Posted

Dec 8th 2008

I feel like trying to make one of these bastard long journals about something absolutly everyone is talking about, that nobody will read. I dont know why, maybe its a Sheezyart tang... Regardless, yes yeah... new Sheezyart is here.. well, be it a slightly revised front page.

A couple of weeks ago, I started to cook up my own idea for a Sheezyart frontpage revision.. I noted down some concept sketches, asked around for some opinions about Sheezyart, and started work on a CSS template to show to Channel Cat...

However, I had to cease all work on this, as things at work got pretty tense... So in the end, I came up with this incomplete concept and sent it to Channel Cat.



With the limited time I had, I briefly described why I felt some of the changes I had made in my template would be beneficial... I had way way too many ideas for the site which I had not enough time to jot down onto paper, or explain in words..... He seemed to acknoledge my comments, but did not directly reply to any of my suggestions.

Well its 8th December 2008, approximatly 9 days since I shared my concept with Channel Cat, and the new Sheezyart front page is upon us.



Its a small improvement, it certainly shows that there is new thinking behind the focus of Sheezyart compared to other websites... however there are still many many flaws.

I'd like to talk about in depth what I feel has improved... what could be improved.. and what just needs a complete redesign. I'll try and throw in some of my own ideas too.. While my ideas may not ideally be the best approach to the site, I sinceerly feel that the issues I identify are firm and undeniable.



One of the biggest problems on Sheezyart I feel is the drama. How is the best way to tackle this? By finding the root cause of the issue. After chatting with many Sheezyart users, both through MSN, on Sheezyradio, and by posting various journals and forum threads over a number of years, one of the biggest issues among the people was that the wrong kind of artwork would end up popular and featured on the front page.

There have been various attempts to address this in the past. Firstly, the featured content was determined using an algorhythm based simply upon favorites and page views. However members later argued that users with more subscribers would recieve featured content much more regularly.

This was initially adressed by looking at how content is classified, rather than how it is publicised. The first attempt at a solution was through the "Sharable" and "Work In Progress" submissions.



"Sharables" could not be favorited, thereby making them illegable to recieve front page coverage. However if any crude artwork was to be submitted as a 'full' submission, your account would be eligable for punishment.

Whether you were aware of the rule or not, or whether you submitted artwork which a member of the report staff would deem as a 'scrap work', you could recieve a flat out ban from Sheezyart. This generates hate.

However soon afterwards.. a YES/NO score voting system was introduced, thereby removing any use for "Sharables" whatsoever. "Sharables" still exist today, and still cannot be favorited, however their only use now appears to be as a means to post artwork that doesnt appear in your main gallery or the front page.

I've found that the flaws to the YES/NO system is simular to the flaws of the favorites algorhythm. A large number of subscribers still means that a submission can quickly gather "YES"s, and become featured on the front page... however it triggers a relationation from users who do not like the artwork as soon as it recieves coverage.... This generates hate.

While the logical question asked out of all of this would be.. "How do we feature the correct content?".. the question being asked is now "How can we publize users?". While I strongly feel this is the wrong philosophy, it is an improvement. In theory, the more artwork the front page has, the more choices the people have to create featured content. You'll definatly see a slightly wider range of featured content now.

I would approach this issue differntly though.

What the Sheezyart staff must realize, is that 'greater coverage' doesn't nessesarily mean 'more'. What Sheezyart lacks is the power to browse and discover content specific to the user. Rather than attempt to satisfy every user as a single statistic.. we should taylor Sheezyart for every user. After all, the greatest thing about Sheezyart is the customizable user pages... So if every user user can have their own taylored central page...

Why cant every user have their own taylored frontpage?

A feature which I had not completed in my concept for Channel Cat... would be the ability to select a differnt front page. In addition to changing the contents of the artwork panel (By default, you're used to about 6 popular artworks and 12 recents).. each "frontpage" could also change the page's styling created by Sheezyarts design staff (So like Xbox NXE marketplace). If you visit as a guest, you'd be greated with a default page named "In The Spotlight", which would feature 1 row of featured's, 2 rows of recent's, a banner ad, and featured artwork.

However, if you visit as a member, you would have the ability to save a frontpage as default.



If you think about this furthur, this makes sense... Say if you visit the site purly for flash animation, 'featured's and 'recent's would only display flash animation. Not only that, but if you visit the site only to view flash animation, then publicising this content gives it much greater coverage... and with greater coverage means



But this is where it all comes together. With people only scoring and viewing about the content they really care about, all the scores from these differnt parts of the community come together to create a much more accurate "In The Spotlight" featured stream, with content that everybody will love.

With this multiple frontpage system in place... YES/NO, and Sharables could be abolished for a more concise, more accurate, and easier to use Sheezyart.



Clubs, the forum and chat are great... but they only have a dedicated number of users. As soon as you join Sheezyart though, you're immediatly given the power to start creating content using no tools, in the Journal. Subscribers of your content recieve these like submissions, unlike threads in the forum...

Now that journals are featured, members have been given a voice louder than either the Clubs or the Forum can deliver.

This could be both a good or a bad thing though...

Say a very popular member posts a journal, with a run joke, or that critizes the operation of Sheezyart.com. If that member is banned, then there would be a wave of popular journals covering this ban. This would not look good for Sheezyart at all, not only that, the number of people that would need to get banned would be untrackable... and we'd end up having even more stray / misunderstood cases that Sheezyart is widely known for.....

Overall though, this feature seems like it can do more good than harm though.




Considering the amount of functionality on the site, the User panel is still quite messy. It is technically flawed, since it is not nessesarily compatible with all devices.

However, there are two major issues with the User Panel which bugs me. Personally I find the "Account" button fiddly and awkward.. Not only that, but its near impossible to access the little known "My Account" page. A page which was originally intended to serve as a central hub... but now features like "news" has been moved elsewhere, and links to the journal and watchlist have been moved to a dorp down list.. the page is useless.



There is a HUGE amount of space at the top of the screen in the header, I feel could be put to use by making a much better, cleaner header... Infact, I'll come back to this later.



Whether this is due to lack of staff.. or lack of staff motivation.. I'm unsure. Its a shame to see it leave, but its probably for the best looking in the long term. Its just a shame that this feature went, and not others.



In my opinion, I believe Sheezyart is now at a state where the entire site needs a revision. I could go into detail about each specific page, but today I'm focusing on the front page.



With the temptation to create a journal entry with the potential to be seen by thousands of visitors to the site... there could be little incentive to visit the forum, except for general chat.



While this is technically not a Front Page update, it is still one that heavy influences the use of the front page. When submitting music or writing, you still lose the ability to really see a preview image, which is a shame, since there is a good sub-division of the community who heavily invest in both compositions and prose.



What I propose is the ability to roll over thumbnails to reveal further infomation.

Now imagine where you could go with that....






This is a huge concern to me.... In the past, everybody has been able to view what certain members have favorited and submitted, using the little known "NOW" page... This is fair enough... This is all public infomation that can be viewed from any user page....

What chills me is.. "USER commented on SOMETHING"....

This seems to be a serious breech of privacy, and according to almost all international laws, all users should have been notified of this change. You saw the shit Facebook got into for Beacon..

While its perhaps not that grand a scale, this is a scary change.

What would make more sense would be a panel which read something more like....

"In the past ten minutes, SUBMISSION recieved 4 comments"
"In the past hour, SUBMISSION recieved 20 favorites"
"USER submitted a journal"



This is one I've really really really tried to convince Channel Cat about, but he's not convinced, at all...

Flexible width is amazing for images, apparently. You can have a whole bunch of content on screen at once. But there are more problems introduced with fixed width...

Problem 1... text..

You cannot deny this. Sheezyart is primarily text. Be it the "NOW" page, Radio, Clubs, Chat, Userpages, Terms and Conditions, News, Journals, we're talking piles upon piles upon piles of text. And the problem with flexible-width, is that the text stretches with it....





Now... brace tight... we're going to an evil place now... Yep, we're looking at Deviantart.

Deviantart is full of flexible content, the whole site is optimized for it... but when it comes to text... do you notice something?



Fixed-width. If its a simple web-design basic. If its text, it has to be fixed-width.

There is absolutly no reason why fixed-width cannot be implemented on Sheezyart IN ADDITION to flexible width. It means that when people browse through comments, or surf through forums they'll subconciously pick up words that'll interest them right away.

The way I had approached this in my design was to give text its own dedicated area.



The Header, area below the header with the frontpage, and the footer are all flexible width... however the text area is clearly isolated, and stylistically designed for fixed-width. This area would be reserved for comments, journals, statistics and news articles. It'll place the interesting "rich" content wack bang straight in the center of the frame... and give you the license to style it up even more....

The point in case here though, is that if you have a large monitor, text content right now is a chore. Hell, I'm surprised you've kept with me this far though the journal!



We're back to the header again. People may say the header is better... at about.. what, 50-60 pixels shorter?



The header is not the issue here, the issue is the banner ad. We have to accept ad's on Sheezyart.. No ad's, no Sheezyart...

In my opinion, we should redesign the user panel....



Looking back at this image, its surprising how much space is now avalible up in the header, due to the reduction in width to the logo. If the user space was to be relocated.... Couldnt we shift the banner ad up there?

Wouldnt it be awesome, if Sheezyart went from this....



To this?.....





Finally.... there doesnt particularly seem to be a sense of direction on the front page... this could just be me though....



As part of my design, I have tried to focus areas of the page on specific features and content. This would hav worked for artwork, clubs, uploading, and other pages too. You would expect content to be in a specific and concise location.

Even on Newgrounds, everything is crystal clear....



Simple web design. The aesthetics need to be pleasing to the eye...



Once you take all this into consideration though... the new frontpage just looks disgusting....



We have text in one corner, stats in another, artwork over here.... and just another box with everything mixed together over there.....



Well I feel that the new Sheezyart frontpage is definatly a better reflection of the site right now. Its a total mess, with a lack of direction. Its swell that theres been an update... but the fact that it appears to have been quite rushed (assuming that redevelopment began after my conversation with Channel Cat) is worrying. What would have been more appropiate is if a Beta phase was introduced to redevelop the entire site, as we had with Sheezyart V3.

There have been some steps taken to address some problems, but in the long run, I dont feel these are the correct means to solve them.

The site deserves a complete overhaul right now. A complete review of every page, every feature, every cast member and every pixel. Sheezyart can be so so much more, than this quick and dirty attempt to keep ahold of the users.