Brownstoner 2.0 Coming At You Today
After months of planning, we’re going to be launching the first significant upgrade of the site later this morning. While the overall look at feel won’t change too much, there will be a few noticeable differences: 1) readers will be able to create user profiles that track their comments, forum posts and responses to forum…
After months of planning, we’re going to be launching the first significant upgrade of the site later this morning. While the overall look at feel won’t change too much, there will be a few noticeable differences: 1) readers will be able to create user profiles that track their comments, forum posts and responses to forum posts; 2) registered users will also be able to upload photos to the forum; 3) all the renovation blogs will stream into a centralized reno blog so you don’t have to (though you still can) check each one individually. In addition, we’ve tried to make searching the site’s archives by topic and neighborhood a little easier. Oh yeah, the site should load faster too.
While we encourage everyone to sign up for a profile and use it as the primary way to interact with the site, it will still be possible to make anonymous comments. That said, anonymous comments will appear in a lighter font than comments from logged-in users. The hope is that regular commenters can establish credibility (and not have their identities stolen) while purposefully disruptive anonymous comments can be easily spotted and discounted.
This first step into a web 2.0 world will lay the groundwork for a bunch of other new functionalities in the upcoming months, including the ability for anyone to start a renovation blog and the creation of a map-based archive of the 2,000 or so property-related posts we’ve written over the past two and a half years.
The site upgrade will start around 10:30 this morning. Access to the site should not be interupted, but any comments or forum posts made between that time and when we tell you it’s complete (hopefully only a couple of hours) will be lost.
Look forward to hearing everyone’s feedback.
Mr. B
Agreed, 1:50PM. The new method will create a small pond in which a few little guppies can masquerade as big fish; but the actual *content* of the site is going to suffer.
I think it’s interesting that Mr. B would be so comfortable sacrificing content quality for other imagined gains, especially now that he depends on this site for his livelihood. I must not have as clear a grasp of his business model as I thought.
I don’t like the new method. I think it will discourage posting. If you had one or two bad apples, changing the whole system to discourage posting will throw out the baby with the bathwater. I predict your site will receive fewer hits and the discussions will be much less interesting, just back and forth between donatella, an architect in brooklyn, crown heights proud, and their ilk.
Spanishfly, you obviously weren’t around a couple of years ago when registration became mandatory on this site. It was a disaster. Why do you think the requirement was dropped, in the first place? It was dropped because it was killing the site. Let’s keep Brownstoner interesting, and that means let’s continue to allow anonymous posting. The serious posts are usually anonymous.
Mr. B has made efforts in the past to require registration and weed people out. However, the people weeded out were precisely the ones we want to stay with the site. The ones who remained were troublemakers–which of course is why we stopped requiring registration a long time ago. So, the history of this site would indicate the exact opposite of what you’re saying, snapplefish.
What you’re saying might ring true over at apartment therapy. I wouldn’t know. That site is so boring I never go there.
I am in complete agreement with you, Snapfish.
11:05, check out http://www.apartmenttherapy.com
People on that site are forced to register with real emails and required real contact info. They are all very civil and the website is also extremely helpful. And if a registered user abuses the system, the moderators block him/her’s email address from being able to post.
Inherently, if no one can tell who you are, you’ll say things you wouldn’t normally say if someone knew your name and if you thought you might be banned from the site.
In any case, it appears this site is starting to get closer to that method, which I think is a good thing. It will weed people out.
Spanishfish, what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. Most of the nonsense on this site comes from the users who register. So, it seems the argument should be in favor of disallowing registration and forcing everyone to post anonymously.
Guest 11:16,
I’m in the same category as you. Most browsers let you enlarge the type with a simple keyboard command.
I think this site is much better. If you could dis-allow anonymous posts, it might get rid of the rants and raves, which would be a good thing. People will be much more careful of what they say if they are forced to register. Getting rid of all the illegal discussions and the useless banter will be worthwhile.