What Happened to Questionland?

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with masturvoting. If you think you supplied a good answer or question, why not vote for it?

Consider our answers as digital buskers. You always have to put a dollar in the hat before the audience will follow suit.

I say bring it back!

i like it. yup. i do. well done.

I really hate it.

Sorry I don't pander to anyone to make them feel good.

e.strange is right. Masturvoting was stopped after Lee asked the question.

The moral dilemma was just too much for some people. Should they do it? If they did would they be wracked with guilt? If they didn't would they be shortchanging themselves because others did? etc.

Doesn't look like you need the help anyway... 

17 mushrooms! You can't give yourself those, Miss Popular.

What sort of moral pervert would vote for their own question?!?!?!?

You may as well ask why can't I touch little boys or little girls on their "special" parts!!!

We haven't been able to vote for our own questions and answers for a while now... I think it started shortly after Lee asked this question.

I love the design - I think it's fun and super cute! I love love love the day and night changes and also the "rest" and "play" options at the bottom. Like Lukeiscool, I'm wondering about easter eggs. I haven't found any yet and I've looked!

Okay, now that I've had some time to use the site, I have some minor, nitpicky things to point out. Feel free to ignore them.

I'm not sure how I feel about the info boxes at the top. I understand why they're there, but as Phil M mentioned, they do push the content that we want to see down pretty low on the page.

From a UI standpoint, it weirds me out a little that clicking the Questionland logo on the blog header doesn't take me home. I know it says Questionland blog, but my reptile brain just sees logo and thinks "link to homepage." This is minor, of course.

Also, as a designer, I can't help but get nitpicky about type. It feels like there are too many typefaces on one page. I know type on the web is a bitch and there's only so much you can do, and I'm probably one of three people who cares, but it bothers me that you have two different serif typefaces in such close proximity. The brown one, which is used in subheads like "The Questions," is really nice and seems to display well on my PC. The blue one which is used for the question headings is okay, but not as nice as the brown one. It doesn't render as well on my PC and also I don't like the look of it (purely my personal aesthetic, but the x-height is too high for my tastes). If I were in charge, which of course I'm not, I'd probably just use the brown typeface for the question headers, but keep them blue. That said, overall I think you've handled the type nicely.

Oh, one more suggestion: it would be great if Questionland had a way of reminding people to award mushrooms. I was just looking at my own page under "Questions" and it's not obvious whether or not I've awarded a mushroom for each question. Perhaps there could be some kind of icon that changes when a mushroom has been awarded? Just a thought.

I really like it!

My mind did go down the "ooh, change, change bad, argh" route for all of about 2 seconds, but having slapped myself around I rather like it.
The new look that is, not slapping myself around.

In longer answers the avatar and kitschnsync are quite far apart. Actually, I wish there was an easy way to turn off QL avatars and just display the username in that spot. (That's why I prefer the text-only design of sites like Metafilter.)

I would like commenter's names to stand out more, as well as the thumbs up/thumbs down numbers. Both look so tiny and faint, and they are the first things I look for. Can you bold them, or highlight the names and categories in different colours? I also don't like how "Report" comes up right under the name if the line is too long. I want to see the name, right there, uncluttered. Anyone agree with me?

Other than that I love the changes.

It's way too busy. On every page, I'm interested in about 20% of what you've placed there.  All of my vertical space is taken up by crap at the top that I must scroll past. A paragraph of terms of use (to which I am not bound), including a link to more terms of use, at the bottom of every page? All the "featured" crap at the top, not just on the front page, but on every page? Come on.

I love it.

I do like it, but is there a link somewhere to get back to the stranger site? Or am I just being a dumb ass? Also, the bottom of the page seems to be consistently messed up.

I like it. I like the tree sidebars. I find the movement of the thumbs annoying, but like Fnarf said, I'll adjust. I like the featured boxes at the top of the page.

The only two microscopic nits I could possibly pick are: I liked the color of the shroom the way it was before, and I think the sky at the top of the page should be cloudy. Otherwise, how will we tell ourselves apart from other Q-Land cities. I'm sorta proud of our gray-skied identity. It works for summer, though.

Nothing to act on, just my $0.02.

It would be cool if the weather report was on here via visual/animation: agreed!

However, the background already loads hells of slow compared to before, so I'd chip in a 'thanks but no thanks' vote.

also

Questionland looks mighty underdeveloped to me. Hire a lumberjack company already and put up some gnomish condos. Tree covered hills = we got enough of them around here in Seattle already ;)

I love the design and the expansion in the layout. It would be nice to have more clear linkage back to the stranger's site and slog as I'm usually back and forth between them.

We thought about doing this but then realized that the weather is always nice in Questionland ;)

Meh.

Reads kinda like a non-offensive south park / construction-paper-art band poster. For a band that sucks live.

The tree-colored sharrows are not at all my thing.
At all.

i.e. We fear change.

oh, and...
Needs more cowbell.

Nice job!! It is juvenile but, that seems appropriate for this site. Thanks for encouraging playful community interaction. I totally missed the "after dark" change and look forward to seeing it tonight.

I think it's fine. I was going to mention the paragraph spacing but you already changed that. The rest of it, I don't care. I don't like having to move my eyes to a new place to see the thumbs up and down but in a few days I won't even remember where it used to be.

It looks pretty sharp. Typically online communities go all OMGWTF when there is any kind of redesign, so the fact that no one has protested so far seems to indicate everyone digs it.

I also think the blog tab is a great idea. It's a simple way to communicate directly with the community.

But, honestly, the events tab seems a little redundant at this point. Given that you already promote the expert weeks on the blog, maybe you could open the events tab up to the community to promote Qland events like happy hours, things members are doing out in the world that might be of interest to Qland, or whatever. Or was that already your intention?

You guys are doing a great job on this site. It is very cool that you continue to welcome feedback from its visitors.

Thanks a ton. We're really into it too. We're really fortunate to work with the designer Michiko Swiggs.

We'll be redesigning the Portland site in a month or so.
Thanks for asking.

Great idea. Right now we only have day and night.
thx

(are you reading this Rev. Smith?).

Yes. Yes, I am.

I agree with Jon on the typography. Type on the web looks so much better on a Mac. When viewed on a Windows machine, serif typefaces tend to be hard to read... Unless you're using IE8 (with TrueType), which you shouldn't be using because it's total crap, other than the type thing.

I disagree about the colors, though. I like the palette as is. I also like the pointy trees. And I'm a designer.

Hey Jon,

Thanks for all that thoughtful feedback. I'm going to defer all your suggestions on typography, colors and graphical treatments to our designer but I did take care of the paragraph spacing. Very good point and so much better now.

I like the trees. I haven't seen the daytime one though. And I think the pointy tops give them that 1960's vibe.

I also get a weird loading pattern - a blue box hovers over everything until the page fully loads. It is rather annoying, since it takes quite awhile (in internet time) to go away.