Introducing the Windy Citizen Raw Feed!
Good news: This community Chicago's building on the Citizen is picking up steam. We're picking up about 20 new members a day. Members are leaving about 50 comments a day and posting dozens and dozens of stories.
You guys are slowly but surely building up a local culture where stories about the failings of local media reside alongside investigations into city government mishaps and funny videos of TV personalities making kids cry. Good local stuff is finding an outlet without having to impress an editor who's worried she might be laid off any day.
Bad news: As we continue to grow, the little "Latest Activity" box in the sidebar has grown increasingly useless. Every time I refresh I see completely new stuff there. It's inadequate for something growing this quickly.
Solution: Today I've added a new link to the site's top navigation, the Raw Feed. The Raw Feed is a simple activity feed for logged in members on the Citizen. It displays the latest votes, new members, profile updates, new stories and (most importantly) comments as soon as they happen on the site. With the Raw Feed, you'll be able to track new activity across our network as it happens.
Also, the Raw Feed has a tab that shows activity from only people you've added as friends/buddies/neighbors on the Citizen (yeah, I know our terminology is a mess). If there are people you really like to follow, add them as a friend on the site. Then you can track just their submissions/votes/comments and ignore the folks you don't care for.
Caveat: The Raw Feed is not pretty. In fact, it's Lower-Wacker-ugly. I'd like to spiff it up with profile photos, comment excerpts etc, but that's proving quite tricky. If there are any developers out there who'd like to lend a hand, drop me a line at editor@windycitizen.com.
Suggested uses:
See someone new join the Citizen? Send them a private message to say "hi."
See someone update their profile? Check out what's new.
See someone vote on an old story? Check out what you might have missed.
Use the paging to look back at comments left over the past few days.
Let me know what you think! I've been sitting on this for a few weeks because of how hideously ugly it looked, but with all the recent growth, it's time to roll it out and see if someone in the community is interested in helping make it better.
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BradFlora
Brad Flora is founder of WindyCitizen.com, a web service that lets people share their favorite Chicago news and events with their friends and neighbors. More
Comments
Letting people see who voted which way on what seems very off-putting. I'd find it awkward to know a friend had voted down something I posted.
Thanks for the heads up, LAZ. I'm going to e-mail some of the regulars on here to ask them to weigh in.
I agree with LAZ. Voting should be secret ballot :-)
Did I miss something somewhere? Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought I that the way people voted had been removed from the raw feed. Now I see it's back.
I really think that if how one votes is going to be recorded publicly, there should be a prominent notice to that effect on the home page.
Nope. I turned it on for a few hours late tonight so I could track an issue I've been investigating. I try to do this stuff at the times when we have the least activity happening on site. It's now been turned off. Thanks for the heads up!
I note that the Windy Citizen has now borrowed a page from Facebook and is listing the people who "like" a particular post on its comment page. The differences, though, are that 1) Facebook is not a public system, so only your friends see your likes there; 2) FB is not competitive, so "liking" doesn't move anyone up on a ranking scale, whereas here it not only elevates the post but also awards users clout; 3) you can't downvote on Facebook.
It's slightly more trouble for the curious than the previous raw feed display, but it's still a public display of voting habits. The WC system now makes it possible to see how a particular user voted on any item by going to their page for the list of what they voted on, and then looking at the post in question to see if they're in the "like" list. So you can tell who voted down as well as up.
Even without that, I'm uneasy about having my "likes" so trackable. Not only does it seem like a public endorsement that I don't necessarily intend an upvote to be, it also makes it easy for marketers to target your interests and send you spammy PMs.
WC should take another page out of FB's book and institute privacy settings, so that those of us who prefer a secret ballot can opt out of having our votes publicly showcased.
I'd like to second the privacy settings proposal.
Very good. Let me look into it this weekend. This is great feedback, thanks.
Actually, it sounds like the most elegant fix would be to get rid of the ability to see what people have voted on from their profiles. Thoughts? People should be able to downvote in privacy. I'm glad someone pointed out that this can be figured out by cross-referencing.
I'd be glad to lose the ability to see what people have voted on, but as I said, I'm not crazy about having them see how I voted, either up or down.
If someone wants to make a public endorsement of a post, he can do it explicitly in the comments.
Sometimes I upvote an item because I'm glad someone posted the information -- even though I don't particularly like the item itself or it's not something I'd care to be associated with. "X likes this" can be taken in so many ways.
Me too. Among other things, it will minimize flame wars and angry feelings. I am certain this is why Facebook doesn't allow "dislike," no matter how much something richly deserves it!
Facebook has dislike... if you use words to say it. Aren't words better?
Not to suggest that every vote here ought to have a comment... some would NEVER vote then. Or would that be an improvement?
One person, one vote. Choose wisely!
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