Possible relocation of Status Updates

[bradl]

I'm thinking of moving the status updates to the Activity tab, with its own page. The reasoning as follows:

• on a page of their own, longer statuses can be read in their entirety, without the truncation that is used in the sidebar feed
• on a page of their own, more statuses can be listed without affecting page layout
• reducing the number of database queries required to fetch and display front page content may improve front page load time
• statuses are superb for updates that aren't really sensible as topics and I like the sense of connection they provide; however I am somewhat concerned that new users in particular sometimes post statuses that really should be forum topics — I think this may be caused by the prominence and ease of posting a status versus creating a topic
• I suspect that forum activity overall is reduced by the prominence of status updates
• because statuses are visible only to logged-in members, significantly useful content can sometimes be lost to guests and search indexing, which is how most people find their way here

Change is hard and I know I've already thrust change upon you with this recent update and consequent redesign. While I ponder whether to move status updates or not I'm curious about whether you think you post more or less as a result of the introduction of status updates.

Edited November 20, 2015 by bradl
it's "its" dagnabbit

[Autumn & Lola]

Can I change my vote? LOL I read this question in the sidebar (and voted) without seeing the entire post until just now.   I now think moving it makes a whole lot of sense.

[bradl]

I'll factor that in  

[bradl]

Update: found a global setting that allows folks to change their votes.  So it should be possible now.

[Hillscreek]

Oh that's good because I want to change my vote too.

The thing with updates is that there are short comments interesting chitchat, mixed in with updates that are a longer item - a topic like you mention Brad.

Also depending how I access the forum I sometimes bypass the sidebar an miss updates.

Must say I don't fell strongly about it so whatever works best for most is fine with me.

 

[bradl]

I'm beginning to get used to the new activity stream (unread content)  and finding that for catching up it pulls in practically everything going on in a pretty handy way. On mobile, unread content is the newspaper icon.

[sanford]

On November 19, 2015 at 3:18:10 PM, bradl said:

on a page of their own, longer statuses can be read in their entirety, without the truncation that is used in the sidebar feed

That's the reason I vote for a page of their own

[bradl]

Digging in I've found that the update are *still* truncated by number of lines, but at least on their own page the lines are longer and are much less frequently truncated. Plus I can bump the number of lines up. 

The replacement page is currently running (http://www.cairntalk.net/status/ or browse there via Activity → Status Updates).