Boing Boing's new community features!
Whenever I look back at how Boing Boing has grown since its early days as a photocopied 'zine, I'm always most amazed by the sheer number of people who now visit the site every single day. It's mind-blowing to consider how many people in the world seem to share our tastes in Internet esoterica, anomalies, and curiosities. The only thing that we regret about relaunching the discussion feature back in August is that we didn't do it sooner. We're so thankful to all of you who take the time to comment on our posts and share links to even more relevant information. Today marks another leap in the evolution of Boing Boing with the introduction of a slew of new community features, including profile pages and the ability to tag your favorite posts and share those with your friends.
We have quite a few folks to thank for their help building out Boing Boing's community system. Federated Media's Jonathan Schreiber, Ivan Kanevski, Ken Snider, and Chris Stankaitis, in collaboration with the folks at Apperceptive, had the technical fortitude to make this project happen. We're very grateful to our sponsor, Hewlett Packard, for supporting the development of all our new community features. Thanks again to Federated Media's Josh Matison for connecting us with HP. We tip our propeller beanies to FM's Jason Weisberger who tirelessly guides us as we grow. Finally, a big thank you to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Boing Boing's community manager, who always keeps the conversation lively and flowing.
A journalist once asked Timothy Leary what people should do after they "turn on." Tim said, "Find the others." We hope we can help. Here's Teresa with more on the new features:
We have quite a few folks to thank for their help building out Boing Boing's community system. Federated Media's Jonathan Schreiber, Ivan Kanevski, Ken Snider, and Chris Stankaitis, in collaboration with the folks at Apperceptive, had the technical fortitude to make this project happen. We're very grateful to our sponsor, Hewlett Packard, for supporting the development of all our new community features. Thanks again to Federated Media's Josh Matison for connecting us with HP. We tip our propeller beanies to FM's Jason Weisberger who tirelessly guides us as we grow. Finally, a big thank you to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Boing Boing's community manager, who always keeps the conversation lively and flowing.
A journalist once asked Timothy Leary what people should do after they "turn on." Tim said, "Find the others." We hope we can help. Here's Teresa with more on the new features:
Here's the big change: all registered users at Boing Boing, Boing Boing Gadgets, and Boing Boing TV now have a profile page, which they can customize if they want by adding a bio and the avatar or image of their choice. On that page is a list of the comments they've posted. Other users can read it when they want to get a sense of that person and their participation here, or use it as a quick way to keep track of their BB friends' most recent comments.
Another change is that anyone can now mark particular Boing Boing posts as favorites. We'll be tallying which ones get marked. A list of the posts a user has marked will appear on that person's profile page. It's another way to get to know people.
The sign-in page is now part of Boing Boing proper, so if you bookmarked the old sign-in page, you'll need to update your bookmark.
You know the header line at the top of Boing Boing comments? At the far right-hand side of that line there's now a small, unobtrusive button. Clicking on it prompts me to look at that comment, putting it on a list for me to review. It's not just a mechanism for noting problems, though it'll be useful for that. Feel free to use it on comments that surprise or delight you. I expect I'll be able to tell the difference.
Just so you know, the system will also tell me who clicked on the button, so if you're just playing with them, I'll know about it.
Some guiding principles:
• Don't be evil. (Yes, it's Google's rule, but it's a good rule. More people should use it.)
• What's right and wrong on Boing Boing is our call. What we do with that power is try to keep your brain stuffed with interesting new things, and create a good place for Boing Boing's readers to have conversations about it.
• Say something interesting. Do something useful. Have fun.
the latest
latest episodes
Wonderful job. I was wondering though if there is any order in which the comments appear under a profile? The ones under my name appear to be not in order of date?
Fantastic, I was planning on figuring out a greasemonkey script so I could favorite posts, now I don't have to!
I clicked on the link in my email, and a page appeared saying "Verification code not found" --although it appears that I've got my screen name, anyway.
Here's hoping it works. Tis an odd community, thus far, with much potential.
Yes! Combine two of my favorite internet things: web communities and boingboing!
I know where I am spending way too much of my free time for now on out.
You guys are the best.
A directory of wonderful things has invited me in. Even more wonderful.
curiouser and curiouser
I love it - now I can save fave things, interact with other like minds out there in the InterTubes, and the BB gang will know I'm a friend in their corner - hoorah!
Gary61
Hey thanks for opening this up...I look forward to meeting more interesting people here.
1. Very nice, very nice. One suggestion. The old comments system had this very nice feature where you could flag a comment thread, so that it would send you an email, whenever somebody made a new comment. That would be nice in the future.
2. Can we oficially call the eye thing on top of each comment "the eye of sauron". Gak, it's looking at me! It's following me wherever I go! You could even animate it so that the eyeball travels from one side to the other...
Great idea. Glad to see that someone is still innovating the blog. But still much to do.
Here are my ideas
Blog readers need more information about other blog readers. I want to know how many times a particular story has been viewed. If I leave a comment, I want to see how many people read my comments, and who. I mean, why not allow some other logged-in person to click the name check button so that I can get a sense of how many times it's been read. This number wouldn’t be fully accurate, but it could give some sense.
It would also be nice to be able to leave audio comments. I'm astounded that no one has done this yet.
How about bringing in Skype so people can schedule a conversation about the damn topic if they're really interested?
But this is just the beginning. Imagine that all of the comments that you make throughout the blogosphere could be collected in to one place. If this could be done, then someone could follow your comment trail through the internet which in turn would bring them in to contact with even more blogs at which they might be tempted to leave a comment. I would be sort of like Stumble Upon. Heck, if I liked what you had to say, I would simply want to have an RSS not of a person’s blog, but of their comments.
Imagined this way, leaving comments would be no different than blogging. In fact, your comments could be your blog.
There should be some kind of software to enable people to easily follow up on the things they are interested in whenever they return to a blog. After posting this comment, when I come back to Boing Boing, I don’t want to have to go digging. I don’t want to see the story I’m interested flushed down the memory hole only to be replaced by some story about some weirdo’s collection of golden pickle forks, or whatever. I want to come back to my stuff, and I want to continue having a meaningful discussion about it until I’m through, the rest of the world be damned. Imagine an internal, Boing Boing specific bookmark.
Now get busy!
Man, this is definately going to get BB shit-listed at my school. Alas.
Sounds good. Looking forward to see how this ends up working out.
Yay! Hurray for slack!
Now I can hae my cake and eat it too! BB is the new Prodigy. No, AOL, no, MSN. :)
Back in the olden days we used to stand drooling next to our mail receptacles, waiting, sometimes for months, for the government's official printed material deliverer to arrive and insert the next issue of bOING bOING into the entry slot. Back then, bOING bOING was a quaint, but precious tangible artifact, imprinted on the pulverized and flattened carcasses of dead trees. But it was a document of great transformative power.
When that happy day would arrive, the townsfolk of our village would declare a holiday. Children would be allowed to leave their milling machines and old people would recall their youthful curiosities. Young adults would get a twinkle in their eyes, all three of 'em, as they giddily oggled each magnificent page.
But then, the perspicacious publication stopped arriving. A dark pall descended upon the land. Wonder and delight became distant memories, disappearing into the hidden crevices of a thousand cranial membranes, where the tiny flame of novelty and neurotica was kept alive. Waiting.
And then one day bOING bOING returned. As a weblog on the inter-tubes. And this time it was back to stay. And it was there every day. Every hour. At everyone's fingertips. Every post a salve. Every entry a balm to soothe our harshly normaled noggins.
The novelty, surreality, and transcendently mundane flowed into the eyeballs of planet Earth like water into a parched desert. Millions of brain lobes swelled to tumescence, slaking their thirst on the cool, the weird, the creative, and the original.
But above all - the happy. And now every day is a village holiday. So let's kick off our wading boots and dance on our footstools. Grab your robot and give it a kiss. It's a bOING bOING planet!
Hot diggety dog!
Congrats on the monumental upgrade. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this all shakes out. :)
Congratulations on the new community features, gang. I've been waiting for this since I picked up my first magazine at a corner store in Moose Jaw, SK in 1992 or so.
awwwwww yeahhhhh....
I'm a bit skeptical on how generous this is. On most blogs, if you want to know more about a comment-maker, you click their name to visit THEIR blog-- not re-route yourself to a site-hosted profile of them.
This is kinda like how Mur Lafferty is "giving" away that novel, which I'm also having issues with. So far, there's one chapter, but these ever-increasing fan-submissions, wallpapers, icons, commentary... it's just sticky content, and not truly generous.
I dig BB a lot, but stuff like this irks me. Prove me wrong, guys!
long time reader, first time commenter...good changes! especially like being able to 'fav' entries. thank you.
Let's all give a hand to Mrs. Hayden, Mr. Weisberger, Mr. Schreiber, Mr. Kanevski, Mr. Snider, Mr. Stankaitis, and everyone else who no doubt works tirelessly behind the scenes to provide us this forum.
I like turtles.
I think that's what you're supposed to say when you're asked what you think about things. It's what bOING bOING and The Internets™ have taught me.
Bravo my friends. The new features look great.
*hugs Mr. Snider* Good job baby! :)
Amazing! I feel as if I've been invited to live inside of my favorite cabinet of curiosities!! Thanks so much for the amazing work - this is the best place in all of Toobzville.
Thanks so much everyone. We feel very fortunate to share this community with you all. Imagine... An entire city of Happy Mutants! Better yet, an entire planet!!!
Sounds neat, but... I'd like to take the opportunity to ask if there are plans on integrating openID into the system and if not, why? Using Bugmenot to sign into BoingBoing seems off, but I'd rather do that than have to manage yet another account.
@ Dave X -- the little wrench beside a name still does take you to a commentor's blog or website, if they have one, but many people do not.
Niftier and niftier. One of these days I'll start blogging, but until then, what could be nicer than being treated as an appreciated guest in a neat hang-out? "Drink to me only with thine fox!"
Fuzzy-- Just added you to my friends. Thanks for understanding my crusty brand of myopic commenting. Wrenches, I love you!
I'm thinking OpenSocial + bb :) Soon, soon.
WOW ... this is a whole slew of new stuff ... gotta wonder what's next in the hopper ... want to give us a hint about the next set of new features?
P.S. Threaded comments perhaps (?)
sweet..now I can be stalked by *smart* chicks. Rock on!
Awesome. Love the changes. I trust y'all won't be evil with the 'favorite this' function. I see potential there if it is misused. I'm good with displaying the number of times an article has been 'favorited' but gosh, I hope you never start sorting articles based on that information.
Love what you've done with the place!!
Thanks for opening up your space and letting us invade even more. It's really fun.
1) I favorited this post and it didn't show up on my account page. Perhaps there's a lag? That's fine, but if not, then there's a bug, so I'm tellin' ya.
2) RSS! I WANT RSS! Please, please, please give me rss of my comments and of what I "favorited". Please! Please! Please!
Dis is all pretty nifty-looking!
One question, and this might just be me being a dunce, here: is there any sense to the order in which our posts are listed on our profile pages?
'Warning: Anonymous messages are held for moderation. This could take a (long) while. Or your comment may not be posted at all'
This is nice of you, thank you! Anonymous posting is bad as the information is not linkable and hence of no value. Your new guiding principle: 'Don't be evil' says it all. you've been scroogled, right?
I was unable to create an account using the name and email address I was using under the old system. It told me that those were already in use. And going the password recovery route, it told me that I was and "unknown user." I had to go to a new name and a different email account.
THANK YOU BOING BOING!
Lovely - and it's great to be able to use the same account to post on Boing Boing Gadgets too. Houpla!
Minor bugreport/advice to users on profile setup: If someone's URL doesn't start with http colon slash slash, clicking on the link gets treated as a relative link on the BB site = 404 city!
Otherwise, nice to see greater community promotion.
#23: That's "Nielsen Hayden". (They'll learn, of course, Teresa...).
Are you sure you don't want to implement "must preview before posting"?
i've only been perusing boingboing for a short while but i must admit it's almost the first thing i look at every day and i usually look at it more than once! i appreciate all the hard work you guys put into it, in fact you've motivated me to create a profile and post a comment. hell, i may even submit something! thanks for enlightening and entertaining me so much every day. yup...
Awesome. You know what would be fun? Best comments of the week posts.
Also, people need no longer wonder what I look like. Gaze upon me and fear! Or not.
Excellent move. Are y'all taking any specific steps to encourage mashups of the community features?
* Although Scroogled@40 is kind of obnoxious, he has a point. Does BoingBoing have a privacy policy? I can't find it. I'd like to know how long you keep my ip address, &c. (Or have I just missed it?)
* There appears to be a bug in the profile links in comments relating to display name vs. user name, at the very least when I click my own name. (my display name is not a valid username, so clicking it gives an unknown user error)
* I can't find a posted email address (or web form) to report bugs (such as the one above) to. This post in particular would be a good place to have posted one.
I've been lovin' BoingBoing since my first copy of Happy Mutants Handbook. It has been re-purchased 4 times due to it's endless perma-borrowed status from my library. Is it still in print? I may have to go for a fifth.
If you ever find some PHP/Ajax work needing attention send me an email. Will work for Boings.
Do you think that the word "favorite" is really appropriate?
Imagine for a moment that you have an article about surveillance. This article is neither positive nor negative, it simply explains that some government arm is now spying on some group of citizens or other. If I favorite this, I feel like I am somehow supporting the thing that the article talks about.
Maybe the whole "favorite" thing should be called "tag" as it is on many other sites with this feature. It seems more neutral somehow.
Otherwise, great new features! Thanks.
great stuff!
Good work, looks solid. Unfortunately, I'm not into auto-generating comment profiles.
I don't see an interface to close/cancel/remove my account. How can I do that?
You could even animate it so that the eyeball travels from one side to the other...
Well, if you're going to do that, it should be one of those gadgets that follows the mouse. ;-)
as a relatively new boing boing-er, i have to say i'm incredibly glad boing boing was born, and continues to become more and more awesome!
I see many great comments.
Like other people I have already a thousand identities on the interwebs. I would like to have only one.
Maybe bOINGbOING could facilitate this in some way. I'm thinking about openID; using profiles of other sites (let the tech guys figure out how) or something similar.
And I have a dual feeling about the feature where people see your recent comments.
It's very nice that we can see what person is a troll or usually makes unwelcome comments (though this is quite rare here).
But at the same time I don't like my identity to be too searchable; I don't want people to know in one click who I am.
"I'm thinking about openID;"
OpenID is a great idea combined with a fatally flawed implementation. A security nightmare at this point.
Sae Miller (1), Ethan (39), do you have enough data yet to see a pattern? The list of your comments supposed to be in chronological order.
Sae, Ethan, Logicaldash (3), anutron (38), GammaBlog (41), Raines Cohen (44), and fuz (49), I've forwarded your reports to the tech guys.
Later, I'll collect and forward all the suggestions.
Patricio (10), I've been thinking of it as the Lookitthat button.
Pyros (11)
I see the appeal, but I'm biased in favor of conversations rather than monadic statements. In that context, context matters.Opposing impulse: I recently got to listen in on a conversation about a new RSS client that will let you bundle different stories together and pass the bundle on to others. I observed that if they could add the ability to attach comments to the bundles, they'd have most of the functionality of a weblog.
Yes. I've wanted markers too. They enable deeper and more engaged discussions. I also want the front-page lists of entries and recent comments to have links at the bottom to pages that have very long lists of comments and entries, each item in which is a link to that thing.A Love Supreme (12), why is this new development going to get BB shit-listed at your school?
Mikel (19), your corner store in Moose Jaw stocked Boing Boing? I'm impressed.
Dave X (21), never mind the fan cruft. Like fanfic, it's a sign that people like the story.
Crash (23): True! Also, David Jacobs and the guys at Apperceptive.
TastyPopsicle (24), that goes into my file of all-time favorite comments.
Fuzzy (30), the wrench may not always stay a wrench, but there'll still be a little icon there that does the same thing.
Dave X (32), cranky people are one thing. Cranky people who care about typos are another, and they're fine by me.
Alek (34), threaded comments are not in our future.
Waugsqueke (36), there's no plan to sort entries by the number of times they've been favorited. It would be unBoingish.
Scroogled (40), there's a place for anonymous messages, but on busy days it's "stuck in the moderation queue." I'm thinking interns would be a good thing.
Hey, Chatworthy! (45): Schemes for killing off spam are Ken Snider's responsibility. He's wizardly.
ApeLad (47), I've been recommending good comments to the Boingers, and they've also been finding them on their own. If you think some comment is especially brilliant, click on the eye to bring it to my attention.
Eggsyntax (48), do you think we need to? (That's a question.)
Dmitri (51), we actually had discussions about words like friend and favorite. They aren't a perfect fit if you think of them in terms of the traditional meanings of the words, but they've accreted additional meanings as used on the web.
Oboreruhito (53), in a forum like this, you are your words.
(54) Hi, Geno! Animated eyeballs, Do Not Want.
And that's enough out of me for now.
Teresa, the first four comments on my page bounce back and forth between August and October and continue in no pattern that I see.
And sheesh, how did I not notice that the VERY FIRST COMMENT on this thread was the same question I had? Sorry, Sae!
Like Anutron says in #38, I think the "FAVORITE THIS!" link is buggy. If I click on it, it increments the count by 1, but then doesn't show up in my list. (Only the first article I clicked stayed there.) And later the count goes down to 1. Do any of the stories have a fav count higher than 1? I don't think so.
Great upgrade otherwise. It makes my favorite site even favoriter. Thanks for all the work, Teresa!
TNH @58:
I've been thinking of it as the Lookitthat button.
The Oooh! button? Or would that be misconstrued?
I'm posting this here because this change came in at about the same time as the ones announced here...
I'm now getting video ads in the rss feed for boingboing. Of course you guys can inject whatever you want in the feed, it's your content, but I thought I'd post a comment here and mention that this is really irritating, and then wait a couple of days before removing boingboing from my daily reads.
I'm not saying I'd blacklist you guys, but removing BB from my rss feed will definitely put the site in the "sometimes read" pile. I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way.
After a few days now, it seems like the potential of BB is unbounded. It seems as if the crowd hearily approves of all of the improvements.
In some ways BB seems like a primitive social networking site which is good since we're all talking about the same things, but bad in the sense that there's probably a lot more to be said or wants to be said on lots of topics and not a lot of tools to faciliate different kinds of discussions.
I would love to find out what's going on with the BB staff. OTOH, this must be exhilirating, and OTOH a bit overwhelming with no clear sense as to where it will lead except for up and up which means, of course more work.
I would want to know whose overarching vision does BB represent? How do you all get along? What are your plans for the future? In light of all else each individual contributor to BB does, where does this fall in the list of priorities? We know so little about all of you guys.
My favourite posts does not work. :(
Love the improvements! My observations so far are:
1) Google reader puts a video advertisement at the bottom of all posts,and they weren't there before. Adblock only removes part of it.
2)Is there a way to edit the user profile name? I found out someone else on the internets has my admittedly obscure yet misspelled screen name, and in all fairness, they had it first. I would opt for an even stupider name if given the opportunity to make a change and keep the same email address.
Teresa,
I don't think it would be monadic. People have little incentive to leave comments right now. If their comments could be aggregated to form a blog, then they would have an incentive.
Additionally, it would be a way to get many more people to subscribe to blogs, and here's why:
Suppose the comments that I left here at BB were aggregated. Someone could read a comment that I had left, click on my nickname, and then be brought to a location on my site which hosted the very comment which lead them there from BB.
If this were the first comment they read, it would be comprehensible because the referent article would have also been read.
But all the other comments thus encountered could not be easily understood on my site if they weren't also accompanied by the referent article.
Therefore, there should be a way to synicate to my site not all of BB, but only my comments and the articles to which they are related. A link back to BB would be necessary if someone wanted to read the entire thread.
You describe this as monadic which is self-contained non-physical unit of being, but that isn't so. In fact, it's a pretty good description of BB as it is right now. You guys find stuff on the web and post your comments, and then link back to the source.
It can be conceptually difficult to understand this idea because it disrupts the current top-down structure of blogging and democratizes it to a very great extent. It would certainly empower the commenters and give them a good reason to bother.
Does this help make it clearer, or did I further obfuscate the matter as usual?
I signed up to the BB Community so that I could keep track of my favorite BB links. Since I am a long time BBer, there are tons in the archives I would love to add to my favorites. What I have noticed is that posts like, Web Zen: Killing TIme (http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/16/web-zen-time-kill-ze.html) from 2 years ago does not give the favorite option. I know its still early in the revamping process to overhaul the site. I hope you will get to some to older posts and add the favorite option. I love the early BB days and want to share them.
Teresa, that's fine. I understand that. I'd just rather link to my blog.
I'd still like to delete my BoingBoing account. How can I do that? There's no interface to do so.
Not that this is all that pressing of an issue, but is there a way to remove a post from your favorites list? I clicked on the "favorite this" link accidentally and now can't figure out how to remove that post from the list. Seems like just a simple, "un-favorite this" link would do the trick.
I don't know if you've heard this tons or not, but I can't seem to favorite posts. I could, but now I can't. They just don't show up on my profile.
Also, I couldn't post from the preview page. I haven't tried yet today, but I couldn't yesterday.
Just wanted to let you all know, and thought this would be the best place to do that. Thanks
I've been wondering also were exactly is the appropriate place to go when we have trouble with the new community features?
Arp, for the moment, this is the appropriate place.
It's becoming apparent that we need a channel for news about problems. we're working on that.
Like #68, I'd also like to know how to delete my profile. I've been all over the website without success.