I'm the LetsRun.com Summer Intern and Want to Improve the Homepage AMA

colorunner123 wrote:

... And edit a post after I've posted it.

I'm a member of another forum that allows edits for 90 seconds. It gives posters time to read their post as it will appear on the site and correct typos or change their minds.

Don't change the homepage.

How about a crazy button on the home page? A place where trolls and internet weirdos can roam. All strange post and threads would be moved here. “View at your own risk.”

I'll be deleting mean-spirited and unconstructive posts in this thread. That said, Ben has now achieved his first badge: dealing with trolls who spend hours a day insulting the same site they're posting on.

The home page will maintain its identity. It's had a similar design for 20 years and we have no intention of making it into something it's not The main goal is to make it easier to read the front page, not change what it does. There are a lot of easy wins we're looking at: addressing the "above the fold" section of the site which is occupied by a couple of suboptimal menus, the quote of the day, and forum links. Improving the grid system to have better vertical rhythm and spacing. And reducing the amount of content that no one reads.

We'll be using the home page as a place to start with a face-lift. The goal with the tech stack is plain HTML and javascript only for little UI things to help reduce clutter (without over-relying on them). Ads support the site and of course we'll do our best to make them manageable. We all know the challenges the pose.

On our staff call this morning we discussed a lot of potential forum improvements which are standard on most forum software. This includes, potentially, thing like a short edit window, user post histories, subscriptions and web-based notifications, and so on. Again, the site has a long history and we're not going to drastically change anything. Just improve it the best we can.

For those who are curious, the forum derives from a 20-year old PHP script and a database design that was intended for 100s, not 10 million posts. Over the last six years we've re-written nearly all the basic functionality using a modern framework and done a lot of database performance improvements. A big part of that has been expanding the moderation capabilities tremendously--which you may not see, but has helped our moderation team a lot.

All these things take time. Serious feedback will be considered. Truly. We also appreciate the jokes. We'll be sure to add some under construction gifs.

My constructive comment was deleted. Oh well.

Suggestion:

Any off-the-shelf community/forum software would be a vast improvement. In particular, here’s what needs to be added/fixed:

* threaded discussions

* better responsive design for mobile

* editable posts

* option to get pinged when someone replies to your post

* better search

* better ad serving

* and (highly controversial) get rid of anonymous posting.

If you are the LRC intern, how come you don't have a red name with special label like the other employees get? You might just be some troll who registered the name "LRC intern" for a big joke. Make your name red and I will believe you are a site admin.

RunningOtaku wrote:

Suggestion:

Any off-the-shelf community/forum software would be a vast improvement. In particular, here’s what needs to be added/fixed:

* threaded discussions

* better responsive design for mobile

* editable posts

* option to get pinged when someone replies to your post

* better search

* better ad serving

* and (highly controversial) get rid of anonymous posting.

Threaded discussions are unlikely, but we will be improving the quoting feature, which is a mess.

Editable posts exist for admin, and we are considering a modified version that allows for a short edit window, like 3 minutes.

Subscriptions/notifications are also mostly done and we'll be adding a few more bells and whistles before rolling it out.

We have no plans to remove anonymous posting (it would make everything about the forum's code way simpler, it's the biggest source of complexity in the whole system. It's also what makes off the shelf software a non-starter). But we are considering options to allow more filter/registered users only posts. Keep your eyes peeled.

One day I'd like to implement a better search feature using a proper backend like elasticsearch, but it's a tier-3 thing on my list.

now, before you delete this post erik, follow through on this shiit. I want to see this site legitimately cleaned up - including bad actors within LRC. I understand that might mean the forum behaves a little differently. But it has become a cesspool, and changing from that is a good thing. Now, don't just appease me with these words. Follow through is necessary. And honestly, if you don't follow through, you understand how that'll go.

There it is wrote:

now, before you delete this post erik, follow through on this shiit. I want to see this site legitimately cleaned up - including bad actors within LRC. I understand that might mean the forum behaves a little differently. But it has become a cesspool, and changing from that is a good thing. Now, don't just appease me with these words. Follow through is necessary. And honestly, if you don't follow through, you understand how that'll go.

I've offered to talk to you on the phone to hear your critiques, ideas, and advice. Email me,

, and we can do it.

Offer stands for everyone!

Okay, if erik the lrc web guy agrees you are the lrc intern, I guess maybe you are. But now the question is, shouldn't you be "ben the LRC web guy?"

erik wrote:

There it is wrote:

now, before you delete this post erik, follow through on this shiit. I want to see this site legitimately cleaned up - including bad actors within LRC. I understand that might mean the forum behaves a little differently. But it has become a cesspool, and changing from that is a good thing. Now, don't just appease me with these words. Follow through is necessary. And honestly, if you don't follow through, you understand how that'll go.

I've offered to talk to you on the phone to hear your critiques, ideas, and advice. Email me,

erik@letsrun.com

, and we can do it.

Offer stands for everyone!

Erik, can't you see why no one believes these changes are going to happen?

Remember the moderation thread?

Remember wejo (I think) asking how we could improve the site?

Those long threads "happened" last year and almost nothing was implemented. I mean, nothing of the changes requested by frequent users.

erik wrote:

I'll be deleting mean-spirited and unconstructive posts in this thread. That said, Ben has now achieved his first badge: dealing with trolls who spend hours a day insulting the same site their posting on.

It really is sad how just a handful of people try and ruin the site for everyone else. The same poster is the guy who was posting threads today and yesterday with hundreds of blockquotes just to mess up the formatting for everyone.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

How about a crazy button on the home page? A place where trolls and internet weirdos can roam. All strange post and threads would be moved here. “View at your own risk.”

we have debated having a place where we kick non - running threads that we now delete from our homepage. We would still moderate these threads but right now we don't let every thread stay on the site even if it is not violating an explicit rule. There is only so much space in the main forum .

Hi ben. Good luck. Glad you found an internship relevant to both your hobby and degree.

I think the quote of the day is often allowed to run too long and it distracts from trying to find the articles. I'd suggest keeping it to fewer characters, or maybe reformatting it vertically.

I think the top section is redundant. It is usually stuff already reflected in the article list below.

Does anybody really click on the shoe review section? It seems to be clutter to me. Maybe other people use it.

The articles could really use more pictures to break it up.

It would be great if quoting was trimmed somehow. I don't need to see 20 nested quotes. I often chop them myself, but if the forum software could do so, even better.

That doesn't strike me as the intern project (you said homepage, not message board), but it would be a welcome improvement.

dtyjtdk wrote:

Those long threads "happened" last year and almost nothing was implemented. I mean, nothing of the changes requested by frequent users.

I'm not sure if you are being serious or not.

We have made tons of changes to the site especially to improve moderation. I'd argue our moderation response is much, much quicker than twitter or facebook. We have brought on additional moderators, we have a better backend to delete and moderate posts. We are going to give more moderators the ability to ban people as that seems to be the weak link as the posters who want to try and get around the system cause the most problem.

We have a smoother system to post than in the past. We put in ways for people to not see COVID threads on the forums, etc. We implemented swipe left and right.

For the homepage in particular, the way all of the story links are formatted is not nice to read. It looks completely random. Right now, you have Film Review, Saturday Night Track Action, More Athletes Speak On Whereabouts Failures, Non-Distance Results From Europe, Geoffrey Kamworor’s Bad Week Just Got Way Worse, and Distance News.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to how those are formatted, and I feel like you could make it much easier to find things if it were reformatted. You could have a section for all distance news (maybe subsections for HS, collegiate, and pro news), a section for media related things (like film reviews, book reviews etc.), a section for various track news etc. that would make it a lot easier to find interesting news and news you are interested in.

runnerdnerd wrote:

Hi ben. Good luck. Glad you found an internship relevant to both your hobby and degree.

I think the quote of the day is often allowed to run too long and it distracts from trying to find the articles. I'd suggest keeping it to fewer characters, or maybe reformatting it vertically.

I think the top section is redundant. It is usually stuff already reflected in the article list below.

Does anybody really click on the shoe review section? It seems to be clutter to me. Maybe other people use it.

The articles could really use more pictures to break it up.

I agree with you on all of these points. We both have a very similar analysis of the problems of the current homepage.

I've brought up to the staff how the Quote of the Day takes up lots of space, adds a lot of text (adding to the clutter), and prevents users from seeing articles. I hope we can find a better use for this area of the homepage (an "important" article with a big photo, for example). Redoing the navbar to cut down on some of those miscellaneous links is also on the agenda.

If other users are reading this: how do you feel about the Quote of the Day? Love it? Hate it? Don't care?

Rocket Mann wrote:

For the homepage in particular, the way all of the story links are formatted is not nice to read. It looks completely random. Right now, you have Film Review, Saturday Night Track Action, More Athletes Speak On Whereabouts Failures, Non-Distance Results From Europe, Geoffrey Kamworor’s Bad Week Just Got Way Worse, and Distance News.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to how those are formatted, and I feel like you could make it much easier to find things if it were reformatted. You could have a section for all distance news (maybe subsections for HS, collegiate, and pro news), a section for media related things (like film reviews, book reviews etc.), a section for various track news etc. that would make it a lot easier to find interesting news and news you are interested in.

It's a challenge to have enough news for all those categories for the daily news. I think our big problem with the daily stuff is, as you note, "all over the place." I think a lot of this is formatting and presentation. It would benefit from more structure around the types of content -- original stories, external stories, link lists, commentary, schedules, results, and so on with stricter length limits so we can get a predictable, readable, "breathable" grid. Maybe 8-10 content blocks on the top half.

I think your advice is very good for the bottom half of the front page. And then the bottom half has more structure with categories like HS/Pro/Distance, etc. We'll experiment with that.

Right now, on any one day, probably 2/3 of the front page should just not be there as it's dated and covered on previous days.