one more

to add to the choir.  our song?  VOX, this last design sucks!

many folks, both in and out of my neighborhood have already complained in detail about the suckiness, the lack of drop-down menus, the increase in page views (clicks), the difficulty in keeping up with one's friends and neighbors.   ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto.

what I wish to complain about in detail is something that was not in the beta of this release - so no mea culpas for not submitting feedback on it at the time - and that is the increase in VOX's editorial presence.  instead of one [tig] we now have five [not as good as [tig] thingies].

5x the editorializing = 5 [not as good as [tig] thingies = < 1  [tig]
.
the old [tig] had an element of whimsy which is missing in the new, unimproved, editorial [thingies]: it was fun to check and to congratulate both your friends and folks you didn't know for their [tigs]. the new ones are hard to keep track of and not as "special" 

the 5 [thingies] are more like the sections of a newspaper:  there is the "Life" section, the "News and Politics", the "Culture" - which up to know has been just about food and eating.  weird  -, and so on.  is too compartamentalized.  how about "Rants"?  or "Bitching"? hell, how about "Sports"?  what happens to awesome posts that do not fit into one of the 5 [thingies]? or that fit into more than one?

to summarize:

VOX, this last design sucks!

VOX, bring back [tig]!

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crankypants

I agree wholeheartedly about the [tig] stuff. Now it's so blah, I thought the same thing about paging thru a newspaper...but if you notice, as soon as you go to the next section, the setup is fucked up and you have to figure out YET AGAIN where to look so you can click on the next section. I find it all underwhelming. I didn't even like how they had started to "theme" the [tig]s before they fubared it for real.

and they're all, "sorry, we have no plan to bring it back. SOL MFers." whatever.

shush now
hear, hear! I was irritated when they changed the format of the TiG to the more editorial headline/description, and absolutely horrified at it becoming all editorial and no TiG. The TiG and community/populace feeling it inspired was so wonderful. Now that is gone, one of the major reasons I loved Vox is gone.

Poorly done, Vox.
YGRS
Hi mariser!
Add my voice to the choir too, please.
I'm so confused that I'm not even too sure what all I'm confused about anymore...all I know is that the "improvements" didn't help ME any. And my line under my banner ( like you have on your blob ) is gone now. Plus --- maybe you can tell me --- how the hell do I find out what the question of the day is and that kind of stuff??? I can't figure out how to do that now...
&:o(
Where's the home page or whatever that place is, and how the hell do I get there???
crankypants
I also wish they would make the fricking home page customizable. Obviously many people are unhappy with it, and not a whole lot of people agree on the exact setup that would make everyone happy, so let us choose. Also, they now have QotD for each of those newspaper sections. I don't know, it just seems like overkill and underwhelming changes, and now I forget what I was going to say next. poop.
crankypants
Oh I was going to say---instead of making all these radical changes, why don't they first work on all the issues "compose" oh wait, I mean CREATE has?
shush now
The QotD is hiding in a bunch of advertisements two thirds of the way down the page when you click on the VOX starburst.
shush now
I've written to them SO many times about how hard it is to format photo-rich posts on my craft blog. A year later, and now I have a hard time even finding where my photos are STORED. Formatting? Still next to impossible.
mariser
c,c, sez "...it just seems like overkill and underwhelming changes."
and hits it right on. to achieve overkill and underwhelm at the same time is quite difficult. not good, mind you, but it took a lot of effort to fuck up so thoroughly.
YGRS, if you click on the VOX logo on the upper left corner of the page it takes you to what used to be the Home page - I guess there ain't no Homepage no more - at any rate, on that page, the Vox Hunt is on the upper right-side of your screen and the QOTD is on the bottom right-side of your screen.
arbed
[this is good]

I'm favouriting every one of these posts that I come across.

I don't even bother looking at the shout-outs formerly known as [tig], and I wasn't even aware that there was a different qotd for each one. Pffftt.

I've been pretty much winging things since the release because I'm so frustrated at the whole experience now. I know this means I'm missing out on a lot and that makes me a bit sad.

Not to do with this release, but I do agree with shush now about how hard it is to find a pic you already have uploaded to your vox library.

Laurie
Of course they want us to click on more pages to find things. Then they report higher numbers of hits to their advertisers. Which makes it clear why they won't deign to change it back.

Yesterday, I couldn't find the simple list of my neighbors anywhere. All I could get to were neighbors' posts. Grrrrr.
crankypants

the formatting, the formatting---holy crap, I hate posting stuff with a lot of pics anymore. why oh WHY is there not enough room to put 2 medium sized photos side by side? (or is it large? see how long it's been?) and then it will screw up the words and GOD FORBID you forget to put in one photo & try to insert it later. You may as well start over.

I had one picture of my dog that I had scanned & used as a banner because all it showed was his ears and it looked good. It was one of the first pics I ever added to Vox back in Sept. of 2006, and a few months ago, I guess in the summer, I wanted to use it for something and it wasn't there. I went all the way back to the first page, I tabbed through a bunch of pages, I looked over and over and over, and could not find the damn photo so I had to upload it again. It showed up later where it was originally, but I swear it was not there. I must have looked 5 times thinking I was missing it. I

t's BASIC problems, Vox, that you should address first before you go fubaring everything.

W. B. Mook
The trouble here is that WYSIWYG editing of web pages is still pretty cagey at best, and the VOX folks have made it pretty clear that they're not they're "for dummies" and they want to retain a certain amount of control over the layouts and overall look and feel of everyone's journal. Basically, vast amounts of customization aren't part of the VOX business plan, and I think we just have to accept the ease of use trade-offs or roll up our sleeves and dig into more advanced blogging platforms.
Valerae
[this is good]
Hey, I was featured in the not-as-good thingie!! I guess I'm just not as good. Haha, I was pretty pissed that I finally had a [TIG] (2 even!) but it wasn't a [TIG] anymore. It wasn't nearly as satisfying.

I'm with Cranky on the customizable home page. That would be a HUGE help...but yeah, this update was for advertisers, not for our communities.
W. B. Mook
On the last VOX revision, I complained that rollover menus were chintzy and so very over as far as web interfaces go these days. So I feel nominally responsible for pushing VOX in this direction (you know, even if I gave them a dozen pleas for revisions when I first saw the beta of this revision and they didn't listen to any of those suggestions, but whatever). Even so, I'm also having a bit of trouble coping with how difficult they've made it to get to some of the most basic functions of the platform.

Still, to continue my treasured role as devil's advocate, VOX is more about connecting people than about being an end-all, be-all blogging platform, and even if the new [tig]-ish sections aren't your choice for categories, maybe if they're refined and/or diversified, it could end up being something pretty cool that points us to posts we wouldn't normally read. And I think I'm sort of in favor of having individual categories of QotD's-- I mean, we've already complained when a QotD has been too "mass-culture" (Posh and Becks come to mind), so why not give specialization a chance?
Ross
[this is good]
I agree. Some very special folks nominated me a few times for [TIG] and it was a really nice feeling when I was featured. Now, assuming I posted something that ended up on the Life or Technology explore tabs, I'm not sure I'd even see it!

Oh, and Valerae - congrats - it's not your fault they discontinued [TIG] right before they featured you on the other one. :-)
jaypo
I think you're right on the ad stats, Laurie.

To fiind your peeps' icons - click on Your Neighborhood. From that page, on the right, is a link that says something like See All My Neighbors. That's the icon page.
thegrumblebunny
ACCCCKKKKK!!!!! So irritated I can't even find the gumption to grumble about it...
YGRS
Thanks shush now and mariser! I was able to find it now.
&:o)
Lauri
[זה מעולה]

I chose the "arabic" "tig" symbols, yes, I am being a smartass and a dumbass at the same time, but the reason I chose them is they look like this whole subject makes me feel.

All prickly and stickyoutty.

jaypo
[this is good]
One more thing--and they still couldn't find a way to alphabetize the Neighbors page. There, I'm done.
IG
[this is good]
Mariser, the loss of TiG doesn't bug me nearly as much as the fact that Vox has not yet fixed the Recent Activity feature (aka More Comments under VoxWatch) -- it's one thing that would allow us to track all ongoing conversations (not just the last five or six) in which we have participated (left a comment, favorited). The previous Home page was better than the mess we have now, but even that was a poor substitute for what Recent Activity used to do.
Zen Ken
[this is good]
That's what happens when you let editorial control drive development. Blog developers should cater to the bloggers, not the editors, but alas, editors need to be on their knees continually slopping up to keep feeling relevant and generate revenue.
Stephel
[this is good]
Totally agree with everything
typewriter
[this is good]
I agree. It's starting to feel like a cross between Gather and About.com and (I think you're old enough to remember) Geocities. I was never aware that there were so many recipes available here. As it happens, I don't come here for recipes, nor do I want to share recipes, so I'm feeling rather irrelevant and unmarketable. Not that I want to be marketable. Ick.

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