Everyone has their personal list of annoying bugs, functions that don't work as expected, and design changes that either don't make sense, or make blogging more difficult. I hope the powers that be will listen to our complaints, because here's the thing: if it gets too difficult, at some point people will get tired. Drift away. Find other communities.
It's not anger, it's frustration … with a dose of disappointment.
I'll give you my top six candidates for the daily punch list, and I'd like to hear about yours.
COMMENTS AND REPLIES
Part three of our old hotlist page was design elegance. One glance gave you the title of the diary and the subject line of the comment in your own diary or the reply to one of your comments. A click on the subject line opened the comment or reply. You could rec the comment, add a reply if you wanted to, and click back to the hotlist. If there were several entries, the ones you'd tended to changed color. I know some people didn't use this feature, but I used it constantly and I miss it desperately. I'm trying to get by with the new functions – which most resemble the comments tab in our old profiles – but they're not working for me.
MESSAGING
OMG, this is a major clusterf*ck! Two changes need to be made immediately: Provide a “select all” button so we can delete messages in a fraction of the time we're spending on it now, and stop sending me so much crap. Seriously. If I'm a non-administrative member of a group I do NOT want to receive administrative message copies. If someone sends me an invitation to a group, and I haven't even accepted or declined yet, I do NOT want that group's messages in my inbox.
A third change should also be made. Profiles have two options about email. If you want to get an email when you get a message, or an email when someone you follow posts a diary, you can select “yes” to those two options. Except … they don't work. Either fix them, or remove the option.
LINKS IN DIARIES AND COMMENTS
Links in diaries and comments should follow the flow of writing. If I want to add a link HERE, I should be able to stop after the word link, open the link function and fill it out, click “add”, and see my newly-added orange link right where I want it. That makes sense, that's intuitive design, and that's what happened on DK3. Here, everything in the link function is posted at the beginning of the diary or comment and has to be moved. PLEASE FIX THIS!
GROUPS VS FOLLOWING
This one is so stupid I can't believe it hasn't been fixed. When I join a Group, I expect to see the group's diaries in my stream. I should NOT have to remember to Follow the dang group! Especially when the Follow function doesn't stick half the time!
AUTO-REFRESH
Markos turned this off because comments were jumping around, IIRC. Until he turns it back on, I won't be here much.
WHAT ELSE?
There are other things that I find frustrating, but my Big Five are enough for today. Please don't jump imto the comments and tell me I'm “wrong” or “impatient” or need to “STFU”. These are MY issues. I've been addicted to Daily Kos for three years. Every time I logged on it was with a sense of excitement and pleasure, and now I find myself sighing and thinking, “I guess I should check the site, but … what a pain.”
What's on your punch list?