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There seems to be much mumbling lately about site upgrades and requests for enhancement (RFEs). I figured I'd dump my first few into a forum; perhaps it can serve as a repository.
Mr. Fiore already knows about the embed demands. (I guiltily admit that I have an app that can pipe the Flash bytestream to a file and 'save' it for local replay. I would never redistribute, though, which is what embeds are needed for.)
I like to comment. It would be nice if registered users had a separate list of 'Recent Comments' below the current 'global' list of recent comments that pertained to reply comments in the threads (or subthreads, etc.) that they started. This list would also be shown on the profile page for the user so that others could track the comment threads for specific users if need be.
Also, the shrinking comment windows...
Indenting I suppose is the only good visual way of maintaining a distinct hierarchy, but the comments get squished but good by the time they're six or more deep. The simple solutions:
- reduce the indent by half; perhaps add some colour (i.e. a LHS colour strip) to emphasize the indent
- make the center frame of fiore.com expand so that the whole frameset fits nicely into the browser window (with a minimum size set so that people with teensy wee resolutions don't have their content smooshed out of existence)
A site map! Including a listing of all cartoons in a compact, top-to-bottom list. A sort-by-name, sort-by-date, and sort-by-main-character would be nice, too. Reverse sort-by-date default.
Comic strip! If a weekly animation could have its key frames fitted into a traditional comic-strip-type lattice, complete with speech bubbles, narrative bubbles, etc., they would make excellent prints. I'd buy the Insta-Scandal one. It's a bit of work to cut out the frames, add the bubbles and the soundwords, but it might be a good way to make some dough if viewers like a particular animation.
Some cartoonists make each strip a unique collectable—each strip is 'sold' to only one person, making the print totally unique. (The rights to the strip and host animation are always retained by the cartoonist.) The per-print price goes up by $100.00 or more in this case. Who knows, these things could be worth millions one day! Granted, for one-a-week type productions, this is < $10,000.00 extra revenue per year for Mr. Fiore. :(
I realize that these changes take time and money, but here they are as suggestions anyway.
Thanks for the site, sir.
Regards,
COTO
(P.S. Apologies for the subject line.)
Submitted by ChampionOfTheOm... on Tue, 2008-07-15 22:07.
Comments
The Sohbet Virus -
The Sohbet Virus - -
Although it will become fairly obvious by visiting any of the latest toon forums, the site seems to have been infected by the 'sohbet' virus.
Popular theories as to what 'sohbet' is, exactly, include:
- a fledgling sentient AI, loosed upon the Internet after growing beyond the parameters of some ill-conceived DARPA project. The curious AI now babbles, mimics, and block-copies text in its attempts to understand/reproduce human communication.
- a spambot gone nuts
- an escaped chimpanzee that discovered a free public library terminal
Whatever 'sohbet' actually turns out to be, the fact remains that its only capabilities seem to be pointlessly thanking people and block-copying snippets of existing comments into random new locations. Again, again, and again. (Forumites will note that these are all classic behavioural elements for escaped chimpanzees on public library terminals.)
I suppose I could click on one of the 'sohbet' links to find out where they lead, but (mindful of the AI theory) I worry that such an action would be construed by the sentient as acknowledging its desire for friendship. It would soon learn my IP, exploit one of the security vulnerabilities in my OS, and establish a local presence on my hard drive, randomly copying files, desktop items and such, like a playful child.
As accommodating as Mr. Fiore has been in allowing 'sohbet' free license to dabble in the marvel of 'communication', Mr. Fiore, I do believe it's time that you got your tech man/woman to write a quick SQL purge of any comment with the word 'sohbet' in it. Additionally, you might consider filtering out any new 'sohbet' comments. The AI (chimp, etc.) seems capable of thwarting your CAPTCHA front-end, but it may not yet possess the insight to omit the word 'sohbet' from its posts, making the filter an easy one-liner.
Let us also not overlook the fact that 'sohbet' is an anagram for 'The S.O.B.'—alluding to my fourth theory on what it is: an eponymous virus designed by Karl Rove to infect your site in response to your 'MC Rove' toon.
Your (Mostly) Human Pal,
COTO
Tue, 2008-09-02 18:34
One of the few times he is
One of the few times he is right. It should be a simple fix to that annoying virus. And I'd also like to urge the site to clear it as soon as possible. As the inane posts hurt the normal flow of conversation in the forum. The links lead to a site that tries to install some DOS based software on my hard drive. As it is a mac this fails, but the program is defiantly a spy bot of some kind.
Casey?
Tue, 2008-09-02 19:09
I have a small comment or
I have a small comment or suggestion. A few weeks ago one of the readers and commentors felt that the format of the comments was not as good as it could be, but couldn't make any specific suggestion as to how to improve it. At the time, I didn't know what was bothering me about the comments section below the animations, but now I do.
Portions of the comments are in chronological order, the order in which the discussion occurred, and other comments are in reverse-chronological order, with the most recent at the top. In general, responses to comments appear below the comments, but new "top-level" comments appear above other comments.
This format of mixed chronological and reverse-chronological comments is a little confusing and hard to follow, if a person doesn't read them soon after they are posted.
It seems like it might be a better idea to make all comments chronological so that the discussion thread, from first page to last page, makes more sense, although doing this would mean that the most recent comments will be on the last page at the bottom, instead of on the first page at the top.
Thu, 2008-07-17 21:13
This is the conundrum of
This is the conundrum of forums everywhere--how to best organize the forum threads.
Most sites I've seen (slashdot, YouTube, etc.) use a most-recent-comment first strategy but also have the comments in each thread running in a most-recent-last framework. I suppose the strategy is to consider each base comment to be a 'top-to-bottom' integral entity, like a book, but then sorting the books in terms of most-recent first.
The problem, of course, is that slashdot has a very sophisticated tree structure, complete with collapse/expand functions, etc., and YouTube typically has short little threads with short little comments, so the top-to-bottom thread format works.
Mr. Fiore's site typically has a large number of comments (like slashdot) in any given thread, and so forcing new comments to the bottom may very well push them to the 'boonies' at the bottom of the webpage, or onto another comment page altogether. It could be taken care of (as you've suggested) by sorting base level comments from oldest to newest, but this would seem to clash with the standards of most other websites. I think mainly because the comments people are most likely to read follow the animation itself (which is why people come here in the first place). Like a grocery store, people expect the fresh stuff to be on top. :)
Following the slashdot example might be best. Treat each comment thread as a 'book', with everything inside (all branches of all sub-trees) sorted from oldest-to-newest, but sort the books themselves in reverse-chronological order so that the fresher material is near the top of the page. I think this is probably the best that any site can hope to do. slashdot also collapses all but the newest reply comments in each seminal thread, and so that could also be something to consider.
I suppose if Mr. Fiore wanted to make everyone happy, he could add a sort-order option.
The 'most recent comments' list is a stroke of genius.
Regards,
COTO
Thu, 2008-07-17 22:50
Thanks so much for your
Thanks so much for your suggestions, COTO! Those are all great ideas-- I'm working on getting the embed implemented as the number one task, then on to improving commenting, etc.
I like your prints idea. There are some select prints in the store, but my ideal would be to have at least one print for each animation. (Maybe not a comic-strip style that conveys the content, I'm thinking something more arty like a single animation cel.)
Let me know what you think, and keep the ideas coming!
Thanks,
-Mark Fiore
Thu, 2008-07-17 16:33
No problem. I suppose I was
No problem. I suppose I was thinking of the comic strip idea as something that could be displayed on an office desk. A lot of professionals [and university profs] like to keep their favourite strips around for others to scrutinize and enjoy. Political humour, alas, isn't timeless, but some of your characters are.
For display art (i.e. pictures, etc.), single-cel is certainly the way to go.
Not to worry. Digital art is becoming more ubiquitous, and if the world doesn't self destruct in the next ten years, your animations will be all the rage for the new Apple 'iAnimate' 3G play-on-demand home picture frames.
Thanks for the site. The toons are first class, and I swear markfiore.com is only one of three websites on earth dedicated to high-minded U.S. political debate.
Cheers,
COTO
Thu, 2008-07-17 23:08
In your mind what are the
In your mind what are the other two? Just wondering.
Casey?
Fri, 2008-07-18 18:40
The two I've found liveable
The two I've found liveable are
and to a lesser extent,
They're about the only two other sites that i) are moderated, ii) have neither a sharp liberal nor conservative bent, iii) have no 'privileged' contributors, iv) are sufficiently populated, v) have a decent commenting framework, vi) are not censored, and most importantly, vii) occasionally touch on political issues of importance instead of the dross pumped out by InstaScandal.
Oh, don't worry, there's plenty of InstaScandal there, too, if you want it.
I should mention that there are 'privileged' contributors on both sites, but they're professional journalists with major newspapers (i.e. they're fully accountable for what they say). By-lines are a gift from heaven. No offense to the left-leaning crowd at markfiore.com, but requiring accountability kills off lefties to righties three-to-one. (It also tends to kill off the stories that the MSM won't touch because of sue-happy lawyers, but that's where the public forums help.)
Personally, I think journalists hate it when people can openly criticize their pieces. I also think it's why conservative call-in radio shows outnumber liberal call-in shows like... five billion to one.
Mr. Fiore's site is left-of-center, but the fact that his cartoons are thoughtful, mostly light-hearted, and (usually) fair in their portrayal more than makes up for it. And kudos to Mr. Fiore for this, because most sites with a single privileged contributor (i.e. blogs) are unmitigated disasters. Half of them end up looking like timecube.com.
Regards,
COTO
Mon, 2008-07-21 00:09
Do Something!
Joined: 2008-03-25