Research and Development! Poker Forums

Hola DCers!

This is just a quick post to show you our latest development at DC Labs. It's pretty experimental and based on brand-spanking-new technology (translation: we're learning as we go here), so please provide us with whatever feedback you can here.

What is it, you say? The DeucesCracked Reader. DCR's purpose is to make it easier to quickly and easily follow all relevant content on DC by allowing you to "follow" any object. Check it out at http://www.deucescracked.com/reader - and read on for a bit more of an explanation of what it does.

Forum Tracking:
This means that you can "follow" the SSNL forum, and any time any new thread is added, it will automatically show up in your reader. Any time the thread is updated, you'll be able to see the latest post made to the thread and see who else has responded to the thread.

Thread Tracking:
Similar to forum tracking, but on a more granular level. Thread tracking will allow you to track individual threads you're interested in seeing responses to.

Video Tracking:
Currently all videos are added to your reader. We'll be modifying this in the near future to allow you to filter by game type, so you can see when videos you're interested in are added to the site, or when their threads are updated with new nuggets of info.

Blog Tracking:
Track blogs of groups of users you're interested in. You can have new posts from users you want to follow the blogs of auto-show up, or have blog posts you're interested in show all comments.

User Tracking (aka stalking aka following):
Track all pieces of content from users you like. Following a user will automatically mean that all of their posts, blog posts, blog comments, and videos show up in your reader.

The goal of the reader is to have one centralized place for all DC content you're interested in - be it podcasts, videos, posts by users, blog posts, or forum posts. We're early in the development of this right now and are looking to get it tested as much as possible, so please give it a shot and let us know what you think.

Oh, and your first pro-tip:

When reading posts, hit "J" to jump to the next post you'd like to read. Hit "K" to jump back to the previous post.

Please post any thoughts you have on the reader in this thread, so I can easily keep an eye on suggestions and see how things are working. We've tested this pretty extensively in Chrome, FF, and Safari, but there's a lot more browser variance out there so let us know if you see any browser or display bugs (things that don't work, etc).

We'll be adding a navigational element for it soon, but this is basically a beta release (maybe slightly pre-beta) while we continue to expand and test out the technology. Let us know what you think!

Rob

This is pretty cool and seems to work well for me in FF, but at the same time, as long as unread posts are properly marked within the forums themselves I'm not sure that this wouldn't be slightly more inefficient for my personal browsing habits. Nevertheless, a big thumbs up to DC R&D for their efforts -- I'm sure that this will be a wonderful product for others among your users. I'll check in on it later on when expansions are made to the technology.

Replying so this thread will show up in my dashboard.

/irony

very cool, but is there a way to make the background black like you can with the regular forums. I kinda get used to it and its easier on the eyes for me

very cool, but is there a way to make the background black like you can with the regular forums. I kinda get used to it and its easier on the eyes for me

We don't currently have any plans for a black background, though there certainly will be design and UX changes as it's pretty much an advanced Alpha release right now.

Rob

This is pretty cool and seems to work well for me in FF, but at the same time, as long as unread posts are properly marked within the forums themselves I'm not sure that this wouldn't be slightly more inefficient for my personal browsing habits. Nevertheless, a big thumbs up to DC R&D for their efforts -- I'm sure that this will be a wonderful product for others among your users. I'll check in on it later on when expansions are made to the technology.

Would love to hear more of your thoughts - the goal of course is to bring this out in such a way that people can discover new/interesting content and have it all centralized, with a secondary goal of being able to track the content they already know they're interested in. What do you mean by "posts are properly marked" in the forums?

The cool thing about this project is it gets to teach us a lot more about how you guys use the site and allows for us to customize the reader to make that better for everyone.

Rob

When reading posts, hit "J" to jump to the next post you'd like to read. Hit "K" to jump back to the previous post.

Nice touch on using the vi/vim hotkeys for movement. Everything I type gets a random hjkl or :w in it It'll be nice to have the reader respond to J and K for movement.

i think this is a great idea!
just not sure how this is different from email notifications on new replies for instance, i guess the centralization is key here?

i think this is a great idea!
just not sure how this is different from email notifications on new replies for instance, i guess the centralization is key here?

It's more centralized, but it's also that the reader allows for more content discovery as well as content tracking - i.e. you can track threads you have already posted in but you can also use it to follow forums, blogs, and people who you want to see new content by. The way I use my reader is this:

I follow PLO, all LHE, and R&D forums. I see an initial notification any time there is a new thread in those. If I'm interested in that thread, I either reply immediately, or click "follow this thread" so I can see more responses on that specific thread. I visit the reader 20-30 times a day to check and see what new things have posted and what updates have happened to things I was initially interested in. I do the same for users I follow and blogs I'm interested in.

Rob

Would love to hear more of your thoughts - the goal of course is to bring this out in such a way that people can discover new/interesting content and have it all centralized, with a secondary goal of being able to track the content they already know they're interested in. What do you mean by "posts are properly marked" in the forums?

The cool thing about this project is it gets to teach us a lot more about how you guys use the site and allows for us to customize the reader to make that better for everyone.

Rob

Well, I was just making reference to the server issues this month which caused some problems with first posts being marked read and read posts being marked unread on my end. I feel bad having to explain it though b/c it sounds like I was making a subtle dig at DC. I was not

Most of how I use the site consists of middle clicking all the threads I have an interest in which have been updated (assuming they're not new) and getting through each one tab at a time. For special content (say a strategy thread) I'll subscribe to the RSS link in Google Reader. Perhaps being able to mark a thread with our own categories would enable me to use DC Reader for this instead (which might be a boon since I have a tendency not to check Google Reader often enough as is).

For whatever reason, being exposed to new content is most convenient to me via the forums themselves. Most of the interesting content I miss out on is likely in the articles and blogs sections, given that I browse direct to the forums usually. (I do RSS some of the blogs, but I'm sure I'm missing out on others.) Basically, my personal dashboard is the general discussion forum. It actually might not be any more efficient than using reader or my My DC dashboard, and more a product of my anal retentiveness in wanting to see posts organized by category in the most granular fashion possible... and to not have to scroll through the OP every time. (I suppose that's the one concrete thing you might take from my novella here: Collapsing the OP in some sort of show/hide fashion may be a good idea).

As far as videos go, there isn't too much I'm unaware of that is something I am also interested in, but I've been here for a while and helped compile the video guide about a year ago. I'm not sure about the best way to expose new users to old videos -- when I was new I just sort of looked at everything, and, if something was particularly challenging/interesting, look for more by that coach. I'm not sure if you can count on your typical user to behave so, though.

Don't show my own replies in the reader (or in the RSS feed for that matter). I know what I wrote.

Don't show my own replies in the reader (or in the RSS feed for that matter). I know what I wrote.

We can't change that in the RSS feed easily, but we can change it in the reader. Thanks.

Rob

Nice feature! Know you guys are in alpha, but have some feedback: seems like I got some false positives when I followed myself -- returns on videos and such where I didn't comment / name wasn't mentioned.

Some suggestions:

1. Mark posts as read in the forum when I read them in the reader.
2. "Mark as unread" option.
3. Give the option to expand a topic, if it has multiple responses, right in the reader.

Great work.

Some suggestions:

1. Mark posts as read in the forum when I read them in the reader.
2. "Mark as unread" option.
3. Give the option to expand a topic, if it has multiple responses, right in the reader.

Great work.

#1 and #2 are great suggestions and we're already at work on #1 - #3 we worked on for quite a while but the UX and duplication of code/areas made it too unwieldy to try to attempt. I'll keep it in the back of our head for the future but it's less likely that we attempt it than #1 and #2.

Rob