AutoSpies.com Gets a Refresh

I prefered the old interface, it was easier to access more articles on the home page...Poor job 004.

It's the same number of articles, just rearranged differently. Give it some time, hopefully you'll find this layout more efficient.

I wish the old interface was back.

I agree with Munich too, this new interface sucks. The last one was perfect, why did you have to fix something that wasnt broke?

We all know the secret behind your act now. Nobody really cares if you or anyone else gets banned.

If you did get banned, you could just always register again, with an underscore in your original username or something... ;)

I have a better fix: When someone says something stupid and irrelevant to the Article (like most lexus fans do) simply do not reply to them and just deboost them to eliminate their comment.

agreed.

I understand it might take some time to get use too, but why change an already good layout?

Munichrob,

Please, the old layout was basic and old-hat. A link to an article made up of merely the title?

This new layout at least gives information on the article before it is viewed, and we as readers can now determine weather or not the article is Autospies news or fanboy w*** material.

As a designer, I find this new layout more professional looking.

Now just remove the gallery links on the left of the page, and free up the site a little more. The news content is getting suffocated by the clutter on either side of the page.

And another thing...

I feel that an 'editing' function is unnecessary and could point Autospies in the wrong direction.

Remember, this ISN'T a forum, it is a (mostly) news site with the ability to comment!

....isn't a forum......

Yes I have noticed the difference..... its now www.autospies.com/Lexus. lol. Every single thread turns into a flame war...... But I still love this site!

Fantastic site. One suggestion: please eliminate the boosting system.

We should be able to edit our articles, we should be able to use metallic/bold/underline, we should be able to use real smilies, and NO MORE BOOSTING SYSTEM!!!

Ahem, not our articles, we should be able to edit our POSTS.

HAHAHAHAHAH!!! I GOT DE-BOOSTED!!!

Nice site updates... maybe also work on the adding photos button. Everytime I try to submit more than one it tells me to select album then press browse button, only to never show me a browse button.

Hi Atom, as part of this refresh, we reworked the gallery upload on the articles. If you're still having a problem, shoot us an email.

Chip-

For what it is worth, whilst I am not entirely accustomed to the new site, it isn’t exactly poorly put together.

I was one of the members, years ago, of the old Amazon.com forums. My username was Cray T1024 and I started posting there probably as a sophomore in high school. I even chose to continue with it when Amazon closed their in house forums and moved us to a private forum on Delphi forums. I must say that I met many interesting people there and the conversations were allowed to wander and be about anything you desired. We talked about everything from physics to politics. Having said that, I know that some of the suggestions expressed here carry their own set of problems.

The capacity to edit may cause problems as people go back and edit their posts to make themselves look better to perpetuity in instances where they have been called upon what may not be a perfectly rational assertion.

As far as the boosting/deboosting system: who really cares anymore? From my understanding of the situation, I would understand why they keep it simply because many who do not desire to post would like to voice their approval/disapproval of what has been said. I understand that many posters here would prefer that they write their comments for open discussion, and I admit that is the ideal system; however you cannot expect people to do that.

The underline/bold/smiles/HTML can be exceptionally problematic. HTML is a programming language. By letting anyone HTML rights you allow these people free reign to imbed even malicious material in their messages. I recall one time on the Delphi forums we were having some problems with a troll and some others who we felt were not being truly honest with us: “Us” being myself and some of the other better known members.

So, I started a thread pertaining to people’s localities and their lives. However, embedded within that first message, I put a device that monitored all of the IP addresses which had accessed the device. These are then traceable to specific locations. Comparing the lists provided with the lists given we, of course, found that we had been lied to. What I did is then begin to imbed these in multiple places and when certain people were trolling, I was able to access their latest IP addresses, and server ping flood their connection into oblivion. It actually worked: we tested it and all. That is a simple and rather benign method; there are far more horrible things you can do. I don’t think you want to open yourself up to that. Ask yourself how well you trust the other people on here.

Incidentally, that latter situation was far more complicated than my message would imply. There were very malicious things going on, and I a am not talking about name calling. The form itself was being used a a platform for the execution of materials designed to go after people and to damage them: those "far more horrible" things which I was talking about.

...the trolls were doing them...let's be explicit about that..not to belabor the point.

"Troll" hunting huh?

The digital age is scary. ;)

Personally, I don't care about the merits and personal life of any particular member. If someone wants to become a different character than their actual self just to prove a point or feel better about themselves by posting then the very nature of the internet should allow them to do so without persecution.

...yes Troll hunting...

Well Will,
It wasn't as simple as someone pretending to be some thing their not. The case was that a disgruntled person on the boards was creating new monikers through which they would post HTML containing external server calls to viruses. I happened to have Zone Alarm and another firewall running behind ti at the time, as well as the Corporate Edition of Norton Antivirus, which is far far more stable and unobtrusive than its consumer counterpart. I was, therefore, lucky and did not manage to get any viruses, but I recall opening threads and both Norton and Zone Alarm would give me multiple warnings. The ultimate outcome of the tracing and the tracing software was to connect multiple monikers with their originator.

As I recall, the way in which the board was set up did not allow for the moderators to remove anyone from the board. Some of those in the "us" category, were moderators for the board.

...and yes, the digital age is scary.

*They are not...

Hmm… I’ve been doing and directing UI for a few years, 004; and no, not freelance from my basement either, for a rather high-profile company. Here’s a couple things to consider:

What was better about the last interface was the amount of scrolling required to read everything. In the previous version, I could see nearly all of the stories and most active threads at a glance, all while keeping the navigation in view. On a 1280x1024 screen, I can only see the top two stories and I immediately loose everything when begin to scroll. Adding photos would only worsen the problem.

This could easily be remedied by wrapping the article teaser in a div, give it a consistent class, then you’d be to provide a “Show Article” button at top that would loop through the divs and show or hide. This would allow users who want to scan headlines to fit them in a much smaller space, and provide others with the article brief if they want it.

In my opinion, the articles didn’t really need a redesign, the side elements do. The main nav bar could use a texture and pixel separation to draw it out. Separating the nav bar, and highlighting your current section would encourage people to use it(That might sound strange, but it’s true). For instance, home page is “Top News” so when you arrived, the colors would be inverted for that button.

This is especially important with “Submit new content.” Article submission is really the edge you guys have over the competitors. It should be clear to every visitor that it’s an option as soon as they arrive. It’s big, but it needs more visual separation.

I understand the call for boosting to go, but I think it should stay. Even though it’s apparent that it’s most liberally used by the trollish badge whores. However, I think you should provide BOTH stats. The number of boosts and de-boosts. This would make the stat more interesting. Also, either don’t hide or give the option to show all de-boosted comments. It’s irritating when the lemmings get a hold of a thread and hide everything.

Last, moving “Logout” My alert and my agent page over to the “Registration” portion would consolidate this info and give you more space on the main nav, and room to add buttons when more features become available.

That’s it for now.

What speaks to me most is what you said about the boosting system. Posts should not be hidden, and it would be interesting to show both "plus boosts" and "minus boosts" next to the username. Although I don't really like the boosting system in general, this is a good compromise for the trolls who love to hide things.

Some good suggestions, webguy, thanks for giving your opinions. I think you might be on to something with the "Registration" area over to the right. Especially since once you are logged in, it's dead space anyway as you've already registered. It's easy enough to swap out what logged in users see versus non-logged in users, so you might see that in the near future :).

As for the "boost" system, it's here to stay. It has actually been a really good way of allowing the communitity to dictate what's appropriate and what is not, and over time, people tend to stay more in line...or get deboosted off the site.

What you might see in the near future is the ability to choose whether deboosted comments are hidden or not.

Thanks again,

Chip-

Agent004, I hope you are joking. The boosting system is abused by fanboys, generally.

If someone says something negative (or truthful) about their brand, they deboost.

Example, if I tell a Lexus fanboy that Lexus is not a global brand, I'll get deboosted. But if a fellow Lexus fanboys claims that in 2008, Lexus will dominate the global market, he'll get boosted.

My advice, get rid of this pathetic boosting system. A lot of good posts from objective users are being deboosted because the fanboys don't like it. Pathetic.

Get rid of that cheesy clock and those stupid "Ads by Google." I liked how the site used to be, with time i will get use to this. I like the boost system, it gives me an idea if anyone actually reads my comments.

I like the refresh, but of course I like change.

Old interface is better. Bring it back please

I like the new site and i like the ratings and being able to boost but there shouldnt be and hiding of unpopular opinions after a certain number of downgrades because sometimes people have a good point but it just so happens that the people logged in at that time happen to disagree

you now have simile capabilities? like :confused:?

whoops....guess not.... 004 how did you do that?

Old layout was better.

New layout is nice. Larger text is nice too. I won't say it'll win design awards - but it's nice.

it was easier to just click on the title and go to the other site to see everythign else rather than look for the Read Article text... that was one nice function of the old site

argh. the layout for this site has never been easy to navigate? i do enjoy this site for its galleries, but please consider making more simple to the reader. this isnt i-drive!

1st, ive never been to a site with a boost system. what is the purpose? 2d, there are no edit capabalities although some are concerned that people will decide to edit a statement, which is ridiculous. 3rd, there is no quoting system in addition to a proper reply option. ive attempted to reply several times to a post and it either places the reply at the postor's last comment or just ties it to a completely different post.

furthermore, in order to look for any interesting topics, i am required to go to a specific page and read about them post-topic. why is it so difficult to make the homepage similar? a few main topics above, with topic points following.

who the heck created this crap setup?

Why would anyone really want to edit a post? The only adequate reason is spelling or grammatical errors. Any other reason will cause more problems than it will fix. Even adding more to a post, will often yield people responding to the original as it is edited, and so there are communication problems with that.

If it is spelling: INTERNET EXPLORER 7 HAS A SPELLCHECKER BUILT INTO IT. It will spellcheck what you have written into the form. Granted, I am unaware if this works outside of Windows Vista, and that may be a barrier: I don't know.

what if someone had more or less to say even prior to receiving a reply? or were even concerned about grammar or the way something is spoken?

would it not be more efficient to just edit rather than have multiple posts following indicating the that the postor had desired to edit?

almost every forum or board ive been to has an edit option and i havent seen a problem yet. cause more problems? i doubt it.

I was on the Amazon board for 3-4 years and it did cause problems. Someone would say something stupid, think better of it, and fix it. In the interim 3-4 posts would appear calling them on it. I doubt there is enough traffic here to have have that many, but it is possible. Granted, you are one minus one post if you can edit. Be that as it may to anyone who views the conversation afterward, it becomes difficult to reconstruct and ambiguous in a sense.

Editing has its place, but it destroys the time record of the conversation. I remember times were people would write posts asking about what they are replying to or what was actually said: and nobody in some instances, could cite what was actually said verbatim. Of course, the threads there were much larger than on here, 500-600 messages was common enough for the popular threads.

here. ill boost u down like u did to my post just to show u how worthless the boosting system is.

now, i thought about this after i posted. would it have made it easier & efficient to simple edit or have a whole entire comment again following?

lol.

Is that to me? More ambiguity. I've never really supported the boosting system personally. I don't recall de-boosting you either.

Adding to a post isn't the issue. Changing what is in the post is.

Well, that and even adding cavets for clarification, that changes the original interpretation...