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Compliments and complaints

Submitted by aaa000 on September 3, 2007 - 9:16am. general discussion

I have been reading Your Triangle.com in the N&O and finally made over here to share.triangle.com. I have been checking it out and have a few suggestions.

1. It is very slow. It takes a long time to load a new page and I am using a cablemodem. I cannot imagine anyone on dial-up would be able to use the site at all. This is probably the biggest reason people don't participate more or come back.

2. Is it necessary to track each page view of every user? I am a statistics junkie and even I think it is a bit much. Maybe if all the tracking was stopped the load on the server would lighten and the performance would improve.

3. Have a link to the last post in threads (topics) in the forum list. To see the newest posts in the Comic thread, I have to click on the thread...wait...wait...scroll down...click Last...wait...wait...scroll down. Sometimes the "click Last" hangs and my browser crashes (I am using Firefox).

4. Some forums on other sites highlight the threads that are new since your last visit. That is very nice because it is frustrating to do all that waiting to get to the end of a thread (see #3) and then there isn't even a new post to read.

5. It would be nice to have <<Previous and Next>> links on the photos to be able to quickly look through the posted pictures. Right now you have to click on photo...wait...wait...click back...wait....wait...click on next photo...wait....wait...browser hangs...wait....wait...get tired of looking at hour glass....leave site. I gave up looking through the photos after trying to view the third one.

If you could fix the performance problems, which are only going to get worse as more people join, this site will be a really cool, neat place to visit and participate in.

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meeting

Submitted by michellerb on September 3, 2007 - 10:09am.

aaa000,

There was tentatively to be a meeting at the News and Observer to discuss such things. Mr. Barkin was planning to meet with any users of the site that had suggestions or ways to make it a better site. One such meeting was held for users of the photo forum.

The date for the other site issues was to be announced. Not sure if it is still in the works.

I agree about the page view tracking, almost feels stalkerish.

Michelle

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One way to improve this site

Submitted by aaa000 on September 3, 2007 - 1:14pm.

One way to improve this site is to get rid of all the javascript scripts they are running. That is a big part of the performance problems. I have resorted to turning off my javascript for this site and all the pages load much much faster.

A good tool for web page speed reports is at www.websiteoptimization.com . Here is the share.triange.com speed report.

Some highlights from the report:

TOTAL_SIZE - Warning! The total size of this page is 169817 bytes (166K), which will load in 42.84 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 30K to achieve sub eight second response times on 56K connections. Pages over 100K exceed most attention thresholds at 56Kbps, even with feedback.

SCRIPT_SIZE - Warning! The total size of external your scripts is 116924 bytes (114K), which is over 8K. Consider optimizing your scripts for size, combining them, and using compression where appropriate for any scripts placed in the HEAD of your documents.

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Salaries

Submitted by Myra (not verified) on January 21, 2008 - 10:49am.

As a tax payer, I think you should also include city and county employee payroll information just as you have for state and university employees. (City of Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham/Wake/Orange County)

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Tracking?

Submitted by thumtax on September 3, 2007 - 1:33pm.

Yes, the site is slow. And this must be apparent to the owners since they took the trouble to warn users that "The good stuff is loading." Sheesh. Just speed it up. I don't like spending birthdays online, especially if I just had one...

The page and post tracking? An utterly outrageous invasion of privacy. I can think of no other site where I can "stalk" another member and see what pages they have viewed and to which threads they have posted. There is no excuse for this "feature" in my opinion.

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I agree about that.

Submitted by michellerb on September 3, 2007 - 1:42pm.

I mentioned that to Dan once. It is an invasion of privacy.

Speaking of that thumtax, would you PLEASE stop visiting my profile. It's scaring me. :)

Michelle

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Blogging Dead End?

Submitted by hal990 on September 3, 2007 - 4:20pm.

I'm a newbie here at share.triangle.com, so maybe I don't understand.

Blogging is about inter-connectedness. I already have 5 or 6 blogs, and I'd love to share my content here, but not if I have to re-post my entries. That's why there's Bloglines and Feedburner.

Same deal for my photos on Flickr.

Am I missing something (highly likely)?

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Backups

Submitted by Java55 on September 6, 2007 - 9:45pm.

As for photos online, number 1, always save backups (multiple copies on multiple CDs if possible) first! Then it's always nice to have some of your better shots at a place in cyberspace more local to where the shots were taken. As for those big photo storage websites, occasionally they do go belly up without much warning of their impending demise until they post it on their websites. I have been through one that went belly up so far and another one that is currently in the process of going belly up. And if you've got years worth (and many multiple GIGs) of photos online one definitely needs to be saving those backups as they go along! I do feel sorry for those folks who have had years of photos uploaded to ImageStation.com as they are now in the process of going belly up and it's like everybody and their brothers too on the planet who have accounts there are all (or perhaps 99%) trying to rescue their photos at the same time and we all know what this will do to a server! I'm glad I saved backups all these years as I went along! As for all those poor folks who didn't... getting through their server is like trying to evacuate a whole country through a small pin hole! I do feel for them!!

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same here

Submitted by dbhorne on September 4, 2007 - 8:00am.

I've been getting frustrated as well with the performance (the actual system performance along with the UI issues that slow you down). I've thought about starting a blog, but I'm going to hold off for now. As a Flickr user, I find the moderation here a barrier to photo sharing and discussion. I hope things improve...

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Complaints, Compliments, Suggestions

Submitted by mntnlvr on September 4, 2007 - 12:31pm.

Could all users possibly adopt this thread as the repository of our complaints, compliments and suggestions on the site. Hopefully, this thread will keep popping at the head of the line and get the attention it deserves from the people in charge at the N & O. They do pay attention but I suspect their priority is to keep the general N & O online site going.

The performance issue was discussed at the photography meeting a couple of weeks ago. I have been waiting forever at times, to the point where my id and password entry I guess timed out and was rejected...

The comparison with flickr.com was also discussed, I believe this site would be unmanageable if scaled up much bigger than it is. The performance and limited navigation would kill it. Furthermore, in the same way flickr.com would not work if it were a single stream or gallery, the sheer volume of many new entries would overwhelm readers and eliminate exposure to even the most active participants. This site works because a few hundred or thousand readers are watching what a few dozens are exposing in a slow stream.

I concur here with some previous suggestions and add a few more.

- Once more, the performance of the site needs to be improved. However, the era of the 56 Kbps is over, just like analog TVs are being phased out, but I understand the 56 Kbps benchmark to show how slow downloads can be.

- Previous and Next buttons would help navigate the photo gallery.

- In forums, I'd like to see the navigation links repeated at the top of the page: first previous 1 2 3 ... next last

- In forums, I agree some highlight or link should point to the latest update entry because the latter is often a reply somewhere in the middle!

- For photo posting, a maximum file size (1 Mbyte?) could be at least suggested which would somewhat help the system performance. That would still leave some leeway for pixel size and quality.

- For photo posting, if the original pixel size is larger than a full screen window, I'd like to have the option of displaying the picture resized as large as possible within the full screen window.

- For photo posting, it would be nice to count on approval twice a day during the week and once on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

- Several months ago, I had friendly answers from the staff in charge after using the contact form to report a problem. Lately, no answer! Is somebody looking at those messages? This site should do what other good sites do, i.e. send an automated acknowledge back to the user email address with the content of the received contact form. Then someone should answer the user within a couple of days...

- The time stamp appears to be one hour off (too early) at the time of posting. Is is not supposed to time stamp at our local time?

- I summed up other problems in the Photography Meeting/Next Wednesday (although past now) forum, please see that entry.

Bernard

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