Imzy: the Good, the Bad, and the Missing

Eventually to be sent along to the site developers. Because betaing is a holy responsibility, and also if I can whine my way to a better fandom site, I'm going to do it.

The Good:

  • The multiple profiles, being able to view all your comments/other people's comments, and the anon name thing is great on a fandom front, especially for fandoms with known trolls and assholes. I might not be a part of the Hockey RPF fandom, but I can see them making a very happy home here.

  • Spoiler and NSFW posts. These are discreet and useful! I like them.

Exists but needs work:

Image Posts: seems to have insufficient customizability for art posts.

  • Can't resize/change the preview, the actual picture, re-arrange the pictures OR change the placement.
  • Can't preview the post as a whole
  • Not sure if it's possible to add more than one photo

Text Posts:

  • No spell check. Someone out there has to save me from myself when it comes to spelling because I sure as hell can't.

  • I've asked them the character limits to text posts (and for comments), but haven't gotten a response yet. Character limit for posts 40 000. It's pitiful next to DW's 300 000 character limit for posts. LJ's size limit for posts is something like 65 000 characters, so even LJ is beating this.

  • I don't know if fandom in general will ever go back to posting fic off-archive instead of just linking it, but given that there's an actual comment feature, auto-cut, and communities on Imzy, it's possible.

  • There's a post image option for text posts (trying it right now)

    There Should be a picture here Okay, so that works (the image is being hosted on Imzy). It's resizable in the same way pictures in LJ used to be (painfully), though, thank god, at least the aspect ratio seems locked. Also, I've tried a couple time to take this out of being inline with the text, and it just isn't working for me. Not intuative.

  • The formatting options are pretty limited. You can switch to html, but I haven't tried it.

Link/Share Posts:

  • You can only do one link for these, I think. It would be nice to be able to do a list of them in the same post so that you could do multiple recs. Of course you can always do normal links in a text post, so that's hardly a deal breaker.

  • It seems like clicking on a share of a share takes you to the previous sharer, not to the content. Can anyone confirm this? And is that good or bad, do you think? On the one hand, you can see what everyone down the line has thought. On the other, you might have to click a billion times just to read one stupid article.

Comments

  • They aren't threaded. I'm not sure this matters that much. I've been on sites that use threaded comments since forever, and it feels really weird. Just talked to Imzy help. They are thinking of making comments more threaded (five deep was mentioned), but infinite threading will not be happening
  • when you click in the wrong place on your screen they disappear and don't come back. That is very uncool. Hey nonnies, if anyone notes this, leave a comment with the Imzy help. It's not supposed to do that.
  • Comment size limit is 10 000 characters.

Interface

  • Clunky. Images instead of words are stupid and annoying.
  • It's boring and ugly. On the upside, it is readable when they chose to use words.
  • The auto click-for-more cut removes all formatting and makes it look like I don't know where the enter key is. Also, it's really not very long. On the upside, there's an auto-cut! I would have killed for that back on LJ, and still would on Tumblr.
  • I don't want an autocut for pictures unless they're NSFW. Pictures are fine. It's the twelve mountains of text I want to avoid. (I'm thinking this would be best handled with a viewing preferences option rather than site-wide changes. Obviously people will have different opinions on this. Also, I feel like this was an option I might have clicked in community creation, and now cannot find again...can anyone else confirm?)

Doesn't Exist, and Should

  • No private messaging/ask system (I don't like the ask system because it replaces PMs, but as a feature on its own, I think it has a purpose)
  • No default personal site for posting/collecting your stuff
  • No option to make posts connected (like post 1 of 3)
  • There's block people (pretty comprehensively!) but I can't find a 'block stuff with this tag' We now have filters to both include and exclude tags on communities. Top right side of comm, directly under the new post buttons, look for the upside-down pyramid of lines. They say they're going to eventually give the option to make these sticky so you don't have to re-enter them every time.
  • Porn. I hate 'I know it when I see it' outlines as a user. Love them as a mod, so I know where they're coming from, but man, I wish they'd be really, really clear on this. It's pretty clearly going to be the sticking point of fandom conversion. Talked to them about it. In brief, fic is probably fine, regardless of rating (but possibly not regardless of content). Someone else has recieved notice from them that porny art is a no-go. I'm pretty sure this is the legitimately porny kind of fanart, not nudes or naked people embracing nakedly, but I'm still waiting on full confirmation for that.

Your thoughts?