Popup on Home: Slow Loading Window - It's important!

Hey Chess.com! Today, September 10th, you may get a strange "loading" popup on your Chess.com Home page. There is a reason for it. 

Today is "Battle for the Net" and many websites are participating (netflix, reddit, twitter, etc). See: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/10/internet-slowdown-go-slow-google-youtube-net-neutrality

You see, the US government is trying to decide if big internet providers can treat websites differently. If they are allowed to, then you might have to either get slower speeds, or pay more for faster access to your favorite sites. Or, they will charge companies like Chess.com to provide faster speed to our customers (which will make Chess.com either slower or more expensive). 

If you believe that internet access should be EQUAL for everyone and all websites, please act! If you are in the USA, please go to https://www.battleforthenet.com/ to participate. If you are outside of the USA, you can also help there. And remember that Chess.com IS in the USA and will be impacted, and that this law may also spread to your country. 

Anyway, I apologize for the inconvenience. If it weren't a super important issue, I wouldn't bother you. But it is. If you close that popup, you should never see it again. 

Thanks for understanding!

I was on the phone and thought I would go crazy. :)

Thanks for this explanation Erik. Now I feel sorry I closed it as quickly as possible. Haven't seen it on Reddit yet though.

thanks for information. ofcourse it must be equal. we will act.

i informed all Team Turkey members about this. We will give support as much as possible.

http://www.chess.com/groups/forumview/oumlneml-duyuru

                  On the cover of this week's  "The Economist"  is a picture of a chessboard with a question about the slow game. The're comparing chess to Putin in the Ukraine.

              "Battle for The Net" day  ???     Who declared a war without MY permission ??    Those dirty rotten scroundrells. This means WAR

I saw CyberSensei's sir Avatar first .

Thanks erik sir 

As much as I agree with the cause, I have never even been to the US so it really would have been better to have only shown this US government petition to members connecting from within the US. There is a world outside of America too (in fact most of it is there).

but if Internet access slows down for Chess.com we're all gonna be affected...

Yes but a non-US citizen signing a petition directed at the US government isn't going to count for anything.

you must be right...

I have already saw it and signed it!

Have no problems in Germany....

okok,

I thought I had a virus in my browser

I didn't have this problem, but I will think about wether to or not do something about the slowness

If enough Foreign citizens signup and protest, then those who are in control will realize it is not just USA citizens that they are being affected by their slowdown on the internet!

                 This has to do with the net going up for sale next year. The US doesn't want to own it anymore.  Nobody ges on the net anymore, its too crowded.

I'm not sure the most appropriate place to put this note. I have made a cursory review of the new site and have some thoughts. 

1) The new interface is very nice. Easy to see everything, big, metro-style interface is nice, contrasting colors are good.

2) The information architecture is still VERY problematic. And this note is a prime example. It's unreasonably difficult to find conversations that I regularly take part in. For instance, I am in the Pup Pack Ladder and every time I want to issue a challenge or check the standings, I have to click around using trial and error to find those threads. Same with this thread. I'm in the Brawl in the Backwoods Tournament - same thing. 

Finding old matches takes some trial and error clicking around too. The ones featured in the right sidebar area seem to be "featured" with no rhyme or reason. They aren't the most recently completed, they are just random, recently completed games.

The "Home" button should take you to the main Chess.com landing page. Your personal page should have a label like "My Chess.com" or "My Page" or something of that nature. Sometimes I want to go back to the home page to try the puzzle of the day and I always have to remember to use the logo instead of the "Home" button.

In the main nav, "Play" and "Learn" are great. "Share" doesn't make any sense. The taxonomy is wrong. The topics inside it are disparate, but you already have a "More" section which is essentially a junk drawer. The "Forums" button is okay, although the entire forums feature needs to be rethought and reorganized. "More" is, like I said, just a junk drawer. I would look at analytics to find out how many people actually use those features and drop the ones that aren't being used. If there are some that you really want to push, they should be moved out. You actually have plenty of horizontal space (and with the new design, you've opened up even more space) so it shouldn't be too problematic to split things out a bit more.

That's the high level stuff. I'd love to really dig in and offer some solid IA and content recommendations but this is what I do for a living so I can really only give you a little bit for free.  

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