Stopping for Directions
Topix currently boasts about 400 thousand different news pages, all available for editing. (hint hint) One thing we have wrestled with in the past is how to make those nodes easier to find for both our readers and for our editors. I mean, that is a lot of news pages. Exposing those pages in a way that is useful, easy to navigate, and not a blinding wholesale list of hyperlinks is no walk in the park. We've been hard at work and I think you just might like the results.
Introducing, the new and improved Topix directory.
This new directory organizes the content in a way that allows you to easily navigate through the top levels and dig deeper into the more granular topics that interest you. Recently, one of our editors asked us for a better way to find the news pages for individual soap operas. Check out the tag cloud in this image.
By clicking on the Soap tag, you dig deeper. Sometimes, specificity is king. There it is, right there in front of you.
Another bonus of this directory is that you should also be able to see if a page you are looking for is there at all. If you don't see it, send us a note and tell us what we are missing. We are adding new nodes all the time. This is your chance to mold the universe.
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Comments (1)
On December 27, 2007 2:32 PM, TrilbyKat said:
I noticed the new directory when it first became available and thought that it was well designed. It is so much easier to use than the old one. Good job on this.
Eh hem, now that I'm here commenting I'd like to say that I would appreciate being able to have another tool at my disposal for editing (since Topix is improving ease of usage) and that is something that would enable me to kill a story on the wire or scare RoboBlogger away from it.
If I read a story from the wire and choose not to post it because it is off-topic, etc. it is somewhat counter-productive for me to have to kill it later if/when RoboBlogger posts it. This has happened to me several times.
Something else that I could really have used today would have been a way to post the "Escaped Tiger" story to the "Cat News" directly from Topix with all 396 comments included rather then having to crawl the url from the news source. Tigers fall under the cat news topic and the wire has carried big cat stories before... but not this one.
So keep up the good work all you cool people here at Topix and I hope you consider my request(s).