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autofantasia / Articles

is it just me ...


Struggling to keep up to date ...

As you may know, if you're a regular visitor to my photostream, I'm one of the many that migrated from flickr last year and putting to one side the fact that my photos here get fewer visitors I have no regrets making the change.

I've found ipernity to be a much cleaner, fresher and easier site to navigate. Equally important, I've found it to be a site that my broadband connection can cope with.

Yes, there are some things I miss about flickr, not least my old contacts, but on the whole it's been a wise move.

That said, there are two aspects of using ipernity that I do have problems with and which affect my enjoyment of the site and my ability to keep up to date with what other people are doing.

Now it may be that it's just me that's being thick and not using the existing tools/options to best effect. In which case by explaining the 'problems' I'm experiencing perhaps someone will be kind enough to put me right and let me know how I can do better.

However, if on the other hand the 'problems' are nothing to do with me, but are a direct result of either a glitch in ipernity or the result of some missing functionality then perhaps someone will try to make things better.

So, what are the problems?

Well, the first relates to being able to quickly and easily identify which of my contacts have recently uploaded images so that I can visit their photostream and view their latest images.

On flickr you simply brought up a list of your contacts and then you click on Last upload and it would sort the list so you could not only see who had uploaded images recently, but exactly when ...


You could then relate this to when you'd last been online and then determine who had new images to view. And, if you were keen to see if a particular contact had uploaded something since you were last online you could even sort the list by Name.

Now, I know that on ipernity you can view small thumbnails of any images your contacts have uploaded recently, either 1 or 5 per person. However, there appears to be no real order to how these are displayed. You certainly can't tell when any images that are displayed were actually uploaded and you can't, as far as I can tell, sort or interrogate the data in any way whatsoever.

Also, ipernity appears to segregate your contacts into Family, Friends and Acquaintances and you have to view each independently. As far as I can tell there is no way of viewing recently posted photos for all of your contacts regardless of their category.

To be honest, I find the whole thing rather pointless and have deduced that the only way to be really sure who has uploaded what and when is to visit each contact's photostream individually ... a rather slow and somewhat tedious way of doing something that on flickr could be done quickly and easily.

Furthermore, whilst it may be slow when you only have 20 or 30 contacts I imagine it will be impossible to do if you have say 100 or more contacts.

So, is it me that's doing something wrong or is there an issue here that could be addressed by improving the user interface?

My second problem relates to keeping up to date with new additions to any groups you are a part of. If you are an Administrator or a Moderator then this part of ipernity works well.

Simply, scroll down your list of groups and if there's anything been added that you've not yet seen a nice little NEW highlighted sign is shown next to the group title.

However, it's when it comes to groups I'm simply a member of that I have real issues. When you scroll down through the list of these groups there is nothing that I can see that tells you there is new content for you to view, so again you either do nothing or you end up having to visit them all individually ... again this is a real pain if you have diverse interests and belong to many groups.

So, once again I ask is it me or is there an issue here?

It would be so much better if ipernity could add those nice little NEW highlighted signs next to the groups you are a member of in the way it does those that you are an Administrator or a Moderator of.

Could this be something the ipernity team could look to introduce along with a way of viewing your groups alphabetically?

Don't get me wrong, I love ipernity and I want to be here for a long time, but I'm finding these aspects of the user experience are making my time here less enjoyable than it could be.

So come on folks, please let me know where I'm going wrong or let's make things better!

Kind regards

PAUL

12 comments

Sami Serola (inactiv… said:

I recommend you post this as a suggestion to Team Ipernity: www.ipernity.com/help/support
Either you can copy paste this or send them a link to this article, which I find as a very good constructive feedback. Ever since I started to have 20+ contacts to follow, I easily started to miss some of them just because there's currently no good way to list my contacts.

I think now the best place to see what is new is the "News" page. There you can click 'View More' to see more, and by default there you see all of your contacts (acquaintances, family and friends). But surely more advanced ways to sort them, as you described, would be very welcome =)
10 years ago

autofantasia replied to Sami Serola (inactiv…:

You're right Sami, it might well be worth raising it with Team Ipernity ... at least they seem to listen and try to help out when they can.

I know about 'View More', but like you say it's rather basic and can often throw up photos you've seen several times before. A more organised filtering system would be much appreciated.
10 years ago

Still SomewhatNorth.… said:

It may be replacing one problem with another, but the option to link to a contact's new material via RSS exists in Ipernity. 100+ contacts will still be unwieldy, but once a routine is established it should be easy to see who has new material. See www.ipernity.com/help/feed
10 years ago

autofantasia replied to Still SomewhatNorth.…:

Never used RSS feeds on any site before so thanks for suggesting that. Might give it a try. :)
10 years ago

Valfal said:

Paul, I know exactly what you mean about the difficulty with keeping up on your contacts' new photos. But like Sami said, if you want to see more of your contacts' pictures, you can click "view more" to bring them up, which seems to closely simulate what Flickr has.

A bigger problem for me is managing my group list. It would be nice to see which of my groups are most active without always having to access the group directly. Some of my groups (mostly doll related) haven't been active for months, but because active groups are mixed with inactive, it takes more time to monitor this. I happen to have a very large group list, which is probably not a good idea, lol! I am joining so many active groups that I can't keep up with them all. But it's hard to say no to a group that keeps inviting your photos...

I know that there is no such thing as a perfect picture sharing site, but it seems that the ipernity team is doing its best to accomodate our needs. I realize that certain things desired by us may require programming that can be hard to execute, which may explain why they have a hard time responding to certain requests that we think should be provided.
10 years ago

autofantasia replied to Valfal:

You're also absolutely right about the group list and although as Wendi points out there is some sense to it I'm sure there are much better ways of flagging up where there's new activity. As I said in my article even something as simple as adding the NEW symbol next to the groups you're simply a member of would help immensely.
10 years ago

Shuttering Yukon said:

umm hey Sami... when something is new to a group you do not admin... it goes to the top of the list if that helps with that at all. The rest is stuff I agree with but I do it Val's way and it works for me. I do have a fairly small contact list though.
10 years ago

autofantasia replied to Shuttering Yukon:

Thanks Wendi, glad it's working for you, but I appreciate you can see where I'm coming from. As I just said in my reply to Val even something as simple as adding the NEW symbol next to the groups you're simply a member of would help immensely.

I mean they do it for those you Administer and those that you Moderate so why not extend it to cover all groups you're involved with ... can't think it would be that difficult.
10 years ago

Sami Serola (inactiv… replied to :

I agree, filtering could be better, and therefore I recommend reporting this to Team Ipernity =)
10 years ago

Valfal replied to :

Oh yes, Paul, if they merely added "new" next to the group that had recent activity it would definitely improve the process and make it so much easier to catch up! Hope they can do something like that soon.
10 years ago

Shuttering Yukon replied to :

agreed Paul, with the group stuff... a little yellow 'new' would suit me just fine.
For me only ... because I admin groups that 'chat' I have it easy, I know when there is new stuff!

you know on thinking about this maybe that is why the group participation is not that great here?? It's a shot in the dark but it's a worthy thought..
10 years ago

autofantasia replied to :

Just flagged this article up on one of the team's own articles so we'll see if they feel there's any merit in what we're saying:

www.ipernity.com/blog/team/757833
10 years ago
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