Some Site Suggestions

Hello Admins! First of all, I’ve been an active member of this site for over a year and I LOVE IT! From the stories, to media, to groups and social interactions, it is the whole package! Thank you for making this space all that it is!

Having said that, now that I’ve been here for awhile, I do have some suggestions for how it could be even better! Perhaps some of these suggestions are feasible with some programming, while others might not be. But as the old saying goes, “If you don’t ask, you won’t get.” In this spirit, here goes:

1. For media albums: it would be great if the album owner had a place to write a brief remark or description about an album (similar to Author’s Note for stories)

2. Similarly, it would be neat if each album had a place for comments on an entire album (from viewers), as well as “Like” and “Favorite.”

3. It would be awesome if album creators had the ability to REPLACE photos in an album (vs. complete deletion of the photo or video). My explanation for this need is possibly unique, and therefore not urgent or unimportant for most users. But I like to create albums of illustrations for my stories, requiring them to be in a certain sequence. Sometimes, I find an error in an image in the sequence, and currently, I have to delete all the images I uploaded after that one in order to replace it. It would be great if I could simply “replace” that image, keeping it in the correct sequence (or “saving the old image’s spot in the album for the new one”).

4. Related to that, I have never been able to re-sequence my uploaded photos. Given what I do with most of my albums, you could imagine why this would be beneficial.

5. We all understand the standard “status” of a submitted, pre-published story as “Currently being reviewed.” But it would be nice if we received a message/notification that a story has actually been assigned to a moderator. That way, we authors know when an approval or return for improvements status is imminent.

Thanks for considering these. Even if none of them were implemented, I still adore this site! Thanks again.

I'll chime in with another suggestion related to the order of images: Arrange the list of existing cover photos with the newest cover at the top of the list instead of the bottom, so I don't have to scroll and click through three pages of old covers to get to the new cover I just created. 😄

Some good ideas here. One by one...

Quote by Chet_Morton
Arrange the list of existing cover photos with the newest cover at the top of the list instead of the bottom,

I second this. It's so annoying having to scroll to the bottom of the story covers, type in the number of the final page it shows, submit, wait for it to repopulate, then scroll to the end, just to find the most recent.

Quote by culohombre
the album owner had a place to write a brief remark or description

Good suggestion. An album description seems useful. I would further this by asking for an optional Story Series description field too.

Quote by culohombre
it would be neat if each album had a place for comments on an entire album (from viewers), as well as “Like” and “Favorite.”

Not sure where these comments/likes would "hang" in terms of UI. The endless scroll of images in an album means the comments can't go at the bottom or you'd rarely reach them, and if they're at the top, you'd need to scroll past them all to get to the pics. I don't think this is viable.

Quote by culohombre
album creators had the ability to REPLACE photo... Related to that, I have never been able to re-sequence my uploaded photos

If there was the ability to drag and drop to reorder images, that might mitigate the need to replace one. There's also the issue that comments are related to an image, so if you swap out a photo of a flogging for one of a facial, the comments might not make sense any more. I know it's unlikely someone would swap a completely different image, but the possibility exists.

Reordering images is, however, difficult because of the silly, endless scrolling, load... wait.... load... wait nature of the albums.

Whoever championed the awful endless scroll style pages (Facebook, I'm looking at you) needs jettisoning into the sun. Nothing wrong with fixed pagination + lazy load. Much faster, more deterministic, easier to reach later images when some network issues rises, less memory intensive as the page goes on (especially for gifs and videos), the benefits mount up. Endless scroll is the wrong UX choice for albums.

Quote by culohombre
it would be nice if we received a message/notification that a story has actually been assigned to a moderator. That way, we authors know when an approval or return for improvements status is imminent.

Not gonna happen. Sometimes we click into a story and have to back out for whatever reason, or reassign it. Sometimes we need to discuss it at length before a decision is made. It could be locked for days while we consider something, so there's no guarantee a decision is imminent. It would just give a false sense of what's going on.

Thanks, @WannabeWordsmith. I understand the behind-the-scenes explanation regarding story moderation.

You are correct: the ability to reorder photos would make the need to “replace” photos unnecessary. And I do understand what you mean about comments on a photo possibly becoming obsolete. I would just imagine if you replace a photo, any likes or comments on the previous one go away.

As for where the “Author’s Note” (or whatever it would be called) and album comments from viewers would go, I would suggest page 1 of an album for the creator’s comment or note, and the last page for comments. I realize this would require a total reformatting of media displays, but I do think users would really like such an added feature.