General: Feature Wish List

There have been some great discussions on the forums about some features you guys would like to see.

What else do you want feature-wise? I know about the technical issues with photo renaming/overwriting - lets talk about what functionality you want to have that you currently don't.

Please leave a list of things, simple or complex, that you think velospace should have.

I think a for sale sticky forum would be read more then the current for sale section.

By: stinky pete "I'd like to see a "reload button" at the bottom of the thumbnails pages please."

I agree, and I'd like to be able to delete comments that I make (made).

I like this idea as well.."Rather than have a single Thumbnails button that draws from all types of bikes, consider having a few hyperlinks (fixed gear, road bikes, etc.) down one side of the page that, when clicked, show thumbnails of just that type of bike. I like thumbnails, but am mainly interested in ones that reflect my interests" by gridplan

As far as search features go, how about a checkbox selection for the Velospace search function, so that you could limit your search to specific sections? I keep trying to do a full-text search of the forums, to see if a subject I'm curious about has already been discussed; but each search brings up lots of user and node references, and I give up trying to wade through it all. If you could select which subsections (node/bike, user, taxonomy/tags, forums, buy/sell) were included in a search, you could target your search much more effectively.

Another tabbing possibility:

Break the forums up into tabs by category. Right now, there's 18 screens of discussion threads; that took six months, with a very small percentage of the membership using them. This will get worse. The traffic in the forums will pick up, and having one long list to go through tends to discourage people from looking very far back.

Posted By: gridplanIf you're going to lump multiple parts into a single field (e.g., "Cog/gearing et cetera"), consider allotting more characters to those columns in your DB.

Seconded. I think that a greater range of component categories would be helpful to us non-fixed gear folk (see BikePedia for relevant categories). Not only do we not have a category for derailleurs, we don't have one for brakes. If we can break those common components out separately, and leave "Etc." for gadgets like racks/weirdo bits, then you could search the nodes by individual components. I suspect it would be very helpful for people doing a build to be able to search the bike listings to see if someone else has the same component they're trying to install, so they can ask about technique/management. I built up a bike with a set of Paul Motolites a few months ago, and I had a bunch of frustration dialing them in; it would have been a real help to have found someone else who'd already done it.

Granted, that issue could also be addressed by a more aggressive end-user use of tags. But you can't enforce the use of tags, while having empty fields marked "brake"/"brake lever"/"F derailleur"/"R derailleur"/"shifter" is more likely to incline people to fill those in. It's hard to know in advance which components might be important to someone doing a search, so it's better to include as many as possible.

That could also help with cluster development. There's a cluster for Paul cranks; it would be easier to add new entries if you could just do a search of all "Crank" fields for "Paul".

These suggestions are great - I want to collect them for a while longer and then put together a special project for you guys.

...

more sections for bike specs on the profiles, and more moderators to delete bullshit posts and frame-only profiles.
on frames a section for material, size, and history. i'd like a section for how you determined what to name your bike (i don't name mine, but people have some unusual ones that leave me curious).

i would like what otto rax said,the most views for a day, a week, a month, ever

do it by submission or special request. people could submit a series of photos of their bike, with its "story". what inspired it, how it came together, what you wanted to do differently. then you could pick what was worthwhile from the fluff and BS.

Posted By: gregEdit: undone. I think its more visible riding up and down the front page.

That may work better in theory than in practice, since the only thing that will keep the thread on the front page is constant posting. Until my comment gets posted, it's on the second page under a Shroud of Invisibility. Greg, is it your idea that the feature request list be a permanent fixture, or is this a temporary suggestion drop box?

Anyway...

Another cluster management feature: The ability to reorganize the order of listed nodes without cut/paste. I have one cluster with over 100 entries, and a second that's getting there fast. When I originally put the clusters together, I entered the starting group in node order, so that I could check the list for duplicates*. But as I add additional bikes, it becomes harder to keep the list in node order, since I find many of them through the Random Bikes function, and others through the Friends function. Since the Edit Cluster screen is a form, you can't use the browser's search function to search the text contents of each field - only the contents of the enclosing form. This means the only way to check for a dupe is to eyeball it. And if the numbers are all scrambled up, it's easy to miss things. At this point, the two clusters I've mentioned are really too big to manage within the existing Edit interface; I have to save source, paste the node listings into a text editor, introduce linebreaks and zero-fills, and sort by node to get a node order listing - and then I still have to do the cut/paste bit. That's a lot of work, and I'm about to give up.

Cut and paste is also troublesome. It's easy to slip up and paste over a legit entry, and thereby lose all record of it; it's also easy to cut one field, forget to paste it, and cut a second field, overwriting the first. I've done massive reorganization projects, only to find I had fewer entries when I save it out than I had when I began.

What if it were possible to view the bike list in the edit stage as a sorted columnar list of data entries, where you could re-sort the list by selected categories (say node, name, submission date, bike type, owner)? And maybe had a checkable preference, so that a cluster author/manager could always view the list in his/her preferred format?

Ideally, a manager could reorganize the actual placement of nodes within a cluster without cut/paste. In the Bianchi di celeste cluster, there's a lot of similar-looking blue-green road frames; mixing the photos up adds to the eye appeal of each one.

*P.S.: If you enter the same node twice into a cluster list, the bike's picture appears twice, although it doesn't add to the total bike count. If nothing else, would it be possible to rewrite the submission script to check the list of existing node members, and reject duplicates? Ideally, you'd get a contextual error message telling you that "Node 1421 is already part of this cluster", so you don't spend unnecessary energy trying to suss out what went wrong.

Thanks for all the additional suggestions - the list will be used in the short term for a project you'll all hear about soon, however I want to keep the thread going long-term as well.

You know, "Location" integrated with Google Maps could be extremely useful. I mean, I'd love to find people in Northampton, but Amherst, Easthampton, and Hatfield are right here, too, and I'll never find those folks without a system that can figure out that we're close.

Posted By: Joshua A.C. Newman1: the ability to markusers as spam. Man, what a science fiction thing to say.

Although you've picked a sterling example, let's not be too hasty. If we get into users flagging other users, it opens the door to potential abuse/vigilante-ism ("I don't like this jerk, or he's violated some code of conduct that exists only in my mind; so I'm going to label him as spam"). Not exactly a community spirit kind of thing.

Greg as Maximum Leader has the power to do this now, of course. Is there a lot of this going on that I'm missing? If Greg needs to share out the cop responsibilities, he might want to think about a way to spread the authority around.

Posted By: Joshua A.C. Newman2: Alerts when someone comments on one of your bikes.

This one's easier: Good idea. In a way, this already exists on the My Stuff page; each listed bike has a comment count and a Most Recent date, so you may catch it as it goes up. Perhaps an additional flag might help with visibility; maybe bolding the count number if there's something new since the last time you loaded the page?

I have noticed that some people don't check into their My Stuff/mailboxes too often. Joshua, I've had a message sitting unread in your inbox for nearly a month. What would entice people to make more use of their My Stuff pages?

And on the HTML subject: Is there a reason that people keep posting URLs without making them active? A lot of comments and forum posts have image addresses and URLs that could be made into active links, but the linking thing is applied inconsistently.

I suspect it's just a matter of people not really understanding the syntax - or not understanding the tags. I think this would be an appropriate FAQ item. If there's a general sense that it's an issue (that is, if anyone other than me is bugged by it), I'd be willing to write up a tutorial, as long as it'll be posted in a visible place.

Thanks for the bump - in a few weeks I'm going to make some announcements related to this thread

I think the Wanted section should scroll from new posts at the top, just like the for sale post does.

You have the ability to preview your text when commenting on a bike. How about extending that capability to this forum?

I would love to see a section on breakdancing.

Also, I would love to contribute a weekly column on matching my shoes to one of my daily Tarck bike configurations.

Also a sticky for apple of the week.

• Random Thumbnails: It would be nice if the random thumbnails on the main page were more random. Quite often 2 of the 3 bikes shown will be of the same bike -- actually the same node, not just a thumbnail with a common filename. Maybe your random number generator isn't seeded properly? Anyway, consider putting in a simple check so no two thumbnails on the main page are alike. Also, it would be nice if it never displayed the text "Cool bike!" instead of a thumbnail.



• Layout: Consider saving some vertical real estate on the main page by moving the search field to the very top of the page and moving the "rss feeds and tags are back!" link elsewhere on the page. These two changes would reduce wasted space and bring the main body of the page closer to the menu items at the top of the page.



• Comments: Sometimes in the Comments section on the front page I see an entry indicating a comment was made for some bike, but there is no hyperlink, just a string indicating how long ago the comment was entered. I know that sometimes people make the title be just a period (.) so the hyperlink is quite short. But that's not what I'm describing here. There is literally no hyperlink, just a string indicating the comment was left X minutes ago.

I'd be interested in seeing (and submitting, when possible) detailed articles on restorations. Most restoration articles I've come across tend to focus on the end result, and not so much on the process leading up to that point. Ideally these would contain verbose details, right down to how those tough grease/rust spots were removed, or where that impossible to find replacement part was discovered.

... always listening

Posted By: sfbeeI'd be interested in seeing (and submitting, when possible) detailed articles on restorations. Most restoration articles I've come across tend to focus on the end result, and not so much on the process leading up to that point. Ideally these would contain verbose details, right down to how those tough grease/rust spots were removed, or where that impossible to find replacement part was discovered.

I'm on board with this. I tried to do the description of this build in that way, and the more detailed descriptions I'm doing for some of my other builds follow the same formula. I'm planning a 'before and after' cluster, to highlight teardown/rebuilds, with emphasis given to nodes with 'before' photos and detailed procedure descriptions.

Unfortunately, there's really no way to convey this in the node listings except to jam everything into the text field. Having more component categories broken out would make it a little easier (seriously, I get that there's a preponderance of fixed-speed guys here; but having shifters/gearing/derailleurs/brakes/brake levers all jammed into the same field, along with racks and gadgets, is a big neon sign saying "I don't care about this stuff at all" - WTF? Your chain merits its own breakout field, but your shifting and braking systems don't?). What might be even better is to have two fields for each category, so that you could list both the gear that was on the frame when you started, and what was there once you'd finished. Since the field headings don't appear if you don't fill in any details, it's not as if anyone's forced to use them, or a node with less detail has big gaping visual holes.

Excellent!!!