rsvpThe most vocal group is the unhappy group. Personally I don't like the new homepage. But at least give it a couple weeks and see how you like it. Try and give constructive criticism rather than just complaining ya dig
I'm honestly confused by the new homepage. I think I like it better, but it's like it brought back the look of the old old homepage without much of it's substance or soul. Yes the background ad + flashing side and top banner + moving highlights page make it a bit of a head ache. There's too many different bright colours and textures and too much movement for sure so it's a little overwhelming, but the previous version was like a shitty version of tumblr/pinterest where I didn't get to curate what content I recieved, my eye had to jump all over the place, and ads were snuck in periodically to trick me. Everything flows nicely now, everything is in order and has it's place, and it's more intuitive for the eye to follow.
Back when I first joined NS, and in the year plus of heavy lurking before that, I spent tons of time on the homepage. I much prefer having things separated out a bit (especially the ads, god damn I hate when the ads try and act like content). Once we switched to what is now the 'old' homepage I pretty much left and never returned. You've got visual separation now, but you're not really separating much - you have the scrolling box of mixed top content above the long list of top content, beside the list of sponsored top content - it's selected differently but it's basically 3 versions of the same thing. Plus, this new homepage, like with the current one, doesn't provide a good mixture of content - I currently have to scroll past 10 videos before I get to a single photo, news piece or discussion. Obviously videos are what's getting the most attention on NS right now, but if all I wanted was videos I'd be in the video section. So although having all of the user submitted content mashed together could work in some ideal world, I feel your metric isn't there yet. What I want easily accessible from the homepage is a mixture most popular of the new pics and movies, the most relevant news, and whatever cool convos are happening.
I can't say the loss of content selectivity bugs me. It never worked the way I wanted it to. As you mentioned in this thread, if before I wanted to just look at pictures I was probably on the pictures page anyways. What I have always wanted is the opportunity to filter out specific types of content. For example most of the time I'm on NS I'm in class, at the library, riding transit, on mobile, have a crappy internet connection or am in some other situation where videos weren't an option - if I could deselect videos and just get a mix of the remaining content I would be a happy camper. Similarly, if I've been hanging out in the forums in awhile it would be nice to deselect discussion so that the home page doesn't get clogged up with threads I've already read.
