David, there’s a big difference here between what Martin’s implemented here (a linear infinite feed) vs Facebook (an algorithmicly determined feed). Unless I’m misunderstanding, the content should never reorder. If you see something you’ve seen before, that’s it, you’re out of new material.
I also hate algorithmic feeds - how am I supposed to see everything when the algorithm hides and reorders things on me.
Thanks everyone for comments, everything is appreciated! Positive or negative.
As D11 said, you shouldn’t miss anything on the infinite list. New entries should still marked with a green star, please let me if this doesn’t work for anybody.
Also, I’ve added loads of changes and used many tricks yesterday, so it now should you bring back to the very same place you clicked on something on the infinite list and later return to that using your browsers ‘back’ function.
This is an archive site instead of a feed site or social media site so infinite scrolling is a really bad idea. There’s a reason why search engines especially Google themselves have never used infinite scrolling. It makes looking for things much harder and take way more effort to find not to mention when you want to find something specific you can’t just go to a specific page knowing that the story is, while not exactly on that page, you know that it’s somewhere in there based on the other stories before and after it. Sure you can use tags on the search function to find a story but that would still involve more scrolling especially when the tag results in hundreds of stories. This puts a hard toil on mouse wheels (and people’s fingers) too for pc users since they’ll have to constantly rotate the wheel to scroll down.
Even shopping sites like Amazon don’t use it either. Etsy tried it way back. It just resulted in their userbase going down since nobody wanted to bother with the frustrations of what I just said.
I’m at a loss as to why you would ever search for something based on what page of results it’s on. Wouldn’t it be easier to use the bookmark feature or search by author/title? I mean, if you know what page something’s on, that implies that you’ve seen it before, so why keep jumping to a specific page when that page changes by the day, if not the hour? Can you elaborate on what it is that you’re doing that makes this kind of search more useful than other methods?
You still have the “More Stories” page (or, as its used to be known, “Stories->All Stories”), where you can sort for authors, name and publishing date.
None of this is gone, and most of all that page is still paged and will remain paged. It’s much better suited to look for older stories, no matter by what criteria.
Right now only the main page is endless scrolling. The comment page will also be changed to infinite scroll, as well. As for any other: I don’t see a reason to change any of those to endless scrolling.
The main site is really not suitable for searching a story at all. It’s just for browsing the latest, the top, and random stories. And for any of those, I think endless scrolling is best suited.
This is just such an incredibly frustrating change. Just really incredibly frustrating.
Heck even the porn site BDSMLR, which I consider the replacement of Tumblr, went from infinite scrolling to giving the option for pages after a major outcry.
Could you please tell me WHY it is so frustrating? I asked you before and you didn’t give me any answer.
Because I don’t have a list of reasons, it just is. There have been many times on many websites where the moment they let me choose between I choose pages. I have never chosen scroll. This is something that just bothers me, it just does.
Well, I’ve tried to accommodate any concern, the biggest one to be able to get back to the exact place in the list where you’ve been before, when you use the browser’s “back” function. But this is working perfectly now, after like a full day of work.
Honestly, I can’t see any reason why it would still be frustrating. You keep comparing to other sites, which have a different concept (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr). On GSS it’s just a simple list. Nothing dynamic, which could be the reason for some frustration.
I have stated my reasons, and I’m going to keep using the paging on most other pages, because I see that it makes some sense if you want to sort the list or browse your stories for different aspects. Which was never possible on the main page anyway.
I’m willing to listen, but unless you can give me some example of a use case which doesn’t work at all, is more frustrating or even just not a nice user experience, I’m gonna stick to this. “It’s just bothering me” doesn’t cut it, because there are always people bothered by something and you cannot make everything perfect for everybody.
I can definitely understand why someone might find the changes to be disconcerting at first. Heck, when I initially saw it was I like…I’m not sure about this…
Pages do look a little neater and - in my opinion - make it easier to track which new stories I’ve already looked at. Plus there is something slightly unsatisfying about never being able to hit the bottom of the page 
HOWEVER, the more I’ve fiddled with the new layout, the more I’ve come to realize it is just better overall. The functionality is improved, and where it really shines is in the ability to scroll through top rated and random stories, which is a great way to uncover hidden gems in the archive.
I think it might just take some getting used to. Change can be scary 
There’s one little aspect I haven’t mention, yet.
Many authors kept complaining that their story is practically “of the radar” for most readers, once it has scrolled off the first page. They even complained that GSS is getting too many new stories too frequently. And it’s true, most casual users never even bother to look at the second page for more stories.
Simply putting more stories on the first page (by default or optionally) slowed down the loading of that page significantly and also caused a heavy hit on the server. The endless list seemed to be the perfect solution for both issues. And the option that I could use this to add an endless list to “random” and “top rated” was a welcome bonus, too.
I would suggest that infinite scroll makes things ‘lost’ quicker.
I use page to guess where a story is… three days ago… roughly 3 pages. Its MUCH easier. I see zero benefit in infinite scrolls.
We all appreciate your efforts. But respectfully this one insnt an improvement.
First, I’m largely in favor of the scrolling view for the reasons Martin has suggested, so one more vote in the Yea column.
What i think is causing a lot of angst from what I see in the comments is that people want to be able to easily find a story they just read to be able to reread it. Even though things shift and update, people are relying on memory to find a story. I personally often neglect to favorite or bookmark a story, though I’ve begun to do so more often. And I’ve definitely had moments where I hunted for a story not knowing enough details to really search for it.
I think a good deal of this could be solved by adding a history, just a simple list of stories I’ve clicked on. That way, the list can update all it wants but if you saw a story that interested you, you can just refer to your list. Not sure if that’s complicated but I think it could alleviate a lot of concerns.
First, to you, @topaz172 and all other “friends of paging” (@Benz, @Heru_Kane…), I do hear you. I want to make the experience as comfortable for everyone, but that also means to make compromises.
First of all, can you live with the “More Stories” page (All Stories - Gay Spiral Stories)? This doesn’t show series (as the main page) but individual stories instead. But I could easily change that or make this switchable. Is that page missing anything that would bring you back your preferred experience?
You could use that page as your new landing point on GSS, if you really prefer it that much.
Otoh, I’d like to ask you to try and give the change some time to set in. It’s quite human to be a bit of a creature of habit, and change - especially if you can’t see the immediate benefit yourself - is sometimes not easy to accept. But give yourself some time to adapt.
If you see anything that really bothers you, please tell me, and I’ll try to fix that somehow.
About the “remember where I’ve been” issue:
I think paging is a really poor substitute for that. The green star is an attempt of mine to show, which stories have been added since your last visit - but this is only working if you allow cookies to stick - i.e. an active “Inkognito mode” practically disables that feature (I could move that information into the user account, so it still works for logged on users, though. Would you like me to do that?)
As @The_Influencer said, Bookmarks are better suited for this. I could maybe add a way to set Bookmarks directly in the list (without the need to open the story) and I could also add a button on the header of the list, which scrolls it down to the latest bookmarked story. Would that help?
A history of “clicked on” stories would be rather DB intense and since I don’t know if you really READ or just clicked a story, I don’t see the benefit, tbh. I’d prefer the bookmark solution described above.
I think I have implemented the perfect solution for everybody who prefers paging:
If you click on “More Stories” on the main page (or select Stories->All Series & Stories, or follow this link: All Series - Gay Spiral Stories) you’ll get a new page which pretty much works like the old main page, just better - but without the “Newsflash” and other stuff exclusive to the main page.
It lists the latest published series, as you’ve been used to on the old main page, and with paging of course.
As an additional bonus, you can sort the table by Author, Series Name or Publishing Date. And you can look for series starting with a given letter. None of this was possible on the old main page.
The usual filters also work, of course.
I hope this makes everybody happy.
I still would ask you to go through the main page if you access GaySpiralStories, otherwise you’ll be cut off from any news, challenges etc.
More Stories sounds exactly what I want to see. In fact for it to be perfect I would want More Stories to be my main option when I join the site because, as mentioned, scrolling is not for me. Which is why I would like for the news and such to be presented there too. I would like to have it keep my preference so when I join it knows to go there.
Oh I really like the current version of the More Stories/“All Series” page! I actually think it’s great as is, and that Martin did an absolutely perfect job with it. 
I feel strongly that the “All Series/Stories” page should remain visually clean and announcement-free because that part of the site is (functionally and visually) a sortable archive of the site. And I think it’s a wonderful & useful addition as is – the clutter of the “Announcements” would make very poor sense on that page, and undermine its usefulness to me and its design.
Personally, I have no problem with loading the front page to see any News, and then doing a single mouse click to navigate to a clean, announcement-free archive of all the stories listed in reverse-chronological order (which can then be re-ordered by other criteria of my choosing). I feel like it’s just so little work on my part to do this button-click when I visit the site; whereas the custom-tailored version suggested by Heru feels like it would create this nightmarish amount of work on Martin’s part, and I don’t know that it’s really necessary.
In case someone says “well, if Martin didn’t want all this extra work, then he should have left the site as is and I wouldn’t be complaining,” I just want to emphasize: Martin’s current update fixed a lot of running problems. The scrolling on the front page – whether you are a fan of it, or someone who (like me) often disables scrolling on default – is a really elegant solution to some major accumulating issues. I understood the purpose of the update immediately, and I appreciated Martin’s forethought in implementing it for the front page before those issues got any worse. (And I say this even as someone who personally does not like endless scrolling in general.)
I just want to say I think @Corin has done a top class job. I love the endless scrolling and think your doing a great job at helping everyone access this site in a way that works. We really appreciate it mate
