I was planning on writing about this, but have been sick in bed all day, and then T.Whid of MTAA did a much better job of reviewing the features than I would have from behind this haze of flu, so here comes a re-blog, via their site:
A superb upgrade of the new media community site
Some of the changes:
1. A major change (for RHIZOME_RAW email list subscribers) is the breaking up of the list into 3 different categories: discussion, opportunities and an arts calendar. This required me to redo my email filters a tad, but also gives me the option to filter categories I don’t want or filter them more granularly.
2. The member pages have been transformed into profiles pages with lots more features: enhanced portfolio section (unclear of whether the portfolio entries get added to the artbase automatically), ability to upload audio and video (very cool) and include the feed from your blog. The organizational improvements to the profile page makes it much easier to read and see how the person is interacting with the platform.
3. There has been a major visual re-design. The front page is easier to scan quickly and is laid out more logically. The top navigation has been improved.
4. The discussion board is much better. One can now drill way back in time very quickly. The only problem is that it seems to go back only to 2002. Also, it would be nice to filter these pages (Max Herman is just as annoying now as he was then) but I suppose that’s what the advanced search is for. Which brings me to…
…Bugs. I did run into some bugs. The biggest bug being that the advanced search form isn’t working (I’ve been waiting and waiting this feature). I’m hoping to see major speed improvements in the search. Also with search, it would be nice to have the same sort of pagination in the search results as we get in the discussion area.
But enough of bug talk. This is a major, major upgrade for Rhizome and a big improvement. Lauren, Patrick and Marisa should be very proud. Congrats!
