Gleemax Q&A

[KnightBrokenCross]

1) Change the color scheme. It makes things a pain to read, and combined with a difficulty in finding things within the site, it's too much of a hassle to keep many potential visitors, including myself.

2) Make community management both responsive and polite. There's a horrendous amount of community ill-will towards Mike (though interestingly not towards Solace) in how they have handled a great many issues including but not limited to: canning UnCon, the drama with Knowledge Arcana, very selective editing of posts critical of CM, the circumstances that led to a lot of WizOs leaving, the recent firing of a WizO for dodgy reasons, the changes to how the WizOs did their job versus the new forum leads and VCLs (and I really don't think many people honestly know why the changes were made and how they work), etc

I've been on the WotC boards for years, and the the tone has distinctly gone downhill in the past year. It's recoverable, but it's going to take lots of effort, or some changes.

1) I personally think that having the ability to change colour schemes would, ultimately, be the best solution to this problem, and that can be suggested.

2) I won't go into people's dealings with Community Management (though all my dealings with them have been great, personally), nor the issue of a WizO being fired. I can, however, understand that some people may not understand the CM/CS structure, and how VCLs/FLs work. This will be included in the Gleemax FAQ we're currently working on, but here's the gist of it:
- Customer Service (i.e. WizOs) deals with Code of Conduct violations, and have various moderating powers; WizOs are WotC employees;
- Community Management deals with Editorial Moderation as well as community building. VCLs (Volunteer Community Leads) are community members who volunteer their free time to engage in those activities for a specific area, reporting directly to Community Management, and they have certain powers to go with their title (e.g. decide which competitions get prizes, whether a blog can be featured, etc.); Forum Leads are also volunteers, but they simply make suggestions regarding a specific forum to CM, while also writing FAQs and helping newcomers to those forums.

In practice, as a Forum Lead myself, I can tell you that I have found Community Management (and Wizards) very willing to hear what we have to say, and I have felt that they have kept their word that what we said would matter.

 

[PeelSeel2]

I got a question. What is Gleemax's purpose? What is it supposed to do? It mission statement, if you will. I am totally confused. All I have got from the marketing I have seen is nothing. A big brain in jar at Gencon spouting things. If it's supposed to be forums for games, we already had better forums. If it's supposed to be blogs, the forums and other venues work better for that. If it's supposed to hook gamers up..well...

Help me understand.

 

[KnightBrokenCross]

1. Navigating the site is a chore. Often a chore that doesn't pay off in the end. It needs a major redesign by someone with extensive experience with web design from a usability standpoint.

2. As many have said - the god awful neon green color scheme has got to go.

3. Code bugs, errors, etc. The frequency with which you are greeted by "Server error in '/' application" or something similar is completely unacceptable.

4. Gleemax feels much like a site that is not only in the early stages of construction, but that does not even know what it wants to be when it's finished. Here is an example:

Go to Gleemax.com
Click on the "take Tour" button under "Know Gaming"
What the hell is that supposed to be? A page with three content-free blurbs about gaming and a place underneath to post a comment? What is this supposed to be a tour of? Why am I leaving a comment? What the hell is this "tour" supposed to be?

I do think we have some quality blogs at Gleemax, though few people seem to read them - probably because, as you say, navigating the site is a chore. Here are a few blogs that I personally read, off my Favourites list: NexusX, phelanarcetus, KJW, Webster, crazy_monkey1956 and Nazaire. And I hope you don't mind that I include a link to my own blog, though I'll refrain judgement on its quality - that's for you to decide.

EDIT: On technical issues, they have said there would be one more "alpha" patch, and then there would be no more patches until beta, which should be finished during the Summer.

The number of times the Error messages crops up is a major concern that they are aware of and will likely try and fix with that final alpha patch.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Take a look at almost any other blogging software in existence.

It should be easy to find items by people (it isn't).

It should be easy to find articles by date (it isn't)

It should be easy to find articles by topic (it isn't)

It should be able to get from a blog by Mearls to the rest of his posts (it isn't)

It should support paragraph formatting at least in comments (it doesn't seem to)

Graphic design should be sorted out (what is the point of the funny shaped buttons which have square menus popping out over them?)

It should allow me to remember my login for as long as I want (rather than throw it away every couple of weeks).

It should ditch tables for layout and move to pure CSS for accessibility reasons (passing Section 508 and WAI - nice to have or legal obligation? I'm not sure which it is in your country)

I'm afraid that at the moment I see no value in Gleemax whatsoever. It turned my daily reading of WotC developer blogs on the vbulletin site into never visiting - and waiting for someone with more patience to post links to interesting items if they appeared. I can't see how that works to the benefit of WotC in any way, shape or form.

The idea of a community blogging/messageboard/etc resource is a great one, but I think you'd be best served by ditching Gleemax before any more resource is wasted on it and buying any of dozens of excellent existing blogging software and configuring it for your own purposes. (looking at the HTML it has all the hallmarks of Microsoft SharePoint, and having laboured with that software for over a year myself I'd never recommend that anyone ever considers using it for anything other than intranets).

Good luck.

 

[KnightBrokenCross]

I got a question. What is Gleemax's purpose? What is it supposed to do? It mission statement, if you will. I am totally confused. All I have got from the marketing I have seen is nothing. A big brain in jar at Gencon spouting things. If it's supposed to be forums for games, we already had better forums. If it's supposed to be blogs, the forums and other venues work better for that. If it's supposed to hook gamers up..well...

Help me understand.

Gleemax, when completed, is meant to be a social networking website fine-tuned for all gamers. The site will include forums, blogs, wikis, online game portals and features typical of social networking websites.

It is a public alpha, at the moment, and Wizards has encouraged people to send them input on the website, which has happened. I can tell you from experience that they have listened to what we have said, and have been open to the ideas we send.

Once it is done, all of the features I described above are meant to be available.

Even though Wizards is paying for it, Gleemax is open to all gamers, regardless of their game of choice. There are ongoing Rifts and Heroes Unlimited campaigns in the Gleemax Play-by-Post forum, for example, and there's a thread on Shadowrun as well.

I hope that answers your question.

 

[mlund]

Right now, the Navigation is brutal.

The Search section is poorly executed and there is really no logical manual way to navigate between topics and content.

You need to form and enforce a topical hierarchy so users can browse your content by topic.

Also, separate your Personal Utilities from your Site Navigation. All the custom crap I can do on my profile and homepage and whatever shouldn't be cluttering my main navigation like it is right now. Think something more like PHP Bulletin board systems in that regard and less like LiveJournal.

Your content display area is poorly executed. Right now you lose way too much reading room to gutters caused by centering it on 800px wide resolution and then eating the gutters caused by seldom-used utilities like the calender and "my games" or google Ads.

Your main content display area should have a flexible width, giving you more display area on 1024px resolution instead of just larger gutters.

Your "hangers on" like the Google Ads and the Calendar application should be floating elements off to one side (preferably the right side). Once the content passes those elements vertically you should have that horizontal real-estate back, sort of like a floating image inside a print piece - the content just flows around it.

In short, less Penny Arcade and Live Journal, more Slashdot or PHPBBS.

- Marty Lund

 

[KnightBrokenCross]

Take a look at almost any other blogging software in existence.

It should be easy to find items by people (it isn't).

It should be easy to find articles by date (it isn't)

It should be easy to find articles by topic (it isn't)

It should be able to get from a blog by Mearls to the rest of his posts (it isn't)

It should support paragraph formatting at least in comments (it doesn't seem to)

Graphic design should be sorted out (what is the point of the funny shaped buttons which have square menus popping out over them?)

It should allow me to remember my login for as long as I want (rather than throw it away every couple of weeks).

It should ditch tables for layout and move to pure CSS for accessibility reasons (passing Section 508 and WAI - nice to have or legal obligation? I'm not sure which it is in your country)

I'm afraid that at the moment I see no value in Gleemax whatsoever. It turned my daily reading of WotC developer blogs on the vbulletin site into never visiting - and waiting for someone with more patience to post links to interesting items if they appeared. I can't see how that works to the benefit of WotC in any way, shape or form.

The idea of a community blogging/messageboard/etc resource is a great one, but I think you'd be best served by ditching Gleemax before any more resource is wasted on it and buying any of dozens of excellent existing blogging software and configuring it for your own purposes. (looking at the HTML it has all the hallmarks of Microsoft SharePoint, and having laboured with that software for over a year myself I'd never recommend that anyone ever considers using it for anything other than intranets).

Good luck.

Well, Gleemax is a public alpha at the moment, hence why things are very rough around the edges.

I can't speak for WotC on any issue, given I'm not an employee, but from my standpoint, as a community member, having a public alpha seemed to be a very good idea to me, especially given I have felt they have been paying attention to what people have told them, and that they are trying to improve.

The core idea of Gleemax - the social networking website for gamers with several features (from blogs, to forums, to wikis, etc) appeals to me, and it appeals to me that they have been getting feedback on Gleemax from its inception, that the final users have been invited and encouraged to give their opinions and help shape the final product.

Wizards also seems interested in promoting what they consider to be good indie games that they don't make themselves, and Gleemax will be vehicle for that. I personally think this is a good idea, too.

Now, it does seem clear to me that many people did not immediately notice that Gleemax is still an alpha and that the website is, at the moment, horrible to use. It may not necessarily have been the best idea to turn WotC staff blogs into Gleemax blogs so early in the process, given the blogs would be harder to gain access to, due to functionality issues.

That said, we have tried to alleviate that problem through the Gleemax Compendium, and several users now have an Index of blogs as their sticky. I have linked to a few blogs above, and I do encourage everyone to read through them - or go through the Compendium and read a few of the non-staff blogs. There are some very good reads to be found there.

EDIT: Also, you can add staff blogs (or any blogs, for that matter) to your Favourite list, and simply click on those links to find the blogs.

 

[yargon]

overhaul the whole site...

Get an Information Architect and UX Design team in....
1. Make the site adhere to some basic website design
2. Make sure its cross browser compatible
3. Get the Information Architect to make the navigation intuitive
4. Get the UX team to go over the design and sort out all the really bad examples of what not to do
5. Update the Hardware to be able to deliver the required pages in a timely fashion

And that’s just the start…
Really I’m an IA and I’ve actually used the site as an example of what not to build for our clients….

To many companies get their website wrong due to them thinking that they know what the user of their website is like. Its best to go to the users and ask them. At least your soliciting advice from the people who will be using it, that's a good start, make sure you listen to them, and do what they suggest.

But seriously get a proper team in....

 

[Darkthorne]

1) If within Gleemax I should be able to get to any other point w/o being forced to hit the back button which chokes from time to time.
2) Whether or not a staff blog is in my favorites putting the timestamp next to their name of their lastest blog I believe would help with the both the current frustration of navigation issue ("Feb 22nd post, oh yeah I read that" goes to next one) and the added time of needing to use the back button and refreshing or starting over in some cases.
3) How about a user manual? Or a help menu that helps you with Gleemax? I'm not trying to be a wiseguy but I wasn't the guy that designed the site and while he's got a really good idea where things are at I don't
4) Why aren't things organized? Folders/Subfolders? Table of contents?
5) Hey new back button issue, clicked on something I didn't want to see sooo.. (back button) See new post below
Thanks

 

[Darkthorne]

5) What the HECK does this mean? I'm clueless but I think it's bad
Server Error in '/' Application.
________________________________________
Index was outside the bounds of the array.[EkSite-->GetPermissions(Int,Int,Int,String,[&Collection)]][EkSite->GetPermissions(Int,Int,String,[&Collection]]
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Exception: Index was outside the bounds of the array.[EkSite-->GetPermissions(Int,Int,Int,String,[&Collection)]][EkSite->GetPermissions(Int,Int,String,[&Collection]]

Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[Exception: Index was outside the bounds of the array.[EkSite-->GetPermissions(Int,Int,Int,String,[&Collection)]][EkSite->GetPermissions(Int,Int,String,[&Collection]]]
Ektron.Cms.EkException.ThrowException(Exception ex, EventLogEntryType EventType) +403
Ektron.Cms.EkException.ThrowException(Exception ex) +10
Ektron.Cms.Content.EkContent.GetContentById(Int32 Id, ContentResultType Type) +12778
Ektron.Cms.API.Content.Content.GetContent(Int32 Id, ContentResultType ContentType) +67
Cornerstone.WebApp.BusinessLayer.ContentFilterManager.GetXmlForUserAndContentDataList(Int32 numberOfItems, Int32 pageOfItems, ContentData[] contentDataList, Boolean displayAvatar, Boolean showEditLinks, Boolean removeTeaserFormatting, Int32 userIdOfBlogOwner) +300
Cornerstone.WebApp.BusinessLayer.ContentFilterManager.GetXmlForUserAndContentDataList(Int32 numberOfItems, Int32 pageOfItems, ContentData[] contentDataList, Boolean displayAvatar, Int32 userIdOfBlogOwner) +23
Comms_Components_SearchResults.FilterContentByCategory(String category) +211
Comms_Components_SearchResults.FilterContentByCategory() +11
Comms_Pages_Blog_AggregateBlog.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) +111
System.Web.Util.CalliHelper.EventArgFunctionCaller(IntPtr fp, Object o, Object t, EventArgs e) +15
System.Web.Util.CalliEventHandlerDelegateProxy.Callback(Object sender, EventArgs e) +34
System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +99
System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +47
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +1061

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Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.832; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.832