Tag: wordpress

Dear WordPress:

Look.  I like you.  Mostly.

But today.  Today, you have pissed me off.

I got a comment on my blog post.  I read it in your fancy schmancy hovering bell notification thing.  I HATE the magic hovering stuff that pervades the web, but I get it – you have to keep up with the latest, even if it’s glitchy and pointless.

Today I responded with a rather lengthy and thoughtful comment to my kind commenter.  I was quite pleased with my comment. And then when I hit send it disappeared and a notice came up that I had somehow sent my kind commenter to Spam Hell.

THAT, that right there, is the reason these stupid Hovery Magicy things are a problem.  I’m sure I clicked something odd while it was moving mysteriously between one form and another.  I certainly didn’t do it intentionally as I had no idea that was even a damn option.  And the comment WASN’T spam.

I then fixed Your pointlessly created problem by Unspamming the comment, but I have no idea if my commenter was notified of this embarrassing mishap.

AND (and this is the crux of my anger) because it is UNFIXABLE, I lost my response to her comment.  My thoughtful and rather long comment was LOST.  Because of this UTTERLY pointless thing you have going with the hoverboard of notification hell.

I like the idea in theory – I want to have easy access to my notifications.  But I’m all kinds of OK with them being in their own page.  Being captured and STATIC is fine.  The hovering stuff is more annoying than good.  Stop the Madness.  Lead the charge away from the sparkles and into the hard and fast reality of things that are FUNCTIONING PROPERLY AND CONSISTENTLY.

Sincerely,

Sara

May I make a suggestion?

Put your soul in the front of your post.  Blaze the content of your idea in your title.  Entice me to keep reading, don’t place a word barrier in front of your thoughts.  Sing them to me immediately.

Don’t do the meta part at the top a post.  Don’t say that you are now going to write a post about a thing because you are participating in a thing.  Don’t repeat the obvious first lines that every other person doing a version of this post also repeated.

Meta is utterly boring.  If it is a necessary part of the post in someway – put it at the bottom.

The reader only shows a few lines and if those lines are full of meta, I am not seeing anything that is enticing me to click to see the rest of the post.

Don’t put the meta in the headline except possibly as a tag at the end.

Just put the original content of the post front and center.  Its the part that its interesting.  Its the part people want to read.

If possible don’t include meta at all.

I realize that I’m more or less telling a great many people to stop doing something that is heavily embedded in the WordPress culture.  But its not an attractive part of the culture.  Its a thing that gets in the way of showing your creativity and blocks the interesting content.

I don’t think its bad to have things that prompt people to write certain things, in particular if they have a hard time finding things to write about.  I don’t think its bad to have things that people participate in as a group writing about similar themes.  I think these are all things that promote social community and help writers.

But placing those things as word barrier in front of the part of your post that is interesting and unique to you is hurting you.  I for one have skipped people’s posts because of the barrier.  And I really don’t think I’m the only one.