I think the overwhelming problem — and it seems that there is an absolute consensus on the DK5 that this site is not loved, with only 8% of people voting in Kos’ recent poll that they loved the current site — with DK5 can be attributed to something really basic that the designer of the site, Jason Libsch, said in Kos’ diary, which shows a mistaken conception of the genre of this site.
Users complain that there is too much “white space” and to not dismiss this concern. I have some thoughts about the issue of “white space,” but I’ll not get ahead of myself.
And Jason Libsch replies (and I am sorry to not be able to link, but I do not know how to link to an individual comment or if that is still possible but the link to the diary is here):
I really think the white background is just different (*my edit — he implies it is different than what the poster is complaining about). For example, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Talking Points Memo, Google, etc., they all have white backgrounds. Its really not something readers aren’t accustomed to.
My response to this? You cannot compare apples with oranges. Jason shows that he is comparing the Daily Kos’ functionality with the functionality of sites like The New York Times, The Atlantic, etc… which are primarily article-driven sites where users respond to the diary/journal/story itself more than to one another because the articles are the primary object of inquiry and interest for users of these sites. Therefore, little has ever been done in the creation of these kinds of sites to make the comments sections, which are NOT like those of the Daily Kos, historically, very interactive beyond being able to have a really basic comment nesting architecture. However, at the Daily Kos, the articles are unique in that they have previously been accompanied by a deeply nested comment architecture which is the actual primary object of inquiry and interest for users on this site. That is how this site has become what it is: a community and not just another boring old news feed.
I responded to Jason Libsch about this and said:
The NYT’s function is as a newspaper with articles. We cannot compare apples to oranges. The perceived function of this site is not in the news stories but in the comments threads; the NYT’s comments threads are paltry compared to what they have been on this site, with over 1,000 comments for some diaries. We are more like a FORUM than a NEWS site.
The designer has mistaken the content here as being LIKE the content on the NYT and other, similar sites. The issues people are raising concern the FORUM aspect of this site. I haven’t heard a single complaint about the ARTICLES function; this is highly secondary to the FORUM (comments-section) part of this site.
The designer and design team would be very wise to note the distinction here.
So my point is that the design team seems to be blithely unaware of the actual LOCATION of the complaints or the basic EXIGENCE behind these complaints, which is not in the articles or diaries section at all — in fact, I have seen almost NO complaints about the functionality of the articles/diaries other than a few bumps and glitches concerning publication. Where the problem is located is in the comments sections of the diaries — and completely unlike those of the NYT or the Atlantic or whatever, these problems involve a feeling of not being able to engage not with the diaries themselves but with other commenters, a.k.a. “The Daily Kos community.”
The reason that the “white space” is a problem is because the comments area is the location, geographically, that the majority of users hang out, talking to one another. Like a bar. They are less interested in responding to the diarist in many cases than to one another, making the Daily Kos (until now) unique in its level of dialogism, to use a term from genre-theorist Mikhael Bakhtin. In other words, what the Daily Kos has always done is discourse — linked conversations and sub-conversations which are organic responses to one another. However, the current site design does not enable discourse. The “white space” is actually just as serious when it’s not-white; my browser, for example, is dimmed to nearly grey because I spend a lot of time writing on Microsoft Word. What the white space MEANS is “unoccupied space.”
This unoccupied space, of any hue, which exists in the comments field, makes dialogue impossible because you cannot easily see whom you are speaking with or whom others are speaking with due to a lack of the following:
1.) a lack of vertical referents in the left margin to indicate the nesting structure of conversation, which I call “like floating in a bowl of alphabet soup.” While some have said “use the p button” this is nonsensical (aside from not working). One needs to be quickly, visually able to ascertain how a conversation is occurring, to who a poster is responding, with a quick glance. Otherwise, the sense of DIALOGUE and DISCOURSE break down, and there is a feeling of being in a loud room which echoes with voices where you cannot quite make out any one conversation.
2.) a lack of headers, due to taking away the “collapse” button, makes it similarly hard to ascertain who is dialoguing with who. The collapse button was useful for helping ascertain this in previous DK versions when an entire comment field was on the right.
3.) no particular visual indicators of what IS a parent comment. Instead, you can see only one person’s response to another now, at the bottom of their post, which is useless when you can only see one or two comments on a page, and again, see item #1
All of this is exacerbated by the large text size, which makes it hard to see more than one comment at a time, and three-inch left margin of nothing-ness. This is like being a little dog, wearing a cone around your head, able to only see a tiny sliver of the world rather than a large swathe of it. With little to see (except lots of “nothing-space”), it is tedious to read the comments fields, which again, are where this site exists and what it is for many people.
Thus, I would argue that the designer of this site has mistaken the GENRE of this site, based on the comparison of “the problem here” to being not really a problem because the Daily Kos is “like” The New York Times, Atlantic, and other journals, and that because of that mistake has been made, we have lost what many call “functionality,” by which they mean the ability to have a conversation.
I would further argue that unless the comments field are understood as the primary “real estate” of this site and where most people dialogue, the community will be unable to converse effectively and any sense of community will be gravely challenged since THIS ISSUE — what the comments field looks like, needs, does, and how it functions — will be viewed as secondary to other issues, such as the diaries working nicely or neat embed features.
Written due to being asked to by frustrated commenters in other threads.
Full-disclosure: I am not cranky, old, decrepit, inept, or unfamiliar with technology, nor am I an impatient person. Actually, I would say I’m highly computer-savvy in addition to being constitutionally very temperate. DK 5.0 needs work, however, or the community will feel deeply compromised. During an election, no less.
If not a mistake, of course, this is simply intentional, which seems like quite a conspiracy theory to me, but to each his or her own.
Update: Happy to see Jason clarify:
I wasn’t comparing the overall site design to the nytimes, just the color choices for the background and font. I was literally talking about the white, not the whitespace, as was i saw a tree today, who i was responding to.
As for the site design, and attention paid to the comments, specifically, we have put a tremendous amount of effort into their design and function. For example, the easy accesses to the image library and ability to embed videos by just pasting in the link. I don’t think there is another large site out there with a shared image library like ours.
He also adds, in Kos’ original diary linked to, that he plans to fix much in the comments section of diaries, including all of the issues that I’ve listed, and is open to further suggestions. I’ve reiterated mine to him there. As ever, I remain hopeful that things will improve.
Update X2: If you want to reply directly to Jason, please click the link HERE: www.dailykos.com/...