Bryan, thank you for offering a compromise on the new/old SI issue.
Personally, I am still wuzzling over this one. But I would like to make a few preliminary comments.
1) You didn't mention what I would have expected to be your major reason for not wanting to keep up the old SI site, which is, that it does not accommodate advertising. I think it is a "reasonable" reason: you do need revenue, after all. But when I remember the uproar that was raised about the Datek banner (which I never even noticed), I wonder whether everyone will agree.
I seem to recall that back at the beginning of the Beta Test, you wrote that paying members would have the option of turning off the advertising on the message boards (but not the rest of the site). Meanwhile, there is a rumor circulating that in the future, access to SI will be free (which would mean, of course, that there would be no category of "paying member" with "special privileges"). Could you please set the record straight on this one?
2) You did not address the special concerns of the BrowseMaster folks. I have never used BrowseMaster, so I cannot personally comment on assertions that (a) the BrowseMaster + Classic SI combination beats New SI hands down; and (b) the engineering team did not even try to integrate BrowseMaster with the New SI. But it seems to me that such assertions should not be ignored.
3) Once you do restore the "lost" features, and add improvements that I would like to see (extended search functions, for example), I personally will probably start using the New SI on a regular basis. But not before!!! :-)
4) This comment does not belong here, but I am putting it here because in another post, you speak of introducing an "improvement" to which I am absolutely, unequivocally opposed, so much so that I would drop my SI membership immediately if it were introduced.
That is a feature -- which some SI members have actually proposed (it takes all kinds, I guess) -- that would rate threads, posts, and people in order of popularity.
Well, the first is not necessary. The number of posts to a thread is the surest indicator of its "popularity." (And the best threads are not necessarily the most popular.) The second I don't like either, for a variety of reasons, although I would like to be able to rate the importance of posts in a thread for myself, according to my own standards, using a checkbox such as I already have in my Eudora e-mail system.
The last one -- rating people -- is an outrageous idea, IMO. I did not join SI to enter into a popularity contest! Okay, you already have your list of 100 or 150 most bookmarked posters. You publish that list periodically on the Welcome thread, where folks who are interested in that sort of thing can go view it. But don't thrust it in the faces of those who don't give a damn about it (and which will probably only make them feel "inferior").
I have a confession to make: I was briefly addicted to playing online Hearts. The addiction (fortunately) lasted only about a month. I was cured of it, very rapidly, when the site started rating all the players, according to the number of games they won/lost. Even though I am a very good player (try me!), that spoiled all the fun for me, by introducing a thoroughly unwelcome competitive note. So I quit. I see an analogous situation developing here, if we have viewable popularity ratings.
End of rant.
jbe |
