Ask Your Question today
Hi Folks. I'm wondering if anyone has any clever ideas for features I could add or improvements I could make to the site. No promises, but leave your thoughts in a comment and I'll take a look. Thanks!
| I like IIN just the way it is. | 24 | |
| I have a thought, I'll leave a comment. | 14 |
Please could you consider making a notification section for when someone "likes" one of your comments. I'm always interested to know how many people share my opinion on something, but scrolling through my comment history to check for new "likes" ony comments feels kind of weird..
maybe a discussion. like the chat feature, but a story is planted as a heading and people can go and argue about it in real time
I kind of hate to be negative, but an ignore feature would really be nice. Either that or get stricter about people who post nothing but regarded useless comments.
For mobile:
-a description preview pane. Tap on the comment box at the side and it brings up a description preview, tap again and it goes away.
-make the font for the numbers on notices/messages red again. It stood out more.
For the main site:
-show the tags in users' posts.
-this: http://isitnormal.com/poll/do-you-think-the-voting-options-for-unmoderated-posts-are-helping-119968/comment-1064615
-a voice response section
-a scroll-able notice box
-the ability for users to display their polls on their profile page
-the ability to choose which stories/polls are displayed on the profile page
-a list that shows which users are/aren't online like many forums have at the bottom of the page
-the ability to accept or reject IIN Gold Gifts
-the ability to save posts as a draft
-an "about" section of IIN that tells a little of the history of this website
-http://isitnormal.com/story/iin-i-wish-everyone-could-vote-on-stories-148247/
Red notice count on mobile should be fixed now.
Also, just added something for the description preview on mobile. Swipe right on any list item and you'll get a preview of the description. Try it out.
I think that posters who offer particularly helpful posts should be rewarded with a free week of gold. One a week. Acknowledged as such by you upon notification, but I don't know if that award should be made public knowledge.
Of course, that is assuming you read the posts on IIN. Are you a psychologist using this for research? I've always wanted to know if we are all just guinea pigs in some research study.
Nope. I'm just an entrepreneur and engineer. I do find it all quite interesting though! I read many of the posts.
Wow, it may be because I haven't slept in a long time but that last though has me slightly paranoid
First of all: Love your site!
Second: I understand that the site needs some financial support but it's sort of awful that you have to have INN Gold to message other users in private when that is a feature that's usually given free on any other site.
I had this issue with a member and decided to message her in private instead of taking it in public for all to see but when I found out that I could not message her in private I sort of -had- to take it public.
Same thing if someone's sad and would like someone to talk to, way easier to just message them here than ask for their skype/mail whatever because some people would not be comfortable with handing out those things.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I def. understand where you're coming from.
Question... if you had to choose between seeing an ad or two on each page (getting Gold would get rid of the ads) or being able to PM without having gold, which would you choose?
Currently registered members don't see any ads. It could def. help a bit with revenue if I changed this, and it would also create another incentive for people who use the site a lot to get Gold. I'm not sure how many people it will piss off though.
I would personally prefer your option to be able to PM and have some ads that could get removed with INN gold.
I think that this is something that should be voted about! Since it does concern everyone and I doubt people would be pissed off about it if they got to vote for ... say ...two weeks?
Because maybe it's just me who miss that one-on-one contact with members, if so I'm willing to accept that.
Perhaps just to the left of a comment it could have a really short summary of the person commenting. EG
Small Profile pic..................... ------------------------------------
How long user has been active ------------Comment------------
How many posts..................... ------------------------------------
How many liked comments..... ------------------------------------
Try hovering over people's usernames on the comment now. I added a popup thingy. (desktop site only, not mobile).
I thought of one thing. For frequently asked questions to be in a category next to the page. For new members to see. Like is someone asks "Is it normal I (whatever age) and a virgin" is asked a lot. Put one of these in the FAQ section. That way new members don't come in and re-ask the same question. There is certain questions that seem to be repeated.
I'm with LornaMae, it's a little too easy to activate. Right now it seems to be triggered by parking your cursor anywhere in the top row of a post (except the date, apparently). Perhaps you could limit it to hovering the actual text of the name. That would be more expected behavior, IMHO.
And also, I think I found a bug. The popup closes when your mouse leaves the popup itself but (since the whole row summons it) the popup won't necessarily start under your mouse. If it doesn't, you have to move your mouse into it, then back out to close it. I couldn't figure out what was going on for the longest time.
On a cell phone, using desktop version, it's cool the first time you see it. After that it became bothersome because when I touch the screen to scroll, someone's info appears and does not go away.
Maybe there could be a specific button or place to click or hover (if there's one already where is it?)
Hey, this site needs more smores and porn ads. Seriously tho an option to follow users comments would be nice. I know I would like to follow some ppl on here, then follow them home, then make love to their corpse. But I digress, more smores is the main point here.
He can't do the following feature, because too many people could be more easily harassed- especially because those harassing could stay anonymous.
I agree about the smores, though.
S'more smores, Udi.
Yeah, this. Although maybe if it was accompanied by a ignore/block feature it could work.
You could have the option to allow/disallow people to add/follow you as well. The block/ignore feature is a good idea even if you don't do the follow feature. Or maybe muting a users comments. Which I feel would be helpful in determining whether a user is being less than kind on this site, actually.
How about an option to directly report stories? I see many stories that are just offensive rants with no "Is it normal" or poll whatsoever. Sorry to sound like a nanny but seriously...
I like the features in this site a lot. But I would recommend a few little things.
1) To be able to sort the comments chronologically, as some times certain posts have so many comments, that it is hard to see the newest or even try to find the firsts.
2) Lately I have seen many posts regarding "internal" affairs (like this one). So maybe there should be a section, like a little forum maybe, to speak and debate only (and only) about these kind of things.
3) A way to reward/punish users. Maybe a non-visible score system? Or maybe only visible for the users themselves.
4) I heard that many users, even old ones, get their accounts deleted sometimes for breaking the rules (even if it is accidental). So maybe there should be a warning and a probation period before deleting the accounts, so that the users can rectify themselves; specially the regular or old users.
Another idea. Could you make it easier to delete one's comments? So I could just delete then on my page, possibly in bulk?
And maybe a forum section too. And I also like ItDuz's idea of having a comment section on each person's profile.
Alright, I'll take a shot. This might be a bit much for this site but since you're asking...
1) Explanations for the thumbs system. Say...
You click "thumbs up", and a small, in-page popup allows you a list of options as explanation,
Helpful, Funny, Thoughtful, Intelligent, Relatable, I agree! And the ability to choose one or more options. This helps the user understand what they are doing right.
"Thumbs down" offering
Unhelpful, Distasteful, Rude, Unintelligent, Irrelevant, I disagree! or Troll Post.
Naturally, said users and other users can view the explanation (click a button next to the thumbs and see (2) votes for (list category here), (1) vote for (list category here).
2) Directly connected to this is a User rating in the profile.
Say...
(6) readers have voted NeuroNeptunian's comments as "Helpful",
(2) readers have voted NeuroNeptunian's comments as "Rude".
I think that this would be a good way to help good users build an easily accessible rapport without giving too much flack to posters like ItDuz who get regular thumbs down for comments that would be seen as rude (his comments regarding gender relations would not be considered "unhelpful"), and would also help users distinguish regular assclowns on this site so they know not to take their rude posts terribly seriously.
This option would be available to users once they have met a certain post or time limit for membership and encourage a little more accountability between users for what they post here.
I am sure you can find a million ways that this would fuck up the site but its a thought.
Thanks for the reach out.
I don't have anything I can immediately think of that I would like as a new feature, and I'm not going to try and force myself to come up with something because it would be disingenuous and deflect priority from people with more pressing problems. Maybe I will later when if I think of something, but not now.
I do think there are things about IIN that I like and that believe new features should not compromise (these, I'm sure you're already aware of since you made the site after all :P):
The image of the site is very tasteful and clean without seeming clinical and cold, which I think is perfect. It's utilitarian and minimal.
The opportunities we are given to express ourselves are not needlessly gaudy or brash; we have one font in one colour and no inbuilt method of emphasis like italics and underlining. This means that everything potentially shallow here is homogenous, meaning substance is valued over style and people are judged more for the content of what they say than the medium they choose to use to say it.
Everything about the community is organic. There is no effort from you to manipulate, incentivise or even encourage us to interact socially apart from to the anonymous OP. This means the interactions we have feel genuine, and IIN is a real community rather than a group of people commenting at each other to gain points or perks.
I don't really know where this is going. Just don't change that good stuff and you're doing well.
I was thinking you could allow users the option of showing that they are online/idle/offline. With the emphasis on their individual option, of course.
Huh. I added more to this than what's showing. Oh well I'll do it again.
I don't think some IINers realize their stories are on their profile. I think showing stories should be off by default, not on- if it's not already.
Thank you kindly for your value in our opinions.
Oh, and maybe you might consider free-trial IIN Gold? Once a year or so? ;)
An enormous self-destruct button.
A text-to-speech function, so click a button and "IIN I'm still virgin but I like to go to sometiems look at the prety girls loll !?" is read out in a robot man voice incredibly loudly (there would be no volume function).
A way of choosing a song to accompany your story. If it's a sad story like "IIN I tried to stroke the cat but the cat moved away too quickly", heartbreaking melancholic music would loop incessantly until the reader left the web page.
A level of old skool Myspace customisation for profile pages, so you could have literally 100 gifs embedded around your name, crippling browsers everywhere.
A way to instantly send your favourite user brownies. Real brownies that arrive at their doorstep.
A way to instantly send your least favourite user brownies. Real brownies that arrive at their doorstep, laced with arsenic.
A way to buy individual stories printed on a T shirt. I would choose this one:
http://isitnormal.com/story/am-i-insest-9410/
I'll offer some serious suggestions now:
Throwback Thursdays: old stories and polls given precedent on Thursdays. Maybe only the oldest stories appear on the homepage for a day. Or one particularly good story / poll from the past chosen to appear prominently on the homepage.
User submitted quizzes. These can be quite fun; a chain of questions and depending on your answers you receive a different outcome.
For example, The Are You Normal Quiz would consist of 20 questions asking your response to different situations, you click the answers and at the end receive a rating based upon other people's results. You can then choose to have your rating featured on your profile e.g. disthing scored 0.01% in the Are You Normal quiz.
Featured user of the week. Kind of like an employee of the month type deal, but perhaps those particularly helpful users could be celebrated in this way. Could be determined by thumbs up to thumbs down ratio, but with the condition that no one user could be featured more than once per year.
A way to buy individual stories printed on a T shirt. I would choose this one:
http://isitnormal.com/story/am-i-insest-9410/ (I totally meant that one)
Some people are saying to post images, which I think would be a good idea, however in a way where they have to click the attachment to open the pictures rather than a way in which would just block up the comment section with the pictures.
The thumbs feature, what NeuroNep said, would be good. I myself dislike the thumbs feature as I tend to see it is based on emotion and bias where you don't have to explain your point and can give the impression of being correct without explaining why, but hey, just because I dislike it doesn't mean others do and wouldn't want more options like Neuro explained.
Perhaps a debating section? A lot of people have debates on here, so perhaps there is a way to post something where discussion is involved without it leaking in to the more traditional "IIN" stories, that way conversations don't clog up a post that is looking for answers rather than a discussion between two commenters.
Another thing I seem to recall a few stating is that they update their profile like a journal. Perhaps bringing a section next to the "poll, stories, my comments", and so on option, have a space where one can update their journal and it's recorded rather than deleting their previous story of a journal and replace it. Maybe then we could have a rating system for that, for their journals, and can have a rating system on the person's profile stating if they are "normal" overall or not, or perhaps have the "Yes it's normal" or "no it's not" effect the rating on that person's profile.
Perhaps a way to stop others from seeing their posts, anonymous or not? That way, say, if someone is fed up with regular trolls, they can just have them not see your posts, so their trolling behaviors can't be expressed on the person's posts.
Maybe, even, and this is probably a stretch, have some sort of video option, but one that isn't part of the main site, if that makes sense? That you click on the video options to go on to them, where people upload their posts via video if they don't care about anonymity? (That one is a bit of a stretch, I know).
I don't want to give suggestions that would make it turn in to like a social site, but perhaps ways for some to comment on their profile? Or perhaps a section where questions from other users can be put on their page (who they're asking) and get answered, and it would be public for others to see, ofcourse the person being asked a question on their profile would have the power to make the question public or not (accept it/decline it).
Personally, something I don't want is a scoring system based on legitimacy or intellect. We all have our biases, and this would simply be a numbers game rather than something that gives a legitimate presentation of the user (Kind of like ten idiots can rank one person down due to their inability to understand what is said or their bias against those users, hence being given a bad interpretation based on numbers rather than reason).
I could think of more in'a bit, however that's all I have right now.
Being able to post images in the comments as long as you have some original text in the post would be cool.
Leave it this way, that's the way I like it. However if I could be given gold for some months. C'mon Management, I've been here for more than a year, doesn't that count? I was a gold user once but now I'm too poor to pay for those $5. Don't you remember Mr. TheManagement?
Any possibility that we can somehow block other members so we can prevent reading their posts?
Yeah, I think I'm going to work on this. If you block someone you won't see their stuff and they won't see yours. Should reduce some of the negative vibes. Bit of a bigger project though, will take some time.
Seems new accounts are limited to one comment a day
http://isitnormal.com/story/is-it-normal-to-wonder-who-gave-me-is-it-normal-gold-173089/comment-1727131
I dunno how I feel about that. I see why it's been made to that (the issues with DragonQueen leading to the comment karma and limited messages) but I think it's unfair to new users to restrict their freedom so much because of one dumb cunt.
I'd imagine there are many current users who wouldn't have stayed around if they'd been put under such restrictions when they joined up. It would be a shame to lose future potential good users.
Find a way to rid IIN of the users creating extremely offensive user names and the just as offensive comments and pic profiles that go with them (e.g CKTAssHole etc)
This might be a rubbish idea, but maybe a user search to find someones profile/latest comment etc?
Although, I can see the downside to this as well if people are getting trolled/harassed...
I have one suggestion. Can we have better choices when making polls and stories. example instead of school can we have Education. Some things regard education but do not necessarily fall under schooling. Also Family I think should have its own section.
I always thought the way Safe(r) Mode works was odd. Even if you're signed in, this is apparently stored in a separate cookie, so every time I log in I still have to manually turn that off to see the good stuff. ;) Would it be possible to have this remembered as part of your account settings?
One other random idea, how about a third option when commenting on your own story, to post with an some kind "OP" flag, but not anonymously. It seems some people prefer to post using their name, but then they have to explicitly say "I'm the OP" or else it's confusing.
I've made it so that going forward your preference will get tied to your account and set upon signing in again. To set it, turn safe(r) mode on and then off again and after that it should become a sticky preference for your account.
Yes. But I probably didn't explain that quite right. What I meant is whenever I start from scratch—either on a new device, or after clearing cookies—I have to both log in and turn Safe(r) Search off, separately.
I know this is a niggling little issue. It just strikes me as weird. Especially in the mobile interface, doesn't it look like that should be part of your account settings?
I agree with what Couman said about the Safe(r) mode. It always reverts to 'ON' mode for me. I use browsing in private mode though, so that could be a reason why it reverts for me.
I dunno. There's not much I would add or change. Maybe icons next to the comments. That could be pretty cool.