How would you make Fluther better?

There is actually a post on the fluther blog about this: Fluther wishlist

Maybe it’d be cool to have designers from up and coming video games featured for a day. I would ask a hundreds Star Craft 2 questions if someone from Blizzard was on here. Hell, that’s a good business model for you guys – research what people want to know so PR people can develop good press releases.

I like that VoodooLogic – It would be cool to have certain developers on here to answer tech questions. Ubuntnu, Apple, Blizzard, etc. immediatley come to mind. Also, I’m not sure if it’s already on here or not – but I think it would be neat to see which threads someone said you had a great answer or great question on.

Why not celebrities of whatever stripe? Sports stars? Politicians? The possibilities are endless.

yea, i think that would be pretty amazing celebrities and video game makers visited this site.

Maybe a bad question/answer button that will lower your points. Little more in the profile section.

I agree that having special guests would be a cool idea.

When you rollover a question in the home screen, it displays the description section of the question in a pop-up bubble instead of displaying the URL. That way one wouldn’t need to load the question (click the question) to be able to read the full description.

Track other people’s replies from their profile page-some flutherites have interesting replies, and it would be neat to be able to click on that user’s avatar, pull up their profile and below the comments and questions asked list, a “questions answered” list.

Perhaps also add the rollover feature for their answers as well (as I described in the post above).

@sndfreq: actually you can track other peoples activities by looking at their rss feeds. For example my rss feed has all the activities i am following and its public.

The only feature i really want is a reply button and nested comments

Thanks for all the great ideas, everyone. We’re listening…

Maybe eventually some small social stuff like friends (to keep track of their questions and topics) and the ability to upload a couple of pictures? Not too much of it though.

Would it be too much off track to have a more complete profile page? I realize Fluther is not exactly a social connections sort of site, but there’s so much interaction among some of the folks, it would be nice to know more about them (or even what they look like). Just look at how often people ask where everyone is, how old they are, etc.

When you click on an “activity you’re following” question, I’d like it to jump to the end of the thread, or where the new responses start, that way I don’t have to scroll through 80 cake answers I’ve already read.

There should be a possibility to leave questions anonymously.

I agree with @krypin’s anonymous question idea, but I’d prefer if we don’t allow anonymous answers.

I like @zaku’s suggestion about knowing where my score comes from too.

Also, I’d be more likely to provide detailed or specific profile info to improve the matching of Fluther questions if I could make my Fluther profile private.

breedmitch, looks like this happens now!

Cool! You guys are so great! Thanks.

thats awesome that it jumps to the bottom now, thanks breedmitch for the awesome idea, and thank you moderators for listening.

It is awesome that Ben and Andrew are listening and introducing features in-real-time! This one would be better though, if it jumped down to the first unread comment. This should be possible because they know how many responses have come in since the last time you looked at the thread.

@segdeha:
New activity links to the last-seen comment’s div.

Oh, and to give credit where credit is due: hossman also made this feature request a few months ago… which doesn’t mean we’re not listening to everything that’s being said!

@andrew, OK, cool. I guess it just looked like it was jumping all the way to the bottom. Sweet as a choice thing!

Nobody has mentioned embeddable widgets?
http://voodoologic45.blogspot.com/search/label/Springwidgets

random questions for blog surfers.

I’ve thought about this one on a few occasions-how about having the option for a user to choose to display/not display time stamping of responses to questions in the discussion threads?

I know that the question part already has this feature (“asked <__> minutes/hours/days ago”), but maybe giving the user the option to display the time stamp for the replies would provide a “temporal trail” that might make things all the more interesting for users.

The option of turning this feature on/off globally could be set in one’s own user profile section; but, maybe as preferences dictate, toggling the option on/off ‘at will’ (through programming-ajax? I have no idea) from inside the discussion thread-i.e. you open the thread to a question, then inside next to question’s details and other metadata sits a check box for ‘show time stamps’?

I have no idea how difficult this might be to implement, but thought I’d throw it into the hat anyway. Could elevate the experience esp. if users know they can reveal time stamps but choose to stay ‘old school’ and not see them ‘at will’...

Thanks for hearing me out, O Ye Gods of Fluther!

Following breedmitch’s suggestion above about positioning at the bottom of the thread as you check in on activity (questions) you’re following (which ye Fluther gods were able to implement-awesome), is the option to jump directly to the next alert/topic/thread in your “Activity you’re following” list when you’re at the bottom of the current thread.

For example, if you have three alerts for activity you’re following, you click on the first question, then once you’ve read the new replies in that topic thread, at the footer of the thread is a button labeled “next thread” or “next activity you’re following” or something to that effect.

That way I don’t have to click back button to the “Activity you’re following” link and go back to the list of questions to read the next topic that has new replies…I know that may sound nit-picky or lazy, but on an iPhone, it is an extra click or two or three (and sit while that page loads on EDGE-argh!) in order to get to the next thread

(i.e. I hit the back button to get back to “Activity you’re following” then have to click on the the next question-two jumps versus a single click to jump directly from one thread to the next). If there’s a better way to do this than hitting back button in order to check each question, clue me in…

@sndfreQ, I like that suggestion a lot. Amazon learned many years ago that if the user reaches the bottom of the page, she needs something to do next. Jumping into questions/activity/comments is a natural thing to do “next.”

How about on the sidebar a “who’s online” column? Maybe some flutherers don’t want to see this, but you already do see this in a way if you are lurking about in the threads…I think it could be useful if you wanted to ‘comment’ or message someone if you see they’re online. It could be an option one could set in their profile/user settings.

I guess a corollary to that may be to browse Fluther in ‘invisible’ mode, but I guess you can do that just by signing out anyway…nbd

I think it would be nice when a post is removed by a moderator for a comment to be sent to the user that posted it telling them what they did causing its removal so it could be avoided in the future.

How about a master roster page of users, point tallies, last posted to question “x”, and their vitals (last post date, joined date, etc.), sortable by use of columned data, as in the iTunes library window…I often think about the experience level and age of fellow flutherers and without sounding judgemental, a displaying of stats might help to understand the demographics of the collective, and even reveal things about flutherites’ interests in a way that would increase socializing, communication and contact.

Of course I have no idea what kind of work/programming something like that would take but I thought it an interesting idea nonetheless.

@sndfreQ: Great ideas—especially the one about adding an “Activity you’re following” link at the bottom of the discussion page.

We liked it so much, we just did it. :)

posing questions inside threads.
polls

what if – we used our star points as, “thank you cookies,” or something of that nature. and we could use them like chuk-e-cheese tickets.

There’s something wrong with the OLDER / NEWER links on the bottom – is it becuase they are in all caps? They just look out of place. Maybe getting rid of the all caps would help.

We could think of a video conference and lend it a personal touch

Two things:

1.) Re-establish hyperlinks on the home page for “Man O’ War” and campfire chat room (make prominent for all those “chatters”); and

2.) Some forums on the internet that have the static html-layouts (I think), have an implementation whereby when one rolls over a discussion topic (from the main directory-in this case, the main search pages/home pages on the site), instead of the URL appearing in a bubble, the details of the topic pop up in the bubble; this would allow a user to roll-over a discussion topic/Question, and be able to read the details of the question, without having to click through to load the discussion. On the iPhone, this would make browsing a lot more efficient, as loading pages on EDGE is painful (as we all know)...I am curious as to how difficult or easy this would be to implement? I have little-to-no experience coding, so again, a shot in the dark on this idea…Thanks Fluther gods!

I know that the “Questions for you” are determined by the topics compared with things in one’s profile. Could the “Activity you’re following ” play a part in determining those as well? I often follow questions that I never answer, but have some interest in. Could the topics of these threads help determine which “Questions for you” I get. Maybe to a lesser degree somehow? It could create a more whole “Fluther profile” of who one is.

So i was browsing fluther the other night and i came up with what i think is a pretty cool idea. Every so often ill click on a question i dont perticularly care about but want to see the answers or in questions that turn into a lot of talking or debate. I thought it would be nice if there was a button that could collapse all the answers except the ones that were awarded great answers. So that i could quickly at a glance see the best ones. And since fluther is “live” it would be like a live feature where you see them all collapse and then reopen so the page doesnt have to reload or anything. Just something i was thinking about that would make fluther better so figured id share.