What would you like to see on VegWeb?
Posted by Webmistress Laura on Jun 12, 2009 · Member since Jun 2009 · 831 posts
Hello Awesome People Who Know VegWeb Best!
As I'm getting to know the site and learning as much as I can, I thought I'd take a moment to get opinions on any changes you'd like to see. What do you like? Love? Want to throw out a window? Anything and everything! It's obvious the community is active and vibrant and so I KNOW you have some opinions! Let's hear 'em!
If you're feeling shy or don't want to post in a thread, feel free to email me at eval(unescape('%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%22%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%6c%61%75%72%61%40%76%65%67%77%65%62%2e%63%6f%6d%22%3e%6c%61%75%72%61%40%76%65%67%77%65%62%2e%63%6f%6d%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29%3b')).
Thanks!!
Laura
On our local vegan forum we had the forums divided up in broad categories and then they were divided up into much more specific categories and it someone became impossible to figure out where to post or where to find a particular thread because people had different ideas of where things should go. Then it was moved back to 4 broad categories and it became much easier to use. But that is nowhere near as active a forum as vegweb so crowding the main page really isn't an issue. Anyway, just a thought in terms of ease of use. It can go both ways.
True. It's a balance and might require some experimentation.
What I'm thinking is, like, Chit Chat is where we post all questions related to health, lifestyle things, social things, random things, fitness things, personal stories, entertainment, etc. Those are hardly all "Chit Chat". On the other hand, I think News and Debate and Events are pretty well set up, as an example. It's clear what's in those sections.
Again, I think PPK is a good example, and it seems to work for them. Something similar.
i know sites like amazon allow you to rate comments as to how helpful they are. if vegweb had a similar system, a person could maybe view recipe reviews according to which ones were voted most helpful. I don't know how well that system could work here, but it's a thought.
Oh! That's a great idea. I don't know why I didn't think of that. That would be much simpler, and I imagine it would be impossible to divide already existing reviews into those that are actual reviews and those that are comments/questions.
Just an observation--I feel like in many other forums, the organizational setup makes it turn out to be many shorter, specific threads as opposed to fewer, longer threads. Here, we have lots of very very long threads, which isn't conducive to finding information. This happens because people don't want to crowd the main page with a small question. I think ideally, the forums would be divided up more thoroughly, with areas of smaller scope, so that we don't end up having these huge blanket threads for related things.
I like that idea too, KissMeKate. The PPK forum may be a very good model for dividing up threads by topic. Not that I think this site should be modeled exactly like the PPK, I love VegWeb. However, that system seems pretty efficient and easy to navigate.
Great ideas :)
If we are changing/adding forum categories, what about a food porn one? We can always add pics to recipes, but there are always more pics, and different recipes. That's my favorite category!
If we are changing/adding forum categories, what about a food porn one? We can always add pics to recipes, but there are always more pics, and different recipes. That's my favorite category!
Yes!
I'm sure someone has mentioned it already, but things like this: you go to "hummus" and there are like 50 recipes for basic hummus. Unnecessary and cluttered. We don't need 50 recipes that say, chickpeas+tahini+garlic+lemon juice. At least make your recipe have some defining characteristic, and name it so it's distinguishable!
(More of a user criticism than an admin thing--you'd think people would check to see if the same recipe already existed).
i know sites like amazon allow you to rate comments as to how helpful they are. if vegweb had a similar system, a person could maybe view recipe reviews according to which ones were voted most helpful. I don't know how well that system could work here, but it's a thought.
Oh! That's a great idea. I don't know why I didn't think of that. That would be much simpler, and I imagine it would be impossible to divide already existing reviews into those that are actual reviews and those that are comments/questions.
Yeah! and if we had the Usefulness rating function, would it then be possible to have a 'Sort By..' option, which allowed us to sort by either usefulness, or date, or poster's username? (I must say I look out for regular vegwebbers names in recipe comments, because they tend to give more known/trustworthy reviews, because they care about VW's reviews being useful! right?)
It would be nice to post links to my favourite recipes on my profile as well.
Seconded. A spiffy idea. :)
It would be nice to post links to my favourite recipes on my profile as well.
^ ^ this
It would be nice to post links to my favourite recipes on my profile as well.
^ ^ this
i think you can add links with an html tag. not sure?
i think it would be cool (building on this idea) (i think i mentioned it eariler) if users could make public "cookbooks" which are essentiall collections of recipes that they like. on sparkpeople i've seen ones that are for special diets. so someone could make a GF book, or a raw book, or whatever.
i think it would be cool to have a pimped out blog space for regular users to offer to run. so like lets say a group of us wanted to have a themed blog (dinners under 30 lets say) we could blog, featuring vegweb recipes. and then people can read our blog and say we are awesome. i think it might help pull more people in from the "blogosphere" who love the food porn.
i've thought about organizing a community blog for a bit but it keeps getting pushed off for other things.
i love the blog idea. expand the audience, make the site more attractive.
an adults-only section to keep threads like "Sex Toys" and "TMI Challenge" off the front forum page where people might be coming on to actually get help transitioning to a veg diet or have legitimate questions. It is a turn-off to a lot of people. Children can come on this site any time and there's no disclaimer or parental warning preceeding those threads. I didn't even know there were threads like that until last night.
I think this is important to do soon.
I really like the blogs idea AND the adult section idea AND the cookbook idea. I've been trying to think of stuff, but VW is pretty great already (:
A lot of the new stuff on here (vegwebber of the week, the giveaways, etc) is super rad too. Webmistress Laura gets an A plus in awesome!
i initially didn't like the adult section idea since it's not like we have a million threads that are anything more than maybe pg-13 rated and this is an adult site anyways. but maybe it would a good idea. it seems to come up a lot. if it would help smooth things out and make people feel more welcomed and comfortable, then maybe we should do it.
and perhaps, along with that, we should have a way to be able to move an entire thread over to that section if it crosses the line from pg-13 to adult only? i know that would probably be hard to do since it would require changing the urls and such... but maybe worth looking into?
although i do agree that when something has a suggestive title then perhaps you should assume it is not safe for work and not safe for kids.
It's easy to move threads, so that wouldn't be a prob. I'm not sure if having a seperate thread would address the issues, though. By that, I mean that Sex Toys isn't ambiguous. If someone who wants to be offended opens it, it's intentional. If there was another board for Sex Toys, what makes that same person not open it there and be offended?
It's easy to move threads, so that wouldn't be a prob. I'm not sure if having a seperate thread would address the issues, though. By that, I mean that Sex Toys isn't ambiguous. If someone who wants to be offended opens it, it's intentional. If there was another board for Sex Toys, what makes that same person not open it there and be offended?
This. It's the same with the argument that children can open adult threads on the chitchat board. They could just as easily open a dedicated adult-themed board and the threads within. ???
Doing is learning. In order for us to internalize that message, I think you're going to have to take us on a fieldtrip to Sweden. We can start in Gotland.
http://www.vagabondish.com/wp-content/uploads/girl-hill-gotland-sweden-2814584366.jpg
This may be adolescent of me, and it probably is, but I'd like to see my recipe for Arroz Vegana a la Cubana posted. I submitted it in February. It's really good.
there. I'm done now.
It's easy to move threads, so that wouldn't be a prob. I'm not sure if having a seperate thread would address the issues, though. By that, I mean that Sex Toys isn't ambiguous. If someone who wants to be offended opens it, it's intentional. If there was another board for Sex Toys, what makes that same person not open it there and be offended?
This. It's the same with the argument that children can open adult threads on the chitchat board. They could just as easily open a dedicated adult-themed board and the threads within. ???
I guess it would just be so we could say "The board said ADULT TOPICS, you knew what you were getting into.." and also so that people looking at topics on the ChitChat board don't come across adult stuff at all. On some sites, if you're looking at stuff for 18+, a thing comes up and says something like "you must be 18+ to view the content on this site. by clicking here you acknowledge you are of the age to look at this blahblah" and while it probably doesn't keep out kids, at least it's a warning and the board/site owners can be all "well we said they had to 18 and they liiiied, not out fault." I dunno.
By that, I mean that Sex Toys isn't ambiguous.
I had started to mentally prepare a list of my six favourite Swedish toys - Sampo, Dachshund, Stacking Clown, Track & Stack City, Freight Express and Bell Rattle.
When I clicked into the thread, I was a little shocked to discover that the 'sex' wasn't a Swedish translation of 'six'.
Please make thread titles less ambiguous. People with a knowledge of Swedish may be offended.
A +, db. A +.
This may be adolescent of me, and it probably is, but I'd like to see my recipe for Arroz Vegana a la Cubana posted. I submitted it in February. It's really good.
there. I'm done now.
Post it please, it sounds awesome!
Something where you customize your own page to look like whatever you want.
For instance, if you go to the "chit chat" threads all the time, have your page set so that when you login thats the first thing you see or something only in a miny module and then when you click on it it expands to full page size, rather than having to click around to go to it. I don't really know how to explain it and I'm not trying to sound "myspace like" but the feature for that site is neat where you can bump things around on your home page and arrange them however you want.
I don't know, the thought just ran across my mind :).
I'm sure that would be an expensive upgrade to do?
For instance, if you go to the "chit chat" threads all the time
I set vegweb bookmarked so that I go directly to the forum. You could bookmark it to go directly to chit chat. As an in-between fix. It's not really what you're describing, though.
While I was baking today (yes, I was baking!), I thought about the "adult" threads. The main complainant about them has been from our re-occurring troll who attacks kmk and ac with each reiterating screen name. So that kmk started the thread, it's no wonder the troll went after it. And keeps going after it everytime she re-registers. I'm not sure that constitutes a considerable population of dissenters. The people who come to the board who only want to talk about food and cooking can go to the Food & Cooking board. That's what it's there for. For people who want Chit Chat, there's a board for that, too. I can see re-arranging the boards so that Food & Cooking is on the top. Making a separate "adult" room is unnecessary because the threads are easy to avoid. I can see them being moved to the News & Debate board. If there was a god-is-great thread, I'd want to see it there instead of mucking up the chit chat board. So, maybe that's a solution.
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