Joey's Evolving List of Web Design & Development Complaints

dude, where are the RSS feeds?

Let me state at the outset my knowledge/experience of cyberspace and modern computers in general is quite limited, and I often suspect elements of dreaded C-Nile virus are at play in my 'wetware.' However, there are several websites I manage to navigate with very little trouble, and others where I can't even get through the registration process.
I regret to report, Craig, the layout here leaves me feeling like I just ate a magic mushroom or 2.

I can't find any mention of what software you're running on, or a way to go to the profiles of writers I want to follow and pull up all their comments. In ALL the other sites I frequent regularly, I can do this and its incredibly helpful.
On many site's where users comment on topics, the thread itself moves to the top of the page whenever someone makes a reply to it. Also, only the subject title and name of poster is on the forum index page, which one clicks to read it. I know you must be familiar with such systems, and my question is why you opted not to use this approach? A setup like this may be all right for a site like "In These Times," where a small number of articles are presented, but on Jewcy new entries push previous ones off the radar and into the back pages so fast, a lot is missed.
Another problem I've had is trying to insert hyper links or pictures. I used the code you posted, but it never worked. (ever considered a career at MS:-)

Last night I posted a comment, and though I separated the paragraphs in the comment box several spaces, the text all ran together as one long block even after deleting and reposting it several times.

 One useful GNU feature I've seen tells you when you hit submit if other users have commented on the thread while you were composing yours. It then gives you the option to read them before posting. That would be nice, but I'd be content just to be able to track writers-other than by just their recent comments-or topics, and to learn the trick-I see others doing it-of inserting links and pics.
If all the above is simply owing to my digital myopia-I'd take that bet-then I would really appreciate it if someone could please take the time to help a confused senior cross this wonderfully info-dense highway. My mouse uses a 'walker,' so don't go too fast, and you MAY HAVE TO SHOUT at times.

As the baby boomers retire and our population ages, you'll eventually have to deal with many in their dotage-like me-so why not get an early start?
One final question. I usually write in Word and paste in my comments, as I did my first post here. The formating came out all messed up. Any way I can circumvent such problems?

Pougai: RSS feeds?? Are you joking? I suspect Craig writes his code with a quill and churns his own butter!! ;)

Recursive: I appreciate your sentiments here. Although my decision to only churn my own butter is purely a health issue and unrelated to my spiritual link to the Luddites. (The quill claim is ridiculous, of course, as everyone knows those monsters in the Bic corporation are keeping the American quill market in a state of laughably poor-quality production, and for the ideological gains, it's just not worth pursuing anymore!)

Anyway, to address your points, I'd like to provide for you all the reasons why I am not to blame for these issues and then offer you a helpful list of all the people who may possibly be to blame.

First, it should be noted that many of the navigational issues you've mentioned here are in the works for the user interface updates that should be in place by the end of January. Also, your complaints are mostly all related to decisions that were originally integrated prior to the site's launch, over a year ago. These are mostly bad decisions, because, often times they were being made without being able to test in a real-world environment. And then, hey, it's been a busy year, and certain functionality (like tracking comments. Dear God do I want comment tracking...) have just had to take the backseat while we move forward on other things.

But, I don't want you to go away empty-handed while you wait for us to get on the ball for the things you've mentioned. ...So, here is a list of all the people that you may want to consider blaming:

• Izzy Grinspan
• Joey Kurtzman
• Tahl Raz
• Mike Weiss
• Maya Wainhaus
• The interns: Laura, Michelle, and Jen
• Tara Rice
• Mike's Dog, Kingsley
• Tamar Fox
• Eli Valley
• Ned Ludd
• The Nazis

In other news, some of the things you asked for are very simple. You don't need to know code to include a link, for example, in a comment. Just click the little "chain link" icon. It should be the 5th one in from the left in a comment text entry field. In a blog posting, there is a little camera icon in the top-left corner of your text entry field that will let you upload an image to embed in your post. Simple!

Pougai: RSS feeds are available wherever there's an aggregation of content by appending /feed to the end of the URL. A good example is http://www.jewcy.com/cabal/feed. A "feed available" icon is probably displaying in your browser on the aggregator pages to let you know that said feed exists.

You actually want comments to go in reverse chronological order from newest to oldest? Don't you think that makes it a little difficult to read the thread?  If people want it, we'll do it, but I think it's a bad idea.

there's rss feed for blogs, but no rss feed for posts?

What do you mean, posts? Aren't blogs posts?

Oh snap, you're talking about like comment threads, huh? I never thought of that. no, that doesn't exist. But it's a good idea.

And now a question for you. Are you aware that you're entering what I assume to be your name in the "Title" of the comment field and not the part where you put your name? 

I love you Craig and all those wankers who complain about IE issues should just upgrade to Safari, mwahahah!

JewcyCraig, i meant like the posts in her profile http://www.jewcy.com/user/izzy_grinspan

 François, I tried Safari before, and it sucked.

Great reply Craig. Always find your comments really amusing. I can't wait until January when I can read all of them! You truly crack me up.

I tried to reply in kind earlier, (in case you saw it) but decided as my attempts at humor are so often misinterpreted, I should just thank you for telling me how to activate links here, and for your continuing efforts. Thanks!

There, now maybe the harassing phone calls will cease! lol Which brings me to my first suggestion. One word, Craig. Are you listening? Plastics! Oops. No. Emoticons!! They help convey a little 'body language' to our communications.

JC- "You actually want comments to go in reverse chronological order from
newest to oldest? Don't you think that makes it a little difficult to read the
thread? If people want it, we'll do it, but I think it's a bad
idea."

No, what I want is to not miss a lot of the great new blogs that get bumped
off the radar into the archives before I get to them, or can go back to read
them again. You should consider having just authors and subject titles on each forum
page-as they are on most other sites-and each new comment would bump them to
the top of the page as you now do with new comments. You wouldn't even NEED a comments
forum then, and it would keep the topics that generated the most interest on
the first page. Instead of just 4 or five new blogs on the page one of the
forum you could have like 50. Here’s just one example, from a site that handles
at least 50 times the volume of Jewcy. http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=11

I’m not saying this system doesn’t have some drawbacks. But from my limited experience,
such formats in conjunction with some well thought out ‘stickys’ that stay at
the very top, are the best way to access a large number of posts. If anyone
knows of a better way I wish they’d post it here. I once spent a lot of time
considering this issue, and believe the ideal set up has yet to be developed. Joey got a reply from rms before-who better to perhaps ask for some direction.

Back to Joey's confession: "And in any case, the site's profound navigational and design problems
are not really of his [JC's] making. It takes numerous people working in close
concert to screw something up that bad." And here I thought you were joking about that list of those culpable. But what about poor Kingsley. (Amis?) What did HE do? Eat the disk with the web-software that actually worked? Well, you may be blameless in creating this monster, Dr. Frankenfritter, but you're the one the mob with torches and pitchforks will now be looking for in February. Good luck. If I can help, you are really in trouble.

Don't let Craig's family go yet Joey. Not until after he makes all the
promised changes. You know he probably wants to chuck this gig by now, and go back to being a commodities broker specializing in recreational
pharmaceuticals. [insert smiling emoticon here] :-)

Kind of disappointed there hasn't been more discussion here as 'the big guns' have promised many changes coming with the new year. But after seeing JC's picture change last week I'm beginning to wonder which calendar they are going by.

Hope the effort to re-design the camel back into a horse is going well, Craig. Look forward to being able to quickly read all my favorite bloggers when you're done. Is it still on track for January?

Hey, Craig... events could be a lot more useful if they were searchable by location. You could add an optional zip code box to the profile (won't be shown to other users) and have an option to sort events by proximity. Might take some work to implement, but as it is now, it doesn't look like there's any way to show just the events that are in your area.