People need to be patient w/ the site. There is too much good new stuff to abandon now.

bitching…I think the site needs an avenue for feedback….

This site has seen plenty wussy rants in the last year…, constructive input is legit…in my book.

By the way..if I haven’t said it lately, I DO appreciate all the hard work that has been put in.

Now that’s funny, I don’t care who ya are…

I’ll love it more completely when it speeds up a little and the 500 errors go away.

We all know Neil and the rest of those involved, are working very hard to get things going the way we would all like.

I too am frustrated, but I’ll still be here every day like I have been since I discovered this wonderful community of like minded folks last fall.

Can we have regular/semi-regular “comments about Redstate” threads? Just for vent/spleen purposes, with geeky explanations of what is working/not working and why?

Then I can use that venue to vent:
Why can’t I make comments on “REDHOT” items? I don’t get that. Or am I just a ‘tard who can see the button?

can we dial the knob a bit on recommended diaries? Maybe even customize it? “see all diaries with 2 or more reccs” type buttons?

The obligatory: Redstate is an awesome site with great content and a fine community, let’s keep the momentum going!

Could there possibly be a sticky thread to post questions or comments or bug reports about RS 3.0?

I’m currently getting weird behavior with clicking on a thread nothing happens, then click again and the link works. Not sure what’s up with that.

It’s working well for me!

Hey EPU..I had a rough night…

Some of you know that I recently moved in with Money…Well…He brought some women home last night and told me to Bail…

So..I end up at Campland..

I got my truck and I got my laptop…You know what’s Awesome?…they have a Hotspot at Campland…[whining] weak signal but cool [/whining]

So I decide to do a GC’esk Sabbatical Interuption…(why is it so hard to stay away?)…

Connection…Yes!!…Dial up Redstate…DOOOHHH!! I was HOT…but I had some cold beers so dont worry.

If I ‘would have been able’ to post a picture I would have posted a yet undeveloped Boycott pic as a comment to the ‘Graphics Contest’….pissedoffski.

Dude…..I’m weak…….and you what? I’m Back….you Rule!!

Later tonight I’ll try to throw a Pic up, Erik.

This Campland connection is really weak though…wah

was about Parliamentary cutbacks on Part D.*

*from proposed Dept of Education Guidelines on American History as part of forthcoming amendment proposed by Barack Obama to NCLB.

Since you brought it up, I will uncloak momentarily to unload, this one time. Then I will go away again and come back when things have improved.

We’re on week 2 now, and while things have improved somewhat, I see little noticeable difference. And I emphasize “noticeable.” While I realize there has been a lot of work going on, I haven’t seen it. Yes, there have been spates of errors, especially day one and yesterday. I was livid after (apparently) losing a posting (which appeared about an hour later), and lost it. I’m sure others have also and haven’t posted their frustrations.

Brian says “…too much new good stuff”. Really? Where? I can name three things that are new: 1) Look and feel – nice, but the old look was ok for me. 2) Improved profile page with list of postings from the user – probably the best enhancement I have seen, 3) tagging – doesn’t spin my tires…I can search with Google to find postings that match my interests. That’s it…that’s all I see.

Now let’s look at what’s been lost in the process:
1) Performance. It is marginally tolerable most of the time, unless you post at midnight. Improved somewhat, but still woefully inconsistent.
2) The severely broken Recommended feature. No need to describe it. Everyone knows it’s broken. The only thing I’ll mention is (as I’ve said before) the design of that block of content needs to be redesigned so it doesn’t take up so darned much space.
3) Consistency of content. The cache issues that have been tossed around repeatedly have caused no end of issues with consistency and currency of content, especially the Recent Comments blocks. This, along with item 4), make it virtually impossible to follow a conversation here.
4) Lost the “New!” indicators for postings. This is the worst, by far, of any of these items. I cannot tell what I’ve read, and eyeballing a string of posts to see who has responded to who is time-consuming and tedious. This has resulted in the worst loss that I see, item 5)
5) Loss of community. This is why I’ve hung out here for the last year – to interact with others. Not just to read the contributors’ diaries, although that is nice too. I want to have conversations with like-minded friends. RedState has gone largely from a two-way interactive site to a one-way “push” site where information goes out but it is difficult, at best, to interact about it. The myriad problems have made things even worse as regulars have departed due to the difficulty in communicating.

Steve mentions that there should be a sticky to discuss things. And he’s right. That “sticky item” should also have regular status updates from those who are working on the site to let people know what is being done and what progress has been made. Many of us, including me, donated money to RS3, and I think the least that you folks in command can do is to keep us up to date on what’s going on.

That’s it. I’ve said my piece. I have tried to be diplomatic about it and not get nasty. Now I’ll go back to work and sign out until things get better. Bye for now.

Ronald Reagan is still dead.

We go to war with the Redstate we have.

And seriously, folks, we’re doing everything we can here (“we” being Neil, Erick and the Eagle tech staff). Things will get better.

after RS2.0 and the San Francisco Earthquake, respectively. Yes, let’s be men and walk on the ground that be.

No more later on this blog. EPU and I have said it all on this subject.

Imagine the quality of advice when I’m paid!

has been said in emails through “contact us”. It doesn’t help to do public airings of the issues with it.

However, telling people that they’re supposed to be “conservative” about it doesn’t help matters, either… sorry. It really doesn’t when the same information can be had elsewhere for less trouble than here.

Since I figure that everybody will still complain about Redstate 3.0′s functionality and technical glitches, I’ve got a great solution for everybody!

Watch this video clip and start scratching your heads. Then you can complain how none of you can understand a thing this video clip is talking about, other than me (I am Deaf and fluent in American Sign Language).

That means you all can complain about why I put up this video clip instead of Redstate 3.0′s technical glitches! Isn’t that a brilliant solution or what?!

And no, I am not the storyteller in that video clip, neither was I involved in producing that video clip. I don’t claim any credit.

I’m only kidding…

I totally agree, EPU.

I see some people who are acting like a website redesign is enough to send them into post-traumatic stress disorder. Heaven forbid these people ever experience something truly stressful.

As someone who designs websites, and regularly goes through the switchover aftershock from customers, I can understand how truly stressful it is to pull something like this off.

Shortly after the switchover, I experienced a few problems with my account, which were promptly fixed by the awesome people behind RS 3.0. Their response was as prompt as possible, and they were totally understanding, cooperative and helpful. I want to congratulate them and tell them what an awesome job they did with this site, and I hope that they are able to resolve most of the (minor) problems ASAP.

On a side note, perhaps if we stopped writing the complaint diaries/comments, and freed up the servers, there would be more bandwidth for the politics-related posts we all know and love.

Viva la RedState!

Just been doing a bunch of work while getting used to the new site. In other good news, my wife is wonderful and being married is great, which is really the reason why I haven’t been posting as frequently as I used to. But I’m starting to come back to the dark side as we get closer and to the election and I start to get things to say.

its the lack of user participation that i miss in the comments sections. I just checked hugh hewitt’s site and his first three diaries have @1,500 comments.

The recommnded diaries section is broken- i understand that the reason the diaries are not changing is because RS 3.0 is using a new “alogorithm”, perhaps the old one worked better?

And then it took me 8 minutes to get to the page, and another 2 to log on and get back.

I love the site, I visit every day, and there’s some great content here on a consistent basis. But as for regular diary entries and comments, it’s just become too time-consuming, at least for right now, to participate casually.

So I will try harder to be involved, but I will need to budget my time well for it.

And I’ll keep doing what I just did now, to even more parts of the site.

The server is sometimes available, sometimes not. The commentary and discussion is for an elect few. I can’t believe I actually gave $25 bucks for this “improvement”. Let’s be real, there is a closed niche of commenters, establishment included, and unless you follow their brand of commentary and timeline of discussion, who really cares? I really don’t waste my time here anymore, I don’t appreciate the hate nor the ever effectual looking at how long someone has been a member before, if any, reply to any comments. Oh yeah, Ron Paul! There, that should get me banned.

If the speed stays up, you’ve fixed the problem with posting new comments, and you’ve gone a long way towards helping us read other people’s comments.

Finding new comments by other commenters has a way to go, though. To quote bs,

Lost the “New!” indicators for postings. This is the worst, by far, of any of these items. I cannot tell what I’ve read, and eyeballing a string of posts to see who has responded to who is time-consuming and tedious.

This is maybe a bigger loss than you realized (although you’re probably getting the idea by now (^:^)).

Less critical, but for finding our own content (or others, for that matter), the “search” function still brings back only 30 matches, and the “Recent Comments” on our own profile page returns only 25.

All in all, I should have said, “Great progress, Neil (et al)!”

But, will there ever be a way to search the archives in an organized way? I spent a great deal of time searching for a particular diary from blackhedd (even knowing the title it would not point to it).

Is there an index at all in this version?

Great job, Neil! Now recommending diaries is easier. It takes three page clicks/page loads to recommend a diary (instead of the 2.0 one click), and before your speed-demon upgrades it was nearly impossible without having to go to the bathroom somewhere among those three clicks.

RS 3.0 recommended!

You were the first one on the McCain band-wagon too! Let me be a hater!

One question: I was quite happy with the old RedState. Why did we make this change? Seems unnecessary….

nt

Why is it all listed in one column and not spread out like a well formatted page?

as a web developer myself, i can appreciate just how much better it looks.

however, by the number of complaints and my own observations; it looks like you have traded looks for ease of use and navigation; two very bad choices by my experience.

and to this:
“The content put up since the launch has been nothing short of OUTSTANDING by the directors, contributors, and other front-pagers”

maybe so, but i think many do not know this as i’m sure many have dropped red state from their #1 site and maybe even out of their top 10. i know i have done this.

i have also dropped my comments significantly. i do not know what my rating was here as a contributor, but i have added things here that i have not seen anywhere else and i’m sure others have done the same thus making red state not improved but trying to make up for things/people it has lost.

and complaining isn’t the main thing I do here(at least about redstate 3.0), but it would be nice to know that they are working to fix the more annoying things:

1) All in one column layout mentioned above.

2) The ability to get to multiple highly recommended diaries or at least list 10.

3) Being able to recommend with a single click instead of three.

4) Being placed automatically back into the thread where I just commented.

5) Better visibility of user diaries

And I do agree with Neil above that the idea was good, but these five things above have hurt the usability to the extent that I’m over here much less than I used to be because of ease of use.

Seriously: Is there any way we can go back to the old RedState?

Sometimes, “change” ain’t so good….