Here are my top 5 changes needed to make TV.com better than it currently is:

1. Increase the number of friends' blogs listed in the right side box to 10 or more. Currently, it is at 4, and we are more likely to miss new blogs if several new ones are posted. Similarly, including how many new/unread comments there are will help not only the blog author, but also regular visitors who enjoy reading comments.

2. Eliminate the blog notices from the "My Feed" box on the left. We already knew they posted a new blog since the blog box on the right told us so, and it included the blog's title. Make "My Feed" have new news articles from my favorite shows. Currently, "My Feed" includes two news articles from April 2007. Not exactly "hot of the press" information!

3. Restore the 0.1 increments in the show/episode/person ratings so we can better grade them. Rounding to 0.5 makes everything less precise, and limits our choices. Additionally, the rating bar doesn't show any numbers until one is chosen. We're forced to use the colors and smiley faces to predict what number that is.

4. Bring back all the wonderfully creative show banners/pictures that Freaksngeeks (and others) created over the years. The new ones, with different size standards, are boring publicity photos, but the old ones had thought and character to them. Reward all that work by putting them back on every show's page. Please.

5. Add more choices for crew credits/positions. There are always new crew jobs being created, but never a way to put them into the crew list. Allow not only different options for the various producing credits, but also writing variations too. A fill-in-the-blank box for unique crew positions would allow us to include their exact contribution to the program. We want this to be the best database of television, and limiting choices makes it a jumbled, inexact mess.

I could've complained about the vast whitespace of the new site, or the lack of smilies in comments, or the light grey colored font used everywhere, but I could live with those for awhile. The five above are site structure issues that relate more to the data and user experience here to TV.com.

I've been contributing since the days of TVTome, and I want to see the site get better and better. But the regular "upgrades" always create more problems than expected. Things need to evolve, rather than make it all pretty and ignore the deep-seeded issues. There are plenty of things to improve, and the last version was well on its way to greatness. And now, we're back at another beginning. I'll stay tuned for the next episode.