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The Sofiechan Index Page Question

admin said in #3796 2w ago: received

We just had an opinionated sofiechanner over at sofie hq to discuss what can be done to improve the design of the site. We're all pretty satisfied with the thread design, being a fairly utilitarian and constrained problem where we can lean a bit on *chan tradition. But we all find ourselves unsatisfied with the front/index page design. Let's cut right to the options we see as a way of eliciting the questions:

1. Keep it more or less as is, but more polished. There are various minor tweaks we can make to make the distinctions between different pieces of information more clear, and cut down the noise. In particular the way the previews blend in to the info lines, the way everything is uniform grey, etc could be improved. We suspect no one actually cares about the previews. The most important pieces of information are the titles, scores, the time and identity of most recent reply, and something like the image or other source of color to create visual distinction.

2. Cut it down to hacker news level or even more minimalistic. What if all we needed was the titles? I think we need slightly more than that. Time, value, number of replies, and some kind of super-short excerpt from the most recent reply is 90% of the value. Do we like images on the front page?

3. Bulk it up on the paradigm that the front page threads should look like the thread pages themselves. Render them as posts, make the titles look like titles, put the nyms on and everything. Just omit and compress a few, and maybe pack them into less space. Twitter and some blogs are like this.

What do you think?

Someone mentioned the 4chan catalog style index. I don't really like it, though I do use it. We could do something like that to use horizontal space more effectively. But we also have a lot of consensus that the purely vertical layout is best.

We also discussed a lot of other design aspects like color scheme and typography. Helvetica just works as the basic font, but maybe you don't like pink and pastels as much as I do? Should we change anything there? We're happy to hear opinions on all of this and more.

We just had an opini received

anon_rabu said in #3799 2w ago: received

I'd vote against having images on the homepage just because they so attention-grabbing that it would become necessary to include a compelling image if you want to get high engagement against a page of other images jumping out at the reader.

I personally like seeing some replies. It makes me want to jump in and comment.

I'd vote against hav received

adamjesionowski said in #3800 2w ago: received

The most useful feature for me would be to jump back into a thread from the last post that I read, plus a count of the number of replies that have happened since I last opened the thread. I only use the previews of the post as a way to jump to the end of the thread before manually scrolling to the last post I remember reading. I don't get any real value out of the preview text itself other than the fact it indicates a reply I haven't read.

I'm not a fan of pinning the highly voted replies on the index as it makes the information density of the index much worse. Most of the time I've already read that post by the time it shows up in the index. The basic idea of surfacing excellent replies is a good one but I'd add another page that displays the full post, sorted by vote * time_decay.

Nyms on the index are a good idea. Images currently are so tiny you don't get much info out of having them on the index. Either them being larger or not having them on the index would work better. Preview text of OP should stay and I would give them more characters on the index.

referenced by: >>3802

The most useful feat received

admin said in #3802 2w ago: received

>>3800
Yeah the purpose of the latest reply, combined with bump order, is exactly that: to show that there's something you haven't read. Interesting idea customizing it to what you have read. That would be a bigger lift technically, so we'll have to think about it. But that would be way easier to show.

What do you mean by another page surfacing good replies? You mean like another page that would be a feed of the best stuff with the time decay? What's the difference in purpose from the index page?

referenced by: >>3804

Yeah the purpose of received

adamjesionowski said in #3804 2w ago: received

>>3802
It's not so bad just for a button that lets me jump to last read, just (user_id, thread_id, last_read_post_id), update row w/ last post id when I open thread_id, join thread_id w/ last_read on index. Calculating number of posts since that id is a little more annoying.

> You mean like another page that would be a feed of the best stuff with the time decay? What's the difference in purpose from the index page?
Yeah. Advantages are you declutter the index and can show the full reply rather than a preview. Reading the full post may entice me to jump into the thread.

referenced by: >>3808

It's not so bad just received

gs said in #3806 2w ago: received

I actually very much like the current home page layout and color palette. It's quite aesthetically pleasing. But I can't help but feel the urge to switch things to catalog view so I can see more threads at once.

If it's possible to add at least an option for catalog view, like the chans, I think it would be well appreciated. Another thing about catalog view is that it encourages people to make new threads, because OPs are what are primarily seen by users. Incentivizing more content creation is good. I've learned from my experience with other boards that a continuous infusion of new threads is important to keep people engaged and interested.

referenced by: >>3808

I actually very much received

admin said in #3808 2w ago: received

>>3804
>>3806
Interesting. I'm hearing a case for having both 2 and 3 from the OP: Have a separate index catalog with minimalistic focus on showing a bunch of OPs for when you're looking for a particular thread, and then also a firehose feed of the latest posts styled as posts with their full content with some value/time filtering similar to current front page. What do you guys make of that?

Interesting. I'm hea received

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