Oh and one further thing, the Watch section, as it is currently laid out, doesn’t work for me at all. It often kills or freezes my browser if I scan more than a couple of pages down, as it just did again a few moments ago, and the connections to the film pages from there are wonky for much the same reason. It seems to me that there should be a better lay out for that section as I can’t even look through it effectively to find out what I might want to watch or what is available.
Ah yes, it’s titled Articles; somehow I missed that, heh.
I agree with the home page forum box being obsolete, and I also reckon that it’d be interesting to have monthly threads posted in the forum about upcoming (or current) festivals, etc, whether they are stickied or not, as opposed to the FESTIVALS tab.
I like the look of Cinémezzo i.e. its white background with some black bars here and there – cool and elegant.
but for Profile pages and the Forum I can’t imagine it looking good as it would just be white and text, bleh.
… and avatars! ;)
And maybe some black divider lines too, etc.
But anyway, we seriously need a quoting function for posting comments imo.
make 5 more stars for voting so we can vote from 1 to 10 stars
current voting vs future voting:
1 – piece of crap/dont watch
2 – watchable-fun movies 2-4 stars :)
3 – worth a watch/good: 5-7 stars makes it easier to choose
4 – good/very good/great movie but cant decide to give it 4 or 5 stars – would give it 7 for good 8 for very good
5 – great movie/masterpiece: would give for great movie 9 stars and 10 for masterpiece
strictly from the viewpoint of a user
STARS – it’s a never-ending story, when they get their 10 instead of 5, they want halves again. From my experience – 5 is enough and 10 is too detailed for my own change of moods. Film is a too multidimensional object to fix it within any chosen scale.
GRAY BLOCKS are great, please, do not change them, at least, and no AVATARS at forum. On the whole, the less it looks like FB or all the usual forums – the better. Healthy minimalism.
LISTS (a great attraction here) are in need of more functions.1) why not to give us an option to make any of them private or public 2) I miss different sorting possibilities ( year, alphabet). and, ugh, just noticed a new thing – display of film titles in you mother tongue (or IP address?) language. I assume (ok, hope) it can be switched off by my choice.
OTHER USERS’ PROFILE – (it was mentioned somewhere already) Am I write that, when I open somebody else’s favorite films page, I see average points, not the owner’s, i am interested in?
re: the last point, i think that’s true, unless you’ve rated the film yourself, in which case it shows your own rating. the only way to see other’s ratings on their profile is to click ‘show all’ ratings. i’ve been annoyed with this too
More choices for the “My Style” pictures would be great. Anyone remember this thread?
sure, i added some there just over a week ago
@Girlfriend in a coma
No, but message board people often behave like teens.
Are we still submitting films through a google docs form? Adding films to database is a continuous and ongoing process, why not have a permanent link on the site with a standard form to do this while user is logged in.
Did this thread just become a redux version of the original “How can we make MUBI better” thread?
Did this thread just become a redux version of the original “How can we make MUBI better” thread?
^ Filmy — I hope not. Though my general aim in starting this thread was to talk about the structure of the site, how to make it more convenient for users to navigate, and how to put all the pieces into a kind of order that is more interrelated, so you can see the relationships between all elements on the site on a given subject. Changing things for the better in this sense would make this site a fantastic research tool and have the potential to give a more in-depth quality to the forum discussions. But it’s cool that people are adding in other points too.
I’m thinking that I’ll want to do what Polaris DiB is doing for his Mubi top movies thread (that sounded weird) and make a summary of all the things that are being discussed so far at a certain point. I could make a table from it too for reference.
Awesome contributions so far it is fantastic to see people throwing in their suggestions here, keep it going! :D
Wow, this is a long thread, so I’m sorry if this has been mentioned (I didn’t have time to read ALL the responses). But I have a few suggestions for this site. Hopefully some of the Mubi engineers will actually read this:
1. Whenever there are more than one movie listed, it should be re-arrangeable. So I’m talking about any kind of movie LIST that you create, or the FAVORITE MOVIES that show up on your profile… I’m also talking about the list of directors on your profile… And the best way to implement this would be a drag and drop AJAX thing so that we don’t have to worry about numbers. Currently the only way I found to re-arrange things is to remove them all and add them in the order you want them. Which is annoying and impractical.
2. Movie reviews seem to be oddly under-utilized in this community, especially considering how many people use this site. I think it might have to do with the fact that there are no room for feedback on a movie review. I think there should at least be a LIKE button and a COMMENT option, so that people can start responding to your points.
OK those are my two points for now, I’ll add to this thread when I think of more. Thanks for starting this thread, Odi!
Glad to have you adding to it, Jimmy. :D
I skimmed the topic so I’m not sure if someone else mentioned this – but how about adding an actual “poll” option for all of the poll topics that get created? I think it would be cool anyway.
I think it would be good to have a notification system that’s actually on the website. I know they e-mail you but I haven’t checked my e-mail in forever, plus it’s just nice to be able to go to one site and have everything to do with it right there rather than having to go to a different site to see if someone commented on a post you’ve made or wrote on your wall. They have it for your inbox, so why not for other things as well?
This isn’t very well thought out, but can there be some form of “influences” or “similar to” data base ref? For instance I look up Lucrecia Martel, because I’ve just seen one of her films and I’m crazy about it, but she only has a few titles. Perhaps a menu might give me an opportunity to see other directors like her, perhaps even by filters: country, style, decade, gender—something which would give me options to find similar talents. As a paradigm, I suppose AMG (All Music Guide) has information along those lines for each band, songwriter, etc. Good way to learn more and be exposed painlessly to similar artists. Of course the data must be reliable and expert.
Sorry if that sounds too loose and/or goofy. How about more available films off the beaten track which show in all regions? How about a lending library of torrent films or links? A legal one I suppose. A db option with outside text reviews on given films/subject matter/filmmakers or a db archive of critical reviews by author or mag/blog/book etc? A sidebar option somewhere for something like “classes or lectures” perhaps on topics like restoration, silent film, Art films etc. or “interviews with filmmakers”
Like I said, maybe the ideas are half-baked.
greg x
Maybe I’m not following you Mischa, but the film pages already have a section devoted to Notebook references just above the forum topic links.
I agree about being able to discuss Garage films, or anything that would bring that part of the site more into the regular mix of things.
I remain dubious on the all white though since I’m generally not a fan of it for anything beyond something of a magazine style. Adam Cook’s website, Cinémezzo looks good in that regard, for example, but for Profile pages and the Forum I can’t imagine it looking good as it would just be white and text, bleh.
As to some of the things I really like about the site; I think the film viewing app is top notch, much better than Netflix’s for example, so if I were someone who liked watching movies online I would definitely prefer this one to the others I’ve seen. I tend to like to use my computer while I watch, and don’t have a set up for watching comfortably online otherwise, so I might not be the ideal person to comment on this, though I do sometimes wonder if having a sort of “critic” function might make it more enjoyable to watch online. Say a small slightly better lit box where one could type in thoughts while watching if one chose to open the application for use. (One could even imagine such a thing being used as a sort of commentary track where you could type in a thought connected to a moment on screen and then play it back with the film or just read them separately later. That isn’t something that would likely be easy to implement, or of great need, but it could be interesting, especially if one could choose to access the thoughts of friends with it as well.)
I also really like the filmography section on people’s pages as I refer to that quite often when looking at friends pages, and it looks great, with those large stills from the movies behind them. That does remind me though that I would like to see the opportunity for more stills to be added to each movie page beyond the main one as I have a ton of them sitting on my hard drive for just such an occasion. They might be useful for discussion purposes, but mostly they’re just enjoyable to browse on their own.
I generally like the profile pages overall, other than the my style thing, but I would agree that our profile pic should be bigger, and that there can be some further refinement to the overall look, as a whole though I am pleased with the favorite film section, the I want to watch section and the favorite auteurs thing, although those last two should also be randomized like the favorites are.
The Home page looks mostly fine, but I admit I don’t spent much time on it, so I’m not sure how other’s experience with it compares to mine. I wouldn’t mind seeing the bottom box of join the discussion disappear for something connected to the Garage since if I want to join a discussion I would just click on the forum anyway, but for those who don’t use the forum as often it may be of more value. On second thought, I suppose that the forum link on the homepage might be what draws people into the forum in the first place, so not having it might make the forum more isolated, but I still think there has to be a better way to integrate it and the Garage onto the Homepage and Notebook.
I like the festival page, but I rarely use it, so, again, I’m not the ideal person to comment on that. It does remind me, however, that I would like to see more comments or discussion or criticism about the movies Mubi is showing since that might be more of an enticement to watch them on the site, which is largely how the site is funded. Right now I get the feeling there is something of a pig in the poke quality to a lot of the movies here for most people. Not that they aren’t good, just that their relative lack of fame doesn’t really give much indication of how good, which might mean people would have to search for reviews off the site to watch a movie on the site, which seems wrong. But that again would be something for others to say more about than myself given my circumstance.