Open beta-feedback thread, and an editor’s note
[Hey folks: This is a continuation of last week’s beta feedback thread–I’m just bumping it up in the pub queue to bring it to newbies’ attention.]
I want to say thanks again for signing up at the Daily Mole beta site, and to let you know a little about what’s going on in these first few days.
I’ve posted an editor’s note about the Daily Mole’s progress below the “read on” jump, but first things first: Tell us about any problems or points of confusion you’ve experienced in registering/logging in, or in navigating and using the site.
And if you’ve got any general questions or observations, this is the place.
Thanks,
Steve
About site content: We’re still very much in the first phases of getting our content streams up and running. And frankly, there are still a lot of tasks at hand that get in the way of adding posts some days. In particular, the posting volume at present is lower–and starts later in the day–than it will as the beta progresses. By next week, we hope, you’ll find more of our content going up early in the morning. The volume will gradually increase over the course of the beta as well.
We also want to emphasize that there is less in the way of original reporting at the site during the first portion of beta than there will be as the site moves closer to public launch. Two main reasons for that: First, we don’t think it’s a good idea, or particularly ethical, to take up a lot of our sources’ time for the purpose of writing news stories that will be outdated by the time they’re publicly available. (Remember, there are only a few hundred of us in here so far.) Second, one of the things we’re doing in this portion of beta-testing is trying out various software applications for creating and editing original multimedia news content.
If you already read the beta-test FAQ, you know that the committed scientists and engineers of Clockwork are hard at work getting some additional content-creating and sharing tools in place, and I’m told they’re close to good solutions on our “Submit a post to this blog” and photo gallery tools.
15 Responses to “Open beta-feedback thread, and an editor’s note”
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Awe snap!
As for comments, it might be beneficial to have a preview of the comment as well as a couple tags that people can use. For example, I’m not sure if most people know how to use blockquote like I did above. It makes things a lot more clear sometimes compared to simply italicizing what someone else said. Maybe.
Speaking of comments, you may want to have a comments RSS feed or even a recent comments page even if it’s just in the sidebar. It’s a good way to to help foster Daily Mole Addicts and it’s easy to implement. I may turn out to be one and a a comments page or feed might be like crack to me.
Of course, that depends on how much you want to lean on community/comments being part of your draw… For example, IMHO, CP.com rests around 2% and MNspeak sits around 75% as far as comments being their draw and I think the Mole would excel if it aimed in the middle of that.
My 2¢ yet again.
Not sure how that happened, but maybe it’s a real life example where having a preview button (or better yet live preview) would pay off.
Had trouble logging in. Spent time by e-mail with Hans Moleman today and we’re all set. Best of luck working out the bugs.
…just subscribed to the Comments RSS. Awesome.
Aaron what reader are you using to subscribe to the feeds? I can’t seem to get Bloglines or Google Reader to work.
I’m in the same boat, Jodi. I tried subscribing in Google Reader– and none of the feeds are popping up.
Since Aaron doesn’t seem to be in the room right now, I can tell you he’s using Shrook. I think. Maybe he’ll confirm?
Yeah, I use Shrook and it works nicely with sites that require a password like this. Note that it does not work with password-protected Blogspot blogs though. I don’t think there are RSS feeds available for those.
Oh, all the timestamps are an hour off, by the way.
Incidentally, I think the troubles you’re having with Google Reader, and possibly other feed readers, is that the RSS feeds–like the whole Daily Mole site for now–need to be authenticated with your site password (the one in your beta invitation, not the site registration you created here), and not all RSS readers make it easy or even possible to do that. The one Aaron’s using does allow users to enter password info.
Long story short: the feed troubles you’re having in some readers should disappear when the site is made publicly available. I’ll double-check that with Clockwork (the Mole’s web gurus), and meantime, apologies for the inconvenience.
Steve’s report is correct. When we move the site out of beta, the authentication step will be removed.
I’m using RSS feeds for posts and comments with Sage (which I’m still reluctant to give up) with Firefox. Once I log-in, they work like a charm.
Hi, you know what I’d like? Instead of the commented on posts (or perhaps in addition to), I’d like the most recently commented on posts. That way I can see as soon as I get here (without having to check and RSS feed) what the heck people are talking about.
Err, also, I meant instead of the most commented on posts.