Profile page redesign: now with a feed! page 14

EPR, it takes a lot of the features, such as game contributions off and replaces that space with a bunch of statistics in big text no one really cares about.

And it also uses a lot of space for that feed no one wants.

Want my real advice and feedback? It’s a failure, and we should go back to the old design. But while the old design was near perfect, there are always improvements to be made. This is why these changes should be made slowly, working closely with the community. Right now, it’s happening too fast with not enough say from the community or outreach to the community to try and get them to say something.

Originally posted by EPR89:

I guess it should be clear now that practically no one finds the feed really useful.

A guy I met on Kong a couple of years ago IMed me a while back all panicky over something. He’d been watching a video on YouTube and it pushed a few pieces of “evidence” that the Illuminati secretly were ruling the world. It was a well presented video… they had dark backgrounds and ominous muisic playing as people solemnly talked about how various events were Illuimati conspiracies. It was quite convincing for an impressionable 14 year old boy, and he firmly beleived in the Illuimanti from that point onwards.

But wait. What was the video missing? That’s right – it was only telling him the evidience for the illuminati. He was so caught up in the production trickery and the apparent authenticity of the interviews that he didn’t notice he was only being told one side of the story. Faced with a flood of almost entirely one-way “evidence”, he discarded any opposition to it, ither from himself or from other people.

This thread is similarly one sided. I know plenty of people who do like the feed, but they looked at the forum and said “Lol so much rage, I think it’s a cool feature”, and didn’t bother posting. People don’t tend to get all up in arms and outraged over something when they like it, only when they don’t. In other words, whatever you think of the news feed, and whatever the thread looks like it says about the feed, you’re only seeing one side of the story. There are a few people who’ve turned it into their own personal crusade, though they can’t actually agree on why they don’t like the feed (a major warning sign of a kneejerk reaction), and not only are they dominating the discussion, they’re also actively looking in chatrooms for other people to come and join their cause.

And there will always be opposition to any new change, and people to rally against something new or unfamiliar. It’s impossible to make soemthing that everyone is 100% pleased with. You can start a campaign for anything on the internet and it will get some followers. I’m sure with a similar amount of work put into it, you could find people who think Kong shouldn’t host games at all, and just be a chat / forum site.

A million people petitioned against the “Like” button when Facebook first standardized the name for it. In hindsight, do you think they were right, or is ‘Liking’ something you instantly associate with Facebook now?

A guy I met on Kong a couple of years ago IMed me a while back all panicky over something. He’d been watching a video on YouTube and it pushed a few pieces of “evidence” that the Illuminati secretly were ruling the world. It was a well presented video… they had dark backgrounds and ominous muisic playing as people solemnly talked about how various events were Illuimati conspiracies. It was quite convincing for an impressionable 14 year old boy, and he firmly beleived in the Illuimanti from that point onwards.

But wait. What was the video missing? That’s right – it was only telling him the evidience for the illuminati. He was so caught up in the production trickery and the apparent authenticity of the interviews that he didn’t notice he was only being told one side of the story. Faced with a flood of almost entirely one-way “evidence”, he discarded any opposition to it, ither from himself or from other people.

Mate, we’ve been looking for the evidence that a majority, in fact, likes the feed. We have a few, here and there, and the positive “knee-jerk” (yes, there is both a negative and positive knee-jerk reaction) to the update.

The only feedback exists inside e-mails sent to Kongregate, and this thread. Since we can’t see the e-mails, we can only assume based on information from the thread because there is no other evidence available to go against the negative reaction.

This thread is similarly one sided. I know plenty of people who do like the feed, but they looked at the forum and said “Lol so much rage, I think it’s a cool feature”, and didn’t bother posting. People don’t tend to get all up in arms and outraged over something when they like it, only when they don’t. In other words, whatever you think of the news feed, and whatever the thread looks like it says about the feed, you’re only seeing one side of the story. There are a few people who’ve turned it into their own personal crusade, though they can’t actually agree on why they don’t like the feed (a major warning sign of a kneejerk reaction), and not only are they dominating the discussion, they’re also actively looking in chatrooms for other people to come and join their cause.

Prove it.

You’ve made so many claims in this thread without being able to accurately back them up. You claim now that you have tons of friends who do like the feed. If so, get them to post in this thread — or, at the least, message me showing their support.

I’ve asked, and asked, and asked for evidence of a majority supporting this change and not simply going along with it. You also claim that some ask that people go into chatrooms and get people to post negative comments on the update. You’ll find that a lot of those were from me. However, if you go back, I stress that people post true opinions, whether negative or positive. I can tell you, quite honestly, that people were either hating the new update or sadly were just going along with it.

If you claim that a lot of people like the feed, simply provide the evidence instead of claiming that it is there. I want to see people, who actually have the update, saying that they like it in this thread or someplace else.

And there will always be opposition to any new change, and people to rally against something new or unfamiliar. It’s impossible to make soemthing that everyone is 100% pleased with. You can start a campaign for anything on the internet and it will get some followers. I’m sure with a similar amount of work put into it, you could find people who think Kong shouldn’t host games at all, and just be a chat / forum site.

OK, so when there’s a change, there’s opposition to it.

So?

You make it sound like opposition actually makes it a good update. It all depends on what the majority think, and any evidence that is actually available to us makes the claim that the majority does not like this update.

That, of course, does not mean a majority does not like the update, just that the current evidence does not support that.

A million people petitioned against the “Like” button when Facebook first standardized the name for it. In hindsight, do you think they were right, or is ‘Liking’ something you instantly associate with Facebook now?

I don’t like anything Facebook does, so I don’t know what you want me to say.

Originally posted by MyDreamName:

Mate, we’ve been looking for the evidence that a majority, in fact, likes the feed. We have a few, here and there, and the positive “knee-jerk” (yes, there is both a negative and positive knee-jerk reaction) to the update.

The only feedback exists inside e-mails sent to Kongregate, and this thread. Since we can’t see the e-mails, we can only assume based on information from the thread because there is no other evidence available to go against the negative reaction.

The point where you said “assume” should be where you realize you might not be seeing the full story. The only way to get a real picture of how things are working is through split testing, which the admins already said is what’s being carried out. It’s one of many points where you’re determined to trust the opinions of about 50 outspoken forum users rather than the stats Kong collects on millions of users.

People don’t want to come and post positive things about the new update for two reasons.

One, everyone who has said anything positive about the changes has been shouted down, criticized, asked to justify how they can like such a “terrible” feature, or whatever. This thread is overwhelmingly hostile.

And two, people who are happy with features rarely come and post about them. How many times did you post about how much you liked Kong’s profiles, before the changes were made? Probably never. So should I assume that you hated them, because you weren’t saying how much you liked them?

I can honestly say I have never, ever seen a thread where users were complimenting the existing profiles. I do remember many threads and many suggestions about having a proper news feed, the ability to follow developers, and so on, though. In fact, I think you yourself quoted an admin earlier on the point that profiles were already the least used section of the site, hence the reason for an overhaul. If nothing else, the stats they must have been collecting to know that should suggest most people on the site didn’t actually care much for the current profile. Improving it to a point where more people use it seems like the right move after that.

Originally posted by MyDreamName:

You’ve made so many claims in this thread without being able to accurately back them up. You claim now that you have tons of friends who do like the feed. If so, get them to post in this thread — or, at the least, message me showing their support.

My only claims that weren’t backed up are that I know people who do like the update, and that they didn’t care enough to get involved in the debate about it. And well….. no, I’m not going to go round up people I know and ask them to go and message some random guy on the forums about it. If you don’t believe me, big deal, my post wasn’t to you in the first place, and the idea of going and telling people they have to go send their input on the changes to someone who doesn’t even represent Kongregate is amazing in itself.

As for the rest of the post, you’ve either misunderstood or misrepresented what I actually said, so I won’t bother getting into that sort of argument.

My only claims that weren’t backed up are that I know people who do like the update, and that they didn’t care enough to get involved in the debate about it. And well….. no, I’m not going to go round up people I know and ask them to go and message some random guy on the forums about it. If you don’t believe me, big deal, my post wasn’t to you in the first place, and the idea of going and telling people they have to go send their input on the changes to someone who doesn’t even represent Kongregate is amazing in itself.

You’re misunderstanding why I had asked them to message me in the first place. In fact, you just stated the exact reason I had said “at least message me instead,” saying that the thread was in fact hostile and that is why they are not posting in here.

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As for the rest of the post, aren’t you assuming that this thread does not represent the majority of Kongregate’s opinion? If so, wouldn’t that just be as bad as what I’m doing?

All I had asked for was evidence of the majority, either from opinions or the statistics that Kongregate is collecting. I’m only asserting things based on what I’ve seen from both people in Kongregate’s chat in thread, but I never said that they could be false.

As for the “least used” comment, it was sort of a joke as the profiles were never meant to be excessively used on the previous design, which, as I am assuming from a lot of the opinions here, was just fine.

Originally posted by MyDreamName:
As for the rest of the post, aren’t you assuming that this thread does not represent the majority of Kongregate’s opinion?

Let’s say 300 people posted in this thread. That’s 0.0043% of Kong’s registered users, and I rounded that up. That’s clearly not a majority, and it’s nowhere close to a representative sample either. The numbers are meaningless at that level.

I didn’t post any suggestion of a majority in either direction since my point was that without the stats that Kong collects it’s impossible to say “nobody likes this” or “everyone preferred this”.

just something i threw together cause i was bored. shrunk down for spam reasons. just an idea of where things could go. only activity feed and shouts would require scrolling for most resolutions.

Originally posted by saybox:

Originally posted by MyDreamName:
As for the rest of the post, aren’t you assuming that this thread does not represent the majority of Kongregate’s opinion?

Let’s say 300 people posted in this thread. That’s 0.0043% of Kong’s registered users, and I rounded that up. That’s clearly not a majority, and it’s nowhere close to a representative sample either. The numbers are meaningless at that level.

I didn’t post any suggestion of a majority in either direction since my point was that without the stats that Kong collects it’s impossible to say “nobody likes this” or “everyone preferred this”.

Whereas my point was, to Kongregate users, this thread represents any evidence indicating a general opinion on an update.

I don’t really have much to say rather than you are correct that it doesn’t represent a true majority, but of the people here, it does show a trend of people having a generally negative opinion, even if the numbers are too small to say anything conclusively about the population.

Also, somewhat unrelated, but registered users is no where close to unique, active people using Kongregate. Although, that would most likely be not anywhere close to a conclusive number, either.

Originally posted by EPR89:

The only thing that I would change in the new profile is having a button to switch between the activity feed and the shouts. I really liked the old shout section, because you could easily follow a conversation. Right now shouts are sort of vanishing in all the comments, activities and other stuff. The shouts and how they can easily be accessed right on the profile, are something that I always connected with Kongregate. Something that that, to me, simply IS Kongregate.
Made a crappy quick image to show how that could look like.

The activity feed could be more or less the exact same thing we have now, maybe even with a few options to adjust what you would like to share and the comments section features the comments only, to make conversations easier and more fluent. And if it has not been changed yet, getting a notification for when someone answers to a shout you posted on someone else’s profile would be cool too. Right now many conversations don’t work “post on someone’s profile. That guy posts a direct reply to that post.” but rather “post on someone’s profile. That guy posts an independent shout on my profile as a reply.” After a while it is impossible to follow the flow of that conversation, especially on longer ones.
And since forum posts are usually also something that carries a bit more weight than the “XYZ earned this or that achievement” notification maybe there should be a button for those too.
Other than that, the new profiles are pretty damn cool. None of the features of the old profiles have been sacrificed and no information was lost (unlike the new YouTube for example, where the whole About Me section was simply gone over night. Those bastards…). Great work!

please. this.

Can we get some official response to this? It’s been a few days the profiles’ve been…..essentially broken for what I use them for.

Agreed on getting some admin feedback as to what is going on…

New profile does not show games users have supported.

Originally posted by Amibtious:

Can we get some official response to this? It’s been a few days the profiles’ve been…..essentially broken for what I use them for.

……
Has anyone mastered Summon Admin spell?

I fourth the request for some administrative response.

I often hear how most users in voice of this thread are the disapproving minority of entire community

True, you also seem to doubt whether we represent members of kongregate’s community as a whole. Well, I got my opinions on that but let’s move to a main point: Why not to arrange a campaign featuring a poll or something similar and advertise it in order to find personal opinion of wider range of audience, I know it takes time and costs some money but it’d give more accurate data for exchange of how people actually take this new profile layout

Yes, problems WILL be involved with this, I am well aware of that

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Throughout my years of kongregatation, I have noticed that changes might be made after updates… They just seel to be quite rare sight though

I’d really appreciate if head of kongregate would actually consider users experience more weighing than before. After all, kongregate is and was built on users

and in case this gets commented

Hey all— I believe someone who works with the product development team will answer this in more detail later on, but I did want to chime in so you know we’re listening. We actually discuss every day the things that you all have been saying in here, and it’s really useful.

At the same time, we also want to “listen” (by gathering data about how people are using the new and old profiles) to the 98% of users who don’t post in the forums. Once we feel like we have enough information from the split test we’ve been running, we’ll combine that with the things you all have written about and figure out how to proceed.

Honestly, we are listening! It’s just that any action we might take at this point would be jumping the gun.

Hey tricky, if that’s the case, I want to address that I don’t want a new feature being plugged into the already cluttered new design that Kongregate is proposing, along with supported games and the such being stuffed into a non-distinct box no one is going to pay attention to.

There was nothing wrong with the old update, and any changes that seem practical to you guys can be put on slowly, rather than just announcing this huge change and expecting Kongregate just to accept it (because that is jumping the gun).

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Another point I wanted to bring up was that I wanted Kongregate to connect more to its users. Currently, we feel as if we are being cheated out of our optimal experience, and we are being lied to in order to get these sort of updates pushed through (like how Kongregate’s administrators lied about the word “friend” being confusing, when it was just to hide this update and “friend” got worked in anyway and to try and get people to accept the term “follow”).

Another thing Kongregate can do, is when someone engages in the split-test testing, is send them a PM encouraging them to go and express their opinions either on here, or by e-mailing you guys. I can enter split-testing, but I get nothing that indicates I should give any sort of feedback to you guys anywhere, whereas you could just be sending them out a PM — sort of like you do to the Kong Plus guys, exclusively.

Statistics can be misinterpreted — any activity on the profiles, for example, can just be someone playing around with all the new features. Opinions are less likely to have that effect, and it seems Kongregate is not trying hard enough to get those opinions.

Originally posted by trickyrodent:

Hey all— I believe someone who works with the product development team will answer this in more detail later on, but I did want to chime in so you know we’re listening. We actually discuss every day the things that you all have been saying in here, and it’s really useful.

At the same time, we also want to “listen” (by gathering data about how people are using the new and old profiles) to the 98% of users who don’t post in the forums. Once we feel like we have enough information from the split test we’ve been running, we’ll combine that with the things you all have written about and figure out how to proceed.

Honestly, we are listening! It’s just that any action we might take at this point would be jumping the gun.

consolidation.

everything that is currently on the profile, can still be on the profile and take one third of the space. (ive tested it when i was bored)

im not even saying to remove/add any features. just use smaller fonts and put things closer together.

And then no one can see it because everything is so small and cluttered together.

That’s true, racefan.

You have to remember that those people who use Facebook can only read big texts, or at the least, read the same text as the rest of us if it is arranged in a Facebook-like fashion.

So, what about still not being able to shout permanently banned usesr and the fact that their profile is now automatically private? I can not think of a single reason anyone would like this…

just noticed sometbhing really bad… when you reply to a shout it dosn’t get bumped back up to the top…
really this ruins the whole feed, and also you need to do that shout page that quoted before… i think that would be the best way to go through with this

Originally posted by racefan12:

And then no one can see it because everything is so small and cluttered together.

no, its easy to read. it is also not cluttered, it is organized.

and to people who cant read small font. ctrl+mouse wheel scroll.

any changes that seem practical to you guys can be put on slowly, rather than just announcing this huge change and expecting Kongregate just to accept it (because that is jumping the gun).

We never expected everyone to just accept it :P I’ve been around long enough to know that there will always be people resistant to any changes we make. It’d be amazing to come up with something that everyone universally loves right away, but I can’t imagine that will ever happen. I know it sounds trite, but all we can do is our best and that’s what we’re doing :/

Another point I wanted to bring up was that I wanted Kongregate to connect more to its users. Currently, we feel as if we are being cheated out of our optimal experience, and we are being lied to in order to get these sort of updates pushed through (like how Kongregate’s administrators lied about the word “friend” being confusing, when it was just to hide this update and “friend” got worked in anyway and to try and get people to accept the term “follow”).

The vast, vast, vast majority of Kongregate users never added anyone as a friend. We want to encourage social connections and the system we had wasn’t working. You can believe this is all a lie if you want, but it’s really just a fact. It wasn’t working. We’re trying to fix that and one of the things we’re trying is changing that terminology. If you added someone as a friend, it evidently wasn’t too confusing to you, but it very likely was to at lease some of the >90% of users that never added anyone :P

We’ve done our best to explain why we made the changes we have to our users. Obviously there are people that disagree with our reasoning, but we’re looking at the big picture of what we think is best for Kongregate. That absolutely includes our most dedicated and social users, but it also includes the silent users. There are people that don’t want us to increase the size of the Kongregate community, and as someone that’s been around since early 2007 when there was a small, intimate community, I understand those feelings, but that’s just something we’re going to have to agree to disagree on. We love the community, we’re proud of the community, and we want more people to experience it :)

Another thing Kongregate can do, is when someone engages in the split-test testing, is send them a PM encouraging them to go and express their opinions either on here, or by e-mailing you guys. I can enter split-testing, but I get nothing that indicates I should give any sort of feedback to you guys anywhere, whereas you could just be sending them out a PM — sort of like you do to the Kong Plus guys, exclusively.

We read every post written about the subject, but we also look at a lot of data. There are ways to see how users react to changes even if they don’t post in the forums about it. That said, we absolutely do value your opinions you post here and we appreciate all constructive feedback. Specific things you miss about the old profile (like being able to see all shouts at one go) is helpful, saying “everything is bad and you should feel bad” is less so.

One thing that I really, really want to stress is how much we care about this community. We’re real people that dedicate our days to trying to improve this site for you. We would never do something with the intention of upsetting people nor do we do anything without a great deal of thought discussion. Our community staff (and a few other members of our staff, myself included) started on this site as community members. We love the site and we know the community is the heart of it. Again, you can believe me or not, but it’s just a fact.

I know some of you say you don’t care what badges you or your friends earn or about their forum posts etc, but there definitely people that are (and I’m one of them). Totally independent of my employment here, I generally want to know what my friends are up to. The game of the week at Kong HQ is Ski Safari and we’ve spent time trash talking each other while comparing high scores. I like that I know I can kick Phoenix00017’s booty in the game, and when Jim7 said his brother got 800k, it gave me a new mark to try and pass. I also only found out about it because they were talking in the office about how much they loved it. I’ve read blog posts written by friends about why Pandemic 2 is the worst game ever and given e-high fives when people got their first impossible badge. Right now when you leave a comment, almost no one sees it unless it’s one of the top voted or someone decides to click to see all the comments a user has left. That’s a crappy system. There are people that spend a lot of time writing out funny/insightful/helpful comments and we think people should see them.

I truly think gaming is improved when it’s more social, and that’s part of the reason why I chose Kongregate as my web gaming home over other options. We’re just trying to make that easier.

There are technological limitations that we have to deal with when making any changes, and not all of them are obvious, but we’re trying to come up with ways to make some of the pain points less painful. This is absolutely a work in progress and we are taking all of your feedback into account while we figure out the next steps.

just noticed sometbhing really bad… when you reply to a shout it dosn’t get bumped back up to the top…really this ruins the whole feed, and also you need to do that shout page that quoted before… i think that would be the best way to go through with this

This was a bug and will be fixed soon :)

The vast, vast, vast majority of Kongregate users never added anyone as a friend. We want to encourage social connections and the system we had wasn’t working. You can believe this is all a lie if you want, but it’s really just a fact. It wasn’t working. We’re trying to fix that and one of the things we’re trying is changing that terminology. If you added someone as a friend, it evidently wasn’t too confusing to you, but it very likely was to at lease some of the >90% of users that never added anyone :P

But who are these >90% of users?

Are these truly active users, or are they alternates or accounts that signed up, hung around for a few days, and never came around again? I would take a weighty bet that most of the accounts are abandoned, decrepit accounts.

This was my point as to why Kongregate should go and encourage users to e-mail them or post on the forums: you can have all the statistics you want, but you don’t necessarily know the how or why.

We’ve done our best to explain why we made the changes we have to our users. Obviously there are people that disagree with our reasoning, but we’re looking at the big picture of what we think is best for Kongregate. That absolutely includes our most dedicated and social users, but it also includes the silent users. There are people that don’t want us to increase the size of the Kongregate community, and as someone that’s been around since early 2007 when there was a small, intimate community, I understand those feelings, but that’s just something we’re going to have to agree to disagree on. We love the community, we’re proud of the community, and we want more people to experience it :)

The thing I don’t feel was addressed was why it simply was not changed back to “friend” instead of “friends you follow” (as a compromise, as was written). The argument from the administration was that “friends” was confusing, but as it stands we don’t “follow” anyone and adding both terms will cause at least as much confusion as the confusion from the terms “following” and “friend” alone, because they are now merged together. More likely more confusing even, considering they are used in an almost interchangeable fashion, especially on the FAQ posts about “friends” or “followers” or whatever.

I know some of you say you don’t care what badges you or your friends earn or about their forum posts etc, but there definitely people that are (and I’m one of them). Totally independent of my employment here, I generally want to know what my friends are up to. The game of the week at Kong HQ is Ski Safari and we’ve spent time trash talking each other while comparing high scores. I like that I know I can kick Phoenix00017’s booty in the game, and when Jim7 said his brother got 800k, it gave me a new mark to try and pass. I also only found out about it because they were talking in the office about how much they loved it. I’ve read blog posts written by friends about why Pandemic 2 is the worst game ever and given e-high fives when people got their first impossible badge. Right now when you leave a comment, almost no one sees it unless it’s one of the top voted or someone decides to click to see all the comments a user has left. That’s a crappy system. There are people that spend a lot of time writing out funny/insightful/helpful comments and we think people should see them.

I truly think gaming is improved when it’s more social, and that’s part of the reason why I chose Kongregate as my web gaming home over other options. We’re just trying to make that easier.

There are technological limitations that we have to deal with when making any changes, and not all of them are obvious, but we’re trying to come up with ways to make some of the pain points less painful. This is absolutely a work in progress and we are taking all of your feedback into account while we figure out the next steps.

Sure, I suppose there are the people that are. However, as you’ve seen, it’s proven as an annoyance to many people. If the feed is really felt necessary, it’s most likely best (along with any other updates) to build it up on the old designs rather than to tear the new designs down.

Something that can be done is to make a semi-hidden, expandable feed on the old profile (like you did with the “about me” on the new profile) or to keep the feed on a separate page for the user. For example, the user can have his profile, and then his own special page dedicated to using his feed along with whatever else he wants to post up on there.

I can’t imagine that would be hard to add, considering you already have things like /profile, /friends, /fans, /blocked, /comments, etc. for users.