Add Thumbnails back to Right-Click Select
The Case
Previously, we had optional thumbnails for all posts, meaning you can get a thousands words in with a single image. This also characterized the post.
It worked a bit like iconography, where an icon made the brain register the functionality a bit faster than XY eye movement to read meaning - a natural interpretation to distinguish a post.
The Request
Can we have these back in the forums?
The reason
- Accidental Iconography for quickly noticing your own posts or others without reading.
- Character/Personality per post, so reading is not required to know what is what
- A Visual Preview of the post content (if images present)
- Friendlier, we are all artists, we work in the visual world. We have to "see" what we are voting for. Now it feels like we have to go into posts to see, one by one. Instead of quickly getting a subconscious glance at relevant information with and overview in the list.
17 Comments
Agree. Usually icon shows, if post have scheme/picture. Also it is easier to navigate.
Yep. Thumbnails can break the mind-numbing new visual homogeneity, and help me identify the posts I want to revisit.
What's wrong with visual artists using visual to communicate or attract? By that logic, why not same colour avatar for all for the sake of democracy? Seriously though, I've been visiting last 3 months, once there was diversity and energy, now it is just orange bulbs and greyed out sameness (which ironically can be as draining as noisy busy pages)
At the least, have brighter, coloured Categories - like Collections in Outliner?
There is still many place for Thumbnails on typical HD resolution. Right now the GUI Menu is and whole view is small. On RWD Thumbnails can be optional, eg. above posts.
From what I noticed before - it worked not like iconography something. It worked like if topic has some colorful image it attract more people attention even if proposed is something insignificant (like change some button color, as if it's main Blender issue), if topic has not such thumbnail people ignore it even if proposed idea is something really valuable.
You can add images to topic now as well as before. IMO now more meaning in idea and how readable u figure to name it than in colorful images something attached as thumbnail to attract attention...
On the same note as this. I feel that by having only text, all posts are equal and get a better chance than having to fight over who makes the most eye-catching thumbnail. Kind of what happens now on YouTube with people adding red arrows.
@pablo Hello, If I want my idea to be catched by more people, I will do everything to attract their attention, even make a custom picture for it. Otherwise it's just a message in the huge flow of ideas...
the problem is, a lot of good ideas don't get posted with pictures, and a lot of bad ideas do. this levels the playing field
But posts aren`t equal, authors, who made schemes usually made better explanation.
Good scheme really do the job, but schemes are not equal to thumbnails... Just put some screenshot in to tiny picture format is not thumbnail. I just remember how it were before. Sometimes "empty" suggetions got dozens of votes in few hours when really good ideas was ignored. No thumbnail = shity idea ?
I'm not against it like "no, never!!", but, maybe, it's time to start reading books instead of looking at colored covers? Of couse it's not me who will decide how to be. (I not up or down vote this)
Eh.. the thumbnail option - by having a visual preview is still democratic with or without a user defined thumbnail. Yes, there was some publicity with framing biases with the thumbnails, but at the same time they were good cues to content without the need to read them one by one (aint no-body got time fo dat!). Once a visual filter is in place, then it's easier to do educated and democratic votes. It's just more accessible.
Here is an example, each webpage has a screen capture in a search. You can see what the site is roughly about without needing to open nor read about the website. This is basically what I'm getting at when a thumbnail is needed - visual content read. No text need if you don't want to invest XY eye movement and second nature learned abilities (reading).
Text and all the lineart icons being the same tells me little or nothing at a glance, nothing to distinguish motivation to read. A thumbnail, or capture of the post.. or something.. helps differentiate the post and relevance to what I'd like to vote on. Even if it's a post preview capture, anything. Just make it more visual.
I think the point is- the ideal user should be looking at every post and giving their honest opinion on a proposal equally, and having thumbnails creates a natural bias that is impossible to ignore. Humans are drawn to pretty pictures. even ugly pictures. most people will click on proposals with pictures and skip ones without. This leads to people making thumbnail images that just have the title of their proposal- a complete waste of time for the user, but an unfortunate necessity to get people to look at it.
The solution: no thumbnails. Click on the proposal and see the pictures there.
The solution to a request for thumbnails as no thumbnails is no solution at all.
There needs to be some kind of visual queue or preview of posts without needing to go into it, to categorize it - user defined or not. A balance would mean thumbnails that are NOT user defined, but a thumbnail nonetheless, or even colour categorization to the relevant tag, like another vote that came out uncannily in the same week as this one.
You can't argue with nueroscience and good UX and design, you need visual queues to make things usable - reading all posts with no visual filter of any kind is exhausting to the end user. UX beurocracy is not the solution (read, read tag, open post, read again, then choose if you want to even be interested in voting). The initial queue is more like this: see, choose if you want to be interested, read, read tag, open post, read and vote.
Previously, it was much easier to vote even without needing to go into a post.
So ultimately... voting and making proposals evident to user feedback is now... more bureaucratic, more clicks, more steps, more processes to get to the end goal.. a democratic vote on ideas.
A middle ground is some kind of category colour coding, or auto thumbnails of posts as a post preview, or even mouseover post preview popover that showccases the header image and post content.
Another benefit is... with any form of colour coding or thumbnails, it's easier to recognize posts you are following at in instance - now you can't. They all look the same.
Previously, it was much easier to vote even without needing to go into a post.
Without needing to go into? Really, that is the reason? Are you joking?
Sometimes a pregnant title and image is enough, you don't need a sentence then a paragraph to understand what a post is about.
As visual artists we are not afraid of some small thumbnails that help us scan faster in a long list.
They can have a desaturation filter until mouseOver to avoid color abuse.