Young Writers Society

Hey Nate, Just want to give you a special thank you for getting up the Profiles, so to show how grateful I am, I wrote you a poem.

Nate the Great

Nate, the young writer, has got mad skills
When it comes to up dating web sites.
Even stricken after the donut run,
He's stayed up, hard at work in the night.

For a time the 'Like' button dissappeared,
But it has since been returned.
What we need now is a button saying;
'This Work Should Really Be Burned'.

Oh, come on, don't take it that way.
You know that I simply tease.
On the YWS we're polite and kind
What I meant was 'Burn This Trash, PLEASE!'

But all jokes aside,
I just want to thank Nate.
Because with all his hard work
The site's looking great!

Thank you, Nate!

~Dragongirl

No worries Spark, but thank you for being so forgiving of my remark. I'm getting crabby! I'm afraid all the updating is taking its toll.

Dragongirl ->> Thank you, but with profile commenting now in place, please direct any further gracious comments to my profile. Thanks!


Everyone ->> Please excuse my testiness. However, everything from the old YWS will be back with the possible exception of badges (the nomination system is just too complicated). Beyond that, a ton of new features are being added as well.

Sometime in the next few days (maybe today), I'll make a post in my blog about everything that will be happening. Pretty much everything (incl. the forums) still has stuff to be added and changed, and I'm honestly not sure when I'll be done with everything. The major stuff should be done fairly soon (within the next few weeks), but then there's a thousand little things left to be done.

At any rate, the following system will be re-implemented later today, and notifications and feeds should follow soon enough. Just keep an eye on this thread!

oh! Shiny new features! I'm about to EXPLODE from excitement. Anyway, no problem Nate, I would have flipped out on everyone by now if I was you. xD

Woo commenting had returned! Thanks Nate
Also, is it just me or has the option to edit preferences been removed? I've searched for it but might be being very slow...

Nate wrote:Everything else about profiles is gone, but that'll be fixed soon enough. Although, my next priority is notifications and then portfolios, so don't expect all the missing information to re-appear for a couple days.

That answers my question. I was wondering when I will be able to see my stats and stuff. Thanks for the constant updates, Nate!

I'm getting crabby!

Noooo, Nate, haven't you heard? We're bringing back "curmudgeonly."

At least I can sleep well tonight, knowing the different features of YWS to expect as I will read it in Nate's Blog. I'm so excited!

Too bad about the badges, though. At first look, it does seem to be very complicated. It was a good feature, though. But of course, the new features will be replacing this oldie! No worries!

I noticed that the Popdown is already vertical. That's a good one!

Your pal,
Al

Yay! Shiny stuff.

noninjaspresent wrote:Yay! Shiny stuff.

+1

It's so PRETTTTTTY.

Well, the 'People' tab was added last night. So linguistically, the 'Feeds' will indeed not be coming back!

Creating a new area just for feeds (as opposed to making them part of profiles) allows for a lot more flexibility within the system. For one, it makes it a lot easier design-wise to allow for the creation of user lists. Previously, that was of course possible, but the design implementation of the filter would've been tough to do right. Now, the filter could be done by just adding a button for each list you've created in the sidebar area.

As a quick aside, lists won't actually be created anytime soon as there's currently no need for it (there's just not enough activity). However, as/if the site grows, I will add that implementation in.

But more than that, the 'People' tab will also make something else very easy to do: hashtags, mentions, and auto-groups. I alluded to these additions in one of my status messages today, and they'll be added in this weekend.

All of the below pertains only to the 'People' area:

Hashtags

These will be familiar to anyone who uses #Twitter. A #hashtag is really just a way of marking keywords within a post, and then the server will automatically turn that #hashtag into a link. Clicking the link will then show you all posts with that #hashtag. Make sense?

Mentions

If you wanted to mention @freakforchrist in a post, you'd just do that. That person would then get a notification letting them know they've been mentioned. Plus, the system would automatically link @freakforchrist to freakforchrist's profile.

Auto-groups

Hashtags are for keywords, while auto-groups are for categories. Groups are marked off with a forward-slash: \. The below would be an example of it's usage:

Nate wrote:Watching the #superbowl this weekend. /sports

Or:

Nate wrote: Currently #reading The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. @Brian recommended it to me. /books /scifi

Clicking on /books, /scifi, or /sports would then take you to all posts that have been grouped by others in this way.


I think hashtags, mentions, and auto-groups could dramatically transform the People tab into something much deeper and much richer.

Edit

Also, some people have talked about the 'Weblogs' tab. I guess a lot of people don't know anymore that 'Blog' is just a shortened form of 'Weblog'! Where do you think the name came from anyways?

In any case, I changed it to 'Weblogs' to keep with the alphabetical order of the tabs. Otherwise, 'Blogs' would've been the first tab, and I want to keep 'Browse' as the first tab.

I #like this, @Nate! /praise

Alphabetical!? I haven't paid any attention, have I? T'is the first time I noticed it! Ha!

Anyways, love the new People area! It's a good shortcut for the 'feeds'. I'm very excited to use the new features! Where in the People area will they appear on?

Also, I would like to agree with your statement. There are not much activity here nowadays. Wonder why?

Your pal,
Al

YES!!! These new bells and whistles are awesome! Thank you so much for an awesome site, Nate!

A couple people have asked, but there will not be 'Liking' for replies to profile comments & status messages. I honestly can't remember if you could do that on the old YWS, but the reason is just that it would take too much time to implement. Believe it or not, but 'Liking' was by far the most difficult feature to implement for profile comments. The actual submission system was a cinch to set up, as was everything else. But just allowing people to 'Like' and 'Unlike' comments took me four hours! Honestly, I have no idea why it took so long other than there's just a lot of minutiae involved. Even at the time I was doing it, I remember thinking, "Why the heck is this taking so long?".

So, no liking for replies to profile comments. Sorry!