I know this was a heavily debated topic awhile back, but I thought it might be good to go back and look at it again now that the dust has settled a bit. To be honest, the way the current news feed on the front page works is useless to me. All of the topics have 1 like (except for one, which has 2, but it's not even at the top), and there seems to be no type of order or anything. I used to use the news feed on the old GDNet, but this new one is a useless RSS feed to me. My suggestions:

1. Make things have topics (or tags) & color coded. i.e. "postmortem", "industry", "APIs/Libraries", "Game Review", etc, etc. Ok, these aren't very good tags I've suggested, they're just the ones that came to the top of my head. But hopefully you get the idea. Right now it's just a randomly sorted mess. If things were tagged, I could then choose the things that I'm interested in (I like postmortems usually, but I don't really care much for industry news (i.e. studios opening/closing)).
2. Realize the big "like" button isn't working that well. Sure, a few people click it. It's big, it's prominent, I see it, and I don't want to click it. Sorry, I don't have a useful suggestion for this one, but it something to consider.
3. Bring in the GDNet touch. Ok, so I know GDNet is super understaffed and all and our wonderful staff are working very hard (thank you guys! (and girls)), but the current news feed feels like a cold robot. Remember the good old days when Trent's 6 year old mind would make me laugh, Tiffany's opinions would make me nod my head, and Drew's links would make me click like crazy, etc? I'm not saying you have to go back to exactly how it was. I know that won't work with how things are. But I'm talking about bringing in the GDNet touch again. Making it feel more personal and alive, and not so much like a cold robot. Brainstorming time?
4. Do you want me to use the news feed? Cause it's kinda not on the screen at all when I load the main page. I have to scroll down an *entire* screen's worth to see it. My suggestion? Simplify the front page. I know, there's lots of awesome things about GDNet we all love and we want to be able to access it all from the front page, but... the current layout ain't workin for me. Sacrifice something, cut down on the large amount of screen space each "box" takes up... heck, even consider not using "boxes"... or "round squares"... or whatever the heck it is they're called. Or allow me to rearrange the "boxes" and close certain ones so they don't display... you know, customize my front page. Wasn't that the original plan anyway?

Well that's what I have off the top of my head. What are your thoughts?

P.S. No, I'm not trying to resurrect something. What I'm trying to do is review things now that we've gotten a little more settled and can see better what is and what isn't working.

I do agree about a few things. It would be nice if things on the news feed were chronological - new stuff at the top, unless it's been 'liked' a bunch. Maybe each 'like' could bump it up a few notches? The other thing that bugs me, and maybe this is just a Chrome thing, is that middle clicking to open a new news article in a new tab instantly snaps me to that new tab. I like going through and opening all the tabs, then looking at them.

I like the news feed just fine, although I constantly find myself wishing for the GDNet Daily/Weekly. :c

Wait, we have a front page? Since when?

Stickified. Since this is actually a recently renewed discussion amongst the senior staff as well best to funnel feedback in here. If it dies down I'll unsticky and move it over to the CSI forum.

I'd love to bring the Dailies back. Things were getting a bit rough for the Daily editors towards the transition of the news system though, there were a lot more missed days than usual and people were having trouble finding time to compose them, including myself. Trent, for example, had to bow out even before the news switch.

Given our largely-volunteer support base, it made sense for us to recruit all you community members on a wider scale to help us with something like filtering news - but in the process we definitely completely lost the whole personal side of things that we always had even in the old days when we had just a news stream of submitted stories - but a news stream that was vetted by editors before posts appeared.

We'll definitely be looking at striking some sort of balance now that we've gone too far in the opposite direction (IMO). Not just in terms of how we deliver news, but what type of news we deliver. For example I would go for cutting out all industry business-type stories altogether and simply focus on new dev tools, processes, updates, releases. Bringing back the Dailies and their editorial style could be the one window into the whole industry each day, the rest would all just be the latest products, tech and methodologies - not Company X buying Company Y or Company A using Technology B...

I know this was a heavily debated topic awhile back, but I thought it might be good to go back and look at it again now that the dust has settled a bit. To be honest, the way the current news feed on the front page works is useless to me. All of the topics have 1 like (except for one, which has 2, but it's not even at the top), and there seems to be no type of order or anything. I used to use the news feed on the old GDNet, but this new one is a useless RSS feed to me. My suggestions:

1. Make things have topics (or tags) & color coded. i.e. "postmortem", "industry", "APIs/Libraries", "Game Review", etc, etc. Ok, these aren't very good tags I've suggested, they're just the ones that came to the top of my head. But hopefully you get the idea. Right now it's just a randomly sorted mess. If things were tagged, I could then choose the things that I'm interested in (I like postmortems usually, but I don't really care much for industry news (i.e. studios opening/closing)).
2. Realize the big "like" button isn't working that well. Sure, a few people click it. It's big, it's prominent, I see it, and I don't want to click it. Sorry, I don't have a useful suggestion for this one, but it something to consider.
3. Bring in the GDNet touch. Ok, so I know GDNet is super understaffed and all and our wonderful staff are working very hard (thank you guys! (and girls)), but the current news feed feels like a cold robot. Remember the good old days when Trent's 6 year old mind would make me laugh, Tiffany's opinions would make me nod my head, and Drew's links would make me click like crazy, etc? I'm not saying you have to go back to exactly how it was. I know that won't work with how things are. But I'm talking about bringing in the GDNet touch again. Making it feel more personal and alive, and not so much like a cold robot. Brainstorming time?
4. Do you want me to use the news feed? Cause it's kinda not on the screen at all when I load the main page. I have to scroll down an *entire* screen's worth to see it. My suggestion? Simplify the front page. I know, there's lots of awesome things about GDNet we all love and we want to be able to access it all from the front page, but... the current layout ain't workin for me. Sacrifice something, cut down on the large amount of screen space each "box" takes up... heck, even consider not using "boxes"... or "round squares"... or whatever the heck it is they're called. Or allow me to rearrange the "boxes" and close certain ones so they don't display... you know, customize my front page. Wasn't that the original plan anyway?

Well that's what I have off the top of my head. What are your thoughts?

P.S. No, I'm not trying to resurrect something. What I'm trying to do is review things now that we've gotten a little more settled and can see better what is and what isn't working.

This is exactly what ran through my mind when I heard about this topic. I *used* to go to this site two times a day (morning, night) to read up on the latest news.

And you're right, the way the news was presented made me open 4 or 5 links because it was all very entertaining and I wanted to know more. It was more of a summary telling me what I should be interested in.

I have to agree with the general sentiment so far. I loved the old dailies, and read every one since Trent started them. Like people have said, it was the human touch that made it worth reading. The current format is a bit cold, and the liking system doesn't seem to be working very well.

That said, the biggest value on gdnet has always been the community, and I guess the staff need to make a judgment on whether the benefits of bringing back the old style (or something similar) are worth the large amount of time it would undoubtedly take.