Revamped Title Information Page

[AFlickering]

can honestly say i never noticed that before just now haha

[glifosfato]

Hey there!

I just wanted to let you all know that we’ve been reading every single post made on the forums these past few days, even if we’ve not been responding to them all. We care a ton about the concerns of our longest-term users, and apologize that this has probably seemed otherwise.

I’d like to share some facts and some background. Firstly, the idea that we’re not listening to user input is patently false (and honestly a little hurtful). We’ve never engaged the community more in a new feature or redesign, and for months have been actively implementing a whole host of bugs and improvements suggested by the community, various groups of whom have been brought in for feedback at varying times. Literally 96 bugs and improvements have been addressed in the past few months, the vast majority suggested by users.

Just as an example: One of the most persistent complaints was that there was too much spacing in the reviews, and people wanted to see ratings in a more compact way. We delivered a solution to that last Friday. Is it perfect? Probably not. But at the very least it’s proof that we’re listening, that we care about what you all think, and that we’re working on the things you care about.

We also did some testing with people who were brand new to Criticker — meaning people who’d never seen the old page OR the new page. And when asked to compare both, their preference was overwhelming (and very nearly unanimous). Users who aren’t already accustomed to the old version of the Title Information Page responded massively better to the new one. Just yesterday, we had a higher number of new (and verified) registrations than we've seen in months. Things are looking up, and it's really exciting.

I hear you thinking, “Great, all they care about is new users.” But honestly, if you’ve been with the site for any amount of time, you know how untrue that is. How much we care about the community and about building a place that feels like home. How slow to change we are. But you also know that Criticker, as it exists, has not grown in 15 years, and has actually been slowly atrophying. We can’t continue like this. If Criticker doesn’t modernize, it will go away.

By reading the posts in this forum, it might feel as though the community is coalescing around a narrative… that the design was a mistake, that people hate it, that we’re not listening. But this is not borne out by the stats. Of all the users active in the last 30 days (including sponsors who have had access to the new TIP since June 1st), only 4.09% have switched back to the old version. Emails we’ve been receiving have been far more positive than the sentiments on the forum. And the reaction of our partners and collaborators is 100% enthusiastic about the direction in which Criticker looks to be headed.

I’m not pointing all this out in an effort to diminish the influence of our long-term forum users. The sentiments of new users and partners are important. But you are the life-blood of Criticker, and we are committed to keeping you happy. We have been making notes on all the conversations going on here, and although it’s often difficult to read, we appreciate the honesty. But again, we simply cannot allow Criticker to remain mostly static with only small incremental changes for the rest of time, and won’t be regressing to a layout that was constantly (and correctly) derided as outdated and ugly. We hope that you all understand that.

As I said, we’ve got loads of improvements and bug fixes coming up, and can’t wait to get to work on them — almost all of them originating from the feedback you’ve been giving us. Keep letting us know when you think we’re off track, but also please understand that we’re trying to grow the site into something bigger than it has been. There are going to be a lot of changes along the path towards Criticker reaching its true potential, and we've just started.

I think making the new design the default for new users, while keeping the option to use the old version as a permanent feature is a simple way to keep everyone happy. Can't imagine that would be costly to maintain.

[mpowell]

I think making the new design the default for new users, while keeping the option to use the old version as a permanent feature is a simple way to keep everyone happy. Can't imagine that would be costly to maintain.

Thanks for writing! We definitely plan on keeping the Legacy version around for awhile, at least until we've had a chance to address the main points of contention with the new page. That said, we can't do it on a permanent basis. Bugs always pop up (already there's been a new one reported on the Legacy version), and permanently supporting two separate versions isn't something we can do.

We think it's better to continue working to improve the new page, addressing the things which might drive users back to the old one. In fact, we're already at work doing exactly that! But like I said, you don't have to worry about the old page going away any time soon, and we'll make sure to announce it way in advance, when we eventually are ready to sunset it.

[gogolit]

I do quite like the design. The movie title font though is very large, outsized even in comparison to rest of page. Not quite sure why, but because the new design spreads everything downwards vertically (in comparison to the old which keep almost everything in place without really even needing to scroll down), reducing it's size may not result in much gain elsewhere.

I really like the 'similar too' film selection, I just wish we were given more than 8 for free.

I really think only showing a few reviews on the title information page is not great, when all of them used to be at a glance. The end result of this, is that 99% of people's reviews will never get seen, as only the first 5 are shown. People are unlikely to click through ultiple pages to see reviews. Clearly, a lot of users of this site enjoy writing a quick review of the film they've seen for people to read.

[JonSmith]

While I like some aspects of the page, I still feel like it's not as compact as it should be. The improvement has been good, but I feel in some places the spacing could be a bit more compact. Granted, it might just be a preference of mine. I think Collections and Similar Titles can benefit from a compact mode, sorry if that's a big ask.

Just mentioning it again since that was the main feedback when we tested it as Sponsors tbh.

[Deadmarsh]

How about something like this?

The collections/stats/etc. could be below.
I think this is something most people would be happy with, all while keeping the modern look.

Good idea!

This would be more useful.


Some of my own feedback, sorry if repeating someone else. I didn't read every comment.

- I want to se more ratings without additional loading. If this is a performace issue make the default smaller and allow users to select from set of values if they wish to see more than the default.

- Ditch collections below the extended cast etc info.

- Allow users to decide if they want to see tie short (useless) cast information at top or the extended (useful) one which is currently below collections.

- Allow users to select if they even want to see collections or statistics (no need to load data which is not wanted = less resources used).

- Allow users to organize the page contents of the overview according to their own preferences (show something or don't and in what order). I know this is very unlikely to happen as the possible maintenance issues can be significant. Maybe within some preset limits this could work?

- Open a larger poster image popup from the poster.

- Make the content wider (= can show and see more = helpful), 1024px is so dated. Or at least give the option to go wider in desktop mode. Do what you want in mobile version. I loathe mobile first design being forced for everyone.

[BadCosmonaut]

...- Allow users to decide if they want to see tie short (useless) cast information at top or the extended (useful) one which is currently below collections...

I would keep the cast and crew section at the top, but then make the one at the top the main place where all this info is. No need for the bottom section and no need for the separate page that needs to be clicked in to/loaded. Three sections for that is redundant.

...- Allow users to select if they even want to see collections or statistics (no need to load data which is not wanted = less resources used)...

This is an interesting idea. I would disable the statistics section for sure. Every once in a while I get curious about statistics, but I'd be happy to enable that feature for those rare occasions (or just have statistics be on a separate page entirely that I have to click to).

For collections on the main overview page, I think it would be nice to be able to filter collections to show either "all collections", "no collections" (which would mean that section is disabled entirely like discussed above with statistics), or to show just "my collections". If I could see just my own collections, that would be the most ideal option for me. If not, then my next best preference would be to disable collections entirely since I don't need or want to see other collections normally. So many collections are like "User9534 to watch this year" or "User5234 films I saw in theater when I was 8 years old". Some collection titles can even be considered spoilers: "Unreliable narrators". The collections system as a whole needs to be cleaned up somehow to make all those obviously personal and private collections not show up for other users...

In any event, I don't think collections needs to take up so much space on the screen. Showing a thumbnail with posters of random movies in the collection does not contribute to my visually parsing collection information on the Overview page. It just takes up big space while adding little to no help in the function I expect from a collection section. The multi-poster thumbnails are blurry to me, too.

[emtilt]

I'm kinda confused by the use of color on the ratings (i.e., how a numeric rating can be green/yellow/red in the ratings and review section). It seems like nearly everything is dark green for me on the new design but not the old design. For example, on the Three Thousand Years of Longing page, there's an average percentile of 44.55% from 440 total ratings. Only the bottom ten of these (percentiles zero through four) show up as yellow or red. Anything else is green. This doesn't occur on the old page for me, and seems like a misleading use of color that might be a bug?

[Ununnilium]

For the life of me I can't figure out how to add a film to a collection from its Collections page.

[BadCosmonaut]

For the life of me I can't figure out how to add a film to a collection from its Collections page.

There's a button right under the poster.