What Do You Want To See At JJP?

14 Jun 2008 Author: Baratunde Thurston (Jack Turner)

Hey yall,

We’re doing some planning for the site and want to get ideas from the people. I thought about setting up some surveys, but let’s just start with an open-ended post.

There are some things we’re definitely doing:

Leaving blogger. Hip hop hooray!!
Moving to a commenting system that allows for threaded comments (easier to follow)

Types of questions I have:

What site features do you think we should have here? Someone mentioned a live chat room, for example.
What topics do you think we could cover better or more?
What do you like MOST about JJP?
What do you like LEAST about JJP?
Would you be interested in a Daily Kos-style “diary” system? (this is a bit tougher for us to solve, but I’d like to know how much people want something like this).

That should be a good start. Thanks everybody for being part of the fam. We take your input seriously.

Tags: Site Maintenance

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KarmiCommunist
One of my favorite sites already, so I don’t really have any suggestions, and will just look forward to the upgrade/s that y’all plan and are thinking about.
TruthSeeker
Like most:
a wealth of divergent opinion, from posters and commenters both.
Like least:
scrolling, scrolling, scrolling…
Are you going to registrations? If so, perhaps a notification system for new posts and comments.
Keep the watermelon, and maybe throw in a piece of fried chicken, some cornbread and a side of greens for a balanced meal.
JJP is terrific. You guys have certainly outgrown Blogger. Best of luck on the upgrade!
Josh
Keep the watermelon, and maybe throw in a piece of fried chicken, some cornbread and a side of greens for a balanced meal.
Yeah gotta up the branding lol.
Anyways the site is already great, but when you move to WordPress you should keep only a few categories, and use tags for everything else. The categories section can be a bit hard to navigate sometimes.
Anonymous
I love the site don’t have much to complain about. I just have a few suggestions.
In the future maybe more policy talk. A lot issue that I see on C-Span should have individual postings on this site.
Lets also keep the talk up about things that disfranchise African American and people of color in general.
Overall lets just always make sure we live up to the Jack and Jill name. As a Jack and Jill legacy and alumnae, just want to make sure the name is not used in vain.
Love the blog
justice58
Jack,
I would hope for a PM system & a chatroom would aslo be good! Just asking! :)
justice58
Oops!
Make that “also”! Sorry!
heartsandflowers
How about a bi-monthly blog show? I do like the idea of being able to post diaries – however the open forums do allow for input. There’s a certain level of professionalism I enjoy and wouldn’t want the quality or the direction of this blog to change too much. An expanded comment section with easier navigation would be good. We have a good group here and I’d like to see more action taken, connecting with other blogs for political actions. The word verification has to be reset before the comments post – having a log in would help with that.
JJ
I think black folks need a DailyKos of their own. Been saying that for awhile now.
I think you all are the best poised to do that.
CitizenX
Not sure why, but comment gives me a small window, probably 300 x 500 without scroll bars or a way to resize.
Remove the window size controls on the comments.
Webb
Live Chatroom would be nice for a moment like right now after having had a few drinks. I agree with Justice58, PMs would also be great!
Coverage? Excellent!
Like Most? The posts are usually on point and the community of commenters is very niche (euphemizing for small). I feel like this blog is very conducive to discussion rather than simply broadcasting…Making a comment amongst 1,000 comments (ala HuffPo or Kos) seems stupid to me…i’m not reading 1,000 comments.
Like Least? Deleted posts and comments (after the fact)…
Bruce Godfrey
Cheers to all. Have you taken a look at Scoop yet? It involves some money outlay – a downer and probably a dealkiller if you are as cheap as I – but provides most of the commenting, threading and diary power of DailyKos, which used to use Scoop.
justice58
Jack,
Will we be able to edit our own posts or be able to embed videos?
Also will be able to see who’s online at the time? :)
Webb, I’m with you that PMs would be great! It’ll be so convenient if a person has a question about anything & can receive a quick response! Hope we get one!
Jack Turner
@Webb as far as I know we’ve never deleted a comment or post other than for tech reasons (that is, duplication).
I know it’s our unstated policy not to delete things. Can you remember when this happened?
Jill Tubman
Thanks for the comments. We appreciate the community’s support and ideas. We want to improve the blog to bring the full power of your voices to the forefront. Keep the ideas coming!
(Adding cornbread to the watermelon! Hilarious.)
Jack Turner
i second the cornbread shoutout. yall are wrong.
jon
What everybody else said …
MOST: the high quality of posting and discussion, and the range of perspectives.
LEAST:
1) stuff doesn’t post well on Facebook — the excerpts and the graphics aren’t great. [Getting off blogger and minor cleanups in the template should help here.]
2) like a lot of sites in the blogosphere, it’s hard to have a long-term conversation about a topic that warrants thinking and slower responses.
How much do you want to grow the site? Adding Daily Kos-style “diaries” (and PMs) and community moderation can let things scale quite a lot. It’s a different model though.
N. Mahana
In my humble opinion, I think a live chat room would be great. However, I would prefer JJP did not post gossip-news stuff. I mean we have a billion blogs out there covering that and it’s a bit disconcerting and distracting to read here.
However I love y’all and look forward to seeing your new site!
Bronze Trinity
I agree with the idea of making a DailyKos type site that will become the centre for African American political blogging. This is really needed and you have so many subscribers already, it will have many visitors and potential bloggers. A place for conversations would be good too. This should be the place where people go to find out the Black opinion on politics.
What I like most is that there are frequent postings about things I want to know about. Its from a Black perspective of course. What I like least…I think the background and site could have more stuff, more features I guess.
Pamela
I would like to see PMs, a lot of responses get lost when they are responded to on “stale” threads which happens about every 8 hours. Also chat is a good idea. And while I want you to have growth and a wider audience for the site the thing that I love about JJP is the smallish group of commentators I have come to know.
justice58
Daily Kos diary system have me a little confused! I read there but rarely ever post! And I would like to be able to join in on the conversation. Just not comfortable with it! But all the other ideas sounds great!
I like a system where you can click on a certain quote and respond to it!
Just saying!
noodles
I love this site and look forward to a system of threaded comments. To further enhance the experience, please add the capability to IGNORE specific commenters. While I generally enjoy diverse viewpoints and lively discussions, some posters just need to give it a rest. Rather than adding any value to the discussions they just make me weary to the point that I give up and stop reading.

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Cheryl Contee aka "Jill Tubman", Baratunde Thurston aka "Jack Turner", rikyrah, Leutisha Stills aka "The Christian Progressive Liberal", B-Serious, Casey Gane-McCalla, Jonathan Pitts-Wiley aka "Marcus Toussaint," Fredric Mitchell, Keith Owens, Anson Asaka, Barbara Moore, Deborah Small, Lisa Coffman, Michael Patton

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