Ideas to enhance ObjectivistLiving.com

[Donovan A.]

I recently joined the Objectivist Living site and I really enjoy the atmosphere of respect and courtesy which is present here. However, I do think there are some ways that we could capture more participation. Please consider the following ideas:

1. The ability to search for members by location. This could greatly help members who want to find other Objectivists locally.

2. A Sexuality preference option.

3. The ability to search for members by sexual preference.

4. Relationship status option.

5. Local message boards: A place to advertise discussion groups and Objectivist clubs.

Best regards,

Donovan

[Kat]

Hi Donovan, welcome to OL.

Thanks for the suggestions. If you look in your profile, you will see that I have added a couple fields to help people make connections. Michael and I met online. Our little love story is called, "The Virtue of Silliness" and we hope others will find their match online too. A good friend of mine is getting married in a month to a guy she met online. hmmmm maybe I should start a matchmaking service called Kitten's connections.... or not.

Anyhoo, I have not figured how to make locations searchable, but if you have a local Objectivist Group, please feel free to post about it in the Events and Happenings forum and make an entry on the calendar with the date, location and event and it will show up at the bottom of the page under upcoming events. I think it goes about a week forward so please when you name your event, start with the date.

Kat

[Donovan A.]

I also really enjoy the Chat feature on ObjectivismOnline.net. Is this something that you guys could add?

[william.scherk]

I also really enjoy the Chat feature on ObjectivismOnline.net. Is this something that you guys could add?

I second the motion to include a chat function. It looks like the offerings by Invision are a bit pricey for their features (50+ bucks a year), but have looked into Flashchat

and it seems reasonable at 5 bucks.

If Kat and Michael pursue this, there is a two-step integration how-to on the invision list (no link to the particular post, scroll about halfway).

Donovan, I note a funny exchange on the ObjectivistOnline list, where Thomas Miovas gives you a mild verbal spanking for apparently deviation from OO rules. This is one of the reasons I don't frequent that forum. Eventually some adept of correctitude will bring out the big hammer to shut off dissent or honest divergence of views . . . in this case, your steps away from Peikoffian orthodoxy deviated from Rule 1.

Participants agree not use the website to spread ideas contrary to Objectivism. Examples include religion, communism, "moral tolerationism," and libertarianism. Honest questions about such subjects are permitted (emphasis added).

I do like the chat function at OO, though!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

I looked at it and I am interested.

Let me catch my breath and I will get this thing and install it.

Michael

[william.scherk]

I looked at it and I am interested.

Let me catch my breath and I will get this thing and install it.

Oh, boy! That is cool -- if you need any help in coding, let me know. I know PHP/MySQL and can assist if you fall down any holes.

I like good chat rooms; they add a personal element to the proceedings of an Objectivish list, and encourage people to treat others as people, not mere disembodied evocations of mentality. I very much enjoyed some of my chat encounters on the original SOLOpassion chatter (later versions have just not caught on). If anyone is interested in reading some of my zany thoughts at the time, check here.

I should mention that I invited James Valliant to a chat at SOLO. No thanks, he said.

[Philip Coates]

My suggestion to improve OL is to decrease the volume of chaff or non-substantive repetition. Many multipage threads have almost half of a page taken up by the original, very long posting, that one has to scroll past on each and every page. Then someone quotes the entire post he is responding to or even several of them running many lines. And then posts a one or two line response.

Result: You see a new post has occurred so you click on the thread. Then after many minutes of scrolling past stuff you've already seen and maybe going to a new page, you find a tiny nugget of new comment.

If a poster is going to simply continue to repeat past posts (as opposed to a one or two line snippet with ellipsis dots), nothing can be done. But the site could perhaps at least make the size of a page longer.

There is nothing more tiresome than trying to follow a thread across many, many pages.

Contrast: take a look at how RoR is set up technically and physically (and the posting habits of many of the posters) -- when you look at a new page, you get lots more new information than you do at OL.

Michael (and posters), hope you don't mind constructive criticism :-)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Phil,

I agree that RoR is a better program (I don't know about security). It integrated a blog with a discussion forum. Rowlands is a coder who did his own stuff. Kat and I licensed this software, so we kind of have to take what we can get.

I am finally learning a bit of MySQL and PHP. I recently installed a link cloaker for my Internet marketing stuff. I had to install a new MySQL database, make proper server-side directory, upload files to it and even move PHP files around on the server side. I screwed up several times, but I eventually got it right. (Server side is not user friendly and it is unforgiving. Servers and server-side programs like Apache are run by evil people with big pointed teeth.)

For now, the only way to get people to stop quoting entire posts is to train them and ask them to stop. Shortly I will be doing some screencast videos for a project I undertook, so I might go ahead and make a quote tutorial. Once I do, you will be able to point to it (and I hope you will). That will help me.

Here one piece of advice. If you see that a new post has been made, instead of clicking on the name of the thread, you have two places you can click to go straight to the new post:

1. In the right hand column called "Last Post Info," There is a line marked "In:" with the name of the thread. If you click on that name, you will go to the last UNREAD post in that thread. Also in that same block, one line up, there is a small square on the left of the word "Today." This will take you to the LAST post on the thread.

2. When you click on an entire section, say "Articles," you will see a list of threads. There is a little orange square on the left of the name of a thread that has new posts in it. If you click on that square, it will take you to the last UNREAD post. Once you do that, the little orange square disappears until someone else posts. Then it appears again.

It's clunky until you learn it, I know. I hope that helps some.

As to you giving constructive criticism and if I mind, you obviously do that because you are an evil subjectivist and emotionalist who is a second-hand evader through and through. You don't loot only because you were too morally corrupt to learn.

Michael

[Philip Coates]

> In the right hand column called "Last Post Info," There is a line marked "In:" with the name of the thread. If you click on that name, you will go to the last UNREAD post in that thread.

Thanks, Michael, that will help...I'll try that.

> you obviously do that because you are an evil subjectivist and emotionalist who is a second-hand evader through and through.

You **understand** me! I feel so VISIBLE!!! :-)

> You don't loot only because you were too morally corrupt to learn.

No, I know how. It's because I'm too lazy.

[Philip Coates]

> In the right hand column called "Last Post Info,"....

Michael, I've now had a chance to try it: That last column doesn't exist in "View New Posts", but only in "Go to discussion forum". But that not only doesn't have most recent threads posted to first, it isn't even threads but super-categories of threads (impossible to remember) and they stretch for seven pages.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Phil,

That column exists in normal view. Click on the top banner to get there (Ayn Rand's face will do).

Michael

[Philip Coates]

Michael, I just tried it. It shows me the same view as this: ""Go to discussion forum". But that not only doesn't have most recent threads posted to first, it isn't even threads but super-categories of threads (impossible to remember) and they stretch for seven pages."

[Ellen Stuttle]

Phil,

Best I can tell from the descriptions between you and Michael, you guys aren't aware of the FAST ways to find stuff on this board.

I find these ways REALLY FAST and very easy to use, much easier and more convenient than on RoR.

I'll try to verbally describe maneuvers -- I don't know how to take and post a picture of the screen so as to "show and tell."

Across the top is a blue banner which says in large capped letters "Objectivist Living," at the left of which is Ayn Rand's picture.

If what's coming up when you sign in is the home page, you'll see two columns, in the right hand of which is block displays of current articles.

On the left hand side, under a line which says:

Objectivist Living

there is a colum of boxed areas.

The first of these says:

Site Navigation

· Go to discussion forum (menu)

· View New Posts

· Today's Active Topics

· Today's Top 10 Posters

· Objectivist Living Store

· Contact Staff

(The 2nd says "Online Users" and shows by name who's currently signed on.)

If you click:

Today's Active Topics

you then get a box filling the screen from left to right.

In this box are columns headed as follows:

(I'm using periods in order to get separation between the column heads)

Topic Title...... Forum.... Topic Starter.. Replies... Views..... Last Action

Under Topic Title, threads are listed in descending order from the thread most recently posted in.

E.g., as I am typing, "Peikoff wows 'em in Q&A as part of" is the top thread in the list, being most recently posted in. As soon as I post this post "Ideas to enhance ObjectivistLiving.com" will be the top-most thread shown. As soon as someone else then posts in another thread, that thread will become the top-most thread.

In other words you can see at a glance the chronology of activity on today's active threads.

In the farthest right column is a display which at this moment looks like this:

Today, 01:01 PM

Last post by:

Philip Coates

That says that Phil is the last to have posted in the "Peikoff wows 'em thread."

"Last post by" is underlined: Last post by.

If you click on "Last post by," you're immediately taken to Phil's post, the most recent (as I'm typing) post on the thread.

You can then read backward up the thread to wherever you left off.

If you want to see a list of current topics longer than Today's (i.e., the last 24 hours):

At the bottom of the whole box -- scroll down; it's easy to scroll down just by dragging the slide icon --

is this line:

Get active topics for:....today.....Go

You can click on the direction arrows next to "today" and get a drop-down menu which gives you the additional options of:

this week

past 2 weeks

this month

past 3 months

this year

Changing the setting to any of those will give you a list, like the original box, only showing the posts in order-of-last-posting for whatever time period you've selected. (The list will extend onto more than one page.)

--

Alternate ways to arrive at the box showing current topics which I've described above:

If, when you sign on, the Forums page comes up, what you'll see is, again, the banner head in capped letters with AR's picture to the left.

In the large box area below this (other small-type info is in between) is a columnar set-up headed:

Objectivist Living Corner Office

Forum.... Topics.... Replies... Last Post Info

The Forums are listed in most-recently-posted-in order. The Last Post Info shows the latest post. You can click on the item which shows next to "In," but going down the column finding recent items by looking at the dates is slow work.

To get to the "Today's Active Topics" box instead, you have two routes:

(1) Click on the small-letter words "Objectivist Living" which are directly in a color strip under AR's photo.

That takes you to the home page and gives you the menu I listed before on the left-hand side, the menu saying:

Site Navigation

· Go to discussion forum (menu)

· View New Posts

· Today's Active Topics

· Today's Top 10 Posters

· Objectivist Living Store

· Contact Staff

Click on "Today's Active Topics" as before.

OR:

(2) Scroll down to the bottom -- drag the slide gizmo for fast moving -- to a box at the bottom headed:

"Board Statistics"

I find this Board Statistics box extremely handy, chock full of easily accessible information. It's the central place from which I do most of my posting and searching.

It lists the following options:

Today's active topics....The moderating team...Today's top 20 posters... Overall top 20 posters

It also shows who's on-line and provides an icon you can click to see where whoever's on-line is.

To find the "Today's active topics" box, just click that heading.

--

As I said, I find this board quite easy to navigate, and on which to find information in more direct and convenient ways than on RoR. It has much more information findable, when one has learned where and how to look. The Search feature is excellent. The facility for finding a particular poster's posts likewise, much easier than on RoR. Plus you can easily link what you find.

And, by no means least of the things I like so much about the features of this board, I find it pleasing to the eye. It sets off my eye-twitches problem less rapidly than any of the other boards I look at with some degree of regularity. RoR, on the other hand, I find rather a nightmare to look at. Maybe the visuals there are pleasing to some, but I don't like them.

Ellen

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Edited July 5, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Ellen Stuttle]

Addendum to the above long post with quick-navigation descriptions:

Suppose you're using the "Today's Active Topics" box as your navigating base.

You've looked at the posts on the most-recent thread (or on whichever of today's threads you were interested in looking at first) and you want to return to the "Today's Active Topics" box to go to another thread, all you have to do is click the reverse arrow at the uppermost left corner of your screen (if you're using Safari) or wherever the reverse arrow shows on the browser you're using, and you're back to the navigating box.

Really easy and fast.

Ellen

___

[Ellen Stuttle]

Another addendum:

Of course if you want to, for maximum speed of accessing current topics, you can just bookmark this URL, which will take you directly to the "Today's Active Topics" box in one click:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...&lastdate=0

Ellen

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[Dragonfly]

Gosh, I just use the "View New Posts" option, that works fine for me.

[Ellen Stuttle]

You have to sign on to use the "View New Posts" screen, and I don't bother to sign on unless I want to post.

Also, I don't like the display as well in that box. Also, it doesn't have the other information directly to hand which you can get from the Board Statistics box.

Ellen

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

Thank you for that tutorial. I already use all those features, but I will be looking at what you wrote here when I put my tutorial videos together.

I forgot about the search function. You are right. RoR's search function sucks. When I need to find a post there I use a Google search with

"words I am looking for" site:http://rebirthofreason.com/

I think Phil's problem, from what he wrote, might be more basic.

Phil,

Scroll down to the very bottom of the screen and see if you are in Lo-Fi version for viewing or full version. You should be in full version. You can tell because it will have a link for Lo-Fi version.

Ellen is right. Make sure you are signed on when you want to use latest post and most short-cut functions.

Also, you might try clearing your cookies. That often cleans up a lot of problems.

See if that helps.

[Dragonfly]

You have to sign on to use the "View New Posts" screen, and I don't bother to sign on unless I want to post.

I'm automatically signed on, so that's no problem.

Also, I don't like the display as well in that box. Also, it doesn't have the other information directly to hand which you can get from the Board Statistics box.

I'm not interested in that information, I'm only looking for new posts, that's all.

[Philip Coates]

Thanks, Michael, Ellen, Dragonfly, et al:

I just realized the thing that I most needed from the preceding is that the little orange box on the right (in several views) will start me with last unread-by-me post in any thread. Which is exactly the way I want to keep up with stuff of interest.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I second the motion to include a chat function. It looks like the offerings by Invision are a bit pricey for their features (50+ bucks a year), but have looked into Flashchat

and it seems reasonable at 5 bucks.

William,

I am in the middle of a product launch (as an affiliate). I was in the middle of my first when you made the post above. The first is always the one with the most things to figure out and the most things that go wrong. (Incidentally, I ranked and still rank No. 1 on Google for several product terms and I made a few sales—it was an email list building program launched on Paydotcom, so I count that as a resounding success for a first time out against the big guys.)

Now back to Flashchat. As I was loading up my sites, writing copy, mapping out my first video series and so forth, another sale came through on the list building product. That was a real pleasant surprise. It made me feel good. So to celebrate, I bought the script.

I will fiddle with it a bit in my spare moments, and ultimately if I need help, I will give you a hollar.

I am going slow, but I am going.

Michael

[william.scherk]

I will fiddle with it a bit in my spare moments, and ultimately if I need help, I will give you a hollar.

Sounds good. I can't wait to extemporize with some of the OL regulars . . .