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- Sphinn It!
READ FIRST: Sphinn Beta Notes!
Welcome to Sphinn! Thanks so much for agreeing to beta test the site. This is the place to get a fast rundown on what's going on plus give us your feedback.
111 Comments
Comments
NOTE: I've moved the general welcome message here:
http://sphinn.com/story/126
Below are comments that covered the closed beta test. If you want to comment going forward now that we are open, please use this URL:
http://sphinn.com/story/124
Goal Of The Beta Test
Over the next day, we're really looking to see if there are any key features that are missing and especially to know if what's out there now isn't working. Kick the tires; slam the cupboard doors. If something's going to break, we want it to break during the beta.
We'd especially like to know if there are key forums or social networking sites you think should be added to the profile pages. We'll try to get them added. Do let us know if there's other info you think people should be able to list on those pages, to.
Known Cosmetic Issues
+ We're adjusting the tabs that have kind of weird spacing
+ In IE6, there's some space between the top category links and the subcategory bar
+ When moving between main tabs (like New Topics to Events Calendar), you might find the page shifts a bit
Known Feature Issues
+ We haven't added many events yet. We're working on that, and no, it won't just be our own :)
+ You can't have groups for friends, like some social sites offer. It's on the list
+ You can't subscribe to a feed of what all your friends are posting. Yep, on the list.
+ The feed URLs probably won't work because of the login requirement. That will get fixed when the beta ends and we go public
+ The buttons to put Sphinn on your site won't work because of the login requirement
+ We're hoping to have a system at launch where in addition to a button, you can have a text links, FeedBurner feed flare and hopefully the ability to have comments about your story on Sphinn flow back to your site.
+ There aren't many stories or discussions in the system. That's the beta test part! Voting is set fairly low at the moment for topics to go Hot. That's will be upped as we see activity increase.
Thanks again for trying out the system. Please fire away with comments, suggestions or whatever below.
Sounds really nice. I will be looking forward to using Sphinn - allthough, I don't think I will ever learn how to pronnounce that name without hurting myself :)
Spin is the pronunciation, I assume.
Is it really that simple? ;)
I know you have a lot on your plate, but perhaps an SEO/SEM Jobs category would be a modest lead in to the often discussed jobs board.
Also, in honor of the Cryogenic Status for Threadwatch, a Rumors and Reminiscing section.
Awesome! Looks great.
I did notice that (this is a short term bug) it looks like you can view a profile page without being logged into the site (I mean the beta test login). For intance:
http://sphinn.com/user/view/profile/vanessafox
Also, the profile tabs are really screwy in IE. Not that I can understand why anyone would use IE, but I suppose it could happen.
The comment numbers near the headline and snippet of each post aren't changing in real time. Seems they're on a noticeable delay.
Also, I don't see a way to reply to a specific person's comment - i.e. If I want to respond to Jonah above, I have to type it as a regular comment - which will make threads a nightmare when you have 100 comments and 14 different conversations going. I'd like to see a way to reply to an individual comment and have it indent underneath vs always having to reply to the thread as a whole. :)
Dang it... You may also want to put a time limit on being able to edit comments. I made a comment 16 minutes ago that I can still edit. Maybe you already have a timer on the comment editing... but I'd make it less if there is one - trolls and troublemakers love being able to edit posts well after the fact.
Jonah, look in the Other category. There are two jobs areas there.
Rae, I debated the usual threaded model and decided to go without it at first. We can always bring it back. If you look at most of the traditional forums (WMW, SEWF, etc), they don't do threaded comments.
I'd be curious what others think. I've also often found threaded comments more confusing than helpful. Like I said, perhaps we'll go back.
As for the Sphinn button for your site: http://sphinn.com/tools.php - is it possible to have a version so that the button only appears once a story has been Sphunn? That way I don't have tacky blue logos on every single post unless there is a reason (no offense, I specifically use the Digg plugin I do because it only appears once the story has been dugg).
As an aside - shame on you Danny for not buying Sphunn.com - seems Digg made the same error: http://dugg.com/ lmao - but don't worry, I picked it up once I realized you had failed to register it and will transfer it to you providing you promise to follow full domain name diligence in the future. ;-)
Clicked on the "edit" button for my comment above and this appeared above the main content area of the page: Warning: current(): Passed variable is not an array or object in /var/www/html/sp/sphinn.com/templates_c/c_6e9d47fca259527c18191d29afe6df5a.php on line 123
Very cool. It may or may not have been discussed, and probably a bit late now - but why not preserve the link pop you have with SEL - and 301 this in to a subdirectory, and add links on the corebrand. You can use the cool sphinn.com branding, and still pull off a 301 to benefit your global link pop of the main brand. Just my "always about the links and rankings" take since it's likely to be very well linked. Seems counterproductive to start from scratch again, and compete with yourself on different phrases (if that is the goal, then perhaps even a subdomain?)
Very sharp interface - and thank god - I need something to check all day long now that TW is gone. Will we be able to drop the occassional f-bombs when it's necessary? :)
After editing a comment, you might want to add the "editable for xx minutes feature as well. Digg really sucks with only under a minute or whatever to edit comments.
[snip] - there is NO language filter... is that a promise or an oversight? ;-)
>language filter
Leave it to Rae to figure that out:)
You may want to thread comments with indents a little bit for when people go off topic too.
I got the same error as Rae above when editing too - though the functionality works fine.
stuntie - you're not reading the above comments are ya? ;-)
Also, any chance we can get permalinks to comments? So if there is a thread with 119 comments and one gem at #68, I can simply send the link to the comment to someone and not have a fishing expedition for them as they try to find the one I'm looking for?
Well, now my newest wish will seem petty compared to all of this. But I want a bigger profile picture. You can barely see my phone balanced on top of my cat.
Ok, just out of curiosity: http://sphinn.com/GoogleOther/Jakob-Nielsen-Not-Optimistic-about-Personalized-Search-1/ how did this entry end up with a "1" tacked onto the end of the url?
Damn... I'm thinking Michael shot me over some of his redbull. :P
I agree the interface is sharp, but I am not sold on three levels of navigation across the top. That is really pushing it. Why aren't you using any side navigation?
Why are you using 800 pixels wide as the standard? Surely this audience is at least ready for 1024.
The Water Cooler may well serve the place of our recently departed TW, particularly if we find out that certain SE engineers have added it to their RSS.
Speaking of RSS, with so many topic areas and subtopics, can we manage subscriptions at the topic or thread level?
Finally, I see some overlap between "Event Calendar" and Conferences and Workshops". Shouldn't Conferences be a subset of the Event Calendar?
Question on reasoning behind voting and saving? I'm a social media *user*, trained by Digg. This means, when I digg something, it is saved for me forever and ever. Now, Sphinn also has a save option, which is seperate from the Sphinn option. Why the need for two? I'd imagine if you are interested enough in something to save it, you'd Sphinn it. So, why the need for the double option? Will those listed in the "Vote" section drop off after a certain amount of time or a certain number?
I see no "bury" like feature - does this mean strict editorial oversight or trust? I hope you say editorial oversight. Because if there is any industry that knows how to game social media and do it with no shame, it is this one. ;-)
I logged out and got the oops page. then I logged in and it gave me the oops page. It logged me in though.
This is all excellent, thanks everyone. Some responses...
Comment time limits: excellent idea, just haven't looked around to figure out how to do this. Agree -- we need to have some so people don't muck around.
Sphinn Button: I think we will have what you want, something that only appears if a story has been submitted. For SEL, I need something to replace where we show comment numbers, since commenting will be here. So I think we're developing some JavaScript that looks and if there's a story, lights up with the number -- and if not, stays quiet. I think. Maybe.
Sphunn: Thank you. I hang my head in shame. I promise!
Why Not Withing SEL: Oh, Todd, you do not know the discussions we had about this. sel/spin? spin.sel.com? That sort of thing. In the end, I felt Sphinn deserved to standalone as its own site. The SEL community will lean on it heavily, but some people might like it on its own. Plus, isn't it nice to have such a short URL to type?
Language: Hmm, I pretend not to notice questions about profanity and the lack of this being implemented for now.
Comment Permalinks: Gads -- yeah, it doesn't have them, does it. Yikes. Will look into that pronto.
Bigger Pictures: I agree, but probably not right away. I think it's kind of hard. Maybe some neat JavaScript hover and make it bigger might work. Dunno, will put it on the list.
That Weird 1 At The End: So Pligg, the software we use, kind of sucks in some ways. Say you submit, then decide to modify something. It stores the first story and starts a new one tacking on a 1. Modify again, you get a 2 at the end, and so on. Makes me angry. But suspect we have to live with it for the near term.
On navigation, well -- I find it kind of handy to have it all up there. Had some debate on whether you should have tabs first, then categories, then subcategories -- and maybe the categories disappear unless you are on a topic page. Short story is, well, we decided to go out with this for now and see how it works.
800 Versus 1024: I think we'll stay conservative a bit longer. I did look not too long ago at screen sizes for SEL, and there were still enough people to make it wise to hang in there.
RSS Management: See the feeds page, and I've outlined how we don't yet have topic specific feeds. Working on it. When we get them, wasn't planning on providing management tools here. Instead, you'd pick and choose what you want and add to your own feed reader. But can consider this.
Events Calendar Overlap: Yeah, was already talking about possible confusion there last night. Conferneces & Webinars might break into two buttons, and each button might instead be the SMN and SMX logos. Or, we might lose that entire button, figuring you'll find out about SMN and SMX through our sidebar units.
Vanessa - logging out/in - what browser are you using?
Got this on the "network" page, though the rest of the page rendered fine: Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in /var/www/html/sp/sphinn.com/templates_c/c_ef20b2b5fff08f636a080a9108ff9329.php on line 136
This was in firefox, but it seems to work ok now.
+1 vote for threaded comments
+1 vote for bigger avatar pictures
Save Feature: Yeah, it's weird. It's part of the Pligg software, and I'm exploring it more for the help files. I'll probably just say to ignore it! Exactly as you say, voting for a story saves it. I suppose some people might want to save a story but not vote for it. Personally, I'd like to see a way to maybe have saving tied with tagging and organizing stories you like. It's more stuff on my todo list to explore.
Buries: I think we have this capability, and I might bring it in, if necessary. One key thing is that unlike Digg, we are going to have an active role in editing and moderating. On the flip side, I'm hoping that just telling people to submit their own stuff might help reduce some of the gaming that can happen.
Nicely done Danny. I like it. Some small things I've seen thus far, others have been covered already:
- Tab order in the profile page: When editing your profile and are in the the company field it does not tab over to the title field next. Instead it tabs to the AIM.
- no chance you can modify your profile name after it's created eh? Like from Ken to KenJurina?
- why isn't Jonah's pic loading above? Maybe he attempted to load a pic and then it didn't default back? Or maybe Jonah's so darn tall that his pic broke the field!?! Man that guy is big. Big but nice.
Still looking around for more, but a bigger pic would be nice too. I agree with Vanessa.
Just cosmetic, but after you rate a post and click on the "+" or "-" the thank you message almost runs over the author and time line. This happens for instance on your post Danny. Looks like the fields are too wide or maybe this is an IE 6 thing.
I like the "check spelling" but it doesn't seem to work now. I just posted and the spell check worked on the initial post and now am trying to post again but the check spelling button isn't functioning now and I'm getting an "error on page" message in the status bar. So, if my spelling sucks in this post it's your fault...or my grade 9 teacher Ms. Jabber.
It's all good! I am ready to open the link building floodgates for sphinn Thursday at 11am.
Neat idea :) Some thoughts, in no particular order...
May get (unjustly) accused of taking advantage of Threadwatch's demise
The name... ugh... sorry, love the idea, hate the name.
Login-required-for comments: may be slightly an uphill battle, but one worth fighting, IMHO. Though you could conceivably chicken out and permit comments from "anonymous cowards" (a la slashdot).
When I tried "Adam Lasnik" for username, it said "Invalid characters." You should make it clear up front that spaces are not permitted and/or note what is permitted (e.g., letters only, no spaces. Case sensitive).
In the profile editing screen, it was unclear which (if any) fields were required.
Under networks, you forgot PicasaWeb ;) Maybe also Tumblr?
Too many clicks to upload a profile pic. Also, when I first uploaded it, I instinctually hit SAVE instead of UPLOAD. It should still know what to do :) And I agree with Vanessa that the pics are really really tiny.
I'd like to see how comments have been rated; just the number of ratings alone isn't very exciting.
When I submitted a post, I clicked "preview" and noticed a spelling error. I clicked modify and got a gray box popup that said: "The page you are trying to view contains POSTDATA that has expired from the cache..." etc and if I clicked cancel, I couldn't edit the post. when I hit ok, it took me back to edit the post, the url was still there, but it had changed the category, title and cleared the description box to the default. Yeah, uh, wasn't pleased. ;-)
Nice idea Danny. Site looks good and any feedback I have appears to have been covered.
I'm so glad this will replace your old comments option and it's good to see you offering an option for more discussions.
The site reminds me of a combination of Digg and SEOmoz.
BTW - are we allowed to ban Kevin Rose? ;-)
I want an RSS feed per user, this way I can "stalk" your submissions and comments in my reader, even sweeter would be to have one feed for both.
If you are going to let people put links in their profile page, I'd no follow them the temptation to abuse is too great. You could do something similar to SEOMoz where you have earn a certain status to get the no-follow removed.
this is a weakness in most social systems, you should require people to view the story before spinning it. Blind votes are really ways to game the system.
Is there a way to see all the stories submitted by my friends?
It seems so web 1.0 but how about an email a friend feature for a story.
How about a category for video and podcasting?
if i've spunn a story the message should change to keep me from spinning twice.
Digg also changes the voted icon with a star thingy if one of my friends voted, sometimes gets sympathy votes but also make me check it out sometime.
Also you should force avatars to be certain size. For oddballs pad with white or black my blog log style, otherwise they look all jumbly and jagged.
Hands red bull back to rae
BTW the main post is showing only 3 comments, but there are clearly more than that.
Modify Name: I think we can do this manually. I'll have Michelle check on it. We're going to have to do it for Gord, I'm certain :)
Threadwatch: Well, we've been working on this for months. But hey, was already accused of masterminding the demise of TW, heh.
Name: It'll grow on you, promise.
Usernames With Spaces: Heard this from gary who wanted gary_price. We'll make that clear.
Ok, so, I made a post here: http://sphinn.com/OtherSearching/Skooiz-unveils-study-on-behaviour-and-attitude-of-French-Canadians-when-searching-the-web/ and interestingly enough, I realized I used the french spelling for "behavious" and then low and behold, AFTER I published it, I was able to click an admin link and edit the title and description. BUT, when I edited the title to change the spelling - yep, it also of course, edited the url: http://sphinn.com/OtherSearching/Skooiz-unveils-study-on-behavior-and-attitude-of-French-Canadians-when-searching-the-web/
So, the old page still exists though and according to http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/server-header.php is returning a 302 but all I am seeing as a user is a blank white page.
I don't know, the whole thing seems kinda messy to me. You don't want people changing urls after something had been posted. It just is asking for a nightmare.
Now I am going to post the: http://www.sphinn.com/longest-url-i-can-do-for-a-minute-here-to-see-if-your-css-can-cope-for-it-and-also-what-happens-to-the-site-design-when-a-really-nasty-and-long-ass-url-are-posted-in-the-comment-area-of-this-here-type-of-page-and-then-you-can-see-if-it-needs-fixing-or-not-and-i-will-hand-the-redbull-back-to-graywolf
Also, any reason that url gives me a 403 instead of a 404?
Modify Loses Data: Yeah, has happened to me, Michelle said it didn't happen to her, so I thought maybe I was just weird. Clearly I'm not. Well, I am, but.... Right now, I'll have to add help messages that this might happen to right below the modify button, since I don't think there's an easy fix.
RSS Feed Per User: So you read my carefully crafted feed pages, where it says, wait a minute, hang on, I'll get it: "Sphinn Profile Feeds: When viewing a member's profile (including your own), the orange feed icon can be used to get a feed of what a particular person has submitted, had published, commented about and so on." Heh heh, it breaks a writer's heart. Look, graywolf comment feed: http://sphinn.com/rss/user/graywolf/commented. OK, so it's not showing your comments. Hmm. But here are you submissions working: http://sphinn.com/rss/user/graywolf/all
Nofollow: Yeah. Yeah. On the list in my head that we'd better figure out how to add that in various places. I was figuring we might make it a week before putting it in. Status idea to lose it is nice. I know -- you could pay money and we'd remove nofollow and then....oh, hi, Matt.
View Friends Stories: I want this sooooooo bad, but not yet. The feed page explains it's on the list.
Misc: Yeah, the comment counts aren't working. The button should say Sphunn after you've sphunn.
@AndyBeal - I say we demand a bury feature and then bury anything about apple or politics...
Speaking of which danny - I noticed here: http://sphinn.com/guidelines.php that you pretty much have "dont game us and categorize correctly" - but what about the harder rules - politics allowed? Can you link to a site with adult content? Can you link to a site that contains adult content but not on the page you're linking to? What constitutes adult content? And how do I report an offensive story?
>So you read my carefully crafted feed pages
I've been trained to look for the little orange feed icon in the address bar, since I saw it there on other pages and not that page, my incorrect assumption was it didn't exist.
You only get the sphunn message when you reload/visit a new page, not real time, so I pushed the button and since there's no feedback I'm not sure it "took".
Is there an upcoming/most page/section page?
the profile name/avatar should take me to your profile.
the break for the snippet looks character count based, if it doesn't split on a space maybe you should back it up so you don't have single letters hanging
if you are going to enable the bury feature pleeeeeeeeze be transparent about it. shadow/stealth buries are just evil.
ack not a graceful failure
http://sphinn.com/user/view/profile/madeupname
takes the redbull back from michael:
http://sphinn.com/network.php
Ok, I know you can't go all in depth on the rating system, and who knows, maybe I haven't figured it out in the last three glorious hours or its simply borked...
1. What is the difference between a Published and Published Spin? I get it, but you need to be clear about it.
2. I've seen people's ratings go up AND down. This seemed to coincide with a specific incidents... but, the incidents don't make total sense as in why they'd factor into reputation (in three hours to me anyway lol).
3. How is it that betagirl who has zeros across the board is listed as the second most reputable user? Unless part of two makes sense.
4. What does "News" mean? (pretending I haven't watched it for three hours)
Little popup boxes that explain these things would help.
And then, literally two minutes after posting the above, betagirl drops to fourth from the bottom of the list.
hey danny - can we add time zones to the events listing?
It would also be cool if, when you went back into a thread, the comments you hadn't seen yet were shaded and maybe even you could be jumped down to there. I think seomoz does something like this.
and now she's back to second lol
Anyone have an issue finding out how to submit a story?
@rustybrick - I did originally look to the top right as trained, but the submit tab was pretty obvious when I realized it wasn't where I was trained to look.
Nice Danny - looking good... couple of quick things:
1) Comments (numbers) aren't showing for all of the stories on the "popular page". I saw 20 for this and none for the others even though they had them.
2) With the editorials - disable the link that would let you click out (to nowhere).
3) Open news stories in a new window (ala Digg) or the same (as they are now - ala blogs)? Was this on purpose?
5) Karma - I've seen this other places and everyone always stays at 10. Will this change here?
Nice job!
what did barry do to lose a reputation point he's at 9
sorry there's a little bit of algo-buster inside all of us
@graywolf - I had nine when I was beta testing it the other week. I guess I did something to upset Danny. :P
I clicked sphinn it for this story and it changed the count, but it didn't change the display to sphunn. It still said sphinn it. So, you know, I clicked it again, and it gave me an error that I had already sphunn it. Which was true and all, but still, it said I could sphinn it and it lied.
Note that when I refreshed the page, it changed to sphunn.
2 more questions (see how I have, in a nice, organized fashion, started asking them here rather than in my fantastic other thread?):
-Why can I "unvote" on the vote tab in my profile but not in the actual story? And why isn't it called anti-sphinn or something?
-Why doesn't anyone want to be my friend. Damn you all. Except for Rae.
Dude. I'm a 9 now too. You not only won't be my friend but you're in some secret back room, trash talking me.
Just a quick note that Michelle and I are having a very nice phone conversation about all this, loving the feedback and working out how to do lots of this stuff. So hang in there. And we're making picture bigger. But this means for a short period, you might find they all go away. So don't panic. OK? No panic.
@rustybrick - and you were at a ten when I first got here today.
@vanessafox - you know who loves you lmao.
@Sugarrae ill give you a plus up if you give me a plus up. ;-)
@rustybrick - done, but we've been messing with it - it seems borked. :P
I'm proud to say we now have the biggest pictures of well, we have big pictures. For the record, Digg icons are all of 16x16. And over at SEOmoz, lots of people are 40x40. OK, a few for no reason clear to me are 80x80. But after extensive testing (hey Michelle, what should we try -- how about 50x50 and 30x30?), we plugged those in and boom, we like what we see. You do too? Note of warning -- you might need to reupload for better quality. The server automatically resized the old ones, so they might be wonky. Or whatever the technical term is.
LOL - like those buttons on the lamp posts at street corners that you press to change the red hand to a green man walking.
My avatar just is the word "avatar". The shunning of me continues. I see how you all are.
It's also somewhat difficult to tell if you have a message.
Now I see why I have no friends. I'm much too whiny.
@vanessafox I friended/stalked you before, ask rae I sent her an email I have proof, I so want points, a zillow shirt or something for that
@graywolf - you so didn't stalk me. You're just saying that to make me feel better. ;)
Another thing I noticed, on the network page, it says:
Become a member of our network! Register here!
Even if you've already registered.
inbox doesn't tell me when I have mail a counter or different color would be helpful.