New changes

As i wrote in another thread:

As a longtime collaborator to this site, I believe the complaints of non-collab reviewers are very much justified. Not everyone has the time or energy to produce the number of reviews to become a PR, but they have the right to have some recognition for their work. Taking those non-collab reviews away from the album page was not very nice at all, in my humble opinion.

I saw the new scheme of reviews, it does indeed have a deep downside..

The difference, or the cut, between Collaborator Reviewers and "Normal" Reviewers could be less emphasized; after all, we did made already a difference when, in the algorithms, SC/PR reviews are counted as 10 points to the rate, NR as 3 and rates as 1. I think that the normal arrangement from before, not this two columns new one, is fine as it is. There's enough space for reviews, plus the grouping of those reviews made by SC/PR and those made by "NR" doesn't damage.

One more thing I noticed is that those reviews made by senior members or guest members are shortened to a few lines, after which a (read more) button comprises the rest of the review. Not cool!

In conclusion, seems like this new change also doesn't really please. I know M@X is doing a good hard work into this maintainance/changes, but perhaps he could open up a thread of suggestions.


Edited by Ricochet - December 13 2007 at 04:58

Easy Livin wrote: There is a current new suggestions thread Rico. This is the right place for comments on the new layout. Keep them coming.   When commenting on the restricted initial view of non-collab reviews, please consider the complaint we get a lot that there are too many reviews shown for popular albums all at once. Is there a better way to address that then?

Well, the complaint doesn't influence the whole picture of non-collab reviews, in my opinion. Whether too many reviews for popular albums are made or two many reviews for popular albums are shown, not a significant difference. The old layout for those popular albums went pretty normal, in my opinion, all the collab reviews were nested first, then the (usually much longer) list of reviews and the "gruesome" list of rates () followed. Right now, those albums still have an endless list of reviews, only put in two columns (and the one of non-collab reviews will still be longer, pushing down the page, than those of collaborators).

Anyhow, this issue doesn't address the problem of cutting non-collab reviews to a mere five lines, while the collab reviews are fully posted (and those of long paragraphs, like mine, really look squeezed). What happens to an "unpopular album", that's been reviewed only by a non-collab member, and it looks, exagerrately put, like that:

... which 30 would you propose, the latest, the first 30, the longest 30, etc.?

either do I. I like the way it was before.. we have an old saying in the south...

if it ain't broke Bubba... don't fix 'er

one thing... I think would be nice.. .and I do miss it.... is the ability to search by poster... some people are sharp as tacks.. and smarter than hell. Would be nice to know what they have to say during the day.. or even to know when someone has something to say to you.  Can't recall how many times I've seen answers or posts to me ...weeks later since I had moved on from a thread.  I know it was removed for performance resason... but still.... would be nice.  

The forum body body had to be removed because of the volume of text the forum now contains. That search runs on our own server. Such searches were constantly timing out.

After thinking about this a while, I have to agree that the change to the reviews is just an awful, awful decision.   If the goal here is to get people interested in participating and reviewing albums, the new design is a BIG step backwards.  As the design also hides a lot of information in the interest of looking pretty, it also a big step backwards for those looking to use the page as a resource.

I've reported the feedback on the layout changes to M@x.