What happened to JU?

I've got the answer. A free bowl of soup AND a haircut for every new member of our cult... I mean erm, blog.

I like this format. 

One thing about the article drop off is that some people were posting a lot of similar articles and I think no one wants to fall in the the same rut.  Maybe?  I think I do that sometimes but my titles are usually quite different.  Maybe.

Personally, I am finding the weather a bit hot to think.  I also feel in a bit of a rut so I don't have a lot to blog about.  I'm trying not to do rants because it puts me in a negative space.

 

I'm doing a lot of photo editing on my computer now, and I've been checking out JU a lot to take a mental break.  I'm good to comment, but don't want to do a lot of thinking of my own articles when doing that kind of work. 

I also noticed a relative dearth of articles.  I like to think of it as people out and about gathering experiences to feed their blog.

 

The new format is daunting, especially if you are not after the tech or game stuff. Maybe it is the heat??

I know some folks liek the new format... I personally like some of the looks, but the functions are quite obfucated comapred to the old format and massive chunks of screen real estate are either filled with nothing at all or widgets that aren't very useful. Just my opinion though.

 

That is a good example of the new format problem namely : the fold.

 

Lets say you had a sweet new picture you wanted to use in an article or a graph or whatever.. it is virtually guranteed to be hidden down below the "Read more..." fold even on featured articles.

This is a problem because it results in moat of the articles looking bland and identical as in a few lines of text before the "read more..." fold. It wasn't like that before and it made a major difference in page views and comments.

 

When an article gets Featured it should be run full length or at the very least have a longer portion above the fold.

 

It simply is too cluttered. This isn't supposed to be Myspace.



It is also the lack of text. I love avatar pictures as much as the next guy (although these are way too tiny) but there should be a text subtitle with the person's handle listed (or at least mousover text). What happens when people change their avatar pics? Now you just have no idea who the pic refers to anymore.

And looking down to the url listing in the bottom of the browser to get the handle info sorts of defeats the whole point no?

Apparently there is also something hinky going on with the site code right now because clicking these icons on the front page:






Gets you malformed URL's liek these:

I'll skip the haricut and go for a beard trim.

As for the front page, I think they are still working some bugs out. But good to note them. It allows Zoomba to focus in on the problems.

did I miss the free ice cream? 

it's summertime and I'm sure people are just enjoying the nice weather and things will be back to normal when the nice weather disappears. 

now, where do I get the ice cream?  

 

With one notable exception, my (pretty much) daily blogs don't draw many customers.  Maybe I'm boring?  Perhaps I am not talking about things people are interested in? The new format bothers me a bit, as well. And I don't know where the "religion" category disappeared to off the forums page.  I've asked several times and get no reply. On the other hand, I do enjoy the comments I do get and I try to comment on other's pages as I can. Things will likely pick up in the fall.

Anyway, thanks for this article and the opportunity to think about ice cream...one of my true no no foods.

See ya.

 

I'm just in this rut where I have nothing to talk about because nothing is going on, and all the people I use to debate with have left for the summer or because they're deployed or some other reason. I hope it picks up in the fall, but the only way it will is if we write the blogs.

Summer is always the slow time, I think. The new format has taken it's toll on some folks that's for sure.

Sodaiho, I read you every morning. I'm sorry I don't comment, but you are like my morning coffee. Don't stop.

I guess we all need to write some more.

Summer, summer, summer.

It's hard to sit down when the weather is so nice.

I have no doubt JU will be up and kicking again this fall. 

No time.  No topics of interest.  Too many other things going on.

Take your pick from that list.

If I had a little more time, or some more inspiration in the form of stupidity in the news or current events type stuff, or worthy items of note going on in my own personal life, there'd perhaps be more output. For now, just too little time and not enough inspiration.

Things are a little quiet around here, eh?  Well, careful what you ask for

Has it really been 5, 6 years?  Wowsers, we old folk.  Hope you've been keeping well, old chap.

Someone needs to write on article on how the homosexual and Darwinist agenda, combined with sharply declining religious morals is impacting abortion rights.

That ought’ to bring’ em back.

I guess, but I hate those articles and I never partipate on them.  What's the point?  No one will convince someone of the wrongness of their thinking. 

 

I dont think the upgrade is the reason .....

It is more serious than that .... it is the content ...

Nothing can survive arrogance combined with a tunnel-vision-mentality policy.

 

 

I know that this is actually the polar opposite of his politics but is COL Gene still blogging? That somehow reminded me of his posts.

 

In any case it is nice to see the unfamiliar names here (and the old familiar ones too).

 

Sometimes that can be a bit annoying but in large part it is the cross-posting that makes JU different from many blog sites. The sydication is what brings in readers. JU never could have taken off the way it did a couple years ago without those crossover browsers.

 

Ok, I will put away my Stardock fanboy costume again.

 

 

I think that there were some homosexuals who were teetering on leaving. The interface Darwinism,  combined with the declining religious writing of those of us who found ourselves with other priorities caused us to abort our prolife-ic habits of the past.  (Did I miss anything?) :~D

 

I also think that for most of us JU was a community and all the other forum categories made up other communities.  When the new format was introduced, all the "communities" were thrown together.. which kind of messed up the community spirit in all of them (or maybe just JU).  It's kind of like Brad threw a party, inviting all his circles of friends.  Have you ever been to a party with people from two different parts of your world?  They almost always begin with the "sitting around looking at each other" phase.  The good ones end with new friendships and discoveries of new kinds of fun, but often end as uncomfortable as they began.

 

QFT.

Also, it seemed that the cross posting was something he WANTED to happen, but he also claimed that NOTHING HAD CHANGED. Something changed when we switched, and now there's a whole bunch of stuff on the forums that didn't use to be there. It really clutters up what used to be a JU forum with light sprinklings of WC or GC or whatever else is going on.

 

Please for the love of god. Never use this on any article again. At least not on my blog. I got quite enough of this particular net-ism trolling the Ron Paul forums and it induces something of a Pavlovian reaction in me now.

 

 

Again I will point out that it is the cross-posting and autosyndication which brought us all readers in the first place. Just try a place like LiveJournal or WordPress sometime and see the difference.

 

First time posters here get comments on their intro articles from folks they never met. That just doesn't happen with other blog sites.

 

 

I stopped because DA and the units were fucking hard with the soldiers that were blogging when I went over. So I saved it 'til I got back, only now I'm out of the habit, and most of the people I'm used to are gone gone gone.