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Aura

@MOOMANiBE

Animation Lead on Wanderstop! She/Her & Transgenderrific! Past: Radial Games, Gaslamp Games

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staff
@staff
staff
@staff

introducing @artist-alley

the two most common points of feedback we get about artist alley are

  • I wish I could share listings onto my timeline
  • I wish i could keep up with new listings

we've spent a long time thinking about potential engineering solutions to these problems. they're great points of feedback and clear ways the product can improve. we'd love to make these changes to artist alley someday. with our limited engineering resources though it's easy to make perfect the enemy of good. with that thought in mind, it became obvious that we already have a pretty good solution to both of points of feedback.
posts on cohost can be shared onto your timeline! pages can be followed so you can get updates right to your home page! it's not perfect, but it's Pretty Good

check it out at @artist-alley

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in reply to @staff's post:

dog
@dog

This is a great idea! Thank you.

I wonder if it's possible to style the posts to look more like the artist alley ads? Give them a little CSS crime button and all that.

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Sciman101
@Sciman101

Y'know what that makes a lot of sense! Is this system automated or does someone have to manually make each post? I guess as long as you're manually approving them, copying into a template isnt' too much more work

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staff
@staff

my footnote broke because of the readmore so please visualize a footnote after "Pretty Good" that says "please imagine a large panning google earth shot here as the music swells ala Jon Bois / Secret Base video"

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Puptini
@Puptini

This is a spectacular update. I am really very bad at remembering to manually check artist's alley every week, and I feel like I miss a lotta stuff because of that. Having listings directly on my feed will be great!

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eramdam
@eramdam

I guess having a “permalink” on artist alley boxes in the artist alley page that redirects to the corresponding post would be a nice addition too.

(I’m almost sure it’s an “easier said than done” thing but still I wanted to suggest it in case it didn’t come up yet)

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lori
@lori

Well they also said they wouldn't sell ads, if you're going to sell ads you need to also have metrics. Metrics are pretty important for ads in ways that they aren't for social media interactions. You do in fact need to know what the ads are doing for you to know if it is worth spending money for them. You don't need to know how many likes you got to know if it's worth posting funny jokes anymore.

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Lollie
@Lollie

On "sharing listings to timeline": Sure, anyone can post about a listing, but that's different to sharing a listing. Listings don't have direct links, so you can't copy and paste a link to a listing and embed it in a new post (this is an issue in itself imo). So how do you share a listing?

  • Go to the account of the person who posted the listing and look for their own post about it, if they've made one? (Takes time and not always guaranteed)
  • Take a screenshot of the listing, and copy the link that it directs to if necessary? (Kind of a pain)
  • Copy the image and text, and repost the whole listing? (Yuck)

All of the above is friction. Sharing a normal post is just a couple clicks away, but listings have these extra steps in the way, and they're all awkward.

So... having an account that you can follow, that posts new listings as they go live? It's not perfect, but it's nice. It provides a "set and forget" solution for keeping up with new Artist Alley listings, an account that posts new listings, inserting them into your feed in a way that is simple and opt-in - and they're just posts, so you can share them like any other post.

Again, not perfect. I'd argue that listings should be directly shareable - like direct links, or share buttons that repost their respective @artist-alley posts. You still have to dig through @artist-alley to find the right post to share. But it's nice to have.

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waitwotno
@waitwotno

A little feedback on the artistalley posts is that they contain a bit of unnecessary information / formatting. Eg. "New listing by x" title of the post then proceeds to repeat that its by "x" in the body, and a whole seperate line for each section headers. Why not post them similar to the ad, including the custom text used for the call to action link?

Something like:
User posted a mature listing
This is the description for the artist alley listing.
Call to action

That's all it could be, and reflects better to how it's originally formatted. (Bonus points for the css crime too if added)

Really like the simple solution to just repost the listings as a new posting project though. Kind of defeats the purpose if they don't expire since the page doesn't also designate itself as an archive of sorts.

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waitwotno
@waitwotno

oh yes - you are totally right. The title is the link to the post, and so you need a seperate one for a clickable username.
Re: the format - something to also keep in mind is that the format should also be shareable. I think keeping it to the original CSS format of the AA post is ideal, but a slight variation would be cool!

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thewaether
@thewaether

DISCLAIMER: I want to note that I pay for cohost plus and intend to keep paying, so I'm not just talking shit:

The "fix" of artists alley postings not getting attention, by giving them a feed that just puts them on your timeline, is laughably bad, I'm sorry. that's just paying $10 to insert something into the feed. I can insert something into the feed for free.

there's an entire sidebar of the screen under "cohost corner" where this stuff could easily fit. I know you are afraid of outright calling these things ads because you're afraid of the term and the behaviour, but if it's worth paying for, it's going to have to behave like an ad

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zlchxo
@zlchxo

It's not supposed to directly make the Artist Alley a better purchase (I think everyone can agree it's a tough sell right now), it's supposed to make AA more visible to end users who want to opt in, which also has the bonus effect of giving it further reach. Maybe some day we'll see them randomized, I wouldn't be opposed to it (opt-in, opt-out, c+! enabled opt-out, whatever) but I think if the history of the web up until now has proven anything what with the adoption of ad algorithms, seeing something because people you know were into it might just be a better traffic driver than totally random ads.

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AndrewNReinke
@AndrewNReinke

Was there a reason for not allowing comments on any given artist alley post? Or is this a thing and posters get to decide if comments are enabled?
I would interact with it more if I could give thoughts to creatives per post.

I appreciate it for how it's a nice window to easily discover works from fellow hoomans. Thank you for the work!

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