Wow, am I glad I found this tribe instead of the newlook tribe which is just getting ugly at this point. I appreciate their concerns and agree with many of the criticisms of the upcoming changes, but the tone has become unbecoming an evolved online society.

Having now read your previous comments in this tribe, I believe in and celebrate what your are trying to do here. I long ago labled social networking websites like tribe as examples of good internet, and credit it with dramatically changing the way I live my 3D life. I hope that it spreads beyond the San Francisco creative community who are already living a good part of what tribe is doing.

I appreciate the forum allowed here and would like to offer my thoughts on the new GUI in hopefully a more rational and sane matter knowing that you all have thought intelligently about what you are trying to do. I will refrain from commenting on the look except to say that red doesn't seem very inviting, but I like the layout of the top of the page and having the list of "my" pages accessable on the left.

My main criteria in judging the changes is whether I find it easier or harder to access the information I use on a daily basis. How many clicks It takes to get to a given page is vital to the usability and the thing I loved about the way tribe has been set up is that you were able to fit a lot of information onto the homepage. I understand that one of the goals is to make it easier for the more ludite amongst us and that the "old" page was too cluttered for those people, but I'm finding the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction.

The first and most important thing I look at is my tribes list. I have over 50 tribes, and read about a dozen every day. Some tribes fill up so fast that I can't keep up with them, and some have so little traffic that they live unread for months at a time. The new page provides such a comparably small amount of space for my list of tribes that I need to make 2 or 3 clicks to get to a specific tribe. The beauty of the old page was that it was all there. all of it. I could see the whole list.

The other potion of the homepage that I refer to is my friends list. Seeing who is online was what made tribe personal. having those faces changing daily and hourly reminded me of the friends I had and provided inspiration for get togethers and conversations. The new homepage seems devoid of any life. Its all words.

Providing more access to what my friends are posting is a very good idea, but I wonder if combining events, listings, blogs, and so on into one list doesn't do away with having seperate types of forums in the first place. What is the difference between a blog and an events listing if they show up in the same list? hard to way the pro and con on this one.

I very much appreciate the reformating of individual threads in tribes. Providing more width for them is an improvement. I 'm finding them much easier to read.

Trying to balance the wants and desires of new users and established users is a very difficult task and I don't envy the position you are in, but am glad you are taking a good hard look at it. The fear here amongst the rants I'm reading and one I share is that tribe is going to become a lowest common denominator website, stamping out what brought so many of here in the first place:the freedom of individuality and creativity. I think the key can be found in customization. Follow what you started in the last round of changes. bring the module format into the homepage. allow the basic user to only see a few tribes if they don't want to be overloaded. Allow the power user to have access to everything from one page. You could create "experience level" based templates as a starting point. your new page for the newbies, and a more exploded version for the power user. let the new user have at the top suggested friends and tribes, let the experienced amongst us to do away with that, or at least move it to the bottom, freeing up room.

Alright, that's my 2 cents.

thanks for what you are doing. you'll find the balance I'm sure

Jared