The site needs better front page organization

Drithius

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I posted about this elsewhere but - surprise, surprise - it got buried in a mountain of other topics.

As it stands right now, there are simply too many "News" posts for anyone to quickly find a topic of interest to them. It is not a news site if the only commentary being made is generally of the incendiary kind on the latest hot topic (because other relevant topics of possible interest to people are quickly buried with 0 comments).

The site needs to categorize and possibly even restrict front page posts. Do we really need Steam sales listed on the front page? Should Kickstarter projects in their last week really be lumped together in a giant wall of text with the latest Dragon Age preview? Does the latest batch of game reviews really need so much space on the front page? That is the gist of my complaint/concern.

So, please add categories for news stories so that it is easier to find topics of interest. And possibly less prominence for fluff news such as reviews and current sales. Because, as it stands right now, this is not RPGWatch but moreso '5-latest-hot-topics'Watch.
 
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While what people find interesting varies from person to person, I agree that potentially interesting forum posts might get buried too quickly. In the event that Myrthos didn't see this, I'll pass it on to him.
 
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I disagree. I think it's fine as it is, and I don't find it cumbersome to find the stuff I'm interested in.

pibbur who is a bit scared because he sounds like a conservative. Yeeech!

EDIT: PS. I won't join the Union of Bitter Men (UBM) and go on hunger strike if mr. Bowie gets his will (correct English?). DS.
 
While what people find interesting varies from person to person

Exactly, and that's why there's a need for categories and not simply lumping everything together into a giant wall of text that people need to visually filter through every time they happen to visit the site.

The old format worked a couple years ago when there were far fewer news stories, but right now with a dozen new topics each day, that system is plain useless. As is the News Watch list for anything other than me-too! commentary.

I find myself visiting the site less and less because of this - it's just not very functional.
 
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EDIT: PS. I won't join the Union of Bitter Men (UBM) and go on hunger strike if mr. Bowie gets his will (correct English?). DS.

That was brilliant, Pibbur. xD Truly.

Union of Bitter Men. Hahaha! I love it.
 
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I navigate this way - works like a charm:
 

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Except people need to make a comment. The vast majority of news stories don't even get that far as they get buried.
 
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Well, while I agree about the Kickstarter and STEAM posts, the other points do not bother me and as Pibbur said, I find it pretty convenient and easy to find what's the interesting stuff for me. Furthermore, browsing through things that'd probably never have picked my attention otherwise is one of the things I find attractive here so please, revamp the site at your leisure but keep its presentation as "clumsy" as it currently is :)
 
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I don't understand the complaint. You've got 2-3 days (depending on how "busy" the day is) worth of news posts displayed at any given time. You only get the 5 most recent news comments, but as you noted there often aren't that many comments on the news anyway and new ones can be readily found via another path as shown by HiddenX. So where's the issue? Is 2-3 days worth of headlines really inadequate?
 
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I don't handle the tech side of the site so this is a problem for Arhu, or Myrthos to fix. I do know a site revamp is in the works, but all of us are volunteers with limited time.:)
 
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Yes, can we redesign the front page with only news that Drithius and Crpgnut are interested in. That way they won't have to actually look through the news titles.

For instance, there are 11 new news articles today and it took me 23 seconds to look at the titles and decide if I was interested in it or not.

You really can't expect people to invest that kind of time.:rolleyes:

Really you want to see a site that's a nightmare to find things on? Check out the PC games redesigned site its a window 8 looking nightmare.

No Watch please keep the simple and easy to navigate lists.

I agree with Pibbur. Sometimes it's like a remake of grumpy old men around here.
 
The problem isn't the number of days, the problem is filtering through all the random junk to find something of interest to you.

CATEGORIES.

Why is that so hard for people to understand? I have better things to do with my time then sit there on the front page and visually filter through news stories because they're all a jumbled mess and the one you might care about is hiding between completely unrelated shit you couldn't care less about. Or finding something completely new/interesting to you but ignoring it because you thought it was just another turd in the mix.

Kickstarters
Reviews
Sales
All the other crap we got now
 
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tumblr_inline_mq7wh85FcC1qz4rgp.gif
 
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Everyone's twelve to someone, Drithius. ;)
 
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I want to see
Kickstarters
Reviews
Sales
& 'all the other crap' in the news ;)
 
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The problem isn't the number of days, the problem is filtering through all the random junk to find something of interest to you.

CATEGORIES.

Why is that so hard for people to understand? I have better things to do with my time then sit there on the front page and visually filter through news stories because they're all a jumbled mess and the one you might care about is hiding between completely unrelated shit you couldn't care less about. Or finding something completely new/interesting to you but ignoring it because you thought it was just another turd in the mix.

Kickstarters
Reviews
Sales
All the other crap we got now

So how will your categories work?

Who will determine them because I may not care about your 5 important categories so I want my 5 and so does the next guy and so on.

Then we have our categories and I don't care about many of them and don't want to " visually filter through" all the crap categories.

What happens when we have categories with very few news posts in them taking up space? Get rid of them. Then someone that wanted them isn't happy.

What happens when your category has several news post in it and your not interested in all of them? Start your dreaded visually filtering through.

Not to mention the first 3 comments on news posts in a category will be:

Post 1 " does this really belong in this category?"
Post 2 " I think it does"
Post 3 " I don't think it does it should be in x category "

Sorry but no thanks.

If you don't have the time to take the 30 seconds a day it takes to look at news title and determine if your interested I don't see how that is the watches fault.
 
I like it the way it is, I have no problems to scan the news site for topics I like.
Most of the time I enter via the forum page.

The only thing I would change on the technical side is (if this is possible) to count the news post itself as the first comment, so that it shows up in the comment section.

I'm interested in most topics around CRPGs and don't want to filter something away.
The problem at RPGWatch are/were never the news.
It is the lack of interesting postings from our normal user base.
But I think it's getting better recently.
 
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Personally I like the lay out of the site. I can quickly check what is new and or what topic people are interested in at the moment.
If I am looking for information on a game for the most part it is well laid out. No site is going to be everything to everyone. Though I think this site does a great job of being the best it can for most.
 
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