Community Poll: How Was Your New User Experience?

Community Poll: How Was Your New User Experience?

rumetzen 25 Nov 2024 21:08

Hey all! First I'd like to say, thanks for all the responses we got on the previous poll! We got a lot of good insight, and rest assured there are many points I will address and try to bring further attention to going forward in upcoming discussions. For now, what I want to focus on is, how was your experience with the site when you were a new user? Was it clear how to navigate it, and how to find stories? What drew you to the site initially? What points of friction were there - stuff that was hard to figure out, unclear, etc. What do you think would be helpful changes we could make to help introduce people to the site and its culture better? Positive feedback is fine, but what I'm most interested in now is improvements we could making, what we could be doing to help facilitate integrating people into the site experience. Thanks all!

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read YONQ

Re: Community Poll: How Was Your New User Experience?

zipzipskins 25 Nov 2024 21:25

i think the page layout could be served well by having "join the site" be more front and center. it's currently off to the side, and under random page. it funnels people directly to the orientation, which is awesome, but it's tucked away and easy to gloss over despite being in big bold print. if it isn't going to be up and centered it should be on the left so that english readers' eyes are drawn to it first (it's small on the scp wiki for instance, but it's also directly in the top left where people are accustomed to looking at the start of a page). i also think that it was a bit of a process to click through things to find the discord info. maybe that's intentional to avoid getting swamped? but since so much of the "community action" happens on the discord it might be good to improve its visibility and navigability to finding it on-site, if that makes sense. i also think it might not be a bad idea. i also think a tab to the recommended reading list in the orientation might be good for examples of site-writing, and on that note, the reading list mostly (maybe entirely) features articles that are three years old and older. it might not be a bad idea to update that to capture some of the more modern writing on-site (and maybe update the list periodically) so that people get an idea of what's hot around the community in the present.

much love, thanks for doing these.

Re: Community Poll: How Was Your New User Experience?

Din-Bidor 25 Nov 2024 21:41

I want to second Zip's suggestions. I have noticed that A LOT of people come here without ever reading the orientation page, lost as to what kind of writing we expect and how the site works (also in relation to the SCP Wiki). It'd do us good to funnel people there, just like you enter a real life library and inevitably have to pass by the front desk.

The recommended reading list should also change periodically to showcase different works as the site grows in size and diversity. On that same vein, I will continue to insist that the Notable Character page be moved to the nav bar or otherwise be given more visibility. People need a starting point when they want to get invested in some lore or give the Library (the in-universe one) greater depth as a setting. Same goes with The Collections: more visibility for them, since it also ties in with the desire some have expressed of making things feel more connected.

Re: Community Poll: How Was Your New User Experience?

UncannyClown 25 Nov 2024 22:30

seconding zip's suggestions. from my observation, the biggest stumbling block new users have hit lately is finding out about the resources we have for them to receive critique on their pieces before they go on site (forums/discord); there's been a lot of not very good coldposts lately from people who seemingly didn't know that they had an opportunity to do something other than throw stuff out to sink or swim. anything that gets these people into the appropriate channels is valuable.

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poet

Re: Community Poll: How Was Your New User Experience?

NotAnOligarch 26 Nov 2024 00:19

Agreed with all above, very good comments from Zip and the rest. Additionally, and as a longer-term thing: the SCP wiki has a great wealth of guides and essays on writing that the Wanderer's Library simply does not have. Some of these are universal and so a page with links to them could be great, but I imagine with the difference in ethos some new guides and essays (like the wonderful one on poetry by StygianBlue) specifically tailored to the WL would be helpful. Perhaps such resources already exist, but if they do they are far too removed from line-of-sight to the newbie. I know when starting out I read many mainstream essays on writing, but there's no reason we couldn't create our own that I see. Perhaps a far future thing but something I thought to bring up.

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Fires rage just below the surface of the ice.