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Letters: Bring back the left-column items, says Giordano
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Feedback problems
Posted by Jim Romenesko 11/26/2008 11:40:45 AM

Bob -- If your comments aren't being posted, you can always send me your comments to be posted on the Romenesko Letters page. Send them to jromenesko@poynter.org .

the changes
Posted by bob cole 11/25/2008 3:10:24 PM

I must be getting old...For a couple of weeks I haven't paid much attention to Romenesko but I now find that everything is harder to find,,,
And the feedback shows that I'm not the only one...
In the earlier version I couold post feedback and find it almost immediately...Now, when I sent something, I couldn't find it, but maybe it never reached you [although I got a reply],,,

As an aside on getting old, I've been hearing crickets in all the rooms at home for more than a week...When my daughter visited us today, she said that it wasn't6 crickets but that I needed a new battery for my smoke alarm...

Even your password has changed...Maybe I'm wrong but now you must include at least one number before you're connected...

Life is getting increasinly complicated...

AS SOMEONE'S ALREADY SAID:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

bob

We hear you.
Posted by Bill Mitchell 11/17/2002 2:22:06 PM

One way or another, the left rail items will return to the top of the page. We'll be working on that this week, along with the other suggestions. The feedback system clearly needs some fixes, and there are a bunch of things that we'll sort into what we can do now or later.

Background on the changes.

Bill Mitchell/Poynter

Irwin Fletcher
Posted by Corky Siemaszko 11/17/2002 1:17:05 PM

Wow. This redesign must really suck if a journalist as famous as Irwin Fletcher escapes from the pages of a pulp novel and weighs in with an opinion. Fletch lives!

Feedback on feedback
Posted by bob stepno 11/17/2002 11:41:25 AM

First, how about putting a series of links between this discussion and the discussion page on Bill Mitchell's article (QuickLink: A9080).

Lacking QuickLinks to the feedback pages, I tried making shortcuts with tinyurl. This discussion:
http://tinyurl.com/2rpo
The one on "The New Poynter Online" article: http://tinyurl.com/2rq3

I suspect the asp system may "expire" the original links tinyurl points to, but it was worth a try.

Second, could we have a larger text-entry screen on the Add Article Feedback pages? With MSIE OS-X, I'm typing into a five-line scrolling field about three inches wide. (With Netscape I get six lines.)

thanks,
Bob in Boston

Agree with the complainers
Posted by James Fallows 11/17/2002 10:59:24 AM

I've enjoyed reading this site for a long time, but have been moved to register only now, so I could make a posting about the design change. I'm sure this was well intentioned, and I know it took a lot of work to implement. But it simply is less usable, readable, and comprehensible than before. Please bring back as many of the old simple-to-use elements as you can. Jim Fallows

new colors
Posted by Erik Markov 11/16/2002 8:52:54 PM

The green color that has been chosen for the new pages is remarkably similiar to the color they chose to paint some of the advertising and design offices in our building. Fortunately I don't have to visit them too often. Hmmm, now that I think about it, I don't need to visit the new Poynter website too often either. I will be looking into some colored glasses that will counteract the website colors and maybe I can come back.

Fools responsible pt. 2
Posted by Sean Scully 11/16/2002 8:16:43 PM

I'm with Irene Silverman. On her advice, I checked out the Data Glyphics website, and looked at many of their client links. And guess what? With the Poynter site, they have faithfully reproduced the same garish, unattractive and user-unfriendly websites that they have done dozens of times before. Not only is the new Poynter site junk, it is profoundly unoriginal, cookie-cutter junk. Again I say: Shame.

Make it stop
Posted by j logan 11/16/2002 7:37:50 PM

I don't like it. I don't like spinach and I don't like this.

All the ways this blows
Posted by Sean Means 11/16/2002 4:52:13 PM

How many ways does this redesign blow chunks?
1) The left-hand column was a great handy guide to other information. Now it's a list of buzzwords suitable for Dilbert's pointy-headed boss.
2) Clicking onto every individual feedback comment is an annoyance. Better to have the full text posted for each (or the first 100 words to cut off the more verbose among us), and let us scroll through them.
3) Having to register with Poynter before posting, quoting a policy of no anonymous posts, is insulting. We are all professionals -- our names are our integrity; if someone chooses not to attach his/her name to a posting, it signals the rest of us that said person should be ignored.
4) The aquamarine color. Yuck. It's that same subdue-the-inmates institutional shade you find at your finer insane asylums and rest homes.

Tecnology no substitute for people
Posted by Bradley Fikes 11/16/2002 3:41:09 PM

Ms. O'Brien's defense of the redesign doesn't jibe with the popularity of the old Romensko site. Poynter hired Romenesko because his Media Gossip site attracted the reporters Poynter wanted to reach. Poynter needs to learn from Romenesko, not the other way around.

Reporting is not endangered by a lack of technology. It's hurt by cookie-cutter corporate journalism, which emits a boring, bloodless "product," (a revealing word choice) that sucks the life out of reporting.

A positive recommendation to resurrect Poynter's dysfunctional Web site: Fire DataGlyphics. Hire Don Norman.

IWantMedia: an excellent site.
Posted by Dodi Schultz 11/16/2002 2:02:24 PM

IWantMedia is an excellent site--fast, user-friendly, reliable..

losing links
Posted by bob stepno 11/16/2002 1:49:33 PM

With any redesign, I clench my teeth and check my links...

For example, I was happy to see that "medianews.org" bounces to the right place. However, "poynter.org/medianews" goes to a very clumsy site map page... on which Medianews is about 100 lines down.

In course syllabi, bookmark lists, SPJ pages, blogs and my own Web pages, I've linked to dozens of Poynter pages. I suspect the same is true of many journalism professors and students.

I think I'll wait a few days before I do a full link-check to see how much work it'll take to fix (or delete) them.

Suggestion: Once the new site architecture is stable, a more powerful Search system would help people find missing links.

Wonder why newspapers are slow to change?
Posted by Margaret OBrien 11/16/2002 1:03:39 PM

The new site does have some usability issues and, clearly, the Web meisters should quickly make Mr. Romensko his own special template page that brings back the much-loved left rail.
But, the pitiful pleas listed by the dozens here to "bring back the old site" are frightening to me. Poynter is simply moving forward to make use of the new technology available -- like this feedback forum and other useful personalization features -- in an attempt to build a more useful product.
This is something we have been slow to do in newspapers and it's driving our rapid decline in loyal readers. They're flocking to other media that have, frankly, been more innovative and open to change. It's hard to embrace change when you're too busy wringing your hands in fear.
Change motivated by a desire to grow and improve is a good thing. Let's hope it is ongoing and evolutionary at Poynter. (Prompting them to bring back the left rail!)

I came for wine, not carrot juice
Posted by Bradley Fikes 11/16/2002 11:37:10 AM

I personally pledged $100 to Salon if it hires Jim and let him do his own thing. Maybe Slate would take him, hell, they've got Micro$oft bucks and Mickey Kaus seems to be doing pretty well there.
Let Romenesko be Romenesko!

Below the fold
Posted by John Abbott 11/16/2002 11:02:32 AM

My biggest problem with the new design is that I can now view only one item on the screen, before having to scroll down. With the old site I could see three or four items at a glance, and focus in on the interesting ones. How about cutting out some space, choosing a more compact font and restoring variable column widths? Why must so much interesting material go below the fold?

I'm with Al
Posted by Maia Szalavitz 11/16/2002 10:52:49 AM

Bring back the links on the left and make the text smaller again, please! It was so much easier to read and use before.

Free Romenesko II
Posted by Andrew Galarneau 11/16/2002 10:27:29 AM

Great. I just proved the point, made by others, about Romenesko's filtered feedback being preferable, with my non-sentences posted for the world to see. I could blame the postage-stamp sized input window, but I'll leave it at this: Bring back Classic Romenesko. Or I'll post again.

A sick joke
Posted by Andrew Galarneau 11/16/2002 10:20:05 AM

Is it really a carefully camouflaged experiment to test Romenesko's appeal? Is the point to see how of Romemesko's appealing features Poynter can lop off without losing the viewing masses? This do-over reminds me of a copy editor cutting the lede and conclusion of a story to make it for the hole. Free Romenesko.

Does it have to be so ugly?
Posted by Kim Masters 11/16/2002 12:51:11 AM

I second Seth. Change it back. Please.

A constructive thought
Posted by Michael Lee 11/15/2002 8:43:55 PM

I actually quite like the "Feedback" feature. It's fun to see familiar names snipe at each other. But the interface is all wrong. All comments should be immediately visible, without clicking on a separate link for each. All that clicking makes for too much effort for a payoff that's nebulous.

In the long run, a Slashdotesque moderation system would be nice as well, to improve the signal-to-noise ratio a bit. But I realize that's not a simple thing to carry out.

Belly-Achers
Posted by Irwin Fletcher 11/15/2002 8:23:32 PM

Sounds like someone's got a belly ache! :( Don't worry in a few days you won't even remember why you were so upset. I know, you all fear change, and you like to complain anonymously(trust me, I know what that's like), but why don't you give the new website a chance. Grow-up. be constructive. stop being babies. What are you whiners like to work with?

the fools responsible
Posted by irene silverman 11/15/2002 7:21:24 PM

click at the bottom on DataGlyphics Inc., the fools responsible for this revamp, to see what else they've done. It's instructive.

Page Bloat.
Posted by Charles Kane 11/15/2002 7:08:11 PM

Okay. It's awful. Counter-intuitive, hard to read, less useful, a giant step back from the core mission. (Ugh. That's probably a Poynter term.)

But here's the real giant irony: Just to the right of where you're reading this, there's a link to something called "Page Bloat."

If the redesign isn't a textbook case of this, I don't know what is.

One (minor) positive
Posted by Craig Stanke 11/15/2002 7:05:32 PM

I don't like it at all either, but there's one advantage. The feedback discussion on any particular posting can be ongoing without having to directly e-mail Jim and wait for him to post it, particularly in off hours. Maybe, even if they go back to the old way, that feature could be retained.

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