Sorry, just had to get your attention. I don't mean the actual forum sucks. This one of the few places where such a diverse and large group of intelligent minds (for the most part at least) can gather to discuss news, politics, science, arts, and more.

But the format of this forum is ridiculous. The views/rating system is completely uninterpretable, the threading is ugly and cumbersome, and to browse the multitude of interesting topics is almost impossible. (But the within frame quick reply is very cool)

Any chance we'll see some changes? Most forums have a well established set up (like vBulletin) that Slate would do well to imitate.

The views/rating system is too susceptible to abuse to be of any value. The Fray Editor seems to be of the opinion that using the ratings system and more options feature is a workable substitute for actual editing. Problem is,the posters(and the crap they post),which one might try to weed out using the more options feature,are many of the very ones abusing the rating system.

okay, the views/rating feature is worthless, but the about user feature (click on the nickname) does have a views counter that seems to work and now (at long last) provides a reply counter. The views counter provides a count of how many times a post has been opened; we never had that in the old fray; I have posts with only one reply and three views and I have posts with no replies, yet it was opened a couple hundred times; that helps me to better understand when the fray is reading me but ignoring the hell out of me versus just ignoring the hell out of me.

The threads window is still way too small and the checkmarks don't show up in the threads or the about user feature; but this new editor picks board is working fabulously and the rich text editor features that are provided are all in good working order.

But it seems that reader count is dwindling since msn.com dropped Slate from their homepage. So all this effort might end up going for nought if the geniuses over at Washington Post don't wake up and find another mainstream feed for the magazine... I hear AOL has a lot of users.

In no measure do we allow the ratings system to substitute for our own judgment as editors.

While imperfect, it helps both to introduce a democratic element into the Fray (as a counterbalance/compliment to editor checkmarks, or their absence) and to provide a crude guide to new readers about which posts/content merit their time and energy.

frayeditor05: The idea is excellent, the execution not so much. The rating system literally at times doesn't work, and at other times is either wrong or misused. Other formats of discussion forums have the same feature, are easier to use and less prone to abuse. Just a thought...