Q & A with the Voice Staff

Posted By: The Voice Staff
Posted on: Jan. 9, 2008 at 4:55 PM

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Hello Members,

Thank you for continuing to support the website with your articles and comments. We appreciate the recent emails from members who have provided many suggestions for improving the site.

The purpose of this post is to give all of you the opportunity to address the new changes with any questions or suggestions. Feel free to be honest, we can take it!

Before you begin posting comments, we would like to take a minute to talk about some of the new features other than the article and commenting system that may interest you.

COMMUNITIES

One prominent change to the site is the consolidation of content into several main Communities:

Politics: Features all member-posted political articles and credible political news
- Grade Your Leaders: Find, rate and discuss your representatives and government officials
- The Political Calendar: Post political events
Entertainment: An expanding section with entertainment news and the latest movies
Sports: Sports news, member articles, scores & lines, and more
Business: Business news and member articles
Travel: A complete collection of golf courses, state and national parks, and other popular attractions

OTHER COMMUNITY FEATURES

Along with the content mentioned above, each community features the following items:

A Business Directory (links to the general Directory) of local and relevant listings
A Marketplace (links to the general Marketplace) for posting and responding to classified ads
An Event Calendar for browsing and posting events

CREDIBLE CONTENT FEEDS

You may have noticed that the site's content has been enhanced with items such as news headlines and full stories, sports lines and schedules, and new movies. Like the articles submitted by members, many of the new items can be rated and commented on.

MEMBER TOOLS

You will notice that there is a new blue box at the top of the right column of every page. When you are not logged in, this box allows you to do so. When you are logged in, you will see many great new tools.

Messages: Communicate directly with other members of the site
Discussions: Here you will find all of your articles---published and pending. You can click that link to begin creating a new article.
Calendar: Store events, activities or reminders to your local or public calendar.
Classifieds: Any classified ads that you create and publish are stored here.
My Favorites: The list of your favorite articles on the site. When you click on another member's article, just below the heading you will see an icon titled "Add to Favorites." You can receive email notifications when there are new comments made on your favorite articles.
My Profile: Let other members get to know you. This area lets you discuss things about you, including your interests, hobbies, and bio. Remember, this profile can be viewed when anyone, logged in or not, clicks your name under your articles or comments. Be sure to be cautious if you intend to post personal information--it is not required!
My Preferences: This area contains global site settings such as language filters, messaging preferences, and more.

THE STORE

A simple, new addition is the Store, which allows you to search and shop Amazon.com products from the Voice site to help support future developments and upgrades to Voice. So if you're ever inclined to go shopping online, we encourage you to start at our Store page. There's no way to gloss over that one, but at least we didn't create "Support the Voice" bumper stickers!

Thanks again and we look forward to hearing from you,

The Voice Staff

Tags: voice of north america voice of arizona voiceofnorthamerica.com voiceofarizona.com updates questions answers staff news

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AZ Moderate

Jan. 9, 2008 at 05:30:15 PM

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Dear Voice Staff:

How difficult would it be to provide a dropdown list of active participants when sending a message?

This may be unmanageable, both from a technical angle and from a usage angle.

So maybe a modified version that allows me to add just those participants that I am messaging?

AZ Moderate

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The Voice Staff

Jan. 9, 2008 at 05:49:55 PM

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[This is a reply to comment by AZ Moderate on Jan. 9, 2008 at 05:30:15 PM]

AZ Moderate
Jan. 9, 2008 at 05:30:15 PM

Dear Voice Staff:
How difficult would it be to provide a dropdown list of active participants when sending a message?
This may be unmanageable, both from a technical angle and from a usage angle.
So maybe a modified version that allows me to add just...

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AZ Moderate,

We do plan on expanding the message tool to allow for contact lists as well as predictive typing in order to make using the message tool more like using an email client.

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www.MoronInCharge.com

Jan. 9, 2008 at 05:56:06 PM

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Hello Voice my old friend. It's nice to talk with you again.

Just a few nit-picky things:

1. In the article writing composition field, italics and bold face don't hold when the article is published.
2. Likewise, the ability to resize graphics to legible size needs to be restored.
3. The tool bar for comments needs revamping. Let us choose between a few standard font sizes (not styles 1 -6 as we previously did, because that formatting was flakey). Bring back the underline button, and how about a pull down menu with several primary colors?
4. Also would like the ability to add at least one graphic per comment. When I asked Bella if she was afraid of a black President wearing bling in the White House, I really needed to post a picture from the movie Idiocracy of nine-time wrestling champion/ex-porn star turned President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.
5. I like the 5 rating stars, although its use may not be immediately intuitive to the new user. But we need a way to give a score of zero, and that is not currently possible.
6. Likewise, we need to bring the trash back, since that is a way to give us at least a little ability to police ourselves.
7. I'm not so sure the ability to rate individual comments is going to catch on, although the thought was nice. It's just not being used, and just what effect will the rating have if 9 out of 10 people thought a particular comment didn't add to the discussion?
8. We know that you don't have the time to review every comment every day to be sure that the discussion isn't getting out of hand. Fortunately this does not happen very often, but every once in a while someone comes around and does this site more harm than good. Eventually these people get banned, but look what we have to suffer through before it gets to that. How about a a red alert button off on the corner of the page -- an alarm icon with the label "break glass in case of fire" -- that we can press if we feel someone is consistently going too far? After a certain number of hits, you get an automated computer alert on your desktop that something is up on the site, and the great God of Banning can come and visit his banning vengeance upon us and temporarily/permanently excommunicate the sinner if deemed necessary.
9. The Voice Staff icon you chose is low res, and does not hold up under the large image scrutiny in the upper right hand corner of the new comment page. You need a new icon.

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True Independent

Jan. 9, 2008 at 08:37:54 PM

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"Hello Voice my old friend. It's nice to talk with you again."

Are you equating "Voice" to "darkness," MoronInCharge?

The articles definitely need to support the formatting options like bold, italic, etc. And yes, underline would be great.

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AZ Moderate

Jan. 9, 2008 at 08:41:50 PM

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[This is a reply to comment by www.MoronInCharge.com on Jan. 9, 2008 at 05:56:06 PM]

www.MoronInCharge.com
Jan. 9, 2008 at 05:56:06 PM

Hello Voice my old friend. It's nice to talk with you again.
Just a few nit-picky things:
1. In the article writing composition field, italics and bold face don't hold when the article is published.
2. Likewise, the ability to...

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MoronInCharge:

Highlight your target text, then;

Ctrl-U to underline your text,

Ctrl-B to bold your text,

Ctrl-I to italicize your text.

Of course you have buttons for the last two, but I thought I would make it a set.

Good comments.

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AZ Moderate

Jan. 9, 2008 at 09:05:57 PM

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[This is a reply to comment by AZ Moderate on Jan. 9, 2008 at 08:41:50 PM]

AZ Moderate
Jan. 9, 2008 at 08:41:50 PM

MoronInCharge:
Highlight your target text, then;
Ctrl-U to underline your text,
Ctrl-B to bold your text,
Ctrl-I to italicize your text.
Of course you have buttons for the last two, but I thought I would make it a set.

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You're right, MoronInCharge. The hot keys work in both comments (see above) and in creating an article. But in the article editor, the underline does not survive and Update.

I didn't realize that. I guess 5 out of 6 isn't enough to wake me up.

I learned hotkeys early in the game. I was teaching on a project for the disabled and our mouses (meese, mice) were late in arriving. We were forced to do everything mousewise via the keyboard. That was a good accident, because one can do anything (with only one exception I am aware of) with the keyboard that can be done with the mouse. And sometimes it is a lot faster to do it with hotkeys.

In fact, I have found that there is often three ways a thing can be done, sometimes four ways, and on occasion five ways.

VofA Staff,

While I am at it, may I point out that the previous revision level handled tables imported from Word with great fidelity, including background color, font color and font type. I would like to see that restored if possible.

Thanks

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www.MoronInCharge.com

Jan. 9, 2008 at 10:18:57 PM

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[This is a reply to comment by AZ Moderate on Jan. 9, 2008 at 08:41:50 PM]

AZ Mod,

I see a definite Windo-centric bias in your advice column. Some of us are using computers and operating systems of the 21st. Our problem is rarely of the end-user variety, but rather, an inability of the rest of the internet to keep up with us.

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AZ Moderate

Jan. 10, 2008 at 02:00:14 PM

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[This is a reply to comment by www.MoronInCharge.com on Jan. 9, 2008 at 10:18:57 PM]

www.MoronInCharge.com
Jan. 9, 2008 at 10:18:57 PM

AZ Mod,
I see a definite Windo-centric bias in your advice column. Some of us are using computers and operating systems of the 21st. Our problem is rarely of the end-user variety, but rather, an inability of the rest of the internet to keep...

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You have my sympathy, MoronInCharge.

I guess as a member of the mainstream user community I can't help you out. Sorry.

Stiff upper lip old chap.

Strength with Honor, my friend.

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Average American

Jan. 10, 2008 at 05:15:27 PM

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Can I have sharks with "freakin' laser beams" on them?

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indie616

Jan. 10, 2008 at 07:04:25 PM

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Thanks Voice!

I see you picked that nit out of MiC's hair by updating your icon.

Only 8 to go to completely de-louse him.

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