New Article Layout Feedback Thread - Keep it Here (Updated 12/4)

omg i didn't even notice that this toxic layout had been pushed out again. :(...... *sob* i was so happy when it appeared as if it was a failed idea that got scraped. this site is so hard to navigate. often i use google to find what i want, because lord knows you will never find it here, if its not on the home page anymore its gone. this new format will make it even harder, as now i will be endlessly scrolling thru uninteresting garbage. (not trying to say what GS posts is garbage, but if i don't care to read it then that is what it is to me) if this layout continues it will cause a 3rd mass exodus....( 3 and i have not even been a member for a full 2 years yet. i have been using the site for over ten years, but in this last 2 1/2 years it has gotten insane. never in the past were there MASS EXODUSES like this WTF gamespot )

i don't usually read any of the articles anymore... i come here to talk to PEOPLE about games or other stuff. that is becoming hard to do, as conversations are crushed by the manual refresh button. and now we will have to open up the comments just to start reading them. *sigh* how is a person to talk to others when we have no comments at all or the tiny amount that is the norm now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8pWEUZKIds. this a good approximation of what GS is doing. a mistake was made when the first layout overhaul was implemented, but the site just keeps going with it.

i am sorry if this just looks as if i'm bitching and not being clear about what i would like to see vs, what i think should be killed with fire. if you really want to know, go back to the way it was during the golden age. when 10,000+ comments on a AAA game was normal i mean FALL OUT 4 has just barely over 2000 comments. 12 million people bought it and yet if you came here you would think the game sucks as no one is talking about it.

The new layout is atrocious. I get Gamespot is trying to follow the design trend of some news sites with their continuous vertical scroll in the articles, but it's obnoxious. The object of web design is to make content more accessible to customers, while delivering a unique and fun experience through the UX. This accomplishes none of these two. But this new layout did manage to make Gamespot feel like a truly amateur blog made by some kid who decided to load up Wordpress.

This so much.

I dont think there was a single person who was sad it was gone...

Please bring back the old system, I find nothing about this system redeemable... blow it up and start over if your really want to change something

@Shadow4020: Yes, I very much hate it too. I wouldn't be so annoyed if it could be disabled via a site/account setting. They're trying to be creative and think we want this crap. I guess their target audience is people who don't open every link in a separate tab.

Do what I did, install AdBlock Plus on your browser, assuming you're using Chrome or Firefox.

Then install these two custom filters:

gamespot.com##div.js-seamless-content__list-body.pod-recirc__content

http://*.gamespot.com/js/compiled/seamlessContent.js*

@ECH71: Works perfectly, thanks!

Do not like this so called layout, it is so cluttered that I lose interest in viewing any articles. It was better the other way before it got jacked up. I may have to go to another game site such as PC Gamer if this continues. Every time you change the site it is for worse and not the better in my honest opinion.

You know whats funny, the mobile version of the site doesnt have the scrolling articles, so they are literally screwing up the desktop version for no good reason. I know you guys are trying, but it is so bad please stop

Count me among those who really dislike the new layout. The bottom bar takes up way too much space and is really unnecessary from a navigation/usability standpoint. It's also very visually distracting. There's simply too much real estate consumed by the UI and too little devoted to the actual content.

Please get rid of the bottom bar or at least give us the option to minimize/turn it off.

Also stop with the infiniscroll already, Every time I try to scroll down to the comments it end up loading another unrelated article and the page stutters all over the place for several seconds, it's quite annoying and will result in less visits to this site in the future.

Reading articles should be a pleasure and not a struggle, please, fix your shit.

ps.: Instead of shoving mobile layouts on us and ruining the experience for anyone with a screen larger than 10" why not make two different layouts?

What happened to that old format we used to have in the past where one could chose between MOBILE/DESKTOP versions of the site (generaly on the bottom of the main page)?

pps.:

"With this layout, we also wanted to reduce some of the clutter in and around the articles by removing the right column and the "skin" ads that box in the content, and adding in more whitespace."

Why not fill the empty spaces with text/content instead of wasting it with, well, empty spaces... ?

I'd like to add my voice to those that absolutely hate the design decisions made by Gamespot. The scrolling bar at the bottom of the screen needs to disappear. Easily the most obnoxious addition. Who thought it was a good idea to cover so much of the content people are actually here for? Next, the auto scrolling to the next random article that has no relevance to the one you are reading. Scoll too far down and "back" doesn't even get you to the home screen. Do you really think people are here to scroll through every article? Lastly, once going back to the main page, it would be nice if it put you back where you were. So many times i'm down to page 2,3 etc. and then you guys put me back on page 1 and I'm looking for where I was. Come on Gamespot, get your S*** together.

Can't comment in half the articles. Keep getting "The CSRF token is invalid. Please try to resubmit the form" error. Doesn't matter what browser I use - same result. Getting very annoying.

You guys also need to keep tabs on the type of ads you have. I'm getting really tired of my antivirus popping up saying such and such ad was blocked because its flagged as malware or a virus.

Thanks everyone for including your feedback. I've wrapped it into a report and have sent it to the powers that be (@LarkAnderson, and @edgework) and hopefully we'll start planning out some initiatives to make some reasonable accommodations to improve the system.

If you still have feedback about this new system, don't worry, I'm still here and happy to forward it along. I just want to again remind you all that when you're sharing your feedback regarding a site feature that we do still expect you to follow the Community Code of Conduct. Also, the more detailed you can be regarding said feedback, the better.

Good Example:
I don't like how easy it is to scroll past what you're trying to find, how jumbled the new format makes the stories you're reading look, the comments not feeling attached to the bottom of the stories, and that bar along the bottom just clutters things up. It feels more like I'm being rushed past the content i want.

Not Idea Example:
I'd like the old layout back. I'm not enjoy this one at all.

@digitaldame: yes to all of it even the thing that is the Not Ideal Example:

The layout feels like a large, open and empty living room and in the middle is a small 1-person couch sandwiched between two imposing bookshelves. Despite all the empty white space, it somehow still feels cramped.

The ESPN site that keeps getting referenced has the scrolling navigation bar on the side, filling what would be the useless empty white space on GameSpot pages and leaving the bottom free of clutter. I'm not a fan of comments being hidden by default.

GameSpot [when it worked] had Featured comments. If at least that or the top comment was displayed even if the comments were unexpanded, it would go a long way toward enticing community response... both in wanting to be featured, but more in having something to immediately read or reply to since comments are hidden by default now.

having multiple articles linked together on the same page(s) is a bad idea. very annoying trying to scroll down to the bottom and just getting a whole new page of an article that has nothing to do with the original. and the floating advertisements and links at the bottom of the screen are very annoying and in the way.

also when checking notifications and linking to them to respond or view it does not open to the comments or the comment section at all.

@digitaldame: There's one more thing I like to mention. When someone is replying to me, I receive a notifications but however, there comes a time when it doesn't take me to directly the person why reply to me on some of the articles and I have to load the comments and scroll down to find the person who reply. Just wanted to point that out when I have this problem that notifications aren't working right.

@digitaldame: I dont like having more than one article on a page. I have to load comments, other articles come up that I dont want to read, some articles I really just go for the comments and I scroll past them because there are other articles that I dont want to read, the bar on the bottom makes the page cluttered cause its filled with articles I didnt want to read. I know you guys are trying, but you seem to have made the mistake of thinking people want to scroll to articles they don't want to read seemlessly

Sorry but GameSpot did highly scientific calculations based on traffic, retention and surveyes on an apples-to-apples comparison and have found out that you, despite believing otherwise, actually like all that stuff. You just don't know it yet.

The article links at the bottom of the page effectively making the readable space very small is absolutely horrible. This new layout has stopped me from reading any articles here because the readable space is so small it's barely usable. If you must add add article links use the margins on the side. Since most people have 16:9 monitors wouldn't it seem logical to use the sides of the screen for for your links.

Better yet just get rid of the random article links. After i read one news article, IF, I want to read another I will go back to the news feed and find another.

I also just noticed that comments are now opt in to red and instead more random articles are loaded up. Since the footer was added I hadn't actually made it through an article. Please don't try to decide what I want to read for me. I'm more than capable of picking what I would like to read for myself.. Simply scrolling down to read comments like it has been done since the dawn of man works rather well. Otherwise I may have to remove GS from my favs tabs and just read Giant Bomb, Kotaku and Polygon instead. Thank you for your consideration

Please change it. It's not a good system and it make visiting the website unpleasant.

This is by far the worst design since the invention of forced predictive text in search engines, a reason why I stopped using Google and switched to Bing.

I have a ultra wide 2.35:1 display, which means my vertical real-estate is already about 20% less than conventional 16:9 displays, add the new scroll bar and I lose another 20% of my viewable space, making articles impossible to read.

My question is how do I turn off this new feature, I don't need articles pushed to me, I'll decide on my own and I'd like my 20% viewable space back.

If I cannot turn this new feature off, I'm going to IGN.

Thanks. Hope you guys aren't pulling a Google and not allowing people to turn off new features, that's how Bing won me over.

FYI a lot of media people use ultrawide 2.35:1 displays for work, which means vertical real-estate is very valuable to them, think next time before you design new features.

@digitaldame: Yes, thanks for relaying our concerns to the developers... and sorry about calling the feature crap. This is the third or fourth site I frequent to introduce it. I just get worked up over this particular feature.

I've no idea how they thought putting articles in a feed would be good? I don't want to have to click "Show comments" on a site that I come for the comments. Also having to refresh the page to see new comments is another bad idea. That's why I've left that other site. I like having comments dynamically updated. I also like to use the middle mouse click to bring up the scroll menu and quickly scroll down. I can't do that as easily with this news feed style layout as I scroll past what I want and click the wrong comment button. The website was fine the way it was. I'm not one of those people who don't like change. I thrive on change. But that change has to be for the better. Everything about the new layout is a step backwards. We have tab browsing for a reason. It's just much easier to have multiple tabs open where I can reference content from one page to another without having a feed of dozens of articles on each tab.

Hey all,

I've updated the OP to include my initial response to this thread, so as to make it more visible. Please check it out if you haven't already to learn about the changes we are making in the immediate future, following the Thanksgiving holiday, but know that we do hear your feedback and have already started work on these.

Thanks,

This is all well and good, but completely misses one of the key negative issues with the redesign: people don't read more than one article like this. Period. End of story. The site is not an RSS feed, so please stop treating it as one. Saying that other sites do it and that's why you are doing it is one of the worst reasons I can think of. If you have legitimate statistics and analytics which show a positive user experience for this change, then please share this as it goes against current usability guidelines and best practices for website design.

this right here ^

I agree with this

Sounds like you're in web design/dev as well. I fully agree with everything you stated, for both here AND espn(since that is obviously where Lark and co got the idea).

Oh and Lark, my usage on both sites like this dropped by about 90% since the change, I'm sure your analytics will probably show a similar down trend on overall usage even though you're forcing most of us to load 2-3 articles for ever single article we want to read. Not only will these artificial page clicks hurt your SEO(cutting your bounce rate for sure), google will adjust their formula for these type of sites to compensate for these stealth page loads, dropping your SEO even further.

I really cannot see any positive results coming from this design. Your team should be focusing on creating a new, cleaner, modern design that doesn't waste half the screen. Full responsive from 1920 to 480(I recommend 6 stages, 480 768 1024 1366 1600 and 1920), and keep the ajax to features we want like real time comments and the voting system, I'm sure both of those would function a lot better if you weren't wasting resources on this current theme.

@suicidesn0wman: I don't mind the ads. But I do want to vote with my eyes and the infiniscrolling is a major concern.

@elheber: If they wanted to keep it exactly the same minus the infinite scroll, I would be ok. I feel pretty let down by gamespot now tbh, its like they are waiting for us to stop complaining so they can do this even if nobody wants it...

@aigis: Probably not going to happen, but that's an interesting tactic, that's for sure. That being said, can you be specific about what you found in the "old site" to be so awesome?

@digitaldame:
-It was less condensed than the new layout (the new layouts grey side bars makes it look like there is barely any space for the articles)
-The bottom bar blocks my view even more (I know you are getting rid of it at least...)
-I have to open the comments section and load them separately even on articles I go just to the comment section for
-The Biggest thing I hate the most is the infinite scroll. I hate having it so much. Instead of skimming the main page just for articles that interest me, I am greeted with a bunch of articles that I didn't want in the first place. The infinite scroll just makes me feel like I'm being used by gamespot to get views on their other articles in a cheap way. I think I'm going to have get an adblocker to fix the site now...

@digitaldame: Perhaps you could share with us specific reasons why you (i.e. GS devs) found the old site to be deficient. As evident from most of the comments here, we disagree with your assessments.

@mairsil: As @LarkAnderson mentioned in his post:

As some of you have pointed out, these changes have been in the works for some time now--this has actually been how the news reading experience has worked for signed out users since E3. After making a few tweaks, most notably the addition of comment upvoting (which will be fixed today, by the way!), we made the decision to release this to everyone.

As for why we've made these changes, what we're trying to do here is make it easier for our users to read articles by letting them transition seamlessly from one into the next. With this layout, we also wanted to reduce some of the clutter in and around the articles by removing the right column and the "skin" ads that box in the content, and adding in more whitespace. This type of news reading experience is increasingly commonplace, and variations of it can be seen right now on sites such as ESPN, Time, and the AV Club.

@digitaldame: But the spaces are smaller now making it more cluttered and just because other sites do it doesnt mean this one should. ESPN doesnt work the same as gamespot does, they are different kinds of sites. A news site in my opinion shouldn't be letting people "transition seamlessly from article into the next", and I feel like that is an opinion that is shared by a lot of the members here.