Changes: Xfire

by Shakes • 3 Nov 2006, 20:04 • Journals
Not going to abuse the articles section for this but in my very humble opinion there are some things on Xfire that could/should be better.

1) Custom flags. I already thought the constant flag changing was annoying that everyone suddenly wanted to have a flag with some weird african country but ok. Now on the other hand everyone has a different flag which is just annoying. They don't add anything to the site except making this site look like a drawing class for 2 years old. Look mommy at the pretty pictures!!! So my suggestion - remove the flags. All of them. Atleast in usernames, they actually have use in newsposts.

2) Replies. I don't care for non-funny-childish replies in journals, hey everything do what they want there (as I am doing now). However look at the newspost of 'Team Spain'. 100+ comments. What is in them? GL. Wow, that really adds something. In news/articles every reply that doesn't add anything to the subject at hand should be deleted. Sometimes it's better to have no replies than those. That also improves the discussion which happen at times and those actually make this site interesting. GL comments or non-funny-childish replies do not.

3) Basically an addition to point 2. With that in effect only show latest comments that are added in news/articles to the list. What use is it currently when it only shows comments that are completely useless and that causes the list to change every minute so it's just coincidence if you see a reply there which could actually interest you.
Comments
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cheasy 3 Nov 2006, 20:05
Anonymous gl
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zivs 3 Nov 2006, 20:06
I smell old chease! :X
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Gaso 3 Nov 2006, 20:15
Now that was mean.
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Viax 3 Nov 2006, 20:07
If you wanted to realise points 2 and 3 you'd have to ban half the people browsing Xfire. Not like I'd mind though.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:12
Not ban, just remove their comments. It won't reduce the amount of unique visitors that visit this site but only the pageviews. While quality of the site goes up and could actually be more attractive to sponsors and god knows what great CF event could be the result of that.
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Nellie 3 Nov 2006, 20:14
Team to Qcon, 2 LANs - don't think the sponsors mind so much :)
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:17
That you have sponsors doesn't necessarily mean it's perfect. Just means it isn't horrible.
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Viax 3 Nov 2006, 20:24
I think banning them would be easier than to remove every single comment they post. You'll need a team of admins working on just that. People will keep posting crap if admins keep removing it, it's how some people work. They want recognition and attention.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:26
Just remove every comment with less then 50 characters. That would do the trick just fine. Almost every useless comment gone and just a few comments that really contributed something.
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Nellie 3 Nov 2006, 20:35
This journal would be empty :)
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Viax 3 Nov 2006, 20:38
Your comment has less than 50 comments. It should be deleted!
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:43
Just picked a random number! Was just to give an idea. Surely you knew that.
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DevaS 3 Nov 2006, 20:08
It shows that we care about team Spain, and we wish them good luck.
When you do something good, you want to be recognized, dont you? So we wish them the very best, and support them mentaly !
I think it's important to show some respect to them.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:13
Respect has to be written down? Respect has to be written down in GL? I'd rather have no respect then.
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DevaS 3 Nov 2006, 20:18
We shall all visit their ventrilo and whine their ears of.
It's the fucking internet, there is no other way than to write down your feeling.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:25
If there is no other way to show someone your respect then to type GL on a website while there is IRC/MSN (meant for chatting online!) there really is no reason to do it. Since apparantly you don't know them very well or you would tell them in 'person' (quoted because it's the internet) so they really won't care.
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Nellie 3 Nov 2006, 20:11
There's been a lot of talk about moderation, whether there's over/under - we came to the conclusion it's marmite.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:15
No idea what you mean with marmite in that sentence.

Could I know why you concluded that? It's great for pageviews I agree. I doesn't do anything to improve the amount of unique visitors per day and I think it lowers the quality of the site. So in a case of pageviews vs quality - what do you prefer?
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Nellie 3 Nov 2006, 20:16
"it's like marmite - you either love it or hate it"

I prefer allowing the userbase to do as they please, within reason.

Edit: I see no problem with the Team Spain news post, there may be no essay replies but all the posts are relevant.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:21
I learned something again, it's never too late.

Fair enough. The strength of the site was that it's community driven and that already got reduced with the 'approving news' thing (not that that was a bad decision). Apparantly not all the added content added to the quality of the site. Why doesn't the same count for comments? 99% is useless and doesn't add anything to the quality.
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Nellie 3 Nov 2006, 20:23
It all depends how you define spam, and the part of xfire you're browsing. You won't find much spam in the articles or columns, that's not because they're heavily moderated - it's just the userbase knows that serious comments belong there. Guess I consider journals as sort of an extention of irc, long as the comments aren't "1st" etc I'd leave people to it.

All submitted news goes directly onto the site, it just needs approving to get on the main page.

This allows for lesser important, though relevant to some (ie lower skilled clans new lineups, a 1 day cup etc) to get more focus. It also prevents malicious news which we've had problems with in the past getting on the main page. This allows for more community news, rather than as you implied less.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:28
I know that every news item is still on the site.

Don't see why it allows for more community news. Previously it was in the news sections (which now needs approving) or moved to the journals. It was on the site then and it is now. Anyway, that's not really the issue.

** You edited your post!
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Nellie 3 Nov 2006, 20:29
Read my edit.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:31
Saw you only added something. Read my comment below - point 3.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:30
Let's go on to point 3. Tell me what the 'latest comments' section adds currently.
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Nellie 3 Nov 2006, 20:34
Links to the latest comments :o

That's pretty much the primary way I navigate the site, is most people the last time I checked analytics.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:38
So you refresh the site every minute to remain updated and read all the replies in journals? Bar a few one (mostly the title indicates whether it's worthwhile to read) I don't read any journals let alone the comments there. Check the latest comments box - only linked to journals because most comments (of which most are useless) are in the journal section.

Again, I don't want the journals section removed and the comments in there just the important things on this page to be rid of those usefull comments. Also, with the latest comment box, more attention to the news/articles which are the important things.
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Nellie 3 Nov 2006, 20:43
Sure a filter for the comments box would be a good feature for those that want it - selecting what you want shown. Will put it to taLa :)

Think of the comments box as a "Last unread comment" button, you don't need to refresh all the time to use it. You don't like journals so it's practically useless to you, the majority of the site do.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:35
The news about CB going 6v6:
" Xend on 03/11/06, 17:13:30 PM | Reply

WHAT A SURPRISE "

Don't those replies, of which there are plenty, just make you stop reading any comment at all? That way comments that might actually add something to the topic at hand or a discussion get overlooked. That way the quality goes down.
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Nellie 3 Nov 2006, 20:37
He's expressing his astonishment?:)

It's a page with over 400 comments, I guess most people do as I do & ignore it. Sure it doesn't add much, doesn't really detract from the site either. I've not really seen any case of serious discussion getting overlooked due to those kind of comments - xfire users are a hardcore bunch.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:42
I really liked reading his astonishment (just picked on of the last comments on a topic I know replied to yesterday). With the many comments, knowing most are useless I hardly read any replies at all. Surely I'm not the only one.... ?
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kahoz 3 Nov 2006, 20:47
<3 marmite
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risee 3 Nov 2006, 20:18
1) Remove custom flags, its really annoying, flags should show the user's origin. But don't remove them completely, i like them

2) and 3) If you remove useless posts, it's not xfire any more, thats what xfire is about
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:22
Xfire is about useless posts? That's what I'm saying about quality - the comments really hurt it. For chatting go to MSN/IRC, if you want to wish someone goodluck PM them and then Xfire can remain clean.
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risee 3 Nov 2006, 20:30
so you prefer a censorship?
It's a gaming community, what do you expect? Of course there are ppl posting a lot of crap but its far better than having comments deleted and censorship. This would really piss ppl off and xfire would lose some of its flavor. Though there are a lot of retarded journals i wouldn't want to miss them.
Having no over-commited admins who warn ppl and delete every second comment makes xfire likeable
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:32
Do I say anything about the journals? News/articles.
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risee 3 Nov 2006, 20:34
removing comments is still a censhorship, why shouldn't ppl be allowed to wish them gl? It lowers the quality of the site... ah right
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Lagger 3 Nov 2006, 20:33
Slashdot moderation thingies?
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:42
Don't know what that is :(
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Lagger 3 Nov 2006, 21:03
It's a system where all comments are given a score, it starts out at 1 (or 2 if you have a good reputation), and users of the site gets a few moderator points every once in a while. A moderator can spend a point to mod a good comment up or a spam comment down. comment scores range from -1 to 5.

When reading the comments you can set a threshold to filter out comments with a low score, and thus get your quality xfire, or you can view all comments in all their spammy goodness.

Of course this system requires that comments can't be edited or deleted. That way, people are responsible for what they write.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 21:33
Maybe that would work quite well.
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Sick 3 Nov 2006, 20:38
Nice, finally something I can agree with. The flags are very annoying in my point of view and I don`t really care about the "GL"`s, although the flame and the constructive contribution in comments and jurnals on xfire has decreased in the last months, which makes it more boring to read (Yes I sometimes like people insulting eachother).
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:40
People insulting eachother, like the useless comments, are great for pageviews bad for the site. Just will make 'serious' people not post (I'm not serious btw).
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Sick 3 Nov 2006, 20:45
Well, for me articles/columns were always for the serious content(comments), and journals for the not significant things(often included with insults/flame(which was, for me, entertaining)). Nowadays they just contain boring bullshit.
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 20:49
Completely agree, that's why I wrote the above. Let's fight to gather! :) The serious content just got overwhelmed by the bullshit.
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Nellie 3 Nov 2006, 20:51
Disapointed by the team nl journal, was a blood bath last year :v
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Sick 3 Nov 2006, 20:54
Let`s hope, that the further national-team announcements will bring my beloved insults!
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Orkrist 3 Nov 2006, 20:53
And please finally enforce the only-acceptable-language-is -English rule.

It's really annoying that all of a sudden a conversations in Dutch/German (well, at least most of the time it's either one of these languages) in the middle of an otherwise English journal/collum/article/newspost starts.
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fusen 3 Nov 2006, 21:16
I rarely see that happen, and if I do, I'll delete it, where as journals marked as "X country only" I'll let slip
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Deactivated5956 3 Nov 2006, 21:09
ban all who not wanna make this change ! imo
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Nippel 3 Nov 2006, 21:18
GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN

and xfire is about this, having fun @ journals and communicate with other gamers :)
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INSECURE 3 Nov 2006, 21:24
Well, realizing option 2 and 3 is very hard, also seen one of the admins is such a crazy guy (hint: his first letter is a ''L''.
Although ''Mr ''L'' isn't the only example, you should rather delete this post or so, seen no one cares nowadays x)


BTW:
GOTTA LOVE LOEKINO
[/b]
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Rhand 3 Nov 2006, 21:37
No, no and no. I already think this site is quite strictly moderated at some points. No need to censorize this site more then it is already now.

Weird behaviour for a libertarian I have to say.
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INSECURE 3 Nov 2006, 21:40
You know the best of all how strictly moderated this site is, dont you?
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Shakes 3 Nov 2006, 23:20
Libertarian = style of government. Doesn't influence how someone runs his own site. That person is allowed to do whatever he wants with his own site - that's liberal.
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Rhand 3 Nov 2006, 23:24
I wasn't talking about that. I was rather referring to the fact that I found it quite strange that a libertarian would prpose censorship.

That's all.
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TosspoT 4 Nov 2006, 02:30
Sure shakes, kill the pageview count on the site :)

You've much to learn about why people RETURN to a website. If you wanted to view Crossfire for souly its content, you wouldnt have a problem in doing so, however if you wanted to interact then you need a website that supports user activity which is exactly what this style of site does.

Just FYI, the site has grown more than a third in the past 4 months. Why you want to hurt this?
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Shakes 8 Nov 2006, 22:19
Just saying that pageviews isn't all that satisfactory. Apparantly you think otherwise.

User activity great, but at what cost? Sometimes comments really add something now hardly anyone sees them because it's a very small %. I hardly read comments at all when I visit Xfire since most are < 5 words and they don't add anything. Sure it added a few pageviews but then what? Again - don't mind when they are in journals but discussions at the articles section or in the news section shouldn't be downgraded to a retard playground. There is no need to interact there ala IRC.

I do know why people return to a website. Discussions add a lot more to that then random dumb comments. Discussions make people refresh the page constantly to see whether someone has responded to them - 'GL' comments do NOT.

Do you think less people would come when there would be no GL comments? Might take some pageviews away but the quality would go up.
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