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F1 Fanatic reader feedback August 2012: Content (30 posts)

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Keith Collantine said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

With commenting enabled on every article and lots of opportunities for people to get in touch through the contact form, Twitter and so on, I perhaps take it for granted that I’m in tune with readers’ feedback.

However it occured to me recently that offering a more structured system for readers to offer their views on the site would be useful. As we’re beginning a long stretch between races I’ve decided to begin that now.

So I’ve set this thread up for you to offer your feedback on any of the site’s content, that is to say, the articles.

This is for you to give your views on what you like, what you don’t like; what you always read, sometimes read and usually miss; and what we don’t do that you think we should.

It would be useful if you could give your views on the different types of articles listed below (you don’t have to cover them all!). Obviously the desire here is to try to find ways to improve.

F1 Fanatic round-ups
Race reviews (and all other aspects of race weekend coverage)
Stats and facts
Editorial comment
F1 Pictures
F1 technology
Top Tens
Grand Prix Flashbacks
Debates and Polls
Guest Articles
F1 Fanatic Quizzes
Interview
Book, DVD and game reviews

Thanks for your time.

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the_sigman said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

I would like more things about the ‘on this day’ at the round up, and more quizzes with not a particular subject. Also I would like the quotes to note who wrote them. All of these would be nice, if they are possible. But the most important is to keep doing that awesome job you do.

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Maksutov said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

I don’t have much to add on the different types of articles you listed, except to say that they are great and you are doing an amazing job. Frankly, I don’t know where you find the time to do everything!

However, I can only make some technical suggestions which i think would improve the site:

1. Improvements for commenting to include a permanent notification for replies. One example could be a feature linked to a reply button. When the reply button is pressed, the user linked to that post will be notified. As it stands now, the “@abcd” feature should be replaced with something more reliable.

2. Every time i click to read an article, the page automatically takes me to the end of the article to the comment section. This gets very frustrating, especially when loading of the page is slow, as I don’t want to read the comments yet. As it stands now, when I start reading the article the page is usually still loading, when the loading finally ends, it flicks me to the bottom. This should fixed so that page does to flick the user anywhere. I will find my own way to the.comment section.

3. Again commenting is such a powerful feature of this site and some tweaking you could add many additional and useful features , like flag alerts for bad language (sometimes even I use bad language ;) ) ;can make life easier – also a +1 button. It doesn’t have to be a voting option as such… but you could also make COTD alerts – although this could lead to biased results.

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Maksutov said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

Once again, i realise this thread was supposed to be about articles content… so if i come up with anything on that ill post it…

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Keith Collantine said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

@Maksutov

Every time i click to read an article, the page automatically takes me to the end of the article to the comment section.

That’s odd. From the homepage, if you click on the headline, it should take you to the article at the top, e.g.:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2012/08/01/ten-ways-survive-august-break-f1-fanatic/

If you click on the comment count it should take you to the comments section, e.g.:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2012/08/01/ten-ways-survive-august-break-f1-fanatic/#comments

Regarding your first point, the problem here is not every commenter is registered and therefore cannot receive an @ message.

Thanks for the technical feedback but, as I say, I’m more after thing on the site content right now. If you have further technical suggestions please post them here:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/groups/f1-fanatic-site-development/forum/topic/known-problems/

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Fer no.65 said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

I read every article on the site. The only thing that I don’t use all the time is the Live Discussion during every session. Not because it’s not good or fun, but because I cannot follow everything while watching the race from an online stream.

I enjoy all the articles, specially the strategies and lap charts after every Grand Prix. And the Practice, Qualyfing and Pre-Race analysis. They are great and very informative.

My favourite posts, though, consist of flashbacks and general F1 history (like those dedicated to a certain car, which often appear during the Goodwood Festival). Those are superb to read.

All in all, there’s not much I can say. I’m trying to find useful things to say, but the site is so good, and you do such a great job, that it’s very very hard.

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Girts said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

If I wanted to list and properly describe here everything that I love about this site, the post would be at least twice as long as my half-season review, that is, a decent 4000-word essay. I’ll do a part of it later but here are two things that I would probably like to see here in an absolutely perfect world:

1) An F1F podcast – it doesn’t necessarily need to be long but it would be great to listen to the website owner’s thoughts for some 10 or 15 minutes now and then.

2) The quizzes could probably be slightly improved. I think the leaderboards ain’t necessary and I feel that the structure of them should be changed a bit, for instance, there are a couple of questions not directly related to the topic in almost every quiz like the quiz is about Tarso Marques and one of the questions is: Marques was the second driver who did something, who was the first driver? Those questions mostly test one’s knowledge of F1 history and would rather fit in a separate quiz imho.

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Girts said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

Here is my personal division of the F1F content:

My life would be empty without these:

Editorial comment: This is my absolutely favourite part of the website and I just can’t get enough of it. What is more, I regularly visit http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/members/keithcollantine/ to not miss any insightful views.
F1 Fanatic round-ups: What would I do without them? This way I can spare my time and don’t have to visit 100 other websites every day as all the most important articles & quotes are summarized here.
Stats and facts: I rarely use other websites for F1 stats because almost all that I need and more is here. I have a couple of suggestions for tiny improvements in mind that I’ll post here later.
Debates and Polls: Who doesn’t love debates and polls? I never miss them.
F1 Pictures: I have to say that I underestimated their appeal when I started to visit this website regularly in 2010. There is always a great choice of high quality pictures of every driver. I often make a slideshow of them for my desktop background and have also made a short clip, combined with a song by Keane once this year. (I don’t know how legal it is but I don’t publish them anywhere, they’re just for my personal use.)
Race reviews: A race weekend is unthinkable without the F1F coverage of it, particularly the Friday practice and pre-race analysis and the revision of drivers’ performances as well as all the figures and stats like lap charts, pit stop times etc. I occasionally join the live blogs as well, although I prefer to remain focused on the TV screen during the action.

And these are simply unbelievably good:

Book, DVD and game reviews: I always read the book & DVD reviews and have bought a few, after reading the descriptions, which have proved to be very accurate. I don’t play computer games so I don’t read the game reviews.
Guest Articles: Depends on the author and topic but there have been a lot of great contributions, particularly the reports from the stands.
Grand Prix Flashbacks: Frankly speaking, I rarely get excited about F1′s past before 1996 (that is, the one that I don’t remember myself) as much as I do about the present events. Still, the articles are fabulous.
F1 technology: Just like F1 history, it’s one of my weaknesses. That is why I always try to get to know / understand more but, if I don’t have enough time for everything, the technology articles can remain unread :( Nevertheless, I consider them to be a very important part of the website.
Interviews: Exclusive interviews are always a good thing, although I can live without them, too.
Top Tens: They always make for an interesting read.

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verstappen said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

Love stats n facts, weekend in 10 pictures, polls … Wait! Better to highlight what I don’t read: the articles with loads of pictures, way too much (but from past experience, I know this one probably gives you massive hits), F1F live – can’t cope with everything at once.

And in general: I’m not a fan of articles which are too long, (with too much links in them you have to follow). I don’t count the words, but I guess above 500 words is long..

I do like round up, because sometimes you have things I didn’t read elsewhere. Fan video’s and from the stands are good as well, oh now I’m in the good things again.

One thing though: your links for Amazon, contribute and buy a mug look like adds. And adds are things people avert their eyes from. I suggest you try it with textlinks.

If I think of something else, I get back.

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Daniel Chico said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

@keithcollantine I read (almost)* every article on the site and I really can’t say how much I enjoy it. My english is not very good, so I never have something to contribute in the comments. But I wait for twelve hours after an article is posted, so I can read the debates and discussions.

*Sometimes, the articles in the main page and/or in the “New on F1 Fanatic” section are not in time order. This always happens during/after a GP weekend… I don’t know how many articles I missed that way. I go back to the main page and proceed to read the “next” article (the one immediately above the one I was reading) . I think it would help if we could get a “previous/next” option at the top and bottom of the article…

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sato113 said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

@keithcollantine what ever happened to the ‘lap 1 positions gained/lost’ column-graph in the post race analysis?

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Lin1876 said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

The daily round-ups and statistics articles are undoubtedly the hightlights for me, closely followed by the analysis, opinion and debates and polls articles. The quizzes are nice, but I could live without them, and I usually only use F1 Fanatic Live for practice sessions and IndyCar, etc races because it all gets a wee bit hectic at other times. I find Twitter to be much more informative during the races.

The rest I could take or leave, though I rarely pay any attention to the picture galleries. I usually read the reviews but I rarely buy F1 books, and I’d probably buy the games anyway. I like the way the game reviews come from a different angle compared to gaming sites though.

Otherwise, keep up the good work. You’re one of the sites I disable my adblocker for, that’s how much I love this place!

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BradFerrari said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

What about improving the way we can view the pictures? Maybe some type of slideshow or something. At the moment it’s a bit slow having to reload the whole page when selecting the next picture to view.

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Bullfrog said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

Yes definitely agree with BradFerrari – I’d look at more of the pictures if they were easier to view. A quicker way of viewing and adding comments on a picture would be nice too – there’s usually a few good ones (as the caption competitions demonstrate), but I wonder if people are unsure or unaware whether to comment on the whole gallery or an individual picture.
I do like the top ten pictures after each race, one of the best recent additions for me.

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squaregoldfish said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

One thing that gets me every time on the round-ups – the quotes from the articles you use are frequently nothing to do with the headlines of those articles.

For example:

Webber turns Olympic spectator in break (Reuters)
“I know other teams have been asked to address things with their cars, but they (the FIA directives) are not for general consumption. And some of ours do make the general consumption, which is just the way it’s been.”

The quote has nothing to do with the Olympics. My mental gearbox isn’t semi-automatic, and there’s always a horrible crunch of gears when I try to parse these things.

Would you consider having a main headline that you write yourself that relates to the quote, and then a smaller line at the bottom giving details of the article it’s taken from?

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