Tuesday 20 October 2009

Gripes with BeliefNet.com

I've only been using BeliefNet five minutes (I've known of it a long time, and have occasionally read linked articles, but I'm only just making a concerted attempt to familiarize myself with it), and already several things frustrate me.

The first two frustrations are to do with design and user-friendliness. The third is a philosophical gripe.

First, there's an annoying floating bar at the bottom of every page. It reduces the size of the page and makes it too busy.

Second, I can see a full article followed by a few comments, or a preview of an article followed by all of the comments, but I can't see a whole article followed by all of the comments. This makes cross-referencing between the article and the comments difficult.

Third, is it just me, or is the ethos that jumps out of the front page unbelievably crass? I get the impression someone thought religion, faith and spirituality (all interpreted in the broadest possible sense) were really good, and therefore a splurge of opinion and inspiration from every conceivable spiritual and religious source could only be a good thing.

These are just a few things that immediately struck me. Having said that, I'm sure there are good things about BeliefNet, and I've subscribed to a few blogs in that hope.

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