I've been off Gather a bit lately, trying to spend less time on the computer. This is my first day really back in a couple weeks.
I still think the homepage needs to be a major area of development. The featured article needs to change more often. I wish that I could get a new featured article by refreshing the page. It's a drag to have the first thing on the front page be something I've already read, especially if I don't like it. I do like having gather throw me something that I might not otherwise have seen, but I don't like that it is the same thing all day long. I want to check in to gather several times a day and have new things to check out on the homepage each time. A list of articles to which I've commented and which have new comments would keep me flying circles around gather like a vulture.
I mean that in a good way.
The categories are problematic. I've written two film reviews for gather and there isn't any film category. I already wrote about this, but your users would be excellent inventors of categories. The categories sound boring. I apologize to the person who came up with them. It's a hard job. It's an impossible job. I'm sure you're a creative person and intelligent. It's just difficult to foresee what the users are going to do. Many minds are better than one. Maybe you could have very broad categories and let the users add subcategories.
Could the tags box be on the same page as this text editor? It would be much easier to write tags if I could re-skim the article while writing tags. Especially after three glasses of wine.
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Comments: 6
On the featured articles, we plan to not display stuff you've already read on the home page and are looking at a few enhancements to improve access to things that you have commented on. The page refresh would be great and I'm sure we will look in to that too.
On the categories, we do have a "Movies and Films" category under the Entertainment section and there is also a category for "Entertainment Reviews". Either of these are great places for film reviews. You can also categorize your film reviews in both categories. We're planning a new "Reviews" function that would make reviews of any kind their own article type. This will make reviews easy to find on Gather.
And don't forget that you earn points for your publishing efforts. These points are your reward for providing these great ideas and valuable feedback. Keep 'em coming.
Allan
Another community that may be different or even better suited for writing and reviews is: www.writing.com/?rfrid=kh53150. Very nice community.