Monday, June 25, 2012

Go Kinja, Go Kinja, Go!

Okay, so that did not go well.

Let's not kid ourselves, the Kinja rollout lived up to all the hype, which is to say that it was awkward, clumsy, and not terribly conducive to what we do, or perhaps I should say, what we did.  So, it's over, right?  We're all going to be writing stuff for Bleacher Report next week.

Pardon me, but I've seen this movie before, and it was directed by Michael Bay that time, too.  When the last redesign rolled out, we all freaked out.  It was buggy as shit (remember when "IMG Fail" wasn't just a dig at me?).  Hearts were gone.  So were our messages.  The "expand all replies" option was gone.  For a while, we didn't even have a blog view option, so shit was all muddled up and confused.  There was a featured comment thing that, frankly, I guess never got fully worked out.  

But that all got fixed.  And it seems pretty silly now when I look back at how much hand-wringing went into an aesthetically pleasing and ultimately pretty successful refresh.  

Kinja is different, of course.  The previous redesigns were largely site redesigns that only incidentally affected the world of comments.  Kinja is a wholesale revision of the comment section.  A casual reader might not have noticed the difference today.  We all did.  And, one would think, that when one sets out to specifically revise a comment section, they would hopefully take into account the opinions and needs of the commentariat.  Yeah, that didn't happen here.  Clearly, this redesign was not done with Deadspin commenting mores in mind.  

But, we are here at another crossroads.  Things will either get better, or they won't.  We can make the best of it, tell some funny jokes, adapt what works to fit the new design, or we can act like a bunch of shitty Gawker commenters and throw shit all over the place.  You are free to do what you choose.  I'm going to give this every chance to work.  And, if it doesn't, I'm going to totally change my tune and rip on everyone involved.  



14 comments:

  1. Thank you. I don't even think it's all that bad. We definitely need an "All" function, but I think that view will give us approximately what the mobile view looks like now (and I believe this was verified by both Gawker tech and Craggs today).

    The All function should make it easy to see what's been said in chronological order, should save comedy pyramids, and should restore DUAN. Those three are definitely going to be sources of frustration until then. But this change is no big deal. It'll be back to normal before you know it.

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    Replies
    1. All function is only a remote possibility per Tommy:

      http://deadspin.com/5921087/?comment=50390022

      Delete
  2. I am by no means a funny common tater, but I feel like a kid with his face pressed against the glass of his room window watching the cool kids playing cowboys & native 'mericans. Can't even post although signed in. Was there a secret email I missed.

    Gawker better answer my email, the fucks.

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  3. Seriously? It wasn't that bad, at all. A little weird, and clickier than we want, but it's not like we were all banned and told to reapply. It's like a little puzzle to be solved. Sure, it's not optimal, and we can all imagine how it could be better, but I bet that subsequent revisions will address some, if not most of our concerns, particularly if we engage their tech folks like the smart adults some of us proved capable of being, and particularly like SteveU did. All the people who are dramatically announcing that it is the end of their little commenting career are sorely deluded that anyone gives a fucking fuck that they are taking their talents to the crossword section of the local free paper. Oh, you've had enough of it, and your grumpiness is driven by the purest intentions - that you're just soooo concerned that Denton is ruining this thing that is meaningful - that you're going to vote with your feet and loudly flounce off in a snit? Fuck you, good bye, you self-centered drama queen. Trust me, no one is going to spend the next six months talking about how awesome it was when you were here, and how it sucks now that you're gone.

    To quote my boyfriend Tim Gunn (and to paraphrase IMG above): Fucking make it work, dickheads.

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  4. Okay, I ain't trying to be a debbie downer and shit. I am really legitimately trying to comment and enjoy kinja and all. But, it says "STUARTSCOTTSEYE" up in the corner of the page, I've gone through the login process and all. But then I go to comment and it tells me I'm not logged in. I've tried it about infinity times. Has this been discussed yet?

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    Replies
    1. I've heard a few people say this and I think you just need to email tech support. It probably has to do with linking your account or something.

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    2. I've had it linked to Twitter for months now, so I don't know what the deal is. Oh well. Not like anyone wants to hear the stupid bullshit I have to say. I was just going to post to ask where "O AN HE SEXY" came from, anyway.

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    3. Right here:

      http://deadspin.com/347143/rejected-commenter-theater-episode-two

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    4. Here's the most ridiculously bizarre part of the whole thing. When I log in and then try to go to my profile, it says "Please sign in to see your profile." As soon as I click "sign out," it shows my full profile. But I still can't comment.

      Delete
    5. I was having issues with that in IE, and I switched to Chrome and it works fine. IE was working earlier today, though, which is weird.

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    6. If you think I use IE, then I seriously need to reevaluate my life.

      Delete
  5. Hey kids, want to enjoy the mobile "All comments" experience on your desktop? Easy-peasy.

    Using Firefox, download the User Agent Switcher extension. Once it's installed, go to options and add a new user agent with these parameters:

    Description: iPhone
    User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)
    App Name: AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko)
    App Version: Version/3.0
    Platform: Mobile/1A543 Safari/419.3

    Then, go to your Tools menu, go to Default User Agent, pick iPhone, and go to Deadspin. You'll get the mobile site - scroll all the way down and pick Full Site and you're in bidness.

    Obviously clunky for Dayspin use, but for DUAN it's a huge help. I'm sure there is a similar fix for Chrome.

    ReplyDelete