Talk:Beardy Spock
From Barbelith
So, yeah. The discussion page. For, y'know, discussing...
Right, so now I need to figure out how to switch that violet back *off* again, and how to set column widths so that it makes some sort of sense rather than spreading out willy-nilly, but that should be doable...
But you see what I'm trying to do, yeah? Highlighting the really really important bits, and *showing* the differences between sections - Next up would be building on the forum-specific FAQs...
*tumbleweeds*
well, *if* anyone ever reads this, you maybe can see the basic idea by now - trying to highlight the practical how-tos of How To Post On Barbelith and really push them right upfront, also have the wider community 'spaces' like flickr and the barbeblogs and even the RSS stuff, all the off-site resources that still constitute a big part of the community, to have that right up-front too, as a Very Important Thing. And then right after that, how the various spaces work/are organised on the site itself, and the forum-specific FAQs.
And all the old 'grant Morrison and barblith', and the Nexus stuff, or all the dead projects and everything, all that gets pushed further back down the index page. Because it's all interesting, but not, strictly speaking, useful. Is the idea. That's if I can ever get these stupid damn columns to work right, so that I can hang the 'Barbelith Related Sites' section *next* to the 'Functionality on Barbelith' bit. And have a divider inbetween the two, so it looks like two parallel uppy-downy columns and not just one next-to-each-other row.
...
... y'know, if anyone does read this, it'd be really, really nice to hear a thought or two.
OK, I finally discovered this page. I think you did all this while I was in China (basically, the month of April).
I've made the text match the Main Page (and edited that text along the way -- some goofy stuff was still in there!). I really like the way the main section looks.
If I had a grip on wiki tables, I'd try doing the following: Moving the part I relabeled "Where else to go (related sites)" underneath the forum FAQs, since people who're reading this page for the first time are probably more interested in the forums than other web pages, while those who're more familiar with the place will be able to find the off-site links more easily.
I'd also, for layout reasons more than anything, consider breaking the "How do I post?" into an etiquette column and a functionality column (1a & 1b). That'd make that brilliantly colored main section 2, and the off-site links 3. Might be nice to have that and whatever's next made into the same sort of double-column layout as 1a & 1b.
Whatcha think? -grant 13:34, 15 Sep 2006 (EDT)
Oh, YAY. grant, you are my hero.
Okay, brilliant job you’ve done w/ all your edits to the text of the Main Page - yes, the version here was already out of date wrt the real Main Page, but I wasn’t touching any of that anyway. But, yeah, it has been a looooong while since anyone had a go at some of that stuff, hasn’t it?
On the shifting-around of the different sections - ok, I can do that. As far as I can recall, my thinking for shoving the barbeblogs up front was maybe to push the barbelith-at-large thing. When I first found the site, there was a webzine, and I think I just kinda miss the idea of emphasis being placed on a wider community that are all actively doing something. Or something. I'm a bit fuzzy about that, tbh.
So, ok, point taken. I’m only talking about blogs and photo-sharing, after all. That stuff’d work better as Section 3. I’ll move it. And I’ll have a go at the split functionality/etiquette columns. Yr input on What Goes Where would be appreciated there.
I like the idea of laying out columns 4 and 5 as the split columns again, that’d look nice, for balance. I'll get on that, too!
(Oh, and the "vxw" was just some letters I threw in so I knew where I was in the table. I am really *not* very good at this keyboard-tapping game.) --Bed 17:36, 15 Sep 2006 (EDT)
- Excellent. Should one of us post something about this to the board once you're done with the layouty stuff, or just surprise 'em? My thoughts on what should go where in the first two columns:
Left side:
* A Guide to Barbelith Posting Etiquette
* Topic Abstracts
* Distributed Moderation
o Disputes over Moderation
* Fiction Suits
* Signature Files
* Picture Threads
* The Ignore Function
* Posting Limits (if these are even still around any more)
Right side:
* Finding Stuff (or: Help, this "Search" thing isn't working right!)
o Finding Posts By User
* Formatting Text and Posting Links and Images
o My Image Isn't Showing Up
o Getting Images Onto The Web
o Free Image Hosting Services
* My IP has been blocked
* RSS Feeds and Newsreaders
* Posting Errors (this should be rewritten at some point)
Oh, and I wouldn't necessarily title them differently, since there's an overlap between etiquette & functionality. Just put one title over both columns, or the same title over each. Does that sound good?
OK, I just did it myself. Wow, that was head-bending, but fun.
Now, I think all that has to happen is to change the words describing the sections -- and maybe something making clear which section was which (horizontal rules between "Core," "Revolution," "Spectacle" and that, maybe).
Oh, and separating the 3,4,5,6 into columns seems to be impossible because they're all section headings. Probably unnecessary anyway, since the rest of it looks so good!
And some of my operatives... are Vulcans.--grant 16:23, 20 Sep 2006 (EDT)
Well, we can always revert it again, but I'm just goingto try stretching some colours around sections, uh, 4 and 5 anyway. Even if there's no real reason to have them on a level. I'd like to see if I can actually stretch the columns out so they each fill 50% of the screen, because I think I've *already* forgotten how to do that. *bangs head*
grant, you rock btw. I go away for a couple of days and find you've had all the head-bending fun while I've been gone. Love the little red stripes, and the new descriptions of Revolution and Spectacle sections. And I love the way the functionality/etiquette columns look - I've added a couple of potential extras in there, btw. - Bed 08:21, 21 Sep 2006 (EDT)
- Okay, so, I've also added a couple of potential subjs to the 'etiquette' bit - I was thinking that we might have *something*, even if only a couple of lines, about what '101' threads and 'SBR' threads are supposed to be - I’m pretty sure the question about What These Acronyms Mean has been asked a few times on the board, and there's the current debate in Policy about possibly marking threads in the Temple as being more serious and 'Revolution'-y than others. Wouldn't have to created brand new separate pages for any of these - 'figured might just tack something about each onto the end of this page, because I think you can do a link straight to a subheading.
- Also, I think there *are* still posting limits, but atm it's something like 50 posts a day, or anyway the sort of limit that hardly anyone ever hits. I don't really think it's a frequently-asked bit of the FAQ, anyway. Noone would miss it, I think, and we can always bring it back - just link to it again - if the posting limits are reduced or suddenly become relevant.
- God. It's... full of stars. How did you get the section headers into table cells? I thought I'd tried using the same tags but they kept breaking it -- I wonder if it was the rowspan things you used. I'll look for a place to insert a "posting limits" link (there may already be one in the "why can't I post?" page). My inner librarian wants to tidy up the "101" and "SBR" tag lines, but I think that just means writing a couple lines in the actual articles. And I think I want to take out the repeated area-names in the area-name descriptions ("The Spectacle. The Spectacle is..."). Other than that, I think this is ready to go live. You think so? --grant 14:13, 21 Sep 2006 (EDT)
yeah, I think so! Wow. And yeah, there *is* a link to 'Posting Limits' in the 'Posting Errors' page, so we could easily lose that in the move.
I mean, I think I'm all done fiddling around with it. It looks absolutely perfect. Wow, you rock, I love your copywriting/tweaking journo skillz. *omgBarbecrushGrantGo!!!*. So, yeah, I think you should move it over to the real Main Page whenever you're ready, you Wiki-admin, you. And, I guess, if something else occurs, we can always change it again. - Bed 14:53, 21 Sep 2006 (EDT)
