Announcing New V-Features: Community Page and VVallpapers
Whenever The Keepers disappear a bit and our postings become sporadic and pointed, you can bet we’re either out riding our bikes or we’ve been busy working away at new features for the site. We have a number of features in various states of completion, and we’ll be rolling them out over the course of the next few weeks and months as they reach maturity and we become convinced they’re working reasonably well.
The beautiful thing about a word like “reasonable” is that it contains within it the perfect amont of vagueness while giving the impression of specificity. After all, there’s no universally agreed-upon reasonable degree of reasonable, meaning that what seems reasonable to me might be completely unreasonable to others. Take, for example, the number of times the word “reasonable” appears in this paragraph. Completely unreasonable.
Back to the point, when I say our new features are working reasonably well, I mean to say that three requirements have been satisfied. First, the vision for the feature is well understood. (The vision does not need to be realized in the release, but it does need to allow for it to become realized at some later stage.) Second, the initial feature set is working sufficiently well that I got tired of testing before I found any major problems. Third, it looks good.
At this time, we’re releasing two new features, both of which represent an initial iteration which we plan to expand on as the features grow and the community adopts them (or not). As we gather feedback on what new features would be helpful, we’ll incorporate it into the subsequent releases (or not).
The VVallpapers
Velominati is founded on the idea of sharing with each other the little things about Cycling that make this sport so amazing. On that premise, providing desktop Wallpapers or, indeed VVallpapers, has been part of the envisioned feature set from the beginning; to select photos from our collective archives within the community that represent Cycling in some way, and provide a specific place to share them with each other. But, like so many other ideas we have kicking around, there simply aren’t enough hours in a day to make everything come to reality.
However, a discussion last week spurred us into action, and we present you with The VVallpapers. We haven’t really found a good home for them yet, but for the time being at least, they can be found through the footer and via The Keepers. The same principle applies as elsewhere; post your suggestions for additional photos for inclusion, and we’ll update the main list with the best ones. Several initial wallpapers have been added already as a start.
The Community
As we know, there is great sense of community on Velominati, and increasingly we’re seeing the desire to know a little bit more about our fellow members. To that end, we’ve put together a Community page which provides a mechanism to share some background information and posting activity. Obviously, we wanted to provide this as an option to people who wish to share information, but still make sure that people who want to stay anonymous can do so. To that end, people who have an account at Velominati may log in and update their profile, sharing whatever information they are comfortable sharing, including a bio, their location, and various social networking coordinates. For those who don’t have a Velominati account or who don’t fill out their profile, only a very basic amount of information is shown along with their posting activity. The fundamental idea is to allow people to choose what they’d like to share; only the handle, photo, and website are shown by default.
To access anyone’s profile, simply click their name in the posting threads. The only downside to that is that in order for you to access a member’s profile, they need to have posted at least once; there are loads of members who have never posted any comments. Unfortunately, this release doesn’t provide a mechanism for viewing their profiles.
To that point, however, is the notion that The Community in particular is viewed by us as an initial iteration; we have a mountain of ideas that we think will help foster a sense of community here, and we’re sure you do as well. With that in mind, have a look, fill out your profile (or don’t), and start using learning about the community. If you have ideas or suggestions, we’d love to hear about them.
Thanks as always to everyone who comes here and makes this all worth while.
@Chris
Ah – great idea, mate!
Nice one frank. I (and all who use this site I’m sure) appreciate how much time and effort is put into this site.
Great ideas from everyone else as well in how to grow the site. Liking the idea of a swap page for one. There’s probably a lot of us who have a heap of gear that could either be swapped or donated (for the cost of the postage for example) to/with another Velominatus for a progetto.
@frank
Aw shucks. Thanks. I’ll see what I can do… manually enlarging the image in Photoshop leaves quite a bit of JPG artifacts, but I can probably figure it out, or just re-do the whole thing starting from better source material (anyone want to send me a screen cap from the newly released Blu-Ray edition of the 4th film? I don’t have it).
@frank
Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this… and totally redeem yourself!
VVallpapers good.
Thanks very much.
They’ll go nicely into the bike related wallpaper folder on my work mac.
@frank
When radios came out, I couldn’t figure out how they got a little man into such a tiny box. I’m having a similar feeling now about the complex awesomeness of this website.
While the suggestion box is still open, perhaps we could add a clickable thumbnail of our bike(s) next to the other identifiers at the top?
What? When you guys disappear I assume you’re riding bikes up mountains in Hawaii or taking trips to France. Work on the site though? Amazing!
Nice work, Founders & Frank!
@Blah
Nice. I knew I always liked y’all from down under (Kiwi’s too). We both have similar avatars; Roubaix with different Rouleur’s.
@Marcus
Ah, don’t worry, I’m still wearing my Addilettes (right now), so I still suck. But I think of you every time I put them on, if that matters. But I do appreciate you setting me up to post my favorite clip ever, even if I can’t find the right version.
Another would be to allow photo uploading from via the v-mobile. And an app.
@frank
I think this should be right up there
so you’re telling there’s a chance
@RedRanger
V-Mobile. Now RR is thinking BIG!!
Awesomeness and redemption combined with new toys – it could only possibly get better if we had a Velominati race up the volcano.
Good one Frank!
Or this one:
I have it as a VVallpaper now, but in need for new spectacular #5 rule VVallpaper.
Remember Rule #5
What about a place where our weight is directly uploaded from bathroom scales to the website profile, by Wifi or Bluetooth – as a source of pride or endless despair and embarrassment – with a calculation showing how far from peaking one is or hopelessly THTC etc
This is a bit belated (time zones, life, requirement to do hill reps at lunch, etc), but no less sincere for that: major kudos to Frank and the Keepers for continually adding to the site’s features. Outstandiing effort.
If the suggestion box has not already been removed, bulging, from the voting stall, I would add to the communal wishlist a “greatest hits” log, for those particularly outstanding contributions to which we keep returning (or, more accurately, trying desperately to remember how to return to) – e.g. McSqueak’s EddyLuke montage; JiPM’s troll-reply (“Yeah, I remember the first time I drank some of my father’s beer and posted on the internet”, or words to that effect – I can’t locate the original; etc).
But far more important than that is to say thanks to Frank and the Keepers.
So … thanks.
Excellent work, gentlemen. One day, I WILL be able to understand the extent of the technology (probably the day I figure out how to incorporate photos into a post.) Days like this, I wish I was not such a luddite with computers.
@Frank Having spent a long time in TV and journalism I have come to the conclusion that spotting typos is a brain-function thing. No doubt a neuroscience researcher will be along in a minute to tell us why.
Some people just do – it leaps out in the same way as certain people see mismatched shifters and cassettes. Other people sort of glaze over, not because they can’t spell or wouldn’t know if it were pointed out, they just don’t see it. And then there are just idiots who can’t spell… a surprising number of whom work in television and journalism and don’t run this website.
Anyway, on the suggestions front and I hesitate to even make this, but… miles, logging. Maybe linked to Strava or some other Rule #74-bending app. No need to build from scratch.
It’s just be interesting in a V-laying-down sort of way to see what riding people do, as well as what they do it on and how they were equipped.
@ChrisO
Typo spotting is an odd thing, I can’t spot my own to save my life but I’m pretty good at it when it comes to reviewing other peoples work.
@frank
Ridewithgps.com is quite a good site for mile logging and the like. It’s advantage over Strava is that as well as doing the full Garmin download thing, you can build your routes up on their maps then add activity data such as time, HR and Cadence manually depending on how much Rule #74 you are prepared to adhere to. I role with Polrs simplest HR monitor and just log elapsed time, max and average HR.
@ChrisO
@Chris
I am convinced it is a trained skill. As a young man the relentless (and spiteful) red pen that seniors put through my work eventually trained me to do the same to my underlings. It’s kind of like hazing.
@Marcus @ChrisO
I always appreciated that process for what it was worth, but too often you’d make the changes in red and ping it back only to receive a second set of red ink returning half of the amendments to their original form. That was when I realised the importance of keeping time stamped copies of my work so that I could drop the original text back in if necessary.
Thanks for all the hard work, Frank. Good stuff.
@Chris
“…other people’s work.” Like that you mean ;-)
One of my favourite things, which I can’t now recall if we had it up in a newsroom or it was in a journalism boook, was…
“The greatest urge of mankind is not money, lust or power… it is the urge of one person to change/edit/amend/alter someone else’s copy.”
With the change/edit/amend/alter bit all crossed out and then ‘stet’ (leave it) handwritten above.
book… dammit
@Tartan1749
That is a fantastic photo, agreed… taken by Gerard Brown on the Stelvio… I have the postcard up on my desk right now… Am hoping to get my own version of this next year, when we do Mortirolo, Gavia and Stelvio…
@ChrisO
Nice, although I think the more literal translation of stet from the Latin is not “leave it” or “let it stand” but “Bugger it, this is too hard. The original served its purpose”.
I shall up my game now that I know there are pedants at large.
@RedRanger
There are technical limitations with mobile browsers that prevent photo uploading from mobile devices via the mobile website, but a Mobile App (iPhone/iPad) is in the works already, but it will be a bit before it is ready; that would allow for photos to be uploaded. Along with a bunch of other super cool stuff. Again, though, great suggestion!
@Papageno
Realizing full well that this is a horrible photo and that I hope both the kid and cyclists are OK, the mother on the streetside is just classic. Even at 50 pixels high, you can see the look of combined horror and disbelief that her son actually did it.
@Dr C
Brilliant! Too complex for the desktop solution, but the iPhone…that has some real possibilities. Push Notifications reminding you you’re too fat to climb, that you’re violating Rule #5 (for some people, we’d just set it on an automatic timer), or that you Look Fantastic.
@G’phant
That’s a great idea as well; we have a comment upvoting system in the works which will automatically assign the +1 badge to the person whose gotten the most upvotes over the past week; we could use that same mechanism to show the comments that have received the most upvotes over time as well as show on the profile page those comments you’ve upvoted the most. For the historical ones, it would require an effort from anyone who cares enough to go find them and go upvote them, but moving forward it would self-manage.
Would that work for what you’re suggesting?
@ChrisO
Excellent idea. You’re getting into MMR territory with that of course, but to show it on the profile page would be call. We should also be able to show pictures of our machines, no? We’d have to figure out exactly what belonged as V-Data and what would better live over on sites like Strava or MapMyRide…but absolutely, it would be very cool to see what types of riding people do. Favorite rides, etc.
@frank
I looked at that photo long and hard before I realised that the first rider in the group hadn’t had his bike mysteriously vaporise from underneath him leaving only his front wheel but was in fact a small boy.
Having done a similar thing as a small boy but with a car rather than the peloton, I know that’s going to hurt for some time. For everyone else, I suspect that, between realising the inevitable outcome and the actual event, time slowed incredibly.
@Chris
Excellent, excellent work. It’s a nice alternative to MapMyRide, which I prefer over Strava for the same reason that you can map your own routes. Very cool; I’ll explore that more. Thanks for pointing it out.@Marcus
I think so, too. I’ve learned to spot a mismatched drivetrain.
@Dr C
Fantastic idea and actually not that difficult to do.
I am pretty sure my weight would crash the webservice uploading it to the website in no time, or perhaps crush it due to its volume. I should really stop with the chocolate eclairs and the daily deserts I enjoy at lunch and dinner time. Actually thinking about it occassionally breakfast time as well.
@frank
Great news to hear about the Mobile Velopplication in the works, make sure you do an android version as well not just the craptastic apple app. Having written a number of mobile apps my self for work, android is far quicker to develop and update.
@frank
I like the greatest hits idea but I’m not sure that I’m a fan of the voting or reping thing. Scoring people on their posts seems to me to have the potential to encourage douchebaggery and trolling, which so far this site seems to have largely avoided. The current system whereby the Keepers chose the +1 recipients, presumably having taken into account any appreciative comments, “chapeaus”, “strong work” and the like, from the general congregation has a night feel to it that sets it apart from the like of rbr, pinkbike.
After all, we are an order of disciples devoted to adherence to the rules not some sort of fucking democracy.
@Chris
I agree with Chris on this one, perhaps leaving that down to the Keepers would be wise.
@All
Something else occurred to me also, adding in “Like” options for facebook, twitter and google Plus-Ones would be nice. Its an easy way of sharing the links through our other social network applications and also encouraging others into the site.
I feel like a girl – I’ll be in Seattle in two weeks to meet Frank and do some riding and all I can think about is losing five pounds before I get there.
@Papageno
love the image, i liked this one as well Von Bueren on the finish line in Swiss championships 1949. I love the innertube hovering inbetween the two riders.
@huffalotpuffalot
fool its already there!!
@huffalotpuffalot
Also agree with Chris on this one.
@huffalotpuffalot
Not just an inner tube – it’s his tub which has rolled off. Few nasty bits of metal from the broken rim and spokes too.
Amazing photo, as he realises what is about to happen but can’t do anything, and yes that tub floating adds a surreal dimension.
Who won ?
@papageno Opera singer in your spare time ? Or you like playing magic flutes – we’re not judgemental here ;-)
@huffalotpuffalot
Should have been the photo heading up the Reverence: Tubs article.
@Chris
haha agreed, i was just checking up Von Bueren won the race as it happens so good on him.
@huffalotpuffalot
Had to add that I think that this is just an awesome photo. Reminds me of the stories of the Army helicoptor pilots who, when hit and crashing downrange, would continue to keep saying, “I’ve got this, I’m pulling us out, Bravo 2-0 NOT going down” as they crash into the ground and all die. I’ve heard some amazing actual audio from pilots shot down and their insistence that they will survive is eerily chilling.
Not sure if that is at ALL relevent, but that’s what popped into my head when I saw that photo. Thanks for bearing with me here!
@huffalotpuffalot
Indeed, you’d think a guy who runs a global Mobile development team for a living would already have gotten this out, but…time continues its marched despite my best efforts to slow it down.
Android is a little bit faster to build, but testing is a much more difficult activity due to the different screen sizes and massive volume of devices to test against. Thankfully, due to my disinterest in thorough testing (see above), this will not pose much of a material problem.
@Chris
Excellent point. Must consider this carefully. An alternative might be to “favorite” a response and that gives no value to anything other than that on the Community page, it would show “frank’s favorite posts”…or something of that nature.
I am absolutely floored that you prefer the Keepers to pick someone for the +1 badge. I figured that seemed way to ghetto and biased. Apparently that’s what you like. Cool.
I suppose I shouldn’t be so shocked that this community appreciates bias. I suppose that’s what the whole thing is based on.
@huffalotpuffalot
We already have the +1 and Twitface links on each post and Rule/Lexi entry.
Adding a “Like” for FB would be easy to add (I suppose there is an effort-difference between just clicking “like” vs posting it to your account…)
Or, are you suggesting we add a FB Like button and Twitface links to each comment?
The suggestion box remains open. Great, great feedback, everyone.
Ah…that photo is missing only one thing…BRR’s commentary:
@Chris
+1
@Buck Rogers
That’s why I’m not a military man…I would be shitting myself and wailing like a puppy.
It does, however, remind me of my favorite comedians (Bird & Fortune) and their General Planner sketch:
We found that in desert conditions, the life expectancy of the helicopter rotors was reduced somewhat.”
How much?
27 hours.
Did that come as a surprise?
It did to the pilots.
The link above jumps to the scene in the sketch, but for anyone who hasn’t watched B&F, I encourage you to take the time to watch this. Absolute gold.
@frank
A button you could hit to put articles and comments into a “shit I like” section, absolutely. As long as there is a corresponding “flush” button in the “shit I like” section to avoid overcrowding.
For me, one of the great things about this site is that while it’s slick and pro looking, it doesn’t come across as a corporate entity in the way that many others do. Its identity seems to very much reflect the Keepers – completely obsessive, slightly knowledgeable and irreverent. The fact the Keepers are responsible for the primary content, the Articles, differentiates from the simple forum type sites where anyone can post any old shit. In other words there is tangible ownership and identity that doesn’t happen elsewhere. Having the people responsible for that decide on the +1 badge seems appropriate and in keeping with the site.
I like all the new tweaks and suggestions. I have one. With everyone who visits this site, there must be 100s, if not 1000s of years of experience out there. Could there be a Q&A/Advice section? I’m sure we all have questions/issues/problems with our bikes and this might be a place to ask them and get answers without mucking up a thread on a different issue. Some of this might fit in the Rules section, but that’s more for clarification on an issue. Thoughts?
Wow, a lot of great ideas from everyone! It’s been fun reading through them all.
As far as my two cents are concerned, I personally don’t like sites where you can “up vote/down vote” individual comments, and everyone sees it. I don’t know, it just seems to add too much complexity to what at it’s core is a pretty simple and intuitive forum interface that Velominati already has.
I like the addition of new features and ways to make this site more community focused, I just don’t want to see the dialog between people on here get lost between a bunch of new buttons and whatnot – because all this dialog is what gives the site value and makes it “sticky” in the first place. Look at how many websites have “0” comments under news posts or articles, and look at how this site can easily get 200 posts regarding bottle cages or sew-up tires. That is amazing.