The FuzzyBlog!
Marketing 101. Consulting 101. PHP Consulting. Random geeky stuff. I Blog Therefore I Am.

Kuro5hin is Broke: But Am I All that Surprised?

One of my favorite sites, but not one I actually visit often, is broke and needs cash.  Rusty's story on this.  Well worth reading.  A great piece of work.

Comments on this and Why I am Not Surprised

NOTE: No matter how I write this you are about 95% likely to think either:

• Scott's just an idiot
• Scott's being pissy to a great site.

Neither of these is accurate to any degree.  There is a fundamental disconnect between users of sites and designers of sites.  I am a huge believer in cheap human factors testing, what I call, the "Give it Mom" test.  This is where you just give your site to someone, perhaps Mom, and watch how they perform on simple tasks.  I've done this probably a dozen or more times and the site NEVER is the same afterwards.  Of course, if Mom is a *nix Kernel Hacker, you should try Dad.  Or your little sister.  If those fail then someone random off the street.  My real point is that there are two types of usability testing and one is expensive and uses highly trained professionals and is a big investment.  The other type is just you getting decent input from real people and then actually following it.  I like the second approach a lot.

So here's what happened:

• Kjartan, over IM, tells me about the article.
• I respect his judgement and like the site so I ask for the URL and read it.
• He suggests that I might want to but a text ad to support the site and I think that's a good idea.
• I read the article expecting to find a link to the ad page or even pricing.
• Nope!  Rusty missed a great chance to give one click access to his ad sales here.  And, it probably wouldn't be perceived poorly in this case.
• I scroll up and look across the toolbar.  Here are the options:
  • Toolbar 1
    • create account
    • help/FAQ
    • contact
    • links
    • search
    • IRC
    • site news 
  • Toolbar 2
    • Everything 
    • Diaries 
    • Technology 
    • Culture 
    • Freedom & Politics 
    • Media 
    • News 
    • Internet 
    • Op-Ed 
    • Columns 
    • Meta 
    • MLP 
• Nothing here is even remotely like "Ad" or even suggests it.  I ask Kjartan again.
• His response is simple -- look below the ad itself.  Makes sense?  Not really -- we all know that people ignore ads on the Internet so hiding the way to buy them below something that is ignored is plain silly (at least to me).
• Kjartan then tells me that if I am logged in, these appear on my menus.  Ok.  That's just fine but are all potential advertisers logged in?  I doubt that.  Now this takes us into "login hell."
• Like probably all of us I have 50 to 2,500 or more discrete web logins.  I try to keep them consistent but I just can never remember them.  I rely heavily on the "Mail Me My Password" (coz I am dumb) feature most sites are smart enough to provide.
• There is a mail me my password button so I click it.  The page reloads.  Nothing happens.  I do it again.  Same. 
• I actually realize that my user id needs to be in the box before I click the button.  It would have been nice to have been told this but this could well just be boneheaded of me.
• It takes 2 separate emails to get me my password.  I still don't understand why and the 1st email didn't make sense to me at all.  It tells me to go to a url but not why.  Ah.  Light dawns.  I just re-read it and the text "Go to: URL" has a paragraph before it telling you more.  I'd strongly suggest this be worded "To get your new password, go here: URL".  A long hyperlink is a distraction within a body of unformatted text so the eye jumps to it first and you often don't read the rest.  No I don't suffer from ADD.
• The password they mailed me was this: khxFmPgm.  (Yes I changed it before posting it here).  This is a password that I have 0 chance of ever remembering.  When I logged in after that password, it should have AUTOMATICALLY made me change it or at least point it out. 
• So I try and change the password.  Maybe it makes sense to bury it in "User Preferences", maybe not.  And, finally, I have to know the bizarro password they sent me to actually change it.
• So now I have the be an advertiser link in 2 places and I can actually think about it.  I'm almost certain that I will do it -- I am frustrated that they don't take American Express since like a lot of small business people, I live and die by my year end Amex summary.  I'll gladly acknowledge that this is just me (maybe). 
• Last Point: Why Don't I Visit Often?  I see this a lot with geek types.  They want a cool domain name so they make something that is so distinctive that, for at least some percentage of users, is hard to remember.  www.kuro5hin.org (that's a 5 not an S).  And, don't bother telling me that www.kuroshin.org also works.  Yes it does -- but how would I know that.  I honestly don't go here often because a) bookmarks are a pathetic joke that just don't work anymore at all and b) I can't really remember it well enough.  Sure, if I was a regular, I would know this cold -- but I'm trying to become a regular.  So, as a result, I really only visit when someone else points me to it.  A great brand identity is useless if it locks out users.  I really don't think this is just me.

Summary and Small Plug

I know you may think I'm a little silly or stupid after reading this but this is what happens when people that don't regularly visit a site try to use it.  It's just painful.  K5 is based on the Scoop engine, http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/, and Kjartan, the person who led to this essay existing, is a Team Lead for www.drupal.org a wonderful piece of software with just about all the features of Scoop and very little of this type of user hostile silliness.

Actual IM Conversation About this with a K5 User

kjartanmannes: ill take a look once I finish reading the k5 is broke story
fuzzygroup: cool. thanks.
kjartanmannes: drats, rusty is having troubles keeping k5 running
fuzzygroup: Crap doodle.
fuzzygroup: url ?
kjartanmannes: http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/6/17/23933/5831
fuzzygroup: did he throw up a paypal donate like like Adam recommended ?
kjartanmannes: you can buy textads and subscriptions
kjartanmannes: dont think he has done the donate thing yet
fuzzygroup: Crap.
kjartanmannes: buy 1000 textads for fuzzyblog
fuzzygroup: I might just
fuzzygroup: Cool. Not clear at all where to buy them.
kjartanmannes: buy ad?
fuzzygroup: Hey... You suggested it.
fuzzygroup: I thought I'd price it out.
kjartanmannes: if you have a user accounts its in your menu
kjartanmannes: http://www.kuro5hin.org/submitad
kjartanmannes: otherwise I see how its hard to find yes
fuzzygroup: Yes but where the frack did you find it.
kjartanmannes: im logged in
kjartanmannes: i have new ad and your ads in the menu
fuzzygroup: so.
kjartanmannes: its also below the textad box
fuzzygroup: oh that's just stupid.
fuzzygroup: ah...
fuzzygroup: I viewed it as a system level thing that should be in the toolbar.
fuzzygroup: Can you tell me if the mail password button works for you on K5 ?
fuzzygroup: Ah... must have username in.
kjartanmannes: thats not very logical
fuzzygroup: Nope.
fuzzygroup: I'll write a piece up about how real people see sites versus how designers think of them. It'll make me look stooooopid but that's fine.
kjartanmannes: nothing new there *ducks*
fuzzygroup: and it takes 2 emails from them to get a password. Sigh.
fuzzygroup: *smack*
fuzzygroup: Blogging away now.
kjartanmannes: they use the scoop engine : http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/
fuzzygroup: I know. I'll point that out.
kjartanmannes: just so you know
kjartanmannes: ahh, ok
fuzzygroup: Another huge issue for me is that fracking domain name. It's hard to bloody type / remember.
kjartanmannes: try kuroshin then
fuzzygroup: does that work ?
kjartanmannes: should work yes
fuzzygroup: lol. very non obvious.
fuzzygroup: Is it ok w/ you if I excerpt this portion of our transcript (i.e. just about k5) ?
kjartanmannes: sure
fuzzygroup: I'll have that article shortly. Actually pretty nice.
kjartanmannes: how is it going?
fuzzygroup: Oh boy. You'll like it I think. Sec for the url.
fuzzygroup: http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/stories/2002/06/17/kuro5hinIsBrokeButAmIAllThatSurprised.html
kjartanmannes: ok, brb phone
fuzzygroup: k
kjartanmannes: radio screw up the post or is the end just not written ?
kjartanmannes: i like it so far
fuzzygroup: not finished
fuzzygroup: more just psoted