Comments systems can be tough places to hang around. The noise, the arguments, the sheer number of people - it can get a bit much. That’s why we’re rolling out a new feature for the comments system: Karma.
Karma is a way of expressing your love or disdain for posts. Take a look at a comments page, and you’ll spot a little box on the right, next to each post. If you like the post, click the positive button. If you don’t like it, click negative, and the post will shrink down, so you never have to read it again.
Each positive or negative click adjusts the score by one point, either up, or down. If a comment keeps getting scored as negative, and reaches a certain threshold, it will be hidden from the default view, leaving the insightful, witty, and informative comments to shine.
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The last few months have seen broken nights and broken relationships for the back-room boys responsible for keeping Eurogamer's sites running. Last year, we realised that changes were needed to our infrastructure. To continue growing at our current rate, and to launch new services such as Eurogamer TV HD - coming soon! - we would need more of everything. More bandwidth, faster network connections, new servers and more physical space to house them in.
A feeling of impending doom came over me, as I realised how much work this would mean. We have endured site moves before - five of them over the past 10 years - moving hardware around the East End of London like Alan Sugar selling car aerials.
But we hadn't moved in over four years and we knew that this would by far the biggest and trickiest move yet. 10 major websites depend on this infrastructure, which attract over four million visitors a month. If the site goes down, or components get broken, it means working without stopping - sometimes right through the night - until they are back up. The wife wasn't going to be happy.
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Hi folks! Often when we alter the site in some fundamental fashion, you, our beloved readers and users, have queries about what we were trying to achieve, such as "What the bloody hell have you done you stupid morons?" and "Do you even understand how to walk? How do you not fall over and axe-murder yourself with your legs whenever you exhale?" So it's high time we started blogging about the things we do, starting with our next site update, the new gamepages, which go live today.
The old gamepages had grown out of date. There wasn't enough content at the top of the screen, so you were having to scroll down past a huge community data block and advert to get to a list of content before you saw more than a single article entry. Even when you finally got to the content, it appeared as overwhelming lists, which often set fire to nearby pets and small children. Gamepages also suffered either from having too much information or not enough. When there was very little content, the page was almost useless, but when there was too much, the page would stretch off into the distance uselessly.
Our solution involves breaking content down into more easily digestible blocks, and highlighting the freshest or most important content. We then keep archives of all the other content available in tabbed category pages. The benefit with this kind of solution is obvious: the most relevant content is smack-bang in front of you, but you can also dig deeper if you choose. The editorial team also has a degree of control over what appears on this summary page, allowing them to create a far more comprehensive home for that game within Eurogamer. Read more...
Last month we started a Developer's blog, only to not write anything on it. I'm glad to see that our professional blog works in the same way as our personal ones - sporadic updates with intermittent apologies about not writing much. This is probably the point at which I promise to write more updates, then.
So, I promise we'll write more updates. We do have an excuse, though: we've all been beavering away on new networking features on our sister site, GamesIndustry.biz. Here's a bit of professionally written promotional text to explain what it's all about:
If you've come over all intrigued and whatnot, and you're part of the gaming industry, you should sign up.
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Welcome to the Developers' blog. You're probably surprised we're allowed to write things on Eurogamer, but we are. So there.
Why? Well, we do a lot of work behind the scenes; things of which you might not be aware. We thought it best to tell you guys what we're up to, how it affects you, and most importantly why we're doing it.
After all, we don't want you to think of us as the editorial team's horribly disfigured secret brother, surrounded by pigeon carcasses in the dark, listening to Squarepusher and changing things on a whim. The "whim" part is just wrong; there's definitely thinking involved.
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