Ma.gnolia: All Discussions in Ma.gnolia Rants & Raves

New post by Maria Haanpää in "What's wrong with ma.gnolia web site?"

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 14:26:33 GMT

At Nov 24, 06:26 AM Maria said...

I seem to recall that I've had occasional problems in saving new bookmarks lately (~ this week). I'm located in Helsinki, too.

I didn't pay so much attention to the phenomenon, because it seemed just like one of those ordinarily obscure network problems that come and go and we'll never really find out where they came from... :-)

Then again, better safe than sorry. Have you made a backup of your bookmarks (and if you have, please tell us how it works with such a large quantity of bookmarks)? Ma.gnolia's Help section describes how to export your bookmarks - see http://ma.gnolia.com/export . I just tried it, and although it's not perfect (there's a character set issue with ä, ö and the like), it's much better than nothing. Tags are exported (they're in the source code), but ratings aren't.

I share your agony about the uncertain future of free services. This time, however, I didn't find any worrying signs regarding the beautiful Ma.gnolia - I checked briefly the Ma.gnolia Blog http://ma.gnolia.com/blog , the Ma.gnolia Community Wiki http://wiki.ma.gnolia.com/Main_Page , and Ma.gnolias's just recently established page in Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=7086428059 .

- Maria

New post by Don Geronimo in "Toward a Ma.gnolia Sidebar"

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:44:37 GMT

At Nov 06, 10:44 AM Don said...

Hrmm... A project to make a Ma.gnolia sidebar would be very interesting. It's a very well-done mockup, and I feel that - though I wouldn't use it personally because it's a bit too feature-packed for me (I'm a little easily overwhelmed) - it would definitely add to the experience. From what I've read at the moment it seems people agree.

I'd be happy to work with a simple button as well - and, in a sense I have an (almost) working version of a custom Firefox button using the Custom Buttons extension ( http://www.custombuttons2.com ). While it would be nice for something not dependent on Custom Buttons, I think it'll work for now - at least until there are users willing to take on a sidebar project.

Anyways, the button was made by taking the bookmarklet JavaScript and replacing some of the XML entities with the actual characters; other than that it's pretty much taken in verbatim. I've used both the code of the Mark in Magnolia and the Mini Marker bookmarklets and they function just as they should save for one big difference: While it grabs the window's title, it does not grab the correct URL. Rather, it actually takes the URL of Firefox's chrome (Essentially the Browser's UI) - which is definitely not wanted. Other than that it functions as it should.

I'm going to find some time to ask around in the Custom Buttons forums for a solution to this problem. However, I'm not quite sure of the legality of working with bookmarklet code. Sure the source is viewable to everyone (because it's JavaScript) but at the moment using the code, or even modifying it for this purpose, may be questionable because of no specific license set. I'm just assuming right now that the bookmarklet code should not be tampered.

Anyways... Yeah. I'll get some more info as the button is finished. Can't wait to see where the sidebar project will go.

Here's screenshot proof of button and why it doesn't work:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/jironimokasumi/3f2daefb.png
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/jironimokasumi/13415f41.png

New post by Matti Narkia in "What's wrong with ma.gnolia web site?"

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:17:17 GMT

At Oct 29, 10:17 AM Matti said...

It is of course possible that the problem is local to my computer, but somehow that does not seem very likely at the moment, because I have not had similar problems with any other web sites recently. But if no one else has had this kind of problems, then the likelihood of the locality of the problem will approach certainty. Therefore I would love to learn whether other ma.gnolia users have ever experienced similar problems with ma.gnolia web site`?

Best regards,

Matti Narkia

New post by Matti Narkia in "What's wrong with ma.gnolia web site?"

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:26:25 GMT

At Oct 29, 09:26 AM Matti said...

I love ma.gnolia's interface, groups and general design, but the recent problems in trying to access my bookmarks drive me crazy. These problems don't seem to go away, they keep on repeating at a few days intervals.

Until today I had not been able to access my ma.gnolia bookmarks for about three days. When I tried to access my ma.gnolia home page, the page kept "loading" for ages and eventually stopped with blank page. Occasionally the loading succeeded, but any further actions then again caused loading to continue for very very long time and end up with blank page. I'm getting very worried, because I have over 8000 personal bookmarks in ma.gnolia, and in addition I have initiated several groups, for which I have spent at least two months full time work. I don't want all this work to go down the drain.

I'm using ma.gnolia from Helsinki, Finland. I use latest Firefox browser under Windows Vista operating system on a portable HP Compaq 6715b computer. I have not experienced major problems with any other web site except ma.gnolia.

Could someone please enlighten me and other users about the nature of the problem, and whether you think that it will eventually be solved for good, and what will be the future of ma.gnolia.

Best regards,

Matti Narkia (nightsurfer, mna@mbnet.fi)

New post by Todd Sieling in "My Ma.gnolia Wishlist"

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:13:08 GMT

At Aug 07, 03:13 PM Todd said...

It's basically the 3 categories of links we show (your recent, your contacts' recent and your groups' recent bookmarks). In each section there is some text telling people what will appear here, but it doesn't do the best job of getting people in the direction of filling those places up.

New post by Todd Sieling in "I have two ratings for links"

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:11:54 GMT

At Aug 07, 03:11 PM Todd said...

I guess there's a few ways to do ratings that all work but just by different degrees for personal taste and the needs of the system. What becomes interesting is using ratings as a warning of bad content, which brushes against the whole ouvre of bookmarking, which is to save the best and leave the rest. But when something is so bad it needs to be pointed out, that's a valid reason for saving and it becomes a sort of anti-search result.

New post by John Stansbury in "My Ma.gnolia Wishlist"

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:58:35 GMT

At Aug 04, 01:58 PM John said...

It's been so long since I've seen one, I would really know what the initial page a uses sees is. Mine was empty for about 10 seconds, so I don't have a frame of reference.

New post by Todd Sieling in "My Ma.gnolia Wishlist"

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 16:47:46 GMT

At Aug 04, 09:47 AM Todd said...

Hm interesting. The person taking a tour of the site isn't usually conceived of as the same person who is just starting with the application, so my gut feeling is they have different needs and questions. The former has questions like 'what is x' while the latter has questions like 'how do i do x'.

For me the best blank slate for a beginning user is like an intersection with signposts pointing to the most likely goals. Whatever path you take the software should support you in getting to your goal, so bringing it back to Ma.gnolia (yes, it's all about Ma.gnolia) we should be getting new users into importing/saving bookmarks, finding people, and finding or starting a group. I don't think it would take many changes to our current blank state to kick those activities off, no?

New post by John Stansbury in "I have two ratings for links"

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:02:31 GMT

At Aug 03, 01:02 PM John said...

You bring up two other interesting things about the ratings, Erik. First, in searching the system, I would be wary of pure number of links as a measure of popularity. That's how Digg works (sometimes), and that hive mindset doesn't always translate to usable search results. Even with the majority of bookmarks rated five-star, I'd still trust that recommendation system over sheer numbers. But that's just me.

And the rating system you have for iTunes is the same thing I have. I only started doing it that way because I realized there were a lot of songs on my hard drive that I never listened to, but I didn't want to delete for whatever reason (mostly because I don't want to reimport them from the CDs). But I have playlists which filter them out so I won't have to see them unless I choose to. Your first system, in my opinion, is what exists now, and works well, if the populace were conditioned to use it.

I actually used a one-star rating for Linux Vs. Mac: Which Is The Better Alternative To Microsoft Windows? (View Details) because it was so totally lacking in quality. Sometimes we need to point out something is terrible, a rip-off, or very poorly done. One-stars and five-stars should both be rare — if everybody played by the rules. I think it's important to have some way of classifying things as bad if they're inside the system, like a warning sign that says, "avoid this."

New post by Erik Mallinson in "I have two ratings for links"

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:29:40 GMT

At Aug 03, 12:29 PM Erik said...

I think there's a Vox Populi thing going on too. When I search for links on Ma.gnolia, I'd rather see Most Bookmarked vs. Highest Rated. It's more trustworthy than ratings, since not everyone (including myself) uses ratings.

Using iTunes ratings I've finally found a 5 star usage system I can live with. The notes in parenthesis are how they may relate to Ma.gnolia.
0-unrated
1-totally sucks (not really appropriate to ma.gnolia because people wouldn't bookmark it)
2-it sucks
3-it's average, not great, not bad (again, why bother?)
4-it's good, really good
5-it blows my mind how awesome it is. I want to make out with it.

So... from my notes, I'd say maybe a 4 state rating system?
0=unrated (maybe grok flickr's "items not in a set" sort of view when 'cleaning your garden'?)
1=it's not that good, but noteworthy
2=it's good!
3=it's awesome. I want to go home and marry it.

New post by John Stansbury in "Commenting on Bookmarks in Discussions"

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:59:15 GMT

At Aug 03, 09:59 AM John said...

I thought about this some more, and my original idea was that any bookmark saved to a group starts a discussion, and is ready for user comments. If people wanted to just argue, that may not work out, though. My initial thought was a screen that would look identical to the bookmark screen, only with the discussion form below it. While I thought it was a great idea, it leads itself to taking over the point of Group Bookmarks, as you'll middle-man the discussion, as the filtering of groups it to streamline the process, not complicate it.

Just though about this: Blogger has, as an option, the ability to show a link field so that all you need to do is put in the URL of the field, title it, put in some reason for posting the link, hit post, and then you've got the link you're discussing right under the discussion title.

So, when you start a discussion with a link in the link field...

My Great Discussion
http://ma.gnolia.com/link

Lorem ipsum fo shizzle!

The only logic you're changing is adding a possible field for links through the shortname system (however that works). It's not like intra-post links, as it gets the place of honor above the "Jump to new posts | Who's talking here?" links.

Since the link would just be the Ma.gnolia shortname, you don't have to go through the bother of saving another person's bookmark just to send it to the Group. Or, you could use it to comment on some bookmark you added that may not be in the purview of the group you want to discus.

This way you're keeping the Bookmarks and Discussion necessarily separate, as they fulfill two different purposes. Bookmarks are naturally-filtered pointers to new information, and Discussions are for topics inside the Group.

Or something. I'm not good with the big finish.

New post by John Stansbury in "I have two ratings for links"

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:30:09 GMT

At Aug 03, 09:30 AM John said...

The ratings I use are subjective as I see something being inherently good or evil. I think there's another fancy psychological theorem that explains why people only star things 3 or above on systems like this because they're being generous. Like that kind of people, I rarely rate something other than 5 because I'm being generous. Or I don't bookmark it for further reference.

But thinking of the overall Ma.gnolia rating system, those bookmarks rated would help people searching for the best sources of information. Not that it would be a good idea to force people to rate stuff, but I can think of no real way create incentives for people to rate bookmarks without significant gaming, other than asking nicely.

Or, you know, one of them screencasts showing off the benefits of ratings, tags, and reference material.

New post by John Stansbury in "My Ma.gnolia Wishlist"

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:17:01 GMT

At Aug 03, 09:17 AM John said...

It comes from a golden age when computer software actually shipped with manuals. If people took the time to read the manual they'd have all their questions answered, or at least be able to remember where to look. The paradox comes from the people who really, really need to use the software often don't have the time to waste reading a manual, they just need to get their work done.

That's why I thought the blank slate page (a page with for a new user with no bookmarks) should be identical to the first page of the Tour. People who barely understand what's going on will get a primer on what the heck's going on.

New post by Todd Sieling in "My Ma.gnolia Wishlist"

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:59:45 GMT

At Aug 03, 08:59 AM Todd said...

Our conundrum is that we want to be able to show something of what's going on inside the site without trying to take people to a bunch of different pages inside. The scroller does some of this, but Ma.gnolia's also grown and changed a fair bit since we launched the scroller and every so often we think about changing it up, but don't come up with much that we can actually do without disrupting feature development.

And since it's Friday, what is the Paradox of the Active User?

New post by Todd Sieling in "I have two ratings for links"

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:54:30 GMT

At Aug 03, 08:54 AM Todd said...

Do you rate based on what you think of the page in your own collection, or based on how you think it measures up to the rest of the web? Personally, I rate relative to my own collection, that is, I think 'how do I want to show this in my own bookmarks - is it really good to me, is it so-so, or not that great but I'll hang onto it?" Later, especially when grabbing a list of bookmarks that I need to share about a specific topic, I pick 4 stars or higher and walk away with only the bookmarks I'm most confident in.

New post by Todd Sieling in "Commenting on Bookmarks in Discussions"

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:51:35 GMT

At Aug 03, 08:51 AM Todd said...

I think it's a pretty neat idea, John. We've talked about various ways that discussions and bookmarks could be brought together, and starting from groups seems like a natural place. Until we can tie discussions into a bookmark detail page, of course, it's always possible to just start a discussion and cite the link in the first post (you can do this by putting the bookmark's short name in parentheses - Ma.gnolia will auto-link and fill in the title for you).

Do you think discussions would need to do anything differently to work in the context of a single bookmark, or is it better to drop them in and see what happens?

New post by John Stansbury in "Commenting on Bookmarks in Discussions"

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:32:01 GMT

At Jul 31, 10:32 PM John said...

Had this thought, see how well it would float. What's difficult for some people to comprehend is that Group Bookmarks are targeted to the specific audience that is in the group. Thus, the natural filtering occurs to keep the bookmarks specific to the group, so that part of it works fine.

Where I'm seeing a disconnect would be the discussions. I'm wondering if that would break the philosophy of Ma.gnolia to allow the comments on bookmarks posted to groups? They are separate from a person's links, so it's not like we're creating another Jaiku here.

I'm thinking the immediacy of the feedback would encourage more discussions, rather than the current, traditional message board/bbs format.

New post by John Stansbury in "My Ma.gnolia Wishlist"

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:19:41 GMT

At Jul 31, 10:19 PM John said...

Re: 9.

I've changed my opinion on the blank slate. While I still think you should be able to get back to the scroll-y thing, the first thing a new user upon signing in with no book marks w/s/could be the tour. I say this, because the scrollathon doesn't provide you any of the user experience in the rest of the site.

Without going into a rant about the Paradox of the Active User, the front page scroll-thing is nice showcase of links, but has little to do with the overall mission of the site.

New post by John Stansbury in "I have two ratings for links"

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:08:33 GMT

At Jul 31, 10:08 PM John said...

0 stars or 5 stars.

One could presume that would lead to YouTube-like 4 star ratings for practically everything. I'm complaining more about my own un-originality than anything else.

New post by Todd Sieling in "Front Page Spam"

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:32:22 GMT

At Jun 26, 01:32 PM Todd said...

Thanks Allen. We're pretty happy with how Gardening is going as well. We have a few more pieces to put in place for it, but it's helped keep the public views much cleaner.

@rumblepup - we're finding that automated tools aren't really working well for our situation, so our programmatic end is being built around supporting the human eyes that are making the call on identifying spam accounts. It's been working so well that we'll likely keep on the path of human judgement assisted by the system.

New post by Allen Day in "Front Page Spam"

Sun, 06 May 2007 03:44:44 GMT

At May 05, 08:44 PM Allen said...

The whole "gardening" system seems to be working quite well -- and I love how your seemingly casual approach to it has turned what is often easily a terribly embittering battle of spam versus content into a rather novel approach to merely weeding out what is an unfortunately normal aspect of gardening. Weeds and gardens. Much more enjoyable than spam and . . . not spam. Love seeing the trowels in action.

New post by John Stansbury in "Be patient when that bookmark doesn't save"

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 04:23:28 GMT

At Mar 31, 09:23 PM John said...

I'm starting to see the triple–posts again. I thought you had that cleared up?

New post by Todd Sieling in "Mass Tagging"

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 02:49:11 GMT

At Feb 24, 06:49 PM Todd said...

We're actually just working to make the tool work in all browsers, but otherwise it's ready to go. We'll be sure to announce it on the blog and on this thread when we do release it.

New post by Daniel M. in "Can't See All My Bookmarks?"

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:21:02 GMT

At Feb 24, 09:21 AM Daniel said...

Danka!...and happy birthday!

New post by estwo in "Mass Tagging"

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:51:29 GMT

At Feb 21, 07:51 AM said...

i just joined magnolia after knowing about it and delicious for a while, decided to finally get my bookmarks out there and use it as a means to back them up. i have over a thousand bookmarks that i imported from firefox and modifying/adding tags to them has proven to be a rather tedious task. i found this discussion about the very subject i was hoping to find a feature for, and see that it is in the works. that is wonderful! the last post in here was a few months ago and i'd like to revive this topic and ask how goes it?

cheers.

New post by Larry Halff in "Can't See All My Bookmarks?"

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:48:42 GMT

At Feb 15, 02:48 PM Larry said...

Hi Daniel.. This was a record counting issue, which is now fixed.

New post by Daniel M. in "Can't See All My Bookmarks?"

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:57:54 GMT

At Feb 14, 12:57 AM Daniel said...

If I do a search for my tag "portland 2007 trip" at http://ma.gnolia.com/people/danimal/tags/portland+trip+2007 ma.gnolia says that it finds 31 bookmarks. When I click the link to go to the second page, though, I get an error saying "no bookmarks found". If I look at the list for my "portland 2007 trip" tag via rss at feed://ma.gnolia.com/atom/full/people/danimal/tags/portland+trip+2007 it states that there are only 17 bookmarks.

Can anyone fill me in on what the bug is here? Am I actually not seeing all of my bookmarks with said tag or is ma.gnolia not counting correctly?

New post by Todd Sieling in "I just figured out the duplicate bookmarks"

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:23:20 GMT

At Dec 19, 04:23 PM Todd said...

Of course you're special! So duplicate bookmarks, super slow pages and all sorts of other weirdness should be cleared up now. Please let me know if you still see problems. We're definintely getting there, and the feedback from the blog, discussions and email has helped us a lot, so many thanks to you there.

New post by Todd Sieling in "Be patient when that bookmark doesn't save"

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:21:39 GMT

At Dec 19, 04:21 PM Todd said...

Alrighty we should have this all cleaned up now. We're adding more performance enhancements (something called memcache) this week, and things are feeling better for us. Let us know if you have a different experience. Thanks for waiting it out and for offering feedback - it helped us a lot!

New post by Aviva Gabriel in "Toward a Ma.gnolia Sidebar"

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 06:45:16 GMT

At Dec 16, 10:45 PM Aviva said...

Well, all in good time. I have oftened where "to start" myself...It seems (from my vantage point) to be a huge project, just to determine the "lay of the land" and "map out" what needs to be learned, and in what sequence, and where the resources for learning might be found. Still, maybe you will surprise me--and yourself (once there's sufficient "fire in the belly" or some kind of motivational fuel)--and that would be grand!

New post by John Stansbury in "I just figured out the duplicate bookmarks"

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 03:53:57 GMT

At Dec 16, 07:53 PM John said...

Well, I'm getting extra service, then! It's because I'm special, right?

Right?

Dang.

So I didn't figure it out. Rats. I describe how I'm getting duplicate bookmarks over here: http://ma.gnolia.com/groups/rants-n-raves/discussions/218

New post by John Stansbury in "Be patient when that bookmark doesn't save"

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 03:51:15 GMT

At Dec 16, 07:51 PM John said...

Using the Mini Ma.rker javascript. And...hmm...forgot to put that bit of info in there.

What'll happen is it takes forever to post, or you get this error page. Human nature says to either click the save again, or to hit the back button and hit save again. That's where my duplicates are coming from.

New post by Todd Sieling in "Be patient when that bookmark doesn't save"

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 02:43:48 GMT

At Dec 16, 06:43 PM Todd said...

How are you adding bookmarks, John? And can you say roughly when the save button stopped responding properly?

New post by Todd Sieling in "I just figured out the duplicate bookmarks"

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 02:42:58 GMT

At Dec 16, 06:42 PM Todd said...

Hey John
Actually we should only be saving one copy of each bookmark. If you're seeing duplicates, something's broken.

New post by John Stansbury in "I just figured out the duplicate bookmarks"

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 18:43:29 GMT

At Dec 16, 10:43 AM John said...

I thought about this for a second, right after I warned everybody about clicking that save button, and I thought, "hey, why's that thing saving multiple copies of a page, anyways?" Coming from the land of del.icio.us, I'm used to being able to bookmark a page only once. You can delete your old mark if you want to create a new one, but you can only have one.

While that's a good way of keeping the duplicates down, I completely forgot about something Ma.gnolia does: cache pages. I was thinking about how when I copied somebody else's mark, it assigned a new short name to it (the url of the page you get to see the bookmark's details). As I wondered why everybody was getting their own page, I remembered what it says...somewhere around here...about caching the page.

When you mark something, Ma.gnolia saves one page in its cache with the short name, the preview picture, and the cached page. Since the same page would change over time, it might be a good idea for you to keep tabs on how the page changes. I'm not sure how you could put this to use, but here's some samples:

- Tracking progress of your webdesign over time
- Coming back to a page after the server dies
- Coming back to a page after its been deleted
- Having a backup of your important pages

I like the part about "when your server dies," as mine's been flaky, recently.

New post by John Stansbury in "Be patient when that bookmark doesn't save"

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 18:26:29 GMT

At Dec 16, 10:26 AM John said...

Don't be like me and keep on clicking "Save" over and over again. It's slow sometimes, and the natural urge is to click it over and over, but don't be like me, and have to clear out a bunch of duplicate bookmarks.

Even if you get an error (I've been getting 408 errors), look at your bookmarks before you try to save it again.

New post by Todd Sieling in "My Ma.gnolia Wishlist"

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 23:54:23 GMT

At Dec 13, 03:54 PM Todd said...

2. Well you get +100 for channeling Chris Walken :)

I get you on the count of people who have bookmarked something. Believe it or not, the huge downtime the other day will make that possible. Roots is something that we're still looking at from different angles. There are lots of things we can put in, but making the call about which ones is tougher than it might seem.

6. I think I hear you on this. We've been talking about re-doing the navigation bar, but while it's an easy change to make it has a big impact. Contrast that with the irony of small impact changes that are hard to make, but such is life. Anyway making the bookmarks page a bit more orienting and maybe changing the profile link to something more descriptive are things we'll look at as well. Another thing that has come up is making it easier to jump to your groups, and I think that can fit into this as well.

New post by John Stansbury in "My Ma.gnolia Wishlist"

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 01:22:11 GMT

At Dec 01, 05:22 PM John said...

2. Or something like "| 2 OTHER PEOPLE SAVED THIS," or, more like I was thinking, another widget beside the recommendation and delete and private buttons, a button that shows up when more that one person's saved it that pops open the Roots deal.

I gotta tell ya, you're gonna want that Roots on the track. I gotta have more Roots. I gotta fever, and the prescription is more Roots.

I could go on, I've got that More Cowbell sketch memorized, I know it by heart. Comes from a lack of socializing with people in the real world. But I digress.

4. It can do tha- I mean - ahem, I knew you could to that all the while. Just testing your reflexes and whatnot.

6. When you click on the link that says "PROFILE" it doesn't take you to your profile, it takes you to your profile configuration. When you click on "BOOKMARKS" it doesn't take you to your bookmarks blog, it takes you to your profile. That's what's confusing to me. It's not wrong, by any means, just not the first thing that I'd expect.

And I'm just wondering out loud. You never know until you ask, you know, and maybe some other people who aren't as demanding as me. Frankly, I'm surprised there's not more people begging for things in here.

New post by Todd Sieling in "My Ma.gnolia Wishlist"

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 20:38:40 GMT

At Dec 01, 12:38 PM Todd said...

Hey John
Thanks for the comments. It's a good thing there's no patent on good ideas or we'd be paying our members royalties for a long time - they're our best source of good ideas!

To touch on your suggestions one by one...
1. A way to group all the tags I want to watch in one place, with the RSS feed-y goodness.

We'll put that one 'under consideration' - there's some technical heavy lifting that might be too heavy.

2. When multiple people bookmark the same link, that cool Roots thing with the number in the berry in the description. Just some way to enumerate on the archive view that other people have linked it.

We didn't think of using Roots, but having the number of people who bookmarked something more evident is on our list, for sure.

3. Paragraph breaks/Textile in the description.

I thought we had Textile in here, but it looks like I might be wrong. I'll investigate that.

4. Resizable Mini Ma.rker.

You should be able to resize downward, but not horizontally.

5. Can we do SOMETHING about ALL the GREEN and BROWN?!?!? Kidding.

Ah there may be a change there before long. In the meantime, how does the red flower grab you? :)

6. A link in the toolbar to your bookmarks. I know it sounds silly, but I'd like to be able to go there with a click. I know I can get the same thing in my profile, I enjoy being nice and irrational.

I'm not sure what you mean here. If you click Bookmarks, you'll see your most recent ones near the top of the page, and can jump to them all in one more click.

7. RSS feed to the 4-star/3-star et cetera. Yes, I'm full of RSS feed greed.

Under consideration, as well, but an interesting way to use the star ratings!

8. Textile in your profile. (For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, Textile is a different way of creating HTML codes. See it in action here: http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/ )

Gotcha. No promises, but we'll look at that.

9. The ability to get back to the front-page slider-thing when you're logged in. Once you log in, you can't see it, and I'm on a computer that never logs out, so I never get to see it.

We've tried thinking of ways to bring that piece into the signed-in experience, but haven't found a good one yet. We'll give this some thought over the holidays and see if we can do something good there.

10. Hot Tags.

We used to have those but not many people clicked them :(
Perhaps we should give it a try again, possibly with a bit of a twist.

Obviously I can't make a lot of promises here, but we are listening!

New post by John Stansbury in "My Ma.gnolia Wishlist"

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 04:11:46 GMT

At Nov 30, 08:11 PM John said...

A list of stuff I'd love to see here, to help with my enjoyment of the experience. I'm new here, obviously, so maybe this is all old news. The old saying goes, "there's no patent on good ideas."

1. A way to group all the tags I want to watch in one place, with the RSS feed-y goodness.

2. When multiple people bookmark the same link, that cool Roots thing with the number in the berry in the description. Just some way to enumerate on the archive view that other people have linked it.

3. Paragraph breaks/Textile in the description.

4. Resizable Mini Ma.rker.

5. Can we do SOMETHING about ALL the GREEN and BROWN?!?!? Kidding.

6. A link in the toolbar to your bookmarks. I know it sounds silly, but I'd like to be able to go there with a click. I know I can get the same thing in my profile, I enjoy being nice and irrational.

7. RSS feed to the 4-star/3-star et cetera. Yes, I'm full of RSS feed greed.

9. The ability to get back to the front-page slider-thing when you're logged in. Once you log in, you can't see it, and I'm on a computer that never logs out, so I never get to see it.

10. Hot Tags.

Okay, people, your turn.

New post by craig in "Toward a Ma.gnolia Sidebar"

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 05:41:01 GMT

At Nov 09, 09:41 PM craig said...

I have considered it, though unfortunately I wouldn't know where to start. I'm still what they call 'green under the collar' with a lot of web stuff, recently released into the world from graduate school... so I'm just trying to get better at web design, and have just started learning Ruby on Rails. Baby steps, you know? But if enough time goes by and we're still waiting for this kind of thing, maybe I'll surprise you... and myself.

New post by Sean Brady in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 02:08:39 GMT

At Nov 05, 06:08 PM Sean said...

Indeed it does work. Thats great news.

New post by Aviva Gabriel in "Toward a Ma.gnolia Sidebar"

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 17:26:47 GMT

At Nov 05, 09:26 AM Aviva said...

I hear you, Craig. On all counts. I surely hope we're gonna see some adding/viewing functionality someday that doesn't require having screenspace occupied by our Links Toolbar. Now, where IS that programmer, anyway? Keep an eye out, okay? And thanks again for the sidebar mockup. Have you thought about learning to code it yourself? Hmmmm....

New post by Larry Halff in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 08:20:04 GMT

At Nov 03, 12:20 AM Larry said...

Just wanted to let everyone know we've rebuilt our full text indexes to include two letter words, and last.fm does look to be findable!

New post by Todd Sieling in "Sent Messages"

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 22:16:44 GMT

At Nov 02, 02:16 PM Todd said...

We don't have a sent messages space right now, but as we're seeing more activity in the messaging I think it will become necessary. Consider it on the list.

New post by Daniel M. in "Sent Messages"

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 22:59:14 GMT

At Oct 31, 02:59 PM Daniel said...

How do you find and read massages that you have sent. I only am able to find received messages.

New post by craig in "Toward a Ma.gnolia Sidebar"

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 16:16:31 GMT

At Oct 29, 08:16 AM craig said...

I'm not thrilled with the bookmarklet either. I don't like having my Bookmarks Toolbar open, especially since it only holds one or two bookmarks. I've wanted to have a button for some time too, but unfortunately I had no idea how to get it to work even using the "Custom Buttons" extension.

The idea of a widget for Windows users is a nice one, but it wouldn't help me since I'm on Linux. And I'm not so concerned with how I bookmark things as with how I access those bookmarks. This is why I'd like something that integrates nicely with my browser. A toolbar would be OK, but the reason I mocked up a sidebar is because my focus is really on accessing and navigating through loads of bookmarks in a way that's fast and efficient. The Diigo toolbar didn't do it for me.

By the way, I think our best hope is that someone with the programming skills will stumble across this discussion, because I too have none of the above and I'm sure the hard-working Ma.gnolia team has a lot of other things to think about.

New post by Aviva Gabriel in "Toward a Ma.gnolia Sidebar"

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:44:08 GMT

At Oct 29, 07:44 AM Aviva said...

I've just discovered an extension for Firefox that'll allow me to have a graphic button for Ma.gnolia, but I haven't yet tried it out. It wasn't easy to discover. Buried in a swarm of extensions and add-ons. Difficult to locate even with Google searching. Kept running into the button that exists for the Internet Explorer 7 Google toolbar.

I've stopped using Diigo, because it doesn't archive a local copy of a web page, but I sure do miss their toolbar. I can easily imagine something similar for Ma.gnolia...but that's where it stops - in fantasy. I have zero programming skills.

I appreciate your mockup, Craig. It's quite fantastic, and shows your affection for, and committment to, Ma.gnolia. I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion on both your mockup, and on this issue in general. Thanks again, Craig, for bringing it up so elegantly.

New post by Aviva Gabriel in "Toward a Ma.gnolia Sidebar"

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:29:19 GMT

At Oct 29, 07:29 AM Aviva said...

I'd be happy with a simple "button" that would integrate with the Firefox Google Toolbar, or Mozilla's GooBar, or any reasonable toolbar...It's pretty funky having to bookmark sites to Ma.gnolia using a bookmarklet that has to live in a folder on my Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar Folder.

Why should Ma.gnolia be so hard to "get to," anyway? With all the incredible design that's gone into this service, both aesthetically and functionally, why must we resort to using a low-life bookmarklet that's accessed from our bookmarks folder (which means having to keep yet another toolbar open)?

How about a widget for Windows users, much like the gorgeous (already-existing) widget for Mac users? A sidebar would be fine, but it seems fairly elaborate, and for folks still stuck with dialup (12-18 kbps), elaborations can be deadly.

Please, Ma.gnolia? Make us a pretty button for Firefox/Windows? Or a sexy widget? Oh please?!

New post by Todd Sieling in "Toward a Ma.gnolia Sidebar"

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 16:24:15 GMT

At Oct 26, 09:24 AM Todd said...

Thanks for posting this Craig. One thing I like a lot about Craig's design is that it brings in the groups and contacts as trusted sources as much it provides access to the personal collection. One thing that would give me pause is the sheer amount of stuff being managed in such a small space, but I think you've done the organization quite well.

New post by Sean Brady in "Toward a Ma.gnolia Sidebar"

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:50:07 GMT

At Oct 26, 06:50 AM Sean said...

Some very cool ideas. I am not much of a programmer either, but I would love to see some sort of sidebar like this. I like the mock up, I am not an artist either.

New post by craig in "Toward a Ma.gnolia Sidebar"

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 17:51:43 GMT

At Oct 25, 10:51 AM craig said...

This is how I've always wished I could use Ma.gnolia. Unfortunately, I know nothing about programming and would have no idea how to make this a reality. So, after a bit of discussion with the friendly Ma.gnolia folks, I'm posting it here in the hopes that someone catches a bit of inspiration from it. It's just a mockup, and it's just one guy's vision, but maybe it'll be the start of something useful.

THE MA.GNOLIA SIDEBAR (VISION)
The Ma.gnolia Sidebar would, in my eyes, be the ultimate browsing companion, enabling users to create, search, and browse bookmarks from within their web browser with minimal hassle. It could turn Ma.gnolia into an even more powerful tool for anyone from the casual browser to the dedicated webhound to the serious researcher.

THE MA.GNOLIA SIDEBAR (MOCKUP - see KEY below)
http://img351.imageshack.us/img351/3590/magnoliasidebarrd9.png

THE MA.GNOLIA SIDEBAR (MOCKUP KEY)
A simple hotkey combination (like Ctrl-M or something like that) should pop open the sidebar. Then we see...

1. The Sidebar Header
Simply identifies the sidebar. Button allows user to close sidebar easily.

2. Account/Sidebar Submenu
Prompts user to Login or displays Username if already logged in. Contains icons/links allowing user to change settings and preferences and visit their Ma.gnolia home page.

3. Bookmarkers
First button opens the traditional Ma.gnolia marker page. Second button expands the Bookmarkers section of the Sidebar to reveal a small form allowing user to edit/enter title, tags, etc. and save the bookmark without opening a new window or tab.

SECTIONS (4-9): I'm using "Sections" here as a sort of meta category of different ways for users to access and browse bookmarks. Sections allow users to select either tags or groups from which to display bookmarks.

4. Section: All Tags
Allows user to search/browse the all public Ma.gnolia tags and bookmarks. See #6-8 for details on functionality.

5. Section: Your Tags
Allows user to search/browse their own tags and bookmarks.

6. Section Submenu (All Tags/Your Tags/Groups)
Search and sort tags/groups. Especially useful for users with lots and lots of tags/groups. In this mockup I've included buttons to sort by Most Recent, Frequency, Weight (number of bookmarks), and Alphabetically.

7. Section Browser
Displays tags/groups based on whatever search or sort is defined in the Section Submenu. Defaults, perhaps, to Alphabetical or to Most Recent.

8. Section Navigator
Even with a search or sort defined, some users will have very long tag/group lists. These buttons simply allow user to page through the list.

9. Section: Groups
Allows user to search/browse their groups and group bookmarks. See #6-8 for details on functionality.

10. Bookmarks Header
Identifies "Bookmarks" section of the Sidebar, along with the name of the current selected tag or group. In this mockup, you'll see that I've
selected "Software" in the "Your Tags" Section Browser, and so this header shows that we're displaying my bookmarks tagged "Software." Contains a button to collapse/expand the section.

11. Bookmarks Submenu
Allows user to search and sort selected bookmarks. Especially useful for users with lots and lots of bookmarks. In this mockup I've included buttons to sort by Most Recent, Frequency, and Alphabetically.

12. Bookmarks Browser
Responds to input from the Section selection, either a selected tag or a selected group. Defaults, perhaps, to most recent bookmarks or most frequently used.

13. Bookmarks Navigator
Even with a Tag or Group defined, some users will have very long bookmark lists. These buttons simply allow user to page through the list.

New post by Daniel M. in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 06:01:54 GMT

At Oct 23, 11:01 PM Daniel said...

YeeeeHaw!

I know "found is the new search" but for me, at this moment, search is the new found. Sorry. Had to do it ;-).

It's working. Thanks for your work on this! It's a good day.

New post by Todd Sieling in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:20:54 GMT

At Oct 23, 03:20 PM Todd said...

You're right, Sean - it's a different issue, though still frustrating I'm sure.

Here's what's up there: 'Last' is one of the words we don't index, and 'fm' is too short (our minimum is 3 characters). I think we'll need to loosen up the non-indexed words list a bit to cover these kinds of cases.

I am, however, relieved that you're finding those other missing bookmarks. If Daniel has the same results, we're in good shape. Thanks for your ongoing help, guys!

New post by Sean Brady in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:17:44 GMT

At Oct 23, 03:17 PM Sean said...

Larry: I gave a try at searching for a few marks that I know did not get indexed in August/September and I can now find them so that is looking good. I still cannot find (prihoweca) if I search for it by title. This is possibly a different issue, as it is one that has been around for quite a while.

New post by Larry Halff in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 21:22:40 GMT

At Oct 23, 02:22 PM Larry said...

Hey Daniel, I think we've got the missing spots finally covered, as I was just able to find crazyegg with a term search in your bookmarks.

New post by Sean Brady in "Contact Grouping and Mass Adding of Contacts and/or Discussion Post Email Notification"

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 00:46:17 GMT

At Oct 21, 05:46 PM Sean said...

If you are the owner/manager of a group there is an option to mail members of the group. That would allow you to get all the members of the group without adding them as contacts. If you go to the home page for the group the button is there, Mail Members.

New post by Daniel M. in "Contact Grouping and Mass Adding of Contacts and/or Discussion Post Email Notification"

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 19:01:03 GMT

At Oct 21, 12:01 PM Daniel said...

Too much for one discussion topic? I'll tie them all together.

Whew! My contact list is growing and growing. It would be great to be able to group my contacts. It would make it a lot easier "recommend" a bookmark to more than one contact if I had some sort of way telling who, in my list, would want to see that link.

What made me think of this was a group I belong to on Ma.gnolia, Travelling on a budget (http://ma.gnolia.com/groups/CheapTravel), seems to be a little stale (many members, no links except for mine and, before my post, only one post in one discussion). I was thinking of giving the group a little jump start by sending everyone a message but there is no way I know of adding all of those people to my contact list. Even if I did I would be hard pressed to be able to weed out just those people that belong to the group when sending the message.

The only other way I though that I could jump start the group was if, by chance, there was some setting in one's preferences that would notify you when there was a new discussion post. But, as far as my current goal is concerned, I would need to trust that all of the group members had such an option checked.

New post by Daniel M. in ""Hey, Your Sidebar is in my Bookmark Title""

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 02:20:59 GMT

At Oct 20, 07:20 PM Daniel said...

Gracias!

New post by Todd Sieling in ""Hey, Your Sidebar is in my Bookmark Title""

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:16:48 GMT

At Oct 20, 02:16 PM Todd said...

Hm that doesn't look too good. I'll pass it into development with a ticket for our resident CSS master to look at.

New post by Daniel M. in ""Hey, Your Sidebar is in my Bookmark Title""

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 03:19:21 GMT

At Oct 19, 08:19 PM Daniel said...

At the text size I have on my browser the sidebar can sometimes cut into the bookmark title like this: http://www.ohdanny.net/images/title_cut_off.jpg

Any fix for this?

New post by Todd Sieling in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 01:22:24 GMT

At Oct 18, 06:22 PM Todd said...

The import delay was part and parcel of all kinds of madness that was going on then, so it's likely unrelated as Sean has been here for quite a while and also has missing bookmarks. That Crazy Egg one seems to be the only one outside the date range, but it's unfortunate we don't have a clean range.

New post by Daniel M. in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 19:17:10 GMT

At Oct 18, 12:17 PM Daniel said...

In looking through my email it seems that I contacted you guys on the 14th of August with my del.icio.us import problem. Apparently I had imported them into ma.gnolia at around 5 or 6 in the morning but they were not showing up by around 4pm that same day.

I am wondering if the Crazy Egg (View Details) bookmark is the only one of my bookmarks to have this problem. Any way of finding out?

Hope this helps.

New post by Todd Sieling in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 17:11:24 GMT

At Oct 18, 10:11 AM Todd said...

Definitely, Sean.

Daniel I'll investigate that one - I'm hoping that these aren't scattered through time and just chunk around one date range. Do you roughly recall when you imported your bookmarks? That date would likely be more telling for this particular problem. We won't need to sign in as you to test the searching out, unless the bookmarks that don't show up for you are private.

Thanks for the continued help, guys!

New post by Sean Brady in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 13:17:39 GMT

At Oct 18, 06:17 AM Sean said...

Todd,

Is there any plan in the works to attempt to re-index those days bookmarks?

New post by Daniel M. in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 03:45:23 GMT

At Oct 17, 08:45 PM Daniel said...

The bookmark I am having trouble finding via a title & description – Crazy Egg (View Details) – was saved on Aug 21, 2006 at 09:42 PM. Maybe it was modified within that date range? Can you tell if that is the case from your end? On my end it only shows the "saved on" date. Also, I believe it was imported from del.icio.us. I don't know what date they were imported. I remember importing them but I believe I had problems with them showing up at first if that might have any bearing on the situation.

Is there any way I can test my bookmarks added or modified (if the "modified date" matters of course) within that date range or is it sufficient to test from your end (i.e. doing test searches without being able to log in as me)?

New post by Todd Sieling in "Permalinks and better group discussion linking"

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 03:04:40 GMT

At Oct 17, 08:04 PM Todd said...

Recommending to a group is definitely a cool idea. Interaction between groups helps keep them from becoming silos that only face inward.

And Chris is right, that we want to revamp our approach to sharing based on what we've learned the past few months. That is still more than a few weeks away, but we recognize the need. Recommending discussions to groups will probably come along with that piece, just to take a wild guess at it.

New post by Todd Sieling in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 02:50:55 GMT

At Oct 17, 07:50 PM Todd said...

We've been able to narrow it down to bookmarks added between Sept 29 and Oct 7 - if you find any that are not showing up in search outside that range, definitely let us know.

New post by e-head in "Tags: related tags, tag intersection, etc ..."

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:54:39 GMT

At Oct 17, 09:54 AM said...

Simpy has one really cool feature... it lists related tags, and allows you to view bookmarks containing a set of tags, or even to filter out bookmarks with a particular tag. For example...

bookmarks tagged "tech" AND "php", or
bookmarks tagged "photos" AND NOT "flickr".

I think this is supremely useful.

Here is something similiar...
http://dotsandloops.net/headlines/tags/news

New post by Sean Brady in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:06:31 GMT

At Oct 16, 09:06 AM Sean said...

I have had some issues with search recently as well. I have always had problems finding the Last.FM bookmark by title search. Interesting tip about using Google. It made me think that you might try using the Technorati integration with Ma.gnolia. They do have a search option. I know that Technorati does not always get update pings from Ma.gnolia so you have to go in and ping it manually every so often, but it might be another avenue to finding bookmarks.

New post by Daniel M. in ""The Search Bug" and a Temporary Workaround"

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 20:05:42 GMT

At Oct 15, 01:05 PM Daniel said...

Soooooo, Ma.gnolia has a search bug. Some bookmarks, as yet, are difficult to find using Ma.gnolia search. I have already sent an email to Ma.gnolia and they have assured me that they are working on the problem. In the interim I am using a workaround.

Here is the email I sent:

===================
Here is the link to the bookmark I was atempting to search for:
http://ma.gnolia.com/people/danimal/bookmarks/clagis

The ONLY way I was able to find it was by typing in "statistics" into the search window having set it up to look through my bookmark tags.

Any other way, no dice. It acts like it doesn't exist. I have tried using "egg", "crazy", "CrazyEgg", etc. with the search criteria set to look in the Title & Description as well as using the search term "administration" with it set to look in my tags. Neither work. Please tell me I am doing something wrong?
===================

Until the good folks at Ma.gnolia get it fixed, though, I have had pretty good luck using Google. I include "ma.gnolia" my username and any other search term I may deem appropriate. I it works fairly well. Not as good as searching inside Ma.gnolia (I don't think it will work if a bookmark is marked as private) but good enough for now.

Anyone else sharing my problem?

New post by Daniel M. in "Mass Tagging"

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 19:48:52 GMT

At Oct 15, 12:48 PM Daniel said...

Just agreeing with the spirit of Allen's original post. Often times, when I am tagging a new bookmark and am adding a tag that I have, heretofore, never utilized I realize that there are a number of other bookmarks in my collection that could benefit from having that particular tag associated with them as well. As yet there is no easy method for applying a tag to a number of bookmarks in fell swoop. Looking forward to the feature.

New post by Chris Messina in "Permalinks and better group discussion linking"

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 20:14:46 GMT

At Oct 10, 01:14 PM Chris said...

I think the recommendation idea for groups is a good one -- and I actually think that the "recommend this..." functionality will be improving soon... Maybe?

New post by Daniel M. in "Permalinks and better group discussion linking"

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 07:32:11 GMT

At Oct 10, 12:32 AM Daniel said...

Unless I missed it (quite possible) I wish there was a way to send a discussion recommendation to a group as opposed to just a contact. It seems like it would be a great way to get more people talking on a given thread in a shorter amount of time.

New post by rumblepup in "Front Page Spam"

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 06:09:08 GMT

At Oct 08, 11:09 PM said...

"For me, and I'd wager others, it's seeing a profile that posts -only- for a certain domain."

Agreed, wholeheartedly. I think that the the type of profile that your describing, however, will be quickly "lost" in the greater size of the community. Just my observation. One of the simplest things that can be done is to not pay attention to links, not letting a spammer's links become part of the flow and ebb of the community, where tags beget more tags, and the ways of finding content expand as the community expands. I think it's almost built in. For instance, you. Just to test it out, I started just...looking around, clicking a few interesting tags, following up on links, and within my wanderings, I found your profile and tags and links. It didn't take me long at all, because you are a contributor. I don't think a spammer has the time or inclination to keep his/her/it's submititions and group joining and sharing and learning. These profiles get lost in the real content.

However, yes, eventually it must be addressed programmatically as well.

Good post.

I also agree that I would hate to see a great thing misused.

New post by Allen Day in "Front Page Spam"

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 03:49:01 GMT

At Oct 08, 08:49 PM Allen said...

> Aha, but there's the catch, because this site is an e-commerce site, someone might think it's spamming the community.

But as a member of the community, you already have more links posted. For me, and I'd wager others, it's seeing a profile that posts -only- for a certain domain. Typically an unfilled out profile--an enigmatic member of sorts-- whose entire contribution to the community is a single (commerce) website. I look at more than just a couple links before I point out a spammer -- and I'm confident others do the same. I'm not out to witch hunt -- I just don't like seeing a great thing misused, as it inevitably will be (attempted).

That said, I agree that the community can/will potentially play a big role in keeping things clean -- organic communities can display awesome power in terms of connection, self-growth and self-maintenance. The ma.gnolia has certainly given us the tools to do it -- it's self evident, here we are chatting away :)

New post by rumblepup in "Front Page Spam"

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 10:11:12 GMT

At Oct 08, 03:11 AM said...

Although I am relatively new to the ma.gnolia community, I think that this discussion thread is just one example of how spamming would undoubtebly be revealed and somewhat dealt with. I completely agree that the power of ma.gnolia is in the community, as stated in the ma.gnolia blog, and I belive that when a community is strong and communitative, just these kinds of spam "markings" would occur; i.e., "I found spam."

On a personal level, I love being able to share all the cool website's and resources that I find on the net, and it's nice to think that I'm exposing those little but thought provoking sites to a whole new group of people who might not happen on this kind of content before.. The fact that from time to time, as a web entrepeneur and enthusiast, I can post a bookmark of my own work, where I know CURIOUS people will check it out, is obviosly a benefit to me personally, and to those who own or promote quality content.

I, in no way, shape, or form, advocate the abuse of ma.gnolia, but I think the PROMISE of what a community driven site like this can be, a true, honest to God, people powered web, is enormous. Here is a place where I know that I can trust the resources I find, because a community member really believes that the content of what he or she presents is worthy, and it's not based on a inhuman algo.

At this point, you have to ask yourself, what is spam? The obvious abuses such as those caught in this discussion should be a concern, but what if I happen on to a site that sells reallly cool t-shirts, and the designs are great, and the site sells them at a really great price? I think that this is a great source, and I think that it's a great source for people who like cool new t-shirts, and the benefit of listing it here is that curious community members will seek it out, and maybe buy one or two. Aha, but there's the catch, because this site is an e-commerce site, someone might think it's spamming the community. Or as stated before "I mean, what if I just don't like Brett's links -- spammer or not? " That's another danger that has been evident in other social network or social bookmarking sites. I came to ma.gnolia to escape that, because I believe in the promise of what this community can be. I especially hated data demolition, felt too much like high schools cliques ganging up on a new kid, or a "different" kid.

Well, rumblepup has been vocal again. Sorry guys. I've just been waiting for something like ma.gnolia for years. Glad to see it here.

New post by Sean Brady in "Front Page Spam"

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 21:00:32 GMT

At Oct 04, 02:00 PM Sean said...

It looks like another spammer on Ma.gnolia (http://ma.gnolia.com/people/states). However, it would appear that this one does now understand the API...all the links are input wrong. :)

New post by Allen Day in "Front Page Spam"

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 18:19:02 GMT

At Sep 28, 11:19 AM Allen said...

> Once you get a certain number of active users, this kind of thing is (sadly) par for the course

I absolutely agree, it's a bit of a coming of age for any Internet service. One might even argue it's a good sign. A good sign with filthy subtext :)

I'm not a fan of censorship/data demolition either. That's not really what I was getting at. I don't think it would be inappropriate to have a mechanism in place that would allow you to mark certain users as "quiet" -- leave them and their data alone, just don't allow their links to contribute to the front page lists. Might be more trouble than it's worth,we'll just have to wait and see what you have up your sleeves.

I'm more interested in the most recent list than the hot list. It'd be nice if I could personally block out users to make the recent list more usable. I mean, what if I just don't like Brett's links -- spammer or not? :P

> Or maybe allow us a certain level of control over what our personal "front page" looks like?

That would be pretty neat. Prior to ma.gnolia I was using a service that allows for total customization of your front page. Obviously there were some problems, as I've migrated here (namely immensely cluttered and slow interface -- but an insanely powerful service behind it). At any rate, the ability to enable/disable lengthen/shorten different lists on our own start page would be cool.

New post by Larry Halff in "Front Page Spam"

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 18:01:56 GMT

At Sep 28, 11:01 AM Larry said...

Sadly, we spend far to much time on our spam handling strategy. Happily, we think it will pay off. While I don't want to get into all of the details of what we're working on right now, we think we've developed a pretty good system for dealing with it. Look for an announcement on the blog coming in a couple of weeks. Of course, we don't and will never delete or destroy, anyone's, even spammers', data.

New post by Brett Kelly in "Front Page Spam"

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:50:09 GMT

At Sep 28, 10:50 AM Brett said...

Well, the idea of censoring content (even though it's obviously spam) is iffy, if you ask me. I personally think the "Hot Bookmarks" should be displayed more prominently and the "Recent Bookmarks" less so. Once you get a certain number of active users, this kind of thing is (sadly) par for the course, IMO. Or maybe allow us a certain level of control over what our personal "front page" looks like? Just an idea.

New post by Allen Day in "Front Page Spam"

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:24:01 GMT

At Sep 28, 04:24 AM Allen said...

I was excited this morning to see my links quickly getting pushed down the sidebar . . . only to click, click, click, and get shit for every click. Maybe I just get up too early in the morning to hang out with non-spammy people :). At any rate, it's here, front page spam has been popupping up lately -- users who post several links to a single domain, adult or just ad-junk in nature. Is there a plan in place to handle this as ma.gnolia grows and the spammer population with it or are you going to leave it an unmoderated experience, left to our own use of block lists?

Here are some examples of my morning company:

rookibabe-99904 -- porn!
(koweshothu)

qq123ww -- google adsense spam!
stone island llanrwst denbighshire (View Details)

cflock3763 -- Yoga spam?
(wegumoru)

---
This brings me to something else, I'd never used the feature before now. Apparently blocking someone only blocks them from sending private messages. What I'd like to be able to do is block them from my lists of recent bookmarks and such. Any chance on including that in the block feature?

New post by Allen Day in "Roots burried deep"

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 23:13:38 GMT

At Sep 26, 04:13 PM Allen said...

I thought as much might be the case, but wanted to make sure -- it'd be a shame for such a great feature to be overlooked when such wasn't intended. :)

New post by Todd Sieling in "Roots burried deep"

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:00:36 GMT

At Sep 26, 02:00 PM Todd said...

A great point, Allen.

Roots is indeed public, and on the path that many of our features follow when we release them. Although available, we like to give new features time to bounce around in the community before making them more highly visible. The people who watch the blog tend to be our leading edgers, and they're willing to test things out and report any problems back to us. It's not quite beta, it's not quite general release as it is a bit obscured. I think within another week, though, we'll be giving Roots more visibility as an Add-on.

It's good to have these reminders, though, so I'm glad you asked this.

New post by Allen Day in "Roots burried deep"

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:07:56 GMT

At Sep 26, 05:07 AM Allen said...

Is roots supposed to be a trickle released feature or are you going for totally public now? I ask because there's really no mention of it in any of the setup/documentation except for the blog -- and I'd dare say that most average/novice users don't read developer blogs. If it's by intent that it's hidden away, grassroots/blog spread only, great. If it's meant to be public it might help to bring it a bit more to the surface :)

New post by Brett Kelly in "Mass Tagging"

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 16:52:28 GMT

At Sep 25, 09:52 AM Brett said...

Happy to do it :)

Allen - just message/email me with the details of what you're after and I'll get you something super slick :)

New post by Todd Sieling in "Mass Tagging"

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:36:41 GMT

At Sep 25, 07:36 AM Todd said...

Brett that's a really generous offer.

The API, of course, is there for people with coding know-how to do some interesting things that a) we didn't think of b) won't appeal to most people in the community and c) haven't had time to do yet. This definitely falls into category c.

Being able to change multiple bookmarks at one time is something we definitely need, and we'll be able to do better than 20-30 at a time. It will take us a few weeks to get there, but in the meantime a little script from Brett might be just the thing to help you out until we get there.

New post by Brett Kelly in "Mass Tagging"

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 04:38:16 GMT

At Sep 23, 09:38 PM Brett said...

Really, the API gives you the capability you're looking for, I think. It supports a bookmarks_tags_replace call, which could be used to take any link tagged with 'foo' and replace it with 'bar'. Obviously, you'd have to know the exact tag name and it would only be able to do a one-to-one replacement. Let me know if this something you'd want to consider, and I can hack out a little script you can run.

Oh, and my python implementation of the ma.gnolia API should be done in a couple days. I'll post a link to it here, for sure.

New post by Allen Day in "Mass Tagging"

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 02:01:43 GMT

At Sep 20, 07:01 PM Allen said...

Loading a page of 10 or 20 and editing them all at once would still be much better/easier/quicker than editing one bookmark at a time. I am not asking for/expecting the impossible -- just something a little better than present :)

New post by Todd Sieling in "Mass Tagging"

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 20:37:18 GMT

At Sep 19, 01:37 PM Todd said...

Well I can't guarantee that we can get all of the bookmarks in a batch onto the same page. We'll have a very wide range of possible batch sizes to deal with - namely anywhere from a small handful (3 or 4) into the hundreds and even thousands for some members. We'll do our best to minimize page loads and to keep things friendly and useful at the same time. Thanks for the input!

New post by Allen Day in "Mass Tagging"

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 00:25:45 GMT

At Sep 15, 05:25 PM Allen said...

Cool, looking forward to any progress in this direction. Even batch editing would help -- while it may still require particular attention to each individual bookmark they'd at least all be on the same page, requiring one page load before editing and one save after. That's a lot of time and clicks saved.

Thanks for the hopeful response!

New post by Todd Sieling in "Mass Tagging"

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 15:04:27 GMT

At Sep 15, 08:04 AM Todd said...

This is definitely a place to have this kind of conversation, Allen. I think I have a handle on what you're asking for. We do have batch editing in the works, but I'll have to go back to the design and see if we can accomodate the request. We'll have a search and replace for tags in a list of bookmarks, and I'll try to get some kind of 'overwrite existing tags' option into that.

New post by Sean Brady in "report broken bookmark"

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 14:40:48 GMT

At Sep 12, 07:40 AM Sean said...

It does not really have to be a flag. Lets say I am looking through your bookmarks for a particular tag, and notice that one of them links to a 404 Not found. I jump back to ma.gnolia and click the Notify user button. The server sends you a message that one of your links was reported as broken, and it includes a link back to the detail page for your link. Maybe you ignore it, maybe there is a system setting which allows you to opt out of receiving that type of notice at all. You can look at the mark, perhaps realize that someone updated their blog structure and didn't set things up to forward correctly. You find the article, update your bookmark and all is well. The actual bookmark itself would never need to be flagged.

New post by Todd Sieling in "report broken bookmark"

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 02:59:42 GMT

At Sep 08, 07:59 PM Todd said...

The thing about flagging that a link is broken is that there's no clear path to removing that flag that I can see. If someone flags a link as broken, we could certainly put some sort of visual indicator on the bookmark and maybe filter them out. But how do we know to remove it without starting to re-visit sites over and over again, which generates a lot of traffic for millions of bookmarks. Moreover, a link can appear broken for 10 seconds or 10 months, but we have no way of knowing how permanent the break is at the time it is seen by someone who clicks the link.

New post by Allen Day in "Mass Tagging"

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 13:45:23 GMT

At Sep 08, 06:45 AM Allen said...

Not sure if this is the appropriate group for feature requests, but here goes anyway :)

I'd love to have some means to mass tag. Most of my bookmarks are imported, and the organization is a composite of years of folder use (and poor organization at that). What I'd love most is to be able filter bookmarks via search, then apply a tag or tags to the bookmarks shown. Perhaps when applying them, a list with check boxes displays to allow for exclusions. Similarly, the ability to re-tag would be great -- an option to, instead of adding tags, overwrite the tags for the bookmarks in question -- replacing their respective tags with the currently applied new set.

Going through bookmarks and editing them one by to alter tags is tedious and time consuming -- especially since our ma.gnolia isn't always the snappiest thing (and being taken to the bookmark rather than the last shown list after saving further complicates/slows progress). (Yes, I know, middle click for a new window/tab. Sometimes I fail to do so :)

New post by Ronald Hötschl in "report broken bookmark"

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 21:56:02 GMT

At Sep 07, 02:56 PM Ronald said...

I agree, saved copies are nice. A lot of bookmarks in particular blog entries and one-paged articles will benefit from that feature.
It would also be a good idea to flag those bookmarks as broken especially if there is no saved copy. Nice thought Allen.
Nevertheless if there was no saved copy and one of my bookmark linked to nirvana, I would be glad to read someone's hint.

New post by Todd Sieling in "report broken bookmark"

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 17:22:06 GMT

At Sep 07, 10:22 AM Todd said...

Ah saved copies. The copying process runs as its own thing, and is sometimes a casualty when we have server troubles. However, that is not the reason for all the times you don't see a saved copy link for your bookmarks. There are sites that specify that they are not indexed or cached by search engines, and we respect those commands. I think we need to show when a saved copy could not be made because the site owner requests no copying, or when we're simply unable to reach the site to make the copy, which can happen as well.

New post by Sean Brady in "report broken bookmark"

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 13:12:17 GMT

At Sep 07, 06:12 AM Sean said...

Agreed. Its a great idea when it works.

New post by Allen Day in "report broken bookmark"

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 11:13:23 GMT

At Sep 07, 04:13 AM Allen said...

Interesting. I haven't put it through much testing -- I wonder if it's an arbitrary failure (perhaps some sort of page size limit set?) or if it's just broken. . . either way, the saved copy as backup plan would only work as well as the backing-up system.

New post by Sean Brady in "report broken bookmark"

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 02:38:52 GMT

At Sep 06, 07:38 PM Sean said...

The saved copy does not work real well for me. Of my last 10 bookmarks only 10 show a saved copy. I would not say that percentage is average, but I would say I might only get 60% captured.

New post by Allen Day in "report broken bookmark"

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:27:30 GMT

At Sep 06, 12:27 PM Allen said...

Ah, yes, I misunderstood. Perhaps instead of simply notifying a member, a flag could be raised on that bookmark causing it to automatically show the saved copy rather than the dead link. Unless the bookmark has actually moved, there's nothing the "owner" could do to fix it short of delete it. But with a saved copy at hand, there's no need to delete -- instead, just go to the cached copy.

New post by Sean Brady in "report broken bookmark"

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 16:07:25 GMT

At Sep 06, 09:07 AM Sean said...

I believe Ronald's original suggestion was not to notify the web site or web master of the broken link itself, but the member on Ma.gnolia who bookmarked the site. Using the message function in Ma.gnolia to send a notice that a link was not working. That user could then decide to act upon it or not, similar to the user consensus you mention. I agree though that automatic checkers are not really great.

New post by Allen Day in "report broken bookmark"

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 11:16:40 GMT

At Sep 06, 04:16 AM Allen said...

I don't think a mechanism to automatically contact the owners of broken websites would really be feasible though. In these days of spam terror, a lot of e-mail addresses are obscured or replaced altogether with contact forms so pre-harvesting addresses would likely not be very fruitful.. Simply sending an email to webmaster@website.com won't work more often than not (again, spam fear) and would be especially unreliable in the case of shared hosting/hosted websites.

As for link checkers, I've yet to use an auto bad link checker that really worked well -- they always seem to detect a handful of broken links and a wagon full of links that aren't broken, but it thinks they are. Technical shortcomings that could perhaps be overcome, but . . . not necessarily worth the effort in my opinion. More valuable than a link checker, to me, would be a link to the google cached copy of the page. If the page doesn't work, there are always a few copies floating around.

I've seen a service or two handle the broken link issue fairly elegantly by simply using a user concensus. The system considers a link active or inactive based upon user input

New post by Sean Brady in "report broken bookmark"

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 02:59:33 GMT

At Sep 05, 07:59 PM Sean said...

Thats an interesting idea. I know that on Simpy they have a sort of automated broken link detector. Actually, Backflip, the very first online bookmark manager I used had the same thing. I don't recall them working all that well. I like the idea of a neighborly reminder that a link is broken. Good suggestion.

New post by Ronald Hötschl in "report broken bookmark"

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 18:56:57 GMT

At Sep 05, 11:56 AM Ronald said...

What if someone's bookmark link is broken: Link dead or forwarded to a domain selling company etc. but not the link as offered.
There are buttons for each bookmark to copy, send recommendation and send to a group. Why not add a button "report bookmark broken".
The bookmark owner will get a message that his bookmark xyz is broken, and he can fix it.
Ok, there is a drawback:
If the bookmark owner gets the message to fix his broken bookmark, he will be able to fix it. But how about the thousand other bookmarkers who have bookmarked the same link, but do not get a fixing request?! Their bookmark would remain broken till somebody push the button!

What do you think about that?

New post by Todd Sieling in "Permalinks and better group discussion linking"

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 01:27:55 GMT

At Aug 25, 06:27 PM Todd said...

Hey Chris

I'm with you on the permalink, and I agree on the discussions accessibility - they need to be tied in with the groups in a much more visible and obvious way.

I noticed the Post/Save button too - I'm certain that just changed, or I somehow had button blindness when we released. Thanks as always for the feedback.