Thoughtstreams Bugs and Wishes

It would be nice to be able to rename streams.

(Speculation) an ability to create "subjects" under which multiple users could group their streams. (How do I easily find streams from other users that deal with music, for example?)

In Chrome (on XP at least :P) I can't upload an image named 2013-02-conf-ref.png but I can upload an image named convref.png.

It would be great if we could reorder cards. Streams should be viewable as "chrono order" and as "final order", so readers could easily switch back and forth. Streams would ideally default to "final order".

My current thinking is that everyone will get an obscure email address they can post to (different for each user).

My first response to this was, what problem would it solve?

Post-via-email came in handy occasionally on Tumblr and Flickr when I was using a Blackberry. There were no BB apps for those services, and the browser was way too cumbersome.

ThoughtStreams's design works very well on modern mobile browsers. I'm hard-pressed to think of a scenario where using an email client would give you a better experience than just using the browser on an iOS, Android or Windows Phone device (or any desktop environment). Legacy phone users would probably benefit the most.

On the other hand, post-via-email could give TS something like an app experience when combined with Drafts or something similar.

Biggest drawback of post-via-email: no success/failure indicators. You have to take the extra step of checking the site to actually confirm that your post made it through, and that it ended up where you wanted it to.

Without the use of an app like Drafts to help me mediate the sending of these emails, I'd probably be too concerned about leaving a typo in the subject line of one of my emails, thus unintentionally creating a new stream and leaving one of my thoughts orphaned in it.

Inbox

Inbox functionality is straightforward but somewhat unclear; I had to experiment with it in order to actually understand how it works.

The "instructions" disappear as soon as you create a card in your inbox. Might be better for them to be visible permanently in a sidebar.

They read:

"You can create cards here to capture thoughts you don't yet have a stream for or if you're not sure what stream to put the thought in."

Additional information would be handy here:

• Inbox is a private stream
• Once a thought is placed in the inbox, you can use it by reposting it to another stream
• Once you repost a thought in your inbox, it is removed from the inbox.

Exploring ThoughtStreams content

The user list appears to have been removed, making it impossible to explore the streams of users that are not currently on the front page.

In addition to restoring the user list (in a more prominent/suitable position than before), it would be good to have

• List of all streams in order of last update
• Stream search

Using TS via mobile doesn't seem to have gotten any easier. There's no way to post via an app, and using mobile Safari is kind of dodgy, often resulting in double posts etc. I don't remember how to reproduce specific "unfortunate behaviours" but it's bad enough that if I have thoughts I want to put on TS I'll delay until I'm on a laptop.

On my "Your Thoughts" page, I'm given a lot of space to drop a fresh thought, and my collection of streams is relegated to a thin column on the right side with no way to customize how they are arranged spatially.

This "What's on Your Mind" lets me type a thought that ends up right on my main "Your Thoughts" page. I avoid using it at all costs because there's no way to file thoughts entered here into a different stream later on. The thoughts just sit there. What am I supposed to do with a bunch of random thoughts? The ability to keep separate streams of thoughts is the whole point of the site.

If I'm going to type out a thought on TS, my first instinct is to either start a new stream or put it in an appropriate already-existing stream. I can understand having an "inbox" of thoughts to be sorted later, but I have to be able to actually sort them later.

It also needs to be clear — where, if anywhere, do these thoughts show up besides on my "Your Thoughts" page? Can other people see them?

Unread counts on the Public Site: I can't express how disheartening it is to have all of ThoughtStreams become just another giant inbox with red number badgers shooting up into the hundreds and thousands.

Maybe let me subscribe to specific streams or users. Not the whole damn site (at least not by default). There's just no way that scales and probably almost no one wants it anyway.

@joeld wrote above:

there's no way to file thoughts entered here into a different stream later on

Yes there is, we just obviously haven't been clear about it. If you "repost" from Your Thoughts to a stream, it moves it to that stream.

As to where they appear for others, they are under the "General Thoughts" tab on a user's page.

It would be nice to be able to rename streams.