heliocentric's Journal: Slashdot updates user info page: confusing and ugly

The good

Incase you hadn't noticed Slashdot has updated the user info page to add a nice gray background to the table of information.

The bad

They tried to arrange the data in a table format, I guess so they aren't repeating the words "Score" and "Replies" and such over and over probably wasting costly bandwidth. Yeah, right.

The ugly

They tried to group the sets of comments by thread. Thus if you were involved in two threads and posted to each in an alternating pattern someone viewing your history can make better sense of your part of a discussion. This fails to work to me as a means to better understand things since the thread (ie, parent, or of your post is a parent) is left off, depth in thread isn't represented (like with tabbing as threads do on the main page), and the information about "attached to" is confusing as to which group of comments goes with what. It all just runs together.

Toss in that things are so wide on the screen so even if you did remember that the comments attached to something are listed after the "attached to" message you may have trouble lining things up. Then add in that this is left off for the first comment listed and you have the recipe for success! I recommend highlighting text with your mouse to ensure you click the link you intend to.

The tin-foil hat

I remember hearing of perl scripts that would read your posting history to come up with some ultimately useless score. This fix would bork those scripts (until updated).

Update

Yeah, I guess this may be a dupe for some of you, I started writing this, posted it, and now I check my messages and I see that arb has already begun a discussion about this topic. Sorry arb, didn't know I wasn't the first with the story. Maybe it was that /. was slow to update the messages and I didn't spot arb's post. [update 2] BO also seems to have hit this nail as well. Perhaps this is just the tip of the iceberg.

More Updates

In the course of posting journals it seems that the fun alignment issues when you would post a new JE (the text over ran other text and graphics) has stopped.

Updates...

[arb]

... a nice gray background to the table of information

'Nice' is a matter of personal preference I guess, but at least it is not too hideous.

As for putting the data in "table" format - I think that is one of the better things they have done recently - declutters the screen - until of course they came up with the god-awful idea of grouping the entries...

The grouping in itself is not really that bad a concept - just the execution that suffers. Maybe they should just group comments by story/JE then sort by

Re:Updates...

[heliocentric]

'Nice' is a matter of personal preference I guess, but at least it is not too hideous.

I thought I should find something good to say about it. The gray keeps with their color scheme. I didn't pick it, but making changes that accept it are good to me.

As for putting the data in "table" format - I think that is one of the better things they have done recently...

Well, this would be true... but the old way had a standard format, and included 0s if I remember correctly. This is just clutter and uncomprehe

Re:Updates...

[arb]

Well, this would be true... but the old way had a standard format, and included 0s if I remember correctly. This is just clutter and uncomprehendable. At least to me. Concept of a table? I'm fine with that, but the layout used here is terrible. So bad that not using a table is better.

Realistically, if they moved the "attached to" to the top left of each group, sorted entries within each group by date and maybe gave you the option of reverting to the old-style format, it would be 100% better. It is the "at

Totally weird.

[sulli]

That is what this is. Odd. But that's slashdot for you, if it weren't weird and somewhat unreadable, it wouldn't be slashdot.

ch-ch-ch-changes

[curtisk]

I guess they were rolling changes in, as I noticed that they removed the "Journal Entry:" Prefix to JE posts just yesterday (maybe I missed it earlier), the grey is alright, but their ass backwards way of showing what thread my post is part of is annoying, maybe it just needs a little space between lines or something, the right side of the table is a smear of text

I'm all for revamping things once in a while, but these guys seem to shoot from the hip too often in production

I'm wondering

[Neop2Lemus]

Kinda related but off-topic.

Is there any way to see a list of all my posts and not just the latest 24?

I've looked but never found them.

Re:I'm wondering

[arb]

Is there any way to see a list of all my posts and not just the latest 24?

Apparently subscribers can do this. I wouldn't know - Slashdot won't let me subscribe because I do not have a Slashdot sanctioned credit card and I refuse to do the PayPal thang.

Re:I'm wondering

[heliocentric]

It is true that this is a "subscriber plum." I can read not just my history, but yours as well. Supposedely this was done because the server load was too high to let regular average people look at comments.

First thread unnamed?

[Nevyn]

They tried to group the sets of comments by thread. Thus if you were involved in two threads and posted to each in an alternating pattern someone viewing your history can make better sense of your part of a discussion.

Also, is it just me or is the first thread unnamed?

Re:First thread unnamed?

[heliocentric]

It's not just you. From the JE:

Then add in that this is left off for the first comment listed...