overheard in the plastic.com conference room

April 24, 2001 12:46 PM

overheard in the plastic.com conference room:

"Ok kids, it's redesign time! I say we reduce the slashdottedness by... oh, say 12%, and increase the weblog/metafilter look by 28%."
posted by mathowie (staff) to General Weblog-Related at 12:46 PM (9 comments total)

I'm not saying they've stolen their look from anything, but it seems easier to scan new articles in the centered list. I wish it were liquid so it wouldn't seem so cramped though, all that stuff on the right side is pretty chaotic.

I wonder why they've added their user stats though, that's kind of funny, given how much advertising they've done.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:49 PM on April 24, 2001

I think it's an excellent example of info overload. Too many links! Brain hurt... want to click.. and click...
posted by owillis at 1:15 PM on April 24, 2001

I like it, at least, I think it's an improvement over what was there before. It's still very hard to get a grip on, but at least they're trying to improve the experience.

Funny thing though: I couldn't figure how to get from the old Plastic to the new one. I didn't see anything about it until someone told me to "switch views." I just have a hard time finding anything on that site I guess. ;)
posted by megnut at 1:22 PM on April 24, 2001

click humor, no wait login first, no no ... no active topic!? ... noo wait ... uh?.. hm? oh. im a failure.

man, its like metafilter in some respects but im going with owillis on this one. i am a simple minded web happy guy, and well, frankly i click links where i see 'em ... needless to say i was thoroughly enveloped by the sheer tonage after 6-7 clicks.

but, honestly, im a metafilter fella myself. :)
posted by a11an at 3:41 PM on April 24, 2001

I still have the tendency to go check out Plastic because everyone mentions is, take a look at all the link overload, and then leave.

I'd just like to come out about this, I'm a web guy, I'm addicted to this shit. I always say "It's the content that matters" but somehow I never read Slashdot or Plastic (or any slashcode site) because they're so ugly.

My name's Anil, and I'm superficial about websites. And I'm OK with that.
posted by anildash at 3:55 PM on April 24, 2001

I have never been on a slash site that had content worth struggling with the interface over.
posted by kindall at 4:31 PM on April 24, 2001

Myabe if they increased the metafilter factor by GETTING RID OF THE FRICKING POP-UP ADS I would stop by more often.
posted by ericost at 9:22 AM on April 25, 2001

Agreed, every time I go to Plastic, I immediately have this feeling of "Well, now what...". The main topic headers (white on blue) do not pop out, There are far far too many links to really make things useful, and I, for one, have never really grokked or liked the whole slashcode format. "Filter level", ugly threading, scattered discussions and annoying Karma scores all are clutter and should definitely be optional items to be applied by power-users that could give a shit.
posted by kokogiak at 9:39 AM on April 26, 2001

I can't read plastic because it all looks like an ad. Look carefully: all that candy-coating over everything makes the whole damn site look like an ad to me. I have to actually force myself to focus on anything.

And then I find out that it's boring. But usually I don't get that far.
posted by rusty at 6:13 PM on April 26, 2001