Does Outquib interface and organization of site suck right now?

Very interesting debate. We would love all of your feedback so please, please tell us what you think. We also have a cause group which we would prefer everyone post in as well to provide us feedback: http://www.outquib.com/causes/view/spread-outquib

As of yet, we've received a lot of positive feedback on the layout. Most criticism comes against the profile. Let us know what you think.

Alright Suhail, I've met you once before, so hey. If you can stick online for a bit longer, I'll have a little list ready for you.

New to the site, joined yesterday. But here are the first few things I've noticed:

* I can't change my birthdate. I wasn't born in 1999...
* My (standard 64x64) avatar was both horizontally and vertically stretched on my home page. This causes pixelation, but I can live with that. Worse, it breaks the aspect ratio of the image, stretching it horizontally.
* If I "edit settings" for my profile, it's not obvious that I need to click on "Update" prior to switching tabs. If you're going to use the tabbed-window metaphor, settings should be persistent across tab switches, and the Update button should save the settings for all of the tabs simultaneously.
* Knowing the username of another OQ member, I haven't yet found how to add them as a friend.

Also, I'm extremely hesitant to add my presence on other social networks until I know what kind of information that will reveal. Heck, I don't even know how much of my profile is visible to other users, and how much is just use to amass statistical data.

Suggestions to improve the site, because I think it’s not terribly friendly right now, and there’s a dead cockroach staring at me from the wallpaper. I realize some of the things I’m pointing out may or may not be accessible or whoever designed this site may not know how to pull off all these tricks. I’m just suggesting. And thanks for the invite Neeru/Fariz/Tulika.

-When you update any of your settings, the menu shouldn’t close, you could want to switch to another tab and change settings on there.

-Site is generally a bit slow.

-I prefer color blue for the site scheme/theme.

-What is this recently followed box on the home page? And who honestly cares? Just taking up space?

-Make it easier to click on the threads. On the home page and these columns of topics, you can only click on the user names and you can’t access the thread directly.

-Min length of 100 characters for each post? Why? And 4 for title? Is this to prevent spamming or something?

-When people post on a thread, their avatars (profile pictures) should ideally show up. Might help ID people a bit better.

-It would be nice if there was a friendlier mini-feed like facebook ID’ing your friends posting, people posting after your cause/posts within 10 posts (you don’t want to post something and get emails for the rest of eternity telling you someone posted on the thread you did and you don’t care anymore).

-I hate this guevara pig thing. It’s sick.

-It would be nice if threads were properly categorized, it’s confusing right now. “feature debates, upcoming debates, and interesting posts” which are all columns on the home page are not legitimate categories. Try “sports”, “weather”, “politics”, “economy”, etc.

-This “Join A Cause” box on the home page kinda blows. It just shows me these small pics and I don’t know what the heck cause I’m clicking on and two of them are pigs so it’s just pissy. Try putting the name of the cause under the pic for starters.

-Linking outquib to email inbox like facebook would be helpful if people are really into it.

-customized fonts, colors, borders, all that shnazz for posts.

-The drop-down box for picking your stance should ideally be where your stance description is. Why put it on the left side of the site?

-Tool-tip boxes for stuff like “Following” and stuff might be useful for those who are new to posting threads or aren’t familiar with this site and how it works. Straightforward explanations are always useful.

-Why are we limited on invites? Might be nice to popularize this site and give us all unlimited for a while.

-Clicking “Browse” at the top of the site gives you pages of thread names, again, not organized in the least. And same with the drop-downs of "post" "cause" and "debate". They just list stuff of what was recently posted. It's tolerable for the community size right now, but definitely will not hold up if this site gets big.

-Might be nice to add a signature section to every post a person does, unless you want to avoid clutter.

-On the browse page (and maybe the site in general), the page jumper area is at the bottom, it would be nice to add it to the top as well, so I don't have to scroll down all the way each time.

-I can't leave the obama for president cause...

And more to come....................
~OSLiM

What you write in this white box before it becomes posted isn't necessarily what comes out onto the post. I spaced ~OSLiM in the middle of the thread and it came out left justified. Quit limiting my originality.

Another thing, instead of me posting every time I think of a genius idea, which is every other moment, why not allow me to edit my previous posts instead of cluttering up the thread further?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~OSLiM

Just checking this editing feature.

Hi,

Yes we are aware of the birthdate issue, expect a fix very soon.

We're still deciding about the avatar, we had decided early we wanted perfect squares. We're looking into methods of dealing with users who have small ones.

You make a fair point with settings, we'll work on the UI concept with that. Thanks.

I would think adding a friend is rather obvious, it's right below their username. Obviously you have to be logged in to commit that action. Is it difficult to find?

We reveal only a link to your profile on that network at this time. No other data is used at this point. We will maintain privacy issues if we do play with something in the future. We'll be sure to incorporate that.

We're still deciding about the avatar, we had decided early we wanted perfect squares. We're looking into methods of dealing with users who have small ones.

My avatar is 64px by 64px, logically square. It gets stretched horizontally more than vertically when I look at it.

I would think adding a friend is rather obvious, it's right below their username. Obviously you have to be logged in to commit that action. Is it difficult to find?

What turned out to be difficult was finding their profile page. There's no obvious search feature for users; I had to replace the "shortcircuit" in the URL to my profile with their username.

* Another bug...The longer my post, the longer the entry text box becomes. Except that it's not really able to keep track of the number of lines in my post, just the number of characters. As a reult, by this point, the bottom of the entry box has scrolled off my screen...Using a scroll bar would really be simpler, and just as effective.

A few thoughts:

-I know this was touched on briefly already, but I'd like to be able to control the privacy of my profile. Even things like birth date and location should be able to be only displayed to friends, if I want, imo.

-I'd like to know who started a debate from that debate's page. Currently, I have to look on the home/browse/profile pages to tell.

-To expand on what shortcircuit was saying about adding friends, you can only easily add friends if you find a post by them in a debate or something. If you know somebody's username, but they haven't posted anything in awhile or they just joined, then it's very difficult to add them as a friend.

-If I change my stance on a debate, I can see it change in the orange letter on the left, but I have to refresh the page for it to change on any of my posts in the debate.