread is about feedback/responses to Studio entries, so I responded with my ideas in that area. It's true that I don't post with regularity right now in the main page news, though this is just because things have been very much in limbo recently while we figure things out. As things become more concrete and actual "measurable" progress is made, I will be sure to post about it.

When the original news about the new design was posted, we were still in the mode of developing for NeverAPI. Through the discussion and events that occurred at that time, we made the decision to move to vBulletin/etc, and so that became my focus right now instead of finishing the design under the old system. The new design will be released as part of the switch to the new system.

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-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Have you considered using MyBB for forum software? It's the best one that I've come across. You can see it here: http://community.mybboard.net/

MyBB...

We might as well use the amazing module-based CMS (CrazyCMS I believe) I was working on back in 1847 (for fun, of course).

I'm sorry but the only case I personally would support yet another switch between systems powering this community would be if it's as good as foolproof and the gain (actual gain, for the community and staff) on doing so is obvious. Putting aside the fact that there is a great risk of more member-dropouts it's also very complicated to move a community of this size and it's content to other systems.

As a final remark:

<digg>

If this community moves to Drupal I will officially stop supporting it with my awesomeness causing a terrible loss and most likely the beginning of the end for this nest of developers and designers. This has been Simon speaking, and everyone knows that I'm the only one who ever is correct around here. My part of this community will cause the e-suicide of millions. Think over this wisely before you make up your mind.

</digg>

Best Regards,
Simon Lilja
CEO of the Internet.

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Neversidian, your staff is broken.

Last edited by Simon, September 9th, 2006 03:31 AM (Edited 1 times)