Welcome, Cranky Users! Today, we'll follow up on some of the items in yesterday's comments, hoping to get them in front of the eyes of someone with an answer, or at least a clue! We'll share some tips that might make somebody's DK life a little happier. And we'll have plenty of room for comments, which we then won't see in a timely manner because &%#$ auto-refresh is not back yet. Join me below the squiggle!
First of all, further on the big "groups" discussion yesterday: I republished a diary from Kos yesterday evening, in which he ruminated further on the use of the term "member". I call the attention of the Crankies to this exchange in particular -- the thread goes on, but I'm pointing out the top four comments, BentLiberal - kos - BL - kos, in which kos finally appears to "get" the issue that a number of people have had. It's easy to say a semantic issue is unimportant, but if people don't feel good about what's happening, that can mean big trouble and it can't be shrugged off. (If I may wax political for a moment, it seems like we liberals are prone to this kind of difficulty in controlling the message.)
Next, some unresolved issues from yesterday's comments.
☯ People like Noor B, who are trying to start groups here that existed on DK3 in the form of a special user ID, are facing the problem that they can't add the group because the old user already has that name (in Noor B's case, WYFP). Some of them have been able to slightly change the group's name and get around it that way, but in the case of WYFP, it would be less than ideal to spell out the words, and things like punctuation aren't allowed. It's not a simple issue of "delete my f###ing account, kos!" because all the old diaries from DK3 are written by that user. I thought I'd heard there was some kind of special conversion planned for that kind of diary, to get rid of the old proto-group users -- anyone know anything about this? This is a big FP!
☯ User m4gill4 has an odd little group problem: when you form a group, you give it a name, but you're allowed to enter a longer "display name" to show on the group's profile page. All well and good, but the display name is a link, and the page it tries to link back to belongs to the display name, not the group's actual name, and there's no such page. This seems to be true for all groups that have taken advantage of the ability to enter a longer display name. (And of course, all the group profile sidebars like blogroll and followers aren't working right, but that's every group, I think.)
☯ And our last complaint for today, for group editors, is about publishing diaries in the group queue. Apparently "publish immediately" is buggy and should be avoided. Some say the problem is confined to re-publishing, while some report it with initial publishing. The safest method seems to be to use "schedule for later" and pick a time a minute or two hence AND to have a copy of your diary in Word or something, just in case.
Here are a few little tidbits we've gleaned lately:
☯ When you add a diary to your hotlist by clicking the little plus sign next to the title, you get the option to add a private note to yourself. This helps if you save things for some specific passage, maybe even a comment, so you won't come back later and say, why did I save this??
☯ The people who've recommended your diary are still shown, but they're in a new hiding place! On the right, under the box about the diarist, you'll see a Diary Recommended By box with a cross. Click the cross to make the recommenders visible. It looks like this (before and after expansion):
☯ Do you like reading front page stories but don't so much like going to the front page? Relax! The front page is a group, and you can follow it here and get all the stories in your stream! You can also get the diaries that belong to that annoying, changes-too-fast feature box here. And if you like the work of the Rescue Rangers but don't remember to check the "Community Spotlight" box, you can also get those diaries for your stream here, so you don't miss them all day. h/t to JanF at the J Town group.
Thanks for reading. I apologize for the bizarre spacing. Please pour our heart out about your latest bugs, glitches, and hated design features in the comments, and we will try to either talk you down or commiserate!