What do you love, what do you hate, about RiotACT?

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?
2004 came across it googling a notorious canberran
What image does the title conjur for you?
Well now that I am familiar with it, it just conjures this place
What do you love about riotact?
Free exchange of ideas and not many personal attacks on others, just very robust debate. I don’t mind the lunatic fringe posts at all. Yes, it’s a very right wing site, but that’s cool. Ocker Australia is right wing – get used to it folks. You don’t have to agree to enjoy the “company” here. I like to hear what people are really thinking.
what do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?
1 Links don’t change colour.
2 Takes ages to scroll down, while pictures open it makes the scrolling jump about. Really annoying.
3. Once a topic is familiar, you could perhaps restrict it to the title, so many more older items can still be on the front page?

What feature have you seen on other sites that you think would rock here?
I’d like to be able to do better searches – there isn’t much search capability, or else I’m not technical enough.
What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?
I just use the main column. I don’t find the categories all that useful.
Perhaps you could have a separate photo gallery area for superb pics? Love to go there.

hah – Fluges again demonstrates the meaning of incessant.

Complete and utter crap.

And you’re free to find another site to frequent if you don’t like the comments.

I see RA as a right wing site. Most of the comments are ill-informed right wing crap, racist, sexist, redneck stuff. You don’t find much compassion and empathy on RA. Good for local news, but most of the comments set my teeth on edge. Politically, RA’s an anti-labor forum dominated by local libs.

Bogannats

Oh, and I also hate ass shots of 16 year olds with their g-strings pulled up around their arm pits.

Summernits?

And Naked Horse Pictures of Zooey Deschanel…

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?
I don’t actually remember… it was such a long time ago. Probably procrastinating like I am now.

What do you love about riotact?
I love that I don’t have to watch the news to know whats going on around the place.

What do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?
I hate it when people people don’t edit their posts properly and just type… it hurts my eyes. I also hate the stupid little whiney topics about some tightass who couldn’t spare $5 or an extra 5 minutes of their life and decides to burden the rest of us with their annoyance. Build a bridge people. Oh, and I also hate ass shots of 16 year olds with their g-strings pulled up around their arm pits.

What feature have you seen on other sites that you think would rock here?
Being able to preview before posting and having the HTML buttons there like bold and italics so I wouldn’t have to type it all in. I also think that we should burn all the people above who need to see boobs. Poor guys probably haven’t seen any since they were a few months old.

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?
I use recent comments all the time. Never bothered with the archives…

🙂

Ugh! I hate the layout, I agree it does have a 90’s look about it.
Love the name

change nothing.

I don’t think you should change too much too quickly – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

It is a good point about govt depts currently letting it through, but not if it became a forum.

I agree with el about the moderation. I love how this place is very lightly moderated. Most other forums and blogs are stale and one-sided. The-RiotACT.com is great in letting everybody have their say no matter how inane it is. Keep it up!

Found it years ago looking for THE Canberra info source. This is it – not that much bullshit, and a far more honest and spin less place for stories. OK, you have a few one-track posters, but its the best source of Canberra debate. And its far better than anything the CTimes has on line.

The name is the brand – you may have tired of it, but it works well. Maybe change the URL to http://www.riotact.com or redirect it to this site if anything.

And please don’t turn it into a forum or Commonwealth Departments will block it.

Agree with format issues etc – but keep it working, don’t kill it with overly complex anything or you will lose your readership as I have seen other forums suffer…

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?

Thumper

What image does the title conjur for you?

Rioting Public Servants

What do you love about riotact?

Being 2 days ahead of most local news, and forming opinions with relevant commentary – and then having a slanging match with leftie bleeding heart whingers

what do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?

n/a

What feature have you seen on other sites that you think would rock here?

n/a – although if you implement boobies, most public service departments will put you on their nasty organisation list and thus reduce posters. I suggest a warning page first ???

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?

the Home link on the categories pane, and the recent comments pane

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?

I don’t remember for sure. I think it was linked to from another site, possibly something like TSSH.

What image does the title conjur for you?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

What do you love about riotact?

The people, and their comments. The fact that moderation is nearly never used, and generally only in the case of full on personal attacks. Moderated sites generally end up as boring, beige mutual appreciation societies. The arguments here can be fantastically entertaining.

what do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?

Posting stories isn’t at all user friendly, especially if it’s your first attempt. The search feature sucks IME, but there’s probably not much you can do about that considering the nearly 6000 articles and probably 100000 comments attached to them.

What feature have you seen on other sites that you think would rock here?

Little “

” “[LINK]” “[B]” “[I]” type buttons to insert the *correct* HTML tags, in particular the ‘Quote’ buttons to encourage people to quote the relevant text that they’re responding to in articles that generate a hefty amount of comments. It would lead to a lot less bollocksed up attempts at posting links, too. A preview button for comments would also be nice.

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?

Recent comments. It’s not exactly a feature rich site, but it doesn’t need to be AFAIC. Given the number of readers, keeping the bloat down to save bandwidth seems like the sensible option to me. User-friendlyness can be addressed, sure, and I’m very happy to see that the ‘Recent Comments’ box no longer messes up the site layout when someone posts a comment containing a URL.

Given the high traffic these days the recent comments box could probably be a little larger.

I’m not sure that the archives feature serves any purpose other than to elicit comments from brand new users to articles that died months (or even years) ago.

My $0.02, anyway. The site is fantastic, regardless. Cheers!

“Spell check on the comments would stop a lot of the slags about grammer and spelling.”

Thereby proving the point! 🙂

Those who call for strippers, do you really want to see Jazz, Kramer, NTP, JB and Che neked. I’ve seen them doing a nude run and it’s not pretty. I am sure their wives or significant others will beg to differ though.

Riotact works as a name.
Posting stories sucks – not user friendly.
Spell check on the comments would stop a lot of the slags about grammer and spelling.
I liked the polls and interviews although these seemed to have dropped off the radar in recent times.

It took weeks. And then you fixed that the original poster of a topic IP address would be hidden but forgot about the address of all subsequent posters.

In our defence ant we plugged that hole as soon as we found it and the individual abusing it was put on the moderation list. In any case an IP address really isn’t as useful to other punters as you might think. In the vast majority of cases you’ll get a new IP address on DSL or dialup every time you log in.

Ant, here is hanky to wipe your tears Princess.

I remember alerting a lot of people. Later, much later RA threatened to cancel anyone who posted someones IPs until they fixed the problem.

I got here through Crikey. I enjoy the immediacy, but sometimes wonder if a slightly more intrusive monitor might be a good idea to stop hasty/silly/offensive things. (On the other hand, the relative absence of oversight makes it a great deal more honest and democratic than it might otherwise be). Anonymity is good and I worried when it was apparently possible to view identifiable information. The title is catchy and probably well-enough known.

Can’t remember exactly where I first heard about Riot Act, might of been from Mike Welsh on 2CC mentioning it.

Agree with a previous poster that I would prefer this site to be in proper forum format as opposed to whatever it’s called that it now is.

I like the recent comments/recent topics feature. You could expand that a bit. On web-based forums using UBB, they have an option for “hot topics” which is what many people browse by.

Moving ads… bandwidth gobblers. I doubt they work. Nuke ’em.

Only biggie for me was the big disappointment at learning that the situation existed where the IPs of posters were viewable by other users, and you allowed this situation to continue, and you didn’t alert people.

Can’t remember how I found riot act. I think it was via Google searching for hits on my workplace.

I love it when nutbags post – kwim.

I would prefer rather forum or a board style.

I only have one criticism, but it’s productive! Ditch the crappola wordpress rubbish and install something like phpbb.

This site is no longer a blog, which is what wordpress is aimed at, the riotact has evolved into probably Canberra’s biggest social commentary forum!

and the comment engine stinks. can’t you bastardise something like joomla and vbulletin?

My criticism is that in an attempt to be inclusive, the whole site comes across as a bit cliquey. I like reading the article, but it’s pretty much the same identities camped on the comments.

What I dont like:
Rioact does not show Arabic script:

???????? = al-Qa’idah

Hi Echelon!

I hate the fact that people from Gungahlin are allowed to post. But then again, I just don’t like Gungahlin very much. But if I haven’t said already, I like the fact that http://the-riotact.com loads faster now.

What I hate:
I want to be able to delete my own posts. I don’t want to be archived in Google for the rest of my life.

I don’t think editing my own posts is that good as you could re-write history.

What I like:
Taking the piss out of people.

Being annonymous so I can say terrorism- ????????- assasinate-president and not have Defence Signals Directorate pigeon hole me.

Opps they just did!

Something similar to that is something i’ve been considering for a while Gungahlin Al.

The difficulty is how to managed pages for upwards of several thousand registered users who might utilise the feature. There are also a lot to consider that dont visit as regularly who might have hundreds of stories between visits.

Jazz: just ruminating on that issue of keeping track of threads of interest some more…
What if apart from the Home Page, there was a My Page, and each new story had a “Click here to add to My Page” thingy. Could RSS or similar tool allow you to show new comments since you were last logged on,and with previews (as others have suggested) so you can see on one page if there’s been anything new on those particular articles even if they’re long gone from the front page?
Then when an article has gone cold you can just drop it off your My Page. Sort of like using RSS as I described before but all in-house…
Then you could just RSS your My Page, to get everything of interest all bundled together.

> What do you hate about riot Act?

The fact that people post topics/threads such as “Can you believe they tried to charge me $5 more for my pizzas?! Outrageous!” or “What is *with* those traffic lights on Northbourne Avenue? How dare I be required to stop for a pedestrian!” And the fact that you let such posts stay up.

There is Meconium – it is the “RSS feed for comments on this post” link above the Comment entry section.

Go to http://www.google.com/reader and install that, and put Google Reader in your Favourites and go there instead of to RA.

When you click on the RSS link on a thread you get a page full of HTML gobbledegook. Just copy the URL for that page and paste it into the “Add subscription” box in Google Reader.

RSS links for new stories and All Comments are on the front page of RA too.

The whole RSS thing is pretty poorly known but a great tool for saving you time when taking sneaky looks on the site during work time…

And after just going back and fixing all my typos, I’ll add in something else to the wish list – spell check, plus previously mentioned WYSIWYG comment editor.

Jazz, maybe I’m just a toal noob, but is there a way to view threads that you’ve recently posted in? I find I just have to remember which stories I’ve commented on, and open it again in a few days to see what other people have said.

I’m pretty sure there’s no ‘subscribe to thread’ function either – that would be really useful, and would get me involved a lot more.

The site layout looks ok but the site feels like some dodgy surface page that’s sitting on top of WordPress, and you need to know how that works to be able to get on top of things like posting stories, playing with passwords etc. Admittedly I haven’t looked into that sort of stuff, but not a lot about the site seems to be self-explanatory.

Whether or not to edit or delete a thread is up to the admins – I think it’s nice and refreshing that threads don’t get closed and posts don’t get deleted here just on an admin’s whim.

The name is great, the white-on-black simple appearance suits the site and the feature I use most is just the front page.

Thanks

Seepi, are you advocating censorship?

Personally the only things here that I would support being censored are personal abuse replete with swearing, and topics which meander way OT.

By the way it was good to see you showing a bit of mongrel with regard to the IVF sheilas.

Hmm, maybe comment preview would be an idea too 🙂

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?
I think I read about it in Crikey – when some disgruntled Liberal was trying to sue you for revealing some party gossip a fwe years back.

What image does the title conjur for you?
One of the multitude of ACT oriented wordplays that seem so beloved here – it’s one of the better ones at least.

What do you love about riotact?
The robust debate and local knowledge

what do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?
Password system is a little clunky, the banner could be rejigged but for easy scanability I’d say that the general layout is pretty good

What feature have you seen on other sites that you think would rock here?
Well you could Ajax it up a little and have the ability to thumbs up/thumbs down other people’s comments (like Digg). Any reason we can’t easily embed YouTube videos?

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?
If only I had the time for them – when I’m here it’s usually a sign that I’m seriously procrastinating 🙂

TheRiot-ACT.com always made more sense to me 🙂

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?
– Googled some Canberra-related stuff in 2003ish?

What image does the title conjur for you?
– People in the ACT running RIOT. Title is great.

What do you love about riotact?
– The WIDE range of opinions and the fact that people feel free to express them. The place isn’t over moderated.

what do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?
– The style and layout is terrible. I realise it’s wordpress, but sheesh! Also the fact that once stories disappear from the front two pages or so, they basically die.

What feature have you seen on other sites that you think would rock here?
– A better style, layout and more functionality (ie view posts since your last visit, ability to edit posts)

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?
– The front page.

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?

I can’t remember – maybe google?

What image does the title conjur for you?
I like the title – its clever, local and a bit irreverent – and easy to remember. I’d spell it
http://www.RiotAct.com if there was a choice, but really google will always bring the site up, so you don’t need to remember the actual web address.

What do you love about riotact?
The local angle. Sometimes someone will have local knowledge of a news event, or will know some interesting background.

what do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?
Sexism
Brutal comments (re Siev X etc)
I Hated the moving ads – there are none at the mo – please don’t get any more.
I used to hate the tiny text, but I’m used to it now.
The password sytem is complicated.

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?
Recent comments

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?

Found it through the search engine ‘anzwers.com.au’.

What image does the title conjur for you?

Chaos; ruptured internal organs; Hargreaves and Foskey rolling in a naked embrace around Commonwealth Park!

What do you love about RiotACT?

Some of the choice comments on here. Being able to rile up some people who take themselves far too seriously.

What do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?

I hate the single issue posters who come on here with a bee up their ‘arks’ about some restaurant/shop/local business/etc and then become rather upset when we slag them off and call them “tossers”!

I hate the fact that JB and Kerces don’t post as much anymore.

Also, I’m not too confident in being able to post stories on here – it all looks a little to techie for me; but maybe that’s because I’m stupid!

What feature have you seen on other sites that you think would rock here?

Reader’s Wivies??? (just kidding!)

A preview function for comments – so you can check it’s all okay before you post. This would help keep the spelling and grammar brigade happy.

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?

Recent comments.

Keep up the good work, guys!

Q: “What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?”
A: “Front page.”

There are other features??

RandomGit – OnlyjustlastweekIupdatedthecodefortherecentcommentsboxtolimitthedisplaysize. Hopefully this comment demonstrates this, so everyone won’t have to now test it out…

BTW – Thanks for all your comments everyone. Keep ’em comming!

Kramer
RiotACT Sys Admin & Code Monkey

great stuff all & certainly some of it along the lines of what we have been looking at as well. Keep it coming

oh, and feel free to pay out on someone elses suggestions. The boob a day feature we’ll reserve for special subscribers.

Oh – and the logon and password reminder functions!
Ever wondered why some of us end up with changed names? For me anyway it is because the logon name and the user name aren’t actually the same, and if you logon at home too and have a few different email addresses, it/I can get messed up to the point where you give up and just go create another ID…

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?

John posting questions about linuxy stuff to the CLUG list.

What image does the title conjur for you?
Who cares? It’s catchy and it’s working.

What do you love about riotact?
Love it for what it is.

what do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?
Not a fan of the header montage.

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?

Front page.

I heard about RiotAct on usenet, I think. The layout doesn’t bother me, it’s quick and simple to use. Graphics, meh, we don’t need no stinkeen graphics.

Hate?
No edit button.
Love?
Topical, irreverent, eclectic, humorous, angry, interesting, fun comments.
Pool room quotes.
Changes?
Alter comment structure so it is less blog-like and more forum-like: BBCode, poster has ‘ownership’ of post to edit, delete, search.

Johnboy used to include quite a bit of political editorial comment, which I found quite interesting. Perhaps some more of that, although where from I don’t know.

I’m with astrojax on an easier way to see current posts, that would be great.

I also vote for boob-a-day, or some other interesting piece that likewise has boobs as its main feature.

>Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?

via Google looking for something I can’t remember and spending the rest of the evening here

>What image does the title conjur for you?

A voice for the people

>What do you love about riotact?

The plain speaking, local nature and the accessibility where even a simple soul like me can
make a point.

>what do you hate, is there anything that is >confusing?

Nothing / Nope

>What feature have you seen on other sites that >you think would rock here?

More local recommendations/Polls but ranking of posters by posts made to identify for instance the Motor repairer who jumps on the board to recommend his own business etc.

>What feature that we currently have do you use >the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?

Recent Stories/Comments and Interviews when available.

It’s good that you guys are continuing to work on the foundations of the site – congrats you.

Yeah the design could stand an upgrade, and the over-reliance on HTML skills for embedding.

Make your RSS updates more regular – I try to use Google Reader to quickly monitor new comments, but it seldom gets an updated feed from RA so is always way behind…
A tag cloud might give a quick indicator of hot topics?

Leave the name alone, but the masthead could be replaced.
Some things like the email interviews are getting dated.
Formalise the FAQs rather than them being just another (messy) thread.
Regular patrons may wish to have personal profiles and links???
It could still be faster to load, or even just to go Back without complete reloads.

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?

An acquaintance who linked me to the site see something she thought was opinionated and rude. I was hooked!

What image does the title conjur for you?

Legal Civil Disobedience.

What do you love about riotact?

Opinionated coverage of local issues. Frankly, so called balanced coverage bores me to death.

What do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?

The mechanics of the site – using the HTML functions and the like. I can’t imagine actually submitting an article under the current arrangements.

What feature have you seen on other sites that you think would rock here?

Ability to edit my posts.

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?

The front page.

I know, change the name to something much too long and unmemorable (I suggest “Concatenate”) and try to get people to pay a subscripion to read your links to government media releases and nerdy game reviews.

riotact is a great name!

what i’d like to see, though, is mebbe an easier way to see current posts, even if they started dyasd/weeks ago, rather than have to trawl through the ones that may generate little discussion… i know ‘recent comments’ does this in its way, but it seems ‘clunky’ to me, and also a bit too abbreviated sometimes to get a sense of what’s gone on…

i love the topical and local nature of the discussions and, if you’re asking, was introduced to the site by a former colleague who is a regular poster…

another site i visit has a quick link above this box to the formatting hints with explanations for dummies like me, so i can hit that, copy the bits i need to make a link a link, or a pic, or bold/italicise, etc, or whatever, and click back to my text and paste in the formatting. dunno if that would be useful..?

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?
Google, a great many moons ago, while looking for fireworks.

What image does the title conjur for you?
Policeman shouting “Our Sovereign Lady the Queen doth strictly charge and command all manner of persons here assembled immediately to disperse themselves and peaceably depart to their own homes. God save the Queen.” before charging into a crowd swinging their truncheons.

What do you love about riotact?
Local content, generaly more informative than the Canberra times webpage.

what do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?
Layout looking like it was designed by GenX-ers in the dot-communist boom and hasn’t been updated since.

What feature have you seen on other sites that you think would rock here?
Live-action strippers. I’ve seen those on other websites.

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?
Recent comments, but the link to articles could be easier differentiated from the actual comments… Would make it easier to read, too.

Love everything about the site except for the very dated design. Definately do not change the name.

Bring back the polls and voting.

Dont really care about the first few questions except that you should definitely NOT change the name.

Hate?

The design and layout of the site is ugly and reminds me of the internet in the 90’s. 😛

Love?

The relevant, local news that mainstream media don’t even consider touching. Keep it up!

Most used feature?

Front Page, which is why you really need to update and redesign the site.

I should add that you should feel free to answer those bits you want to, and provide any other feedback. (that is reasonably relevant).

Cheers
Jazz

Where did you hear about The-Riotact.com?

The 2004 Australian Blog Awards, ACT section.

What image does the title conjur for you?

An ACT based site that is free and rambunctuous.

What do you love about riotact?

Local news of actual interest with ‘usually’ insightful editorial.

what do you hate, is there anything that is confusing?

I hate how the comments blovk on the right can’t handle a long unbroken string. It should be reading by character and not by word. Or at least know how to recognise a URL from a word.

What feature have you seen on other sites that you think would rock here?

Boob-a-day

What feature that we currently have do you use the most (eg. recent comments, archives)?

The front page.