2. Clicking on the banner results in going to a new home page (What's New), which is dominated by action items. No intro materials on the Caucus are found here.

3. Home page left sidebar has been simplified. There is now an Essays section, which lists all essays, by date or popularity, as well as an editor's picks set.

4. The top menu bar has been updated substantially. "Home" has been split into "Home" and "About".

5. (beginning) an updated Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) area.

February 4, 2007

Updated the "What's Classic" list on the front page. I tried to balance a presentation of what is currently popular, what is interesting (lots of votes, or is very funny), what is important (I exercise some webmaster's perogative here), and what makes a good introduction to what this site is about. I suspect this list could use some tweaking, and everyone is going to have their own view of what belongs in this list.

Also updated the consensus page for essays, to reflect the new voting system, and added complete lists of essays and planks to the What's New area.

January 2007

Two very big changes:

1. A new voting system. I have replaced the old Approval Votes for planks and 1-5 consensus votes for essays with a -5 to +5 Range Vote. See rangevoting.org for the heavy duty voting theory arguments as to why Range Voting is better. Seriously, this is important!

Also note the new one-touch widget I developed to implement the range vote. Voting should go faster, and it is now straightforward to vote on multiple things on the same page. This is important because...

2. New Platform Format System. There was a good deal of consensus last go around that we should scrap the old platform and rewrite from scratch. But how? How do we vote on both format and content? The solution? Have a directory for each propsed format. Then, have a file for each plank in that format, with multiple options for each plank on the same page. If you think the -5 to 5 range is too fine grained, you would be right if we were judging things in isolation. But once confronted with several very good (or bad) options on the same page, methinks you will find a use for the finer grained voting system.

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What's New (2007)