Help us shape the future of Philly.com
Philly.com is excited to take the first external step in something that's overdue. Today, we are asking you, our readers, to take a survey to help us begin to redesign our site.
Help us shape the future of Philly.com
Philly.com is excited to take the first external step in something that’s overdue. Today, we are asking you, our readers, to take a survey to help us begin to redesign our site.
We want to make Philly.com easier for you to use, and help users discover more of the outstanding content on Philly.com, including content from The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and our other content partners.
We know you want that too. We've heard it on comments on our stories, in emails to our feedback address and in person when we meet you at events. It’s been more than four years since Philly.com’s design got a serious reexamination, and that’s too long.
Our first step is to collect information about how you use Philly.com and to open the door to much more communication. This is a small beginning of a long process that will likely take us into next year, as we plan, develop and test a better site.
Please take a moment to take our survey. It should not require more than 10 minutes of your time. The link is here.
And if you would like to be more deeply involved in this project, we welcome you. Email us at feedback@phillynews.com or comment below. You may be able to join virtual or in-person testing groups that will help us further refine our redesign.
Thank you, in advance, for your help and for reading Philly.com.
Wendy Warren, editor, Philly.com
Josh Cohen, design director, Philly.com
Took the survey...thanks for opportunity to comment. I may be interested in participatinq in a virtual or perhaps in person test qroup.— riverhealer- Thanks for a survey that is long overdue. I appreciated the ability to provide feedback. Hopefully you will follow the advice of the readers and not dismiss it— cusomano
- Took the survey. Please listen to us.— Sherwood Forest
We definitely will listen, cusomano and Sherwood. We appreciate your help very much. And riverhealer, thanks for the offer on the focus groups.- I did the survey and wrote some very specific issues the site needs to correct. I hope you will do as you say and "definitely listen". Thanks. I'd love to be a part of a focus group.— WakeUpEverybody!
Comment removed.- Took the survey as well, and I agree with above, listen to us please. I was limited in some responses but I would like to state that most of us read this because this is the next evolutionary step for Philly paper enthusiasts. If I want national I read national sites, PLEASE keep it as local as possible and realistic. Also, stop deciding what stories people can comment on. You guys are journalists who rely on the 1st Amendment to be able to do what you do. Don't turn around and censor the readers from having an ability to post an opinion. I realize that usually racial stories get out of hand, but there in and of itself is what makes the 1st Amendment beautiful. These people have extreme opinions for a reason(both sides BTW), whether you want to admit it or not there is a place for it. If everybody agreed on everything, it would be a pretty boring world - even though the MSM and gov't seem to really want that as an end result...— phillyjeffsr
Took the survey and here are the important points. 1 - too much fluff and not enough news. 2 - what little news there is is often just a skim and not in depth. 3 - any image galleries in philly.com are just horrible - poor navigation, small photos, nonsense captions. 4 - Stop splitting articles to several pages just so you can make more ad impression revenue. ALL of these can be nicely summed up by just visiting Boston.com - probably the best web local / news site there is. Any redesign that doesn't mimic that is probably just going to fall short.— poger67- Please stop the destructive racist drivel that is so prevalent in anonymous comment posts. Internet trolls claim 1st amendment rights but they add nothing to the discussion but hatred and bile. Use the facebook login system so that everyone can see who is posting. I've seen other sites implement facebook login successfully and comments cleaned up immediately. And trolls who don't like facebook? Go post your rant on your own blog.— bobjones1359
- Also took the survey, also agree regarding the need for comments in just about every article. Don't agree with using Facebook - not because I have anything against it, but because that can be faked easily too. How about outsourcing it people whose sole job is comments (Disqus)? If you insist on doing it in house, look at what others have done with a rating system where "down voted" comments get pushed to the bottom and eventually hidden unless you go looking for them. Many sites that draw far more outspoken / vile people have successfully controlled their commenting via this method.— Another_1
- Disqus can be faked too... I don't think that matters much. If the comments are rude or spam, they shouldn't be allowed, if not who cares if the names are fake.
And I do not think all articles need to have open comments. That is a lot of work for those who have to enforce the rules.
— ICDogg - Again, thank you all very much for your comments and for taking the survey. We've gotten a lot of helpful feedback. Next steps for this will be focus groups to continue hearing what our users would like to see from the site; if you are interested in participating and have not let me know, please email me at wwarren@philly.com— Wendy Warren
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