Propeller 2.0 - A Critique »
Posted By Spadecaller 1 year, 3 months ago in News
D uring the last year, loyal members of Propeller were repeatedly promised improvements to the social news site - improvements intended to fix performance related issues that sometimes hindered its functionality. But what did we actually get?
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Spadecaller
Welcome to my profile. About me: I'm an artist of several kinds; from bull to painting. I don't spare too many words. Most ...
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Spadecaller1 year, 3 months ago
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obiefrommuskogee1 year, 3 months ago
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Yes, the editing feature was great. They really need to bring the old site back.
PLs get rid of professorpropeller. He's about as relevant as Broadway Joe at the Cinemark movies. Getrid of themiddlecolumn.I really don't care who the top News (nose) picker of the day is. Propeller was not a social site like facebook.I'm not interested in who's on first. I don't see how they can fix this site.It's garbage-y.
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MRCOFFEECAKE1 year, 3 months ago
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IF YOU SEE THIS>>>HELLO!!!!!
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If you see this, all that I can equate the new website to is the great anticipation'
of that " Segway".. or is the Titanic more appropriate??
Actually, if this were the Titanic, the passengers would have jumped off ship in warmer water upon first sight!1\
WHAT were these people thinking?? is beer that cheap in England?
They had to be seriously drunk or stoned, or perhaps someone's 11 year old nephew got the contract..
But seriously, this is a HUGE boondoggle and I cannot believe that after building up
a decent sized customer base ANYONE in their right mind would let it all implode.
HELLO!!!!!?????? -
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richtech1 year, 3 months ago
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Ok, I agree that I don't like the changes. Plus I still use Netscape 7.2 for my email, Internet, and webpage development. But now my email pops up with a 404 error - page not found - on the startup message window. Grrrr! GIVE ME BACK MY VERSION 1 PROPELLER!!!!!
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david_nwpa1 year, 3 months ago
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I am back home folks...good to see you all. I am happy about some of the changes, but disappointed in a lot.
For example, the groups are cool. I like being the owner of a group and having stories submitted to people I know will read them instead of having to message 5 at a time to indicate that I had posted a story. We still have the ability to check recent submissions, which is also cool. However, the general look and navigation of the site is rather clumsy.
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vor1 year, 3 months ago
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You can see by the number of votes cast on your comment that it is true. Some familiar posters do appear to have hit the road and I was nearly one of them last week. I still find this new Propeller utterly frustrating and deficient. It seems we lost far more features than we gained.
Losses:
Editing
Recent Comments (no direction to specific comments)
No pages (so much easier to navigate to comments)
The ability to see who voted for or against a comment
Categories (the whole Group concept seems to limit participation)
Sinks
Gains:
Somehow I now have 937 messages in my box.......
The Cartoon Guy who makes me feel like a 4-year old everytime I log on.
I can't think of any other gains?
And if you are going to leave things the way they are at least make it possible to read Most Recent Comments first. The inability to respond to recent comments because you must hit Next 25 forty times has killed the whole message board concept that was the core of Propeller.
Tired of complaining but I just have to wonder what has been improved? The look of the site? Of course I am nostalgic for the old Propeller but I can deal with the look. But what features have we exactly gained here?
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Spadecaller1 year, 3 months ago
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I am only participating on this story because berkeley and some other members asked me to put it on my website and to help them submit... but I do not enjoy navigating on this site anymore. They ruined Propeller to make an extra buck -- caring little about its loyal members.
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Candida1 year, 3 months ago
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There is nothing wrong with making an extra buck, after all they are in a business, they are not a charity. What they should consider, however, is whether this will lead to making that extra buck. There are lots of sites where one can socialize but I haven't seen many where one can engage in serious debate. The format of the previous version was excellently suited for that and, I must admit, it was quite addictive. I can't say the same about the current version. So, if they want a new audience, good luck to them, but if they want to keep the current members, I suspect they'll have to make a number of changes.
I'm not very fond of the red and pale blue color scheme, but that is something I can live with. Constantly having to click on the little red triangles only to have the comments disappear again the next time is frustrating and takes the joy out of the debate. This format encourages users to make posts only two deep, which helps readability as the thread doesn't become a very narrow column, but it discourages real debate, which made the old site unique.
I agree that not being able to review my comments and the responses made to them is a great loss, and so is not seeing who voted which way. I don't care whether I get 15 or 20 positive votes if they are not from the right people. On the other hand, when one of the members whose opinion I value gives me a negative vote, I know that I better rethink my argument to make sure that it is solid. If they wanted to save some storage space, they could have limited the Comments review to one page, a certain number of days, or a certain number of stories.
There are a couple of things I like though. Not promoting stories to the front page purely on the basis of votes is one of them. The old system was too easy to manipulate. There were far too many stories on the old front page about how to paint your fingernails and similar "important" things. I think taking the total number of views and number of comments into consideration is a good thing. The other good things are the cancel button on the comments, and the removal of the 1000 character limit on comments.
For now, I'll wait and see. If I'll find the site fun I'll stick around, if not, I'll do something else. There are lots of fun things in the world.
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chevydog1 year, 3 months ago
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Hi Spade-- Good to see you back. I've finally found a few ways to get around this site and do some of the things I did with ease previously. But they almost always take a few more clicks. Time may not always be money; but to me it is something that has value. The additional navigation effort needed is a sore disappointment.
I guess I don't really see who would make an "extra buck" by relasing this "upgrade"--or how. My thinking is that it was done without any user input of any kind by people who had the final look and feel of a product in mind from the beginning. But I confess I don't know why.
Hope we don't lose you or your videos. They were uniformly great.
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SenorCoconut1 year, 3 months ago
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The Propeller that I became so fond of, and so addicted to, does indeed seem to be a sinking ship. I am hanging in there hoping that many of the old features will be reinstated. The way it is now is just too time consuming, **********, and user unfriendly.
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They blew it! -
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Beau78901 year, 3 months ago
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It's been endlessly discussed, but I don't think anyone has brought up that there are had to have been other considerations at work behind this "upgrade." Absolutely no one would do what Propeller did to the old format, if they'd been given free rein.
I'm guessing that bigger bosses at AOL had a different agenda--not (as has been suggested) to destroy Propeller, but rather to make more money from it. The back-and-forth commenting between members was a wonderful forum, easy to use (despite some bugs) and created much more depth to discussions. At the same time, catering to a small number of loyal users probably didn't do much for ad revenue.
The focus of the new format appears to be to make the site seem more user-friendly to new users (more white space, less text, larger type), and to cater to a different and perhaps younger demographic.
I believe (this is all speculation, of course) that the old Propeller team wanted to retain many of the old features that made browsing out here enjoyable to us loyal die-hards and "sticky" (meaning that you could stick around and do things for hours at a time), but that they had to stick to some constraints dictated from above--less text on a page, for instance, and perhaps an entirely new database setup that is much cheaper to maintain and requires less bandwidth to use. Thus, the entire site was reprogrammed from scratch for both new hardware and software.
Personally, I think the new look and many of its social features are strategic mistakes--it seems Propeller wants to compete in a more general market for the same audience as Digg, perhaps even Facebook or other sites that are enormous compared to Netscape, er, Propeller. Those sites already own that demographic. The old demographic here skewed older, and there was no other site like it.
Netscape/Propeller owned its market--had carved out a niche and was positioned at the top of it. If it'd gone after advertisers that appealed to its market, it would have made more money that way.
Just my professional opinion.
Now--CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHY I CAN'T CHANGE MY AVATAR?
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jordan111 year, 3 months ago
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Now--CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHY I CAN'T CHANGE MY AVATAR?>>>>
LOL! I emailed the 'powers' that I couldn't take my own self seriously with the goofy cartoon by my name. At least you know how to go through the process of changing your avatar. I have to wait until my kid comes over, lol.
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flyonthewallzzComment removed: Spam
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tehranchik1 year, 3 months ago
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Beau78901 year, 3 months ago
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Those algorithms are closely guarded secrets. If the members knew exactly how to raise the rating of stories, the site would be easy to spam and manipulate in order to drive traffic to your own site.
Again, this is speculation, but from what I've seen, it has to do not only with the number of props, but also possibly many other factors that are not so easy to manipulate:
--how many people view the story (and/or how many click all the way through to the site where the story is located)
--how many comments, how many separate members comment (and/or the number of votes the comments receive)
--how many groups the story is sent to.
I'm sure there are other things I'm not aware of.
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Spadecaller1 year, 3 months ago
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Beau
After all our theories are shared and proposed, the fact remains - this site does not even work the way it was intended to. I can't change my profile, send a complete message, or fix my AVATAR. This site will not serve any demographic group adequately.
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Beau78901 year, 3 months ago
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That is my biggest disappointment. I miss many features, I miss the ease of use, I don't like the design of the new site.
But I specifically recall a thread many months back where James Marcus and others from the team PROMISED that the bugs would be fixed in the new Propeller. And they've been working on it since the switch from Netscape to Propeller--what was that, 9 months ago?
I would have thought they'd have done enough testing to address those problems.
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Spadecaller1 year, 3 months ago
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tehranchik1 year, 3 months ago
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We're all looking for compromises spade. It would be a shame for you and others to leave before we know the full capability of the new propeller.
I'm pretty sure the old format is not coming back---but maybe a few of it's functions will.
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PsychoHosebeastComment removed: Spammer, Abusive
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gamahuche1 year, 3 months ago
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What I think would raise a loud and lusty cheer from almost every prop old-timer would be if that silly Mr Prop twit [who looks more like a greeter at a Soho strip club in the 1950's than any other "type" I can think of] would take 3 virtual steps forward and disappear for ever into that hole - preferably with an anguished shriek and the satisfying sound of a landing on something soft and smelly - perhaps a one-time sensorama effect could also be added to propeller]. Live on James's WIR would be perfect!!
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Do I hear a unanimous cheer? -
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vor1 year, 3 months ago
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I think they deserve a chance. A reasonable amount of time to address these issues. If there is no response then they are driving off their own cattle. There are many posters on these boards whose views would be missed and SpadeCaller is one of them.
I work in software and these mistakes do happen. Someone gets overzealous and damages the customer base. That is what happened here. This looks like a site my nephew would design so maybe if some adults get involved they can make some headway. I don't mean that in an ugly way but that was truly my impression the day I first saw this, especially The Cartoon Guy!
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RickyDawkins1 year, 3 months ago
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I think that once Spadecaller creates his group, and invites all his friends (me included), it will be just like old times. In fact, now it only takes one click to share the story with a whole group. Still haven't figured out how to send a story to people's mailbox, maybe thats on purpose to reduce spam.
(message paid for by the Coalition of Propeller Users, not affiliated with AG Enterprises)
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Beau78901 year, 3 months ago
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Ricky,
I haven't received very many PMs with story links, though I've joined some very active groups. As far as I know, when you share a story with a group, it shows up somewhere on the group's page, and others can search for stories there. But I don't know how to send stories to more than one person at a time in PMs.
I'm sure it's a spam-reducing plan, but it sure makes it hard to find the stories you're interested in.
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MikeWesner1 year, 3 months ago
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Spadecaller1 year, 3 months ago
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Ricky, you're funny. I'm out of here after this story. But, I must say you appear to accept the new Propeller better than most - including myself.
You remind of the boy digging with a shovel in the backyard on a huge pile of horse manure. When asked what he is doing, he answers: "With all this horse sh!t here, ther must be a pony buried under here somewhere".
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mozzer1 year, 3 months ago
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That's it! I couldn't put my finger on it, but you hit the nail on the head, SC! The new propeller experience is ISOLATING.
I still say the new look is much nicer than the previous incarnation, but at what cost? The sense of immediacy and accessibility is gone. It's like one user walks into a room, submits a story and leaves. I show up later to prop it (and possibly comment) and promptly leave so another can use the room.
My opinion of Propeller 2.0: Looks good, but isn't conducive to active participation.
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MikeWesner1 year, 3 months ago
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We are working to add back in a few things. Check out the "Friends' Submissions" page on profile pages. That is similar to a feature on the old site. Our new design is also a work in progress. Check back often and you should see things improve.
Thank you for the feedback, we appreciate your patience.
-Mike Wesner
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(Propeller Developer) -
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lfergie8121 year, 3 months ago
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mozzer
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I agree. The biggest problem with the old Propeller and even this new one is the way it puts you in no man's land when it refreshes the page after a comment. Sometimes I would be two of three pages away from the page on which I commented.. Sometimes the comment isn't where it was suppose to be but that does seem to have gotten better lately..
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SenorCoconut1 year, 3 months ago
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I'm reposting this comment here as it's hidden up above.
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It is possible to send a story to multiple members, I played around with it yesterday. You need to copy and paste friend's names with only a comma separating each name, and you can paste about 15 - 20 names at a time. The link to the story is however not a hyper link so it needs to be copied into the browser address bar. This might be a possibility for us to still share our stories. -
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AnteUp1 year, 3 months ago
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Propeller friends ~
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The loss of the ability to track comments is a major blow.
No ability to find your own comment within a thread without going through
the entire thread - PLUS clicking on all the hidden replies.
No edit feature after an initial submission of a comment.
Some of my old time friends disappeared from my friends list!
If you vote on comments and come back later - it's as if you were
never there. At least when I return I find comments that I KNOW
I voted for bare of any preference from me. If I vote for the comment
again - does it get counted again?
Re: a FAN, an IDOL, a REFLECTION - what is the purpose
and how do you use the feature?
All I ever wanted was the ability to send a story to my Friends List
in one fell swoop - rather than 5 at a time. I don't care for this Group
concept.
I HATE this Propped score idea - I LIKE votes for a story, and I like
knowing who voted for (or against) my comments. I fondly remember
the day Wolfie gave me a positive - lol!
The graphics, the messages sent that never got delivered AND never
even showed up in my Sent Messages - those were probably glitsches
I could have written off to re-design of the system - bugs that would be
dealt with in time - but stripping us our our individuality is just tragic.
Look at the number of comments on the articles - obviously I am not
alone in my lack of enthusiasm.
We used to get some really ROUSING discussions going - we shared
topics of interest - we LEARNED thing here. We had such an intelligent
group participating that I lived with a dictionary beside me - rather than
embarrass myself in front of such a well educated community.
We had a veritable blaze of creative exchange going here - this is
as compared to the ashes it has become.......in a week!
As I said to an old Prop friend recently - I will continue to check in
and hang around..................until I don't.
I will say that some of the Propeller Help responses have
been very timely - and I appreciate their concern and know that
this must be a nightmare for them as well. Thank you Mr.Drapeau!
Many thanks Berkeley for your thoughtful submission - and thank
you, Spadecaller for helping out.
Does anyone think they will consider our input?-
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nostalgia1 year, 3 months ago
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"The loss of the ability to track comments is a major blow.
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No ability to find your own comment within a thread without going through
the entire thread - PLUS clicking on all the hidden replies."
Those are the biggest problems I see with the new design
It is one of the major reasons I spend so little time here now -
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rushran1 year, 3 months ago
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To ante i doubt it. This site was changed by genius who probably never used the site but thought the change was needed because it hasnt been changed in a few yrs. they changed it for the sake of change. This site sucks now it makes want to leave. Its so user unfriendly.
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slate1 year, 3 months ago
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brettodactyl1 year, 3 months ago
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Ok, I've found the answer to the avatar problem!!! My issue was that when you go to upload an image, Propeller says to use a JPEG. This is totally wrong, because JPEGs aren't working at all (for me anyway). Instead, if you use a PNG or a GIF, everything seems to work just great. I hope this helps some people.
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brettodactyl1 year, 3 months ago
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I agree with a lot of the negative comments that have been put forward, but I'm willing to give this new format a chance because I see a lot of great potential. I feel like this period we are in right now basically is the equivalent of the beta test Netscape first went through when it became a social site. In other words, the developers have created the basic structure with the main features, but they now want to hear what we want that can make the current format better. It really does seem like the Propeller people are actively working on things now, and I'm just happy that the site is finally loading quickly, unlike a couple days ago.
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questionseverything1 year, 3 months ago
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netscape was a great site....easy access,loads of information,open discussion
then aol tried to bury it and was pretty successful...after all most peops werent gonna search for it,and no one would ever stumble on it by accident as i did when it was at the top of my home page but still good stories were presented and discussed...evidently thats what the "powers that be" could NOT allow
isolating us is EXACTLY what they want to do...to make us think we r the only one that knows mcsame made ovr 30 propaganda films for our enemies,that he is a man ho and has no respect for woman,that his wife and he r tied to the mob
now the rnc shills have a free ride....ag posts bs and no one can answer ....at least not and be seen
i keep asking altho i realize even if i got an answer...i could nevr find it..lol
does anyone know of a good news site,whr ideas and info can be exchanged?
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canadianrancher571 year, 3 months ago
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If something is broken you fix it , If something isn't working right you tweak it , but what happened here was they took something that needed tweaked and threw it out and replaced it with something that causes me nothing but grief. This time on the site was a bit of a get away for me and I was able to get news, information and even humor from members , now it has turned into something that requires me to be constantly looking and searching for members or stories . If they are going to make this more user friendly they better get at it , for the last few days I have basically avoided these social sites .
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Sorry for not getting back to you yet Spade, I just checked today so I''ll likely contact you this evening. -
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