Incorporate more writing , not just clicking buttons.

Feedback · Incorporate more writing , not just clicking buttons. (needs discussion)

Edited: The whole damn thing. x.X;

As a new user to the site, I have to say that I was utterly bewildered and simultaneously both underwhelmed and a little overwhelmed by the reliance on buttons for the site's profile creation.

Too many buttons all at once. Pare it down. Have a selection of cascade selections to choose from.

Sex/Gender? This one was really intimidating at first, since it could be done so much more engagingly. A nice and simple 'what they look like' selection, that then goes into further detail once that's selected.

Species? The tags are a good idea, but some people will call their, let's say, Vampire, a Kindred or a Kuei-Jin or what have you; the basic tag is great, but a write-in option would help as well in addition.

Interests: Perhaps they could be included as a sort of hashtag or searchable under the categories of 'Mandatory,' 'Core,' et al? Possibly meta-groups of Interests that can be later sorted, for ease of starting off the profile?

EDIT2: Showcase the writing. Like, up top, not all the way down at the bottom in profile creation. Barring that, off to a side. Yes. A lot of F-list users have the attention span of a premature ejaculator hopped up on adderal-NoDoz slammers, but for a site with an allusion to literature and euphoria, you don't seem to enable them a whole lot.

What you call 'roleplays,' most sensible people would call 'ads' and 'ideas.' There's a line between community-specific terminology, and outright dissonance. Yes, profiles are an ad of sorts, a sample of what to expect with that user, which means they need content created by that user, not a whole pocketful of Good Value al dente spaghetti shoved in the user's face and then their having to go searching for the pasta sauce and meatballs while equipped with a poorly-calibrated metal detector in a parking lot.

Condense it down. Make it user-friendly. Figure out a flow-chart. Ask people on other sites. Ask us for our blunt and harsh opinions. I'm trying to get a rein on my irritation so as to help you with this, and I understand if there are repercussions for this poorly-worked out diatribe.

You've done fantastic work with slimCat, with only a few nitpicky little details I'd have liked to have seen done differently or inclusive of, but by and large, going from using slimCat with F-list and coming to see, well, this, it's heartbreaking.

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created: 13 May 16 at 03:24 AM (build: 5/8/2016 8:04 PM beta)

Astarte

Lot of suggestions in here, to where it may be more beneficial to break out your distinctive ideas as separate feedback. That's a personal preference though, so don't take it as gospel.

Too many buttons all at once. Pare it down.
Wholly agree

Have a selection of cascade selections to choose from.
I like this idea in theory, compacts the slew of options we currently have. Any suggestions of what you might have in mind specifically?

Sex/Gender? Go off of appearance at a glance, and cascade it down into mentality and primary/secondary characteristics.
I don't understand what you're suggesting, could you elaborate?

Species? Allow users to write it in themselves
Disagree, seems like that would break the ability to search out profiles by species. You can always select a category and then clarify in the trait write-up

Interests? Group it into various and sundries
I don't understand what you're suggesting, could you elaborate?

incorporate the spell-it-out function and preferences in the character creation section.
Concur

The initial creation can be as simple as 'name and gender appearance,' and then the standard 'fill it in here' page.
Disagree, had I seen this when first starting I would have immediately gone 'ah-hah, so this is how I get into the details of my character. What a shock it would have been after this screen then to see that there were buttons to help categorize what I just spent an age writing pages of text for.

Allow more writing.
Is there a limit on your writing? You have writing in your traits, in your preferences, in your bottom section. You have ads you can write, RPs you can link. Seems there's an awful lot of writing built into literally every facet of the character system already. If you didn't realize, those boxes on each of your traits can be resized with a click and drag to be as large as you need. There comes a point though where 'less is more', but that's probably a discussion for elsewhere.

<snip>

What you call 'roleplays,' most sensible people would call 'ads.'
We also call them ads, if you're talking about the small little snippets of an RP idea you can setup. They're ads once you put them publicly viewable as such. Until then it's... you gathering your ideas in one place to be expanded upon eventually. For an example of some ads, check the litphoria front page. Once you go into them, then they're roleplays and probably much more akin to what you're expecting.

<snip>

Ask us for our blunt and harsh opinions.
You're literally in the space for exactly that, writing your blunt and harsh opinion.

I understand if there are repercussions for this poorly-worked out diatribe.
I'll expect to see you in my office. It's right next to the rooftop swimming pool. PS: that's a joke, I'm a site nobody but I was curious what you were going to suggest.

Hadrian Miller

cascade buttons, gender, etc.

A simple "man, woman, unknown, androgyne" entry, for example, that then cascades into the specifics.

species search

I definitely want to keep the species searching. I was suggesting using the present tags as more of a hashtag such as used in imgur and others, so that if there's a shared canon, then it can still be found and similar but non-related searches can bring up as well.

interests categorization

It seems bass-ackwards to me to go through picking things out, and then having to sort them into mandatory, core, good, et al, when it really should be going through those preferences in the first place, possibly with meta-bloc groupings at the outset that can be fine-tuned.

writing

OK, I did NOT see the main body entry down below everything else, when everyone else in the normal world has it up towards the top.

roleplays vs. ads, ideas

Then...simply call them ads and ideas? At least I'm not bitching about no one using 'storylines' any more. :P

Will be editing things, now that I see where it was me not seeing it, vs. my own gripes.

Lich Community Manager

Thanks for the honest feedback. I'll be reading over the things said here. How profiles are created, edited and shown are things we need to revise, and this is very informative.

Astarte

gender.

There's a separate feedback item, I'd have to find the link, that mentions trying to simplify the gender/sex portion. If memory serves, it's a pretty good read. People seem to want more detail, and the ability to be more specific in likes/dislikes. Simplifying it too much would be counter to that, but I think having some sort of simpler start that could be drilled into for details and specifics would be nice.

species.

I don't see the difference from how that is currently. You're a kindred? Pick vampire (is what I'd search, coupled with an appropriate canon of I was looking for this kind of character), then click where it says vampire on your character profile and on the available details box that's already there write say: "an elder kindred from VtM"or what have you.

interests.

I think this was done for ease of use, but some notification that it is easier to wait until the next screen if you want to be more detailed would be nice. In the same vein as your cascading suggestion, someone can quickly sort yes and no during the initial character generation. If someone is planning to be more specific, I slip the sorry form entirely and go to the next page where you can add interests directly into the specific categories very quickly.

writing.

Disagree. Leave it at the bottom. If I'm browsing profiles I want a quick snap shot of the character, which the writing portion won't help me with. If I like the profile enough to want to read more, then it's easy to scroll on down.

roleplays

They're roleplays though. The small snippet I assumed you were referring to is an ad, but it's part and parcel with a roleplay. I don't see the need for the rigid semantics. Also weekdays wrong with storylines?

Hadrian Miller

Then on the writing portion, have it user-defined. Some of us prefer to read the profile first, with only a few minor compatibilities, than go through a huge long and tiring list of BUTTONS to see the writing sample.

Desdemona Fireheart

You can mention your species in your short char-description. "A succubus with a heart of fire" in my case.

The gender/sex traits we discussed back and forth and forth and back. We cannot agree how a female "looks like". Does this mean with or without clothes? Does a male crossdresser look like a female? The "secondary something" shall be removed though, if I got that right, since it is covered by other traits (breasts, beard, body build).

Lich Community Manager

I've got some time to read now. A lot of what you've brought up has been covered before in feedback. Thanks to a recent curation march through the entire archive, my memory's fresh. I'll link to it where it's relevant. You may want to comment on those suggestions.

Speaking of which I'll introduce myself: Hi! I'm one of the site community managers. I'm staff. I'm not Wrecked Avent, who developed this site and slimcat, but I'm one of their assistants in helping the site run effectively.

We do have plans to revisit the profile creation, editing, and view pages in the near future.

Too many buttons and too much stuff in character creation: we agree. You might want to look at remove or rework likes and dislikes in character creation (litphoria.com).
Sex/gender: Some users recently discussed an overhaul gender options (litphoria.com). It appears the last step is delete the secondary sexual characteristics trait (litphoria.com) but there might be something or other after that.
Species: We don't plan to have an arbitrary write-whatever-in-there field. Pick an option and fill in the context for more detail. If there's no appropriate option, we'd ask you suggest one. (We do need to improve our message around that.)
Interests: We've got some suggestions to make searching more specific. (when searching for profiles interests order search results to first show those profiles most into those interests (litphoria.com), search for interests marked as core mandatory (litphoria.com)).
Writing: We won't be moving the description to the top. Astarte explains why - people don't read that stuff. Hate to break it to you but most people just don't care and will scroll right past it to get to the good stuff: interests and your various character traits. So we show those first. However, we do have plans to add a short description to Traits and to Interests and may expand that to a small description (or context) for each trait group.
We'll be renaming "ideas" to "ads" in the near future. I agree with your thoughts on renaming. Calling them "ideas" is a level of obscurity that just adds to the site's learning curve.

.... looots of this stuff is actually planned and accepted, now that I look at it. Hooray!

I'm interested to know a bit more about some of the things you said:

Sex/gender again: Could you say more about your thoughts on a "what they look like" section? (Is that the cascading "pick man/woman/androgyne/etc" thing you mentioned in another post?)
Interests: Elaborate on the hashtag thing, and the meta-groups? I don't understand what you mean by those.

Desdemona Fireheart

Astarte explains why - people don't read that stuff. Hate to break it to you but most people just don't care and will scroll right past it to get to the good stuff: interests and your various character traits. So we show those first.

I doubt it is that simple. If I check a F-List profile then first I read the summary on the top left. Here I get the information if the character is a potential partner for me. Then I check for my main kinks. Then maybe I read the character description a bit to get a first impression. Check the pictures. Look at info for "desired RP method". There is no simple traits first, text last routine.

Lich Community Manager

No there is no one simple routine, but it is very clear to us that most people scroll right past the description looking for everything else. After that the profile is closed. Some users may proceed to read the description in full if/when other details check out, some don't bother.

The description is very important to the person writing it, but one of the least important parts of the profile to most visitors.

Summary descriptions are important though so we'll pursue those.

Desdemona Fireheart

The description is very important to the person writing it, but one of the least important parts of the profile to most visitors.

The description is the most important part for me. The traits and interests only tell me if we share the same interests, not if you are someone I want to play with. It's only that traits are faster to read than a description. You are right though, that a profile may be sorted out before I read the text.

Astarte

You would rather read every description prior to finding out of you share any interests? Differences in methods I suppose. If I find someone whose only interest is stuff in my no category then it doesn't matter how much I like the character itself there's nothing for us to play is how I approach it.

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