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by stickfigure 2186 days ago
I would add - as a patron, the UI is horrible.

The one thing I'd like, when I subscribe to someone, is a list of patron-only content so that I can slowly go back and watch/listen to/read past material. Instead the only option is an infinite-scroll style blog roll, which makes it extremely hard to go back and pick up where you left off. It's also impossible to navigate in anything other than inverse chronological order. Atrocious.

4 comments

I'm fairly sure some people are clicking the heart (like?) button on every post they read to know when they can stop scrolling.
There is an option for normal chronological ordering on the posts page though I can't comment on the mobile version. A curious thing I noticed was every time I loaded more posts it would take longer than previously. Going through hundreds of posts like this would result in waiting for minutes for the next set of posts to load in.
I don’t follow what you mean by wanting a list of this content, then you go onto describe the list that they give you.

If it was just paginated and let you sort forward or reverse chronologically, is that all you’re asking for?

Ok, I'll go into detail.

I recently subscribed to (patronized?) Hand Tool Rescue. His patron-only content is narrated versions of his restoration videos, which typically run 20+ minutes long. I have time to watch one maybe every few days.

To go back and watch all of his old stuff:

1) Visit patreon.com. I'm logged in, so it takes me to /creator-home. It looks like this: https://monosnap.com/file/PtG4Robbscnt7fns0omVO9a2D3IQul There are no links to who I'm following or content to consume.

2) After scratching my head a few minutes, click on my tiny persona icon top right, then click on "Posts from my creators". Now I'm looking at a blog roll of all my creators. There's a tantalizing "Patron Only Content" filter here, but that's for "all creators". There's a list of my creators on the left though, so...

3) Click on "Hand Tool Rescue" on the left side. Finally I'm looking at posts from HTR. But now there's no filter for Patron Only Content! WTF?

4) Let's see, where what was the last video I watched? Scroll down. And scroll. And scroll. Click the "More..." button. Scroll more. And scroll. "More..." again. Oh, here's where I left off. I think.

5) Oh, this is a 3-part series. Scroll down some more to the first part.

6) Open video in a new tab, watch the first couple minutes. Oh wait, I did already watch this part. Thankfully I didn't close the tab in #4 (learned that the hard way). Scroll back to the next part and watch it.

This is a trainwreck of UX. It's also pretty nearly my only interaction with patreon.com. I discover content on youtube and through friends, and rarely add/remove creators anyway.

All I want is to see is a dense easily navigable list of patron only content! Youtube is excellent for this - just a list of thumbnails. I really wish I could just pay HTR through Youtube.

BTW - before someone posts "You can sort inverse chronologically" - yes, I now see that you can do that. It still doesn't reduce the total scrolling. It actually makes it somewhat worse, because HTR's first couple years of videos weren't narrated. Ugh.

Not GP, but the web interface is bog slow at loading posts and scrolling the page (once enough posts are loaded). Also, basic navigation is broken by the infinite scroll, so it's easy to lose your place in the stream and have to waste time looking for it again.

As a workaround, there's an option to filter posts by month and year. I work my way backwards a month at a time.

You could keep the e-mail in a "to do" or "to read" state and get to it this way later.
I interpreted their comment to be about content created before they became a patron, so there would not be an email.
Ah, right, of course. Had a brain fart there.