Friday Q&A

Questionable Reorganization

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to another edition of the Friday Q&A. In this weekly feature, I examine the strange world of Fark Photoshop contests. This is a landmark week for our favorite news aggregate, as a brand new design went live Jun 1st. Users have actually had the option to start using this new design for a while now. I've completely avoided all the discussion threads so that I may offer what I feel to be an unbiased opinion on the changes.

Q: How much do you hate the new design?

A: You might be surprised to learn that I don't hate the new Fark at all. In fact, I like it a lot. The text just seems easier to read. I actually hated the old design, Fark 2.0. Fark 3.0 is a much better visual update. Management's approach to this change has been vastly different compared with the disastrous debut of 2.0. I did avoid the discussion threads this time, so there may have been a staff member trolling the users and I just missed it.

Q: What sucks about the new design?

A: There are only a couple issues that I can see. First of all, we seem to have lost the list of recently green/red Photoshop links. That's a huge detriment to people who submit contests, and I really hope someone fixes it soon. Another problem is the contest page, which looks butt-ugly due to some odd typeface choices. It's functional, but odd-looking. I'm hoping they take a closer look at that at some point.

Q: How will Photoshop contests be affected?

A: Besides losing a primary resource for submitters, I don't see any major changes. I already covered the addition of a vote button to the bottom of the screen, which I still think is a great idea. The Contest Browser could be more prominently positioned, but I'm glad to see it present in any capacity.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by. Here's hoping any bugs in the new Fark design get worked out quickly. Visually, it's a huge improvement over version 2.0. The only major flaw is the omission of recently submitted contest links. Picking out Photoshop links from the mass of crap spammed to the TotalFark submission queue is going to require more filtering on my part, but it's something I can get over.

Stay tuned for more page searching from the Doctor!