Re: What you're missing

[Ben Williamson]

On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 8:01 PM, Suzanna wrote:

Hi Ben !

 

looks good :)

Hey Suz, thanks! Hope you don't mind if I reply including the list. I like your ideas, want to open it up input from others too.

 

- do you get updated by email or when you sign in when another person 'counters' your point ?

You've prompted me to add this to the backlog, does it look right?  https://github.com/benw/counterpointy/issues/40

(I'm using GitHub's Issues system as a backlog of bugs and missing features. Feel free to add issues there.)

 

 - have you thought about employing a 'like' system (to borrow facebook's terminology) of rating how 'valid' or 'important' users believe a point to be ? this could then be used as a 'filter' for particularly contentious topics (which have a number of points associated with the topic), eg only points which have a large amount of support (in the terms of how many 'likes' they have) are displayed if you select a certain filter.

My current thinking is to be able to Favourite points: https://github.com/benw/counterpointy/issues/4

I suspect users might get overloaded / confused if they are given the options of agreeing, disagreeing, liking and disliking. The main thing I want people to do is to agree or disagree; I need to improve the visual design to draw attention to that part of the screen. The function of favourites would be just like bookmarks, important starting points much like the current featured points. Thoughts?

You've nailed it that as the amount of content and activity grows, some smart filtering will definitely be required. I spent ages worrying about this before realising that it was stopping me from actually just building something. My currently problem is that there is very little content or activity! I think it will become easier to understand how to filter when we start feeling that there is too much, so for now I'm focussed on making the site more engaging and getting a few people interested. Thanks for being an early user! Please yell when you notice feeling that there's too much stuff, and we'll work out how to filter that. What we really need is for our early users to find some things they can disagree on, so that we can make that work well.

 

 - how would you integrate it with facebook or twitter ? is it possible ? what would it look like ? would you want to ?

I have some thoughts on this, but I'm generally hesitant. What sort of integration would you like to see?

All the best for 2012!

- Ben.

[Michael Strand]

Hi Ben,

I was playing with Counterpointy and found that once you get to an end
point and can see the user, I could click on that user and see a list
of their views. I quite like being able to do that and thought it
should be a more prominent feature, such as having a couple of small
lists on the front page such as recent contributors and top
contributors. Then it leads to being able to associate with friends,
so now I am thinking Facebook app too. It would be popular I think to
be able to click on a friends views and see a rundown on how they
think, which would lead to better discussion/opinion posting. No need
for like or dislike, you either agree or you don't or you are
undecided.

As posts grow the filtering will become vital, maybe categories?
Religion, Climate, Economy, Politics etc so on and so forth.

A minor cosmetic one, the cursor when you hover over a view could
change to a pointer to indicate a link, such as in css
"cursor:pointer;".

I like where you are going and really think the path to user support
will be as a plug in to social media sites.

Michael

On Jan 3, 7:58 am, Ben Williamson <b...@pobox.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 8:01 PM, Suzanna wrote:
> > Hi Ben !
>
> > looks good :)
>
> Hey Suz, thanks! Hope you don't mind if I reply including the list. I like
> your ideas, want to open it up input from others too.
>
> > - do you get updated by email or when you sign in when another person
> > 'counters' your point ?
>

> You've prompted me to add this to the backlog, does it look right?https://github.com/benw/counterpointy/issues/40

[Ben Williamson]

Hey Michael,

Great to see you getting into it, and thanks for your thoughts.

For the audience, Michael has stated his position on some existing points, and added some new points regarding gene patents, with a link to a CNN article: http://counterpointy.org/user/michael

This is great - I encourage everyone to notice when they read something that has a bearing on the public policy debate (gene patent legislation in this example) and to take a minute to drop in a summary point or two with a link to the article. It increases the chances that new visitors to the site will find something that engages them.

My intention is that when you visit Michael's profile, you get the world according to Michael. Currently that's just lists of points he agrees and disagrees with, but that will quickly become too big to sift through. I want to let users mark points of interest and perhaps to organise them as lists or tags. (Like the categories you suggested, but users choose their own.) Those starting points should be useful to Michael as well as to anyone who wants to see what Michael thinks. Those are what will be up front when you visit a Michael's profile, eventually along with his recent activity. Sound ok?

As a baby steps towards Facebook integration, I propose adding some Open Graph metadata http://ogp.me/ so that when a Fb user links to a Counterpointy page it looks good and makes sense. I'm steering away about even thinking about a Facebook app unless someone comes up with a really good reason.  :)

I'm adding a Share button that makes it easier to share a link to a point by email etc. One day I might also add a view that's suitable for embedding on a site as an iframe, but that seems less urgent.

A minor cosmetic one, the cursor when you hover over a view could
change to a pointer to indicate a link, such as in css
"cursor:pointer;".

Sorry, not sure what you mean here?

Cheers,

- Ben.