Propeller's Anti-Group Group »
Posted By Spadecaller 2 months ago in News
Despite the recent attempts of management to patch up and accessorize Propeller 2.0, its most serious flaws continue to frustrate members. Many of us have discovered that the lack of responsiveness from "groups" has made it difficult to share and to conveniently access stories of personal interest.
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Comments So Far: 173
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Spadecaller2 months ago
The lack of responsiveness from "groups" has made it difficult to share and to conveniently access stories of personal interest.
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The new format will remain isolating and restrictive to sharing among members as long as groups are used as the go-between for members, their interests, and their posted stories. -
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mickoleon2 months ago
I couldn't agree more. Groups, at least for now, are hardly functioning as intended and sharing stories we deem important between friends has become rather difficult.
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antibrainwasher2 months ago
NYT today, AOL/netscape/propeller is hemoraging money, Time warner is selling this crap product, all propeller changes were done corporate sanitization and lowering overhead for corporate sale.
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PsychoHosebeast2 months ago
Bingo, SC, I was bitching about groups the second day... why is there a specialized group, yet every friggin story, regardless of subject, is posted there? Many groups are little more than "here are my stories, vote for me" vehicles. How many "politics" groups are there now? Food? Just groups with somebody's name? Groups have their place, however, to bail on all the categories that existed before, which were (in theory) restricted to on-topic posts, has pretty much left people thrashing around trying to find what they want to read, particularly since the majority of group owners stop being interested in their group about fifteen minutes after it's created.
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Nowalive2 months ago
PHB,
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While I agree that most of these groups are self promoting submissions stations, there are some groups that legitimately function as outlets for an exchange of ideas. My group is self promoting to a point, however only in that I am promoting the idea that Americans DO have other choices in politics. I invite you to take a look at it and decide.
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Spadecaller2 months ago
Agreed PHB... but to have groups act as middlemen is utter stupidity. Why would anyone want to post a story and have to got through this nonsense; it beats me. I cannot muster much more patience for this fiasco. It takes twice as long for me to find people to resond to an article that I post. When I posted stories in the old system, I had an average of 12 to 13 votes within the first hour.
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This is no picnic. Most of my friends are weblogging on other sites to get away from this dog. We are trying to hang in here hoping to affect some positive changes, but it does not appear that Propeller really wants to address the key issues. This is certainly one of the biggies.-
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hyperbola2 months ago
I detest mechanisms for "soliciting votes for me" (and those who do it). This fosters herd mentalities that we don't need here. In fact the groups mechanism was probably created in response to herds who wanted such mechanisms.
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I agree that finding new stories is a crucial feature for the site and make some suggestions below. -
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Nowalive2 months ago
Bravo Spade!
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I have been a loyal NS/Propeller user since '93. I have seen the various stages of development, and I must say that I consider the old NS/Prop the pinnacle of social networking. Now the look and feel is just depressing. I can't review my comments, can't edit my profile, it is actually slower than the old prop and I really preferred the vote and sink features. I miss not being able to see who voted, as I have made a lot of new friends on both sides of the issues from that reference.
I like the groups feature, but must agree with PHB that most are now just spam groups or groups to promote submissions.
I am going to hang on though, hoping for much needed improvements. I thoroughly enjoy the disussions here and although the threads sometimes turn into little more than name calling events, they generally have brilliant and thought provoking dialogue.
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SenorCoconut2 months ago
In all fairness to the management, the site messaging system has improved this week, and the site is generally functioning much more efficiently.
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However, the story sharing function that was omitted from Propeller 2 was a great loss. It allowed for efficient access to stories that are now just too time consuming to search for. More importantly I found myself reading good and interesting articles that I would otherwise not have seen. If the story sharing feature were to be restored, I see no reason why the groups should be done away with, they could serve as an archive for each particular group subject, and also a place for like minded people to network.-
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RickyDawkins2 months ago
I have a major problem with the "message center". The message center does not recognize the ENTER key. When I write a message, it all gets crammed into ONE paragraph, even if i have written NUMEROUS paragraphs. (Nobody seems to want to touch this issue or even recognize that it exists.)
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Spadecaller2 months ago
I don't see the great benefit of the groups, other than imposing restrictions to the entire community. My loyalty was to the community. Now what do we have? Food people, politicos, movie buffs, ... some groups are even restricting membership. This is nonsense. It's divisive, isolating, and inefficient.
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I don't need someone else or something else forcing me into reading stories that I may bypass. I trust my own ability to determine what I want to read and what I would care not to read. If I want an instructor to assign reading assignments I can go back to school for that; or if I want an activities counselor, I would not want Mr. Spinhead to show me around the camp.
Just give us back a dedcent list of categories and most of us are intelligent enough to pick and choose according to our own tastes.-
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cosmogenium2 months ago
I didn't mean to neg or pos.
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SC, I can't completely agree. The groups do make it easier to share activity with a greater number of people at a time. I always hated the Five Friends Only rule when trying to get a story out to people i thought would be interested. By joining the appropriate group(s) and sending stories to them, I can get the word out to many more people than I could before.
That said, I wanted to be able to send stories to a list selected from my friends and to have that list be unlimited by some arbitrary number. However, I've done something like that with my own group to which I invite whatever friends are interested in joining. That was the motive behind cosmogenium's coop. The group also gives me an easy way to monitor my friends who are members' activities and to prop and comment on their stories. Its membership is "limited" to those who are already my friends because I want to use it as I used to use my friends page. Since some of my friends keep their activity private, the group is a way for them to share with me selectively and vice versa.
The group Politics is one I consider to be an alternative to the old "politics" category, which no longer exists (what were they thinking?).
Anyway, at the risk of seeming contrarian about groups, I can see a lot of potential with them, and with this new format in general. Have you noticed that it works well on an iPhone or iPod Touch? I was amazed after having tried to work with the old format on my Touch to no success and then trying again with the new one. It's actually easy to work with on a small format device!
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bluetexasvalley2 months ago
Beau: "And wasn't there some mention by the Propeller staff that there'd be a directory of all groups forthcoming? Without an invitation to join, how would you even know if one exists?"
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From your Profile page or Socialize tab, click on New Groups. You can see all of the groups, with the newest ones shown first. -
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Beau78902 months ago
There was also some mention of re-enabling tracking back to comments. It's still far too difficult to find old comments and find out if anyone has responded to them. Your activity shows which stories you've commented on, but you can't get directly to them--you still have to open all the little triangles on each story and search for your own comments--not an easy task on popular stories with many comments.
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Groups don't bother me, as long as there are also OTHER ways to conveniently find and share new stories that interest you--a group's home page only shows the last 10 stories people have shared with that group.
And wasn't there some mention by the Propeller staff that there'd be a directory of all groups forthcoming? Without an invitation to join, how would you even know if one exists?
I also don't like the fact that there may be stories that I want to see to know what they're about, but wouldn't want to support and push up to the top of the home page. The way it works now, if you look at a story and its comments, you're effectively supporting that story.-
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Beau78902 months ago
I know. You can also see all of the most popular groups, so that all groups are arranged by how many members they contain.
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But how many pages do you have to go through? Can't we have a simple list of them--one line each, in alphabetical order so we can see more than 15 or so at a time? -
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nostalgia2 months ago
"It's still far too difficult to find old comments and find out if anyone has responded to them. Your activity shows which stories you've commented on, but you can't get directly to them--you still have to open all the little triangles on each story and search for your own comments"
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I agree
This is a major problem
Who wants to continue to go back through all of the comments to see if there are replies
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Spadecaller2 months ago
This is a comment that I just received regarding this story...
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I am finding he same thing is happening to me too.
"I believe this was all done for the purpose of advertising, but it is not working for most of us. --- I didn't want to comment in public..... I scan my computer EVERYDAY for adware and virus... before the switch a normal scan produced around 4-8 adware cookies.... last night 47 .... and averages well over 20 since the switch.. and this is with LESS time on propeller than before the switch.... and no other change in internet habits... " -
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dadesider2 months ago
So far there are over 300 groups, soon we will all have our own groups and can shotgun our stories to the world. I think I'll just whittle my friends list to 10 and go from there...
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bluetexasvalley2 months ago
"So far there are over 300 groups..."
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Not any more. I have reported quite a few as SPAM -- which they were -- so it's been whittled down some. :)-
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mntnman4442 months ago
And then there are people like AlphaGnosis who are so desperate to push their hate threads that they add them to the music group.
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bluetexasvalley2 months ago
Although I submit stories to groups -- and I belong to several -- I find it much more convenient to go to Friends Submissions where I can vote on my friends' stories. In fact, for me it is more convenient than answering individual vote-for-me messages, plus cruising channels. And I don't go to my groups or to channels to look up new stories to prop; Friends Submissions is the best way and I go there 3 or 4 times a day.
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I still go through the Top Stories and look at submissions from non-friends, but not nearly as often. I used to go through the Top Stories looking for my friends' submissions when they didn't PM me about them, but that was a bit of a hassle.-
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flyonthewallzz2 months ago
I like the friends submissions thing too! I have considered making that my startup page. My friends list is a mix of folks, that I think speak well from both sides of the aisle and I am pretty stingy about adding to it. I miss the who voted thing because that was the basis from which I decided who to put on my friends list. Basically the folks that did not respond to my comments did not get on my list.
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I have digressed: I think the group thing could be handy, The conversation feature could be used to store research and links to information that often seem to clog the jabber. I am not sure how the "Reflect feature works"?
The thing that drew me here was folks sharing information and then tempering it with their opinion. I think the group feature could be used as an archive.
For instance Spadecaller could post links to all his videos and a Luddite like me could respond at the time when I was using a fancy media computer.
There are a lot of folks here that do a bunch of research it would be cool to look into their library of links and possibly add to it.
Sorry to take up so much space! long day and I just started jabbering, usually on a night like this I would just vote up the comments and go to sleep.
But then y'all would not know how much I appreciate the company.
Side note: I have never had a story make it to the front page, but Alpha has supported most of them even though we generally disagree. I am having a conscience problem, because I have found myself avoiding stories I disagree with because my participation seems to boost its value.
I feel that my ability to "gently" express my point of view has been diminished.
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bluetexasvalley2 months ago
I have over 100 friends, most of whom have the same viewpoints on politics, religion, environment, etc., so I don't feel like I'm missing many important stories. If I do miss anything interesting, I can usually get to those in Top Stories.
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I can easily do without the groups, but don't take away Friends Submissions from me. :) -
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jovial2 months ago
I lost track of a lot of my friends. With so many groups to join and pick from it's become a burden to navigate through all of it. As an owner of a group I have been having a major problem adding people that request to join my group the link to to do it is not functional. Another disturbing thing is i can't seem to log out on IE explorer. Maybe something to do with script handling or something. So right now i am perpetually logged on. I do have to say that when I report bugs they have been trying to answer me and solve problems.
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flyonthewallzz2 months ago
"You are surely not missing anything."
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What am I, Chopped liver?
Neither the "old propeller "or the Religion group would have me!
Sorry Spade: but I do have to wonder if I want to join a club that would let me in!
But thanks for letting me join even if I have no clue what it means.
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Spadecaller2 months ago
If some people want the groups, that is fine with me too, but give the members the tools to navigate this site effectively. I heard management explain that the groups would serve as a substitute for the loss of categories.
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Many of us do not find that acceptable. In my case, if we do not get back the categories and the tools to locate old stories, comments, and to have a convenient method to search out the stories that we want to participate on, then I would not want to continued here. If it stays the way it is now, I will join the ranks of the growing list of Propeller refugees.
