I was momentarily puzzled today when I looked at someone's contributor profile and saw what looked like Playpen posts in the 'articles' column and what looked like comments in the 'playpen' column, and nothing in the 'comments' column. Of course this was because I'd completely failed to read the column-headings and thus see that the person hadn't written any articles, so the other two columns had shifted to the left. But I wonder whether, if it's easy to do, it might be slightly more natural to have the columns stay where they always are even if one of them is empty?

I can't seem to respond in the playpen - is this something I ought to be able to do using my open ID?
[Sorry, Mary-J, but the Playpen's limited to FerretBrain accounts only]

Could the Playpen RSS feed possibly include the name of the contributor? Also, is there a reason it doesn't appear as an option under "Boomarks/Subscribe to this page" in Firefox (I only get recent articles/recent comments as options there)?
[Done and done :-)]

Add permalinks to comments
[Done]

A Playpen RSS feed would be really cool.

[Er, we have one...]

I have been trying to post to playpen, but it keeps telling me to login even though I've already authenticated with my OpenId.

[I'm afraid you can't post to the Playpen unless you have a FerretBrain account. Sorry.]

Minor thing – it'd be helpful if the contributor playpen/comment feeds linked to the relevant posts in full, just like the front page feeds.
[Should be done]

How are you logging in? The little links at the bottom of the comments should redirect you from the login page automatically. Ah, cunning! I must have been using the 'log in' link at the top right. Didn't occur to me that the one at the bottom of the page would be cleverer. Thanks.

Consider RST as an alternative composition format for articles, while maintaining HTML for those who like control.

If you're reading a page without being logged in and then you log in (e.g. in order to comment), is there any easy way to go directly back to the page you were reading without having to navigate to it through the left-hand menu or the front page?
[How are you logging in? The little links at the bottom of the comments should redirect you from the login page automatically.]

(Though the trick here would be "finalising" the timestamp in some way so articles don't get pushed to the frontpage every time someone makes a minor edit... maybe once an article is published the timestamp gets "fixed" and can't be altered?)
[Done. Drafts are saved to the year 1900, and updated to their actual publishing date when they're published for the first time -- after that, the publishing date isn't altered.]

I've noticed that the timestamp on articles is set when the draft is saved, but isn't updated when the article is actually published. This can lead to some really strange results if an article is in the "draft" or "ready" phase for some days before publication - it ends up appearing beneath articles that were published well before it on the frontpage, and it's even possible (if there's a glut of activity between the article being drafted and published) that an article won't make it to the frontpage. Shouldn't the timestamp be updated when an article is first published?

On Arthur's suggestion below: If it could be done, that would also help to reduce html errors like leaving out a slash and ending up with the second half of one's comment in italics. On my last suggestion: Thanks, that's feeling much easier to me now. Hope it's working for everyone else. One more thing: I notice that if one clicks to hide comments on an article and then clicks to view them again the 'new comment' box reverts to the old style rather than the new floaty one. Not really problem but a quirk worth mentioning.

I sometimes find that I ramble on a bit too much in comments, and I think it's partly due to the fact that the comment box is quite small; it would be nice to have a "preview" button which lets me see how the comment would look once published. This would also help in those cases where a long comment is, in fact, merited, since then commenters can see the entire thing all in one go and tidy up as they see fit.

Here's something I've noticed lately about how I use the site. When I'm reading comments on an article and I come to one that's sufficiently long that the end doesn't fit on my screen when I'm reading the beginning, I find myself reading the first couple of sentences and then scrolling down to the end of the comment to find out whose it is before going back to start reading again. I think it's partly because I want to make sure I'm reading in the right 'voice', as it were, and partly so that I can read it in the context of the commenter's previous comments on the same topic (so as to keep the train of thought clear). And on a couple of occasions I've also found that failing to do this has caused me to misidentify the commenter and then get cuite qonfused.

Which is a long way of saying: could we maybe try having the commenter's name at the top of the comment (like on this page or in the playpen) rather than (or as well as) the bottom?
[Sure -- done]

Dude, this is a dangerous page. With regards to the image library, I am often a complete arse and load things wrongly so it would be nice if there was a function to delete images.
[OK, done]

Random things: I always have to log in twice, I don't if there's a bug. And it'd be great if I could navigate directly to the page I was before I started to log in (e.g. if I want to comment on an article, it'd be great if I could be directly returned to that article).
[Auto-redirecting has been changed to a cruder but more reliable method, so it should work better now. And if you use the link at the bottom of the comments section to login, it should take you right back to the article once you've done so]

Also: could text formatting appear in the front page feeds?
[I'll think about it ;-)]

Could the (very cool) quote function also appear on the Playpen?

Set up axis of awesome / awful dude =P
[All right, done]

Our name links are broken from this page :-( They go to ferretbrain.com/number instead of ferretbrain.com/contributor/number
Fixed -- newly posted ideas will link correctly.

"[Implemented -- hope you like it!]"
I do :-)
I noticed on the facebook page someone was asking where the link to the friends page had gone, which is something I was wondering too.

Also - and this really is a tiny and totally inconsequential thing but I'm bored - I notice that in those three boxes on the home page the previews of comments and playpen posts don't preserve line-breaks, italics, or (I conjecture) other bits of formatting; the only real problem this causes is that the lack of line-breaks makes the last word of a paragraph run straight into the first word of the next paragraph without a space, which looks very slightly jarring.

The new site is nice and easy to navigate. One suggestion: on the home page we get the latest articles on the left, and it's possible to go to the latest one by clicking on the title of the article, and on the right we get the latest comments and we can go to the article to which the comment is attached, but in the middle with the playpen there's nothing clickable to take us to the latest posts. Of course each of the three columns has 'see more' at the bottom, but somehow I find myself instinctively expecting something clickable within the box to take me to the playpen, like with the boxes on either side. Don't know quite what it would be - maybe just make the first word of each post into a link? Maybe a bit redundant since they'd all lead to the same page... Well, anyway, there's my nebulous and poorly thought-out suggestion. :)
[Do the little direct links under each playpen post / comment help, at all?]

The themes are still miscounting btw.
[Ah, found the error. Fixed.]

An utterly pedantic thought: in the Playpen, I noticed that to see chronologically earlier posts, you click on "next 20". Shouldn't it be "prev 20"?
[Good point. Changed.]

Ooh, I agree with Arthur's latest suggestion - that sounds great. I want to see where the controversy lies :-)
[Implemented -- hope you like it!]

I was thinking it would be interesting to see the theme listings in some alterate orders; for example, we already arrange them by "most articles", but it would be interesting to see which themes have the most comments. Chances are the largest themes will dominate that list too, but it would be nice to be able to see whether Joss Whedon or Watchmen have provoked the most discussion.
[Yup, done, see above -- hope you like it]

We currently have a lot of themes. I'm of the opinion that this is a good thing because it is friendly to people browsing the site: if someone wants to read all of the articles about Harry Potter, or XBox games, or matters of choice in video games, they can, and I think that's great.

It is getting a little cluttered when it comes to assigning themes to articles, because at the moment you have to pick stuff out of a wall of around 40 checkboxes. Can we think of ways to make it nicer?

The easiest way I can think of is to hide all the checkboxes and replace them with an "add another theme" button. On pressing "add theme" two drop-down menus would appear; the first menu would let you select a type of theme ("video game genres"/"literary genres"/"specific authors/directors/creators"/"video game systems"/"type of media"/"all themes", that sort of thing), the second drop-down menu would list the actual themes. And there'll be a little "add" button to confirm.

So, the mouse clicks involved in selecting a theme will go:

Add Another Theme -> Select the type from the drop down menu ("Specific creator") -> Select the specific theme from the second menu ("J.K. Rowling") -> "Confirm".

Once you've added a theme to the article, you can click on a "remove theme" button next to it to remove the theme, or click the "add another theme" button to add another theme.

Advantages of this:

• Categorising the themes will make us think logically about them and identify glaring omissions or blatant redundancies.
• Using a drop-down menu to pick a specific theme category means that in the second drop-down menu only the relevant themes are displayed, making locating the theme you want faster.
• Going through the above process to pick a theme is quick enough that it doesn't take ages, but slow enough that you are actually thinking about what themes you are applying to the article.

[That's way too many clicks. I think the current number of themes has stabilized and it's not too inconvenient to use the checkboxes; if this changes or if I get more opinions I'll look into updating the system.]

Hey a suggestion for the recent playpen comments section on the home - it'd be great if you could link directly to the comment and to any external links in the comments from the home page.
[External links I'm not going to do as it would be too fragile, but direct links are up]

Can we has friends page please?
[Your wish is my command ;-) It's up]

An idea: why don't we put a google search box on the Search page until the site's own search function is ready? Setting such a thing up is ludicrously easy, and I've seen a number of sites out there where the site's own search engine also has a "search this site using google" option to help catch the results the main search can't quite manage, so there's no reason we can't have such a thing running in parallel with the site's own search anyhow. (Also, I imagine it would be quite useful for testing the site's search engine...)
[I'd rather not specifically set up a Google-owned FerretBrain search, as I do still want to build a search system myself, but a filtered Google search box is up.]