New Board - Props and Slops

[llamabeast]

It would be nice if it would be possible to at least retain the ability to edit the OP's of each thread, (This would also solve the MP issue mentioned before.

This is a very good idea.

[Mindi]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I wasn't trying to be unhelpful Mindi. I'm sorry if it came across that way. I understand this must be a pretty rotten day for you.

No I wouldn't say that, in some ways it's a great day for Shrapnel, but I'm not going to tolerate a lot of nit picking considering what we've went through and what all is working RIGHT. Many other sites that do conversions like this take many more days or even weeks to be back up again. We did this in less than 3 days with 3 to 4 people at a time working on it! This is a great accomplishment but that also means we're exhausted and are still working on it so patience and kindness go a long way.

If it is possible (and of course I don't know that it is), there is a good deal of room for rearrangement. The avatar pictures don't need to be so big (the old size was fine), and the graphs could be placed alongside all the text in the top right rather than below it. Finally there is a bit of space underneath the main header which just contains the post symbol, generally a bit of paper. This could be incorporated somewhere in the main header. All those measures together would make a big difference.

As someone else said in the last couple of weeks, we have one of the smallest allowed avatar sizes of any board, so the fact that it's 32 pixels higher now is not a big amount of space IMO. As for putting other things across the top of the postbit instead of under the right stats, there are some issues with that as user IDs are different in length for different users which means that space is variable and will probably look a mess if too much stuff is put up there. It may even push out the side of the table throwing the whole template off. As far as the line with the post symbo and post time, if you look on the right hand side of that same line there are other important symbols and functionality, including the box for moderators to click to use moderation for that post. I don't know if that can even be changed in vb or if it's that big of a deal to try to change all the templates to do so.

With regard to the bookmarks - yes, sorry, that is my personal opinion, and I only repeated it here to open it to debate. Sorry if that was an aggravating thing to do. I still feel that they would be used just as often if placed below the Quick Reply box - I'm certainly not suggesting they be removed! - and that would generally add to the ease of use of the site.

You should be lucky I put them at the bottom of a thread and not the top.

After ending up doing a lot of technical support over the last year or two with my Dom3 server, I merely venture to suggest you may be being overoptimistic. It's not a big deal though, if people aren't sure they can just post a question on the board and they will quickly find help. So disregard that point.

Please tell me what is so hard. You click on the txt, it opens a box and asks you were you want to save it on your computer. Once saved, you open it....again, I'm not seeing what's so hard. Especially coming from anyone who has uploaded or downloaded a file before. It's a basic computer skill that anyone learns after a short time online.

[Zeldor]

Mindi:

It looks like only Dominions MP players are posting here. The thing is that game is turn-based strategy and is played by e-mail. That requires some other communication method for diplomacy and trade. You just cannot wait few days for an in-game reply. E-mails don't work for obvious reasons, both privacy and easy of use - you know who is playing that nation, so you simply PM him, instead of PMing him for e-mail address

That is quite mature community that does not need to be poked in the eyes with that ugly childish addons [btw, that women in new 'I want my dominions' ad looks like she needs some medical attention]. There should be an option to get rid of that bookmarks tab, also that strang xp/activity bars. We are not 11 old children that need to write and link everything we do.

Width is the big issue too, probably around 90% monitors sold now are widescreen now and standard size now is 19-22". And people want to make use of it, not get squeezed by tiny text, tiny amount of threads and cluttered space.

Everyone here values all work done by Shrapnel and Illwinter and we want better forum both for you and us. But the thing is that if it stays like that we can expect to see a creation of new forum [for example on llamaserver] and migration of MP community there. And they would just ignore Shrapnel forums and all those ads, so no exposure and no sales, as you said.

[Mindi]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Mindi:

It looks like only Dominions MP players are posting here. The thing is that game is turn-based strategy and is played by e-mail. That requires some other communication method for diplomacy and trade. You just cannot wait few days for an in-game reply. E-mails don't work for obvious reasons, both privacy and easy of use - you know who is playing that nation, so you simply PM him, instead of PMing him for e-mail address

That is quite mature community that does not need to be poked in the eyes with that ugly childish addons [btw, that women in new 'I want my dominions' ad looks like she needs some medical attention]. There should be an option to get rid of that bookmarks tab, also that strang xp/activity bars. We are not 11 old children that need to write and link everything we do.

Width is the big issue too, probably around 90% monitors sold now are widescreen now and standard size now is 19-22". And people want to make use of it, not get squeezed by tiny text, tiny amount of threads and cluttered space.

Everyone here values all work done by Shrapnel and Illwinter and we want better forum both for you and us. But the thing is that if it stays like that we can expect to see a creation of new forum [for example on llamaserver] and migration of MP community there. And they would just ignore Shrapnel forums and all those ads, so no exposure and no sales, as you said.

As I told llamabeast, kindness and patience would go far in being heard. Threats will get you no where. And I would dare say that social networking is not 'childish'.....it may not be your cup of tea, but it's the predominant type of community on the internet these days.

And again, I have a wide screen monitor as well, but I still go to many sites that have fixed width. Most people design sites with the predominant screen resolution in mind at the time. That resolution right now is 1024.

[llamabeast]

Thanks again for your responses Mindi. Just one small clarification:

As far as the line with the post symbo and post time, if you look on the right hand side of that same line there are other important symbols and functionality, including the box for moderators to click to use moderation for that post.

Sorry, I meant the bit just below the poster's name, rather than the bit above it. That seems only to contain the bit of paper.

You should be lucky I put them at the bottom of a thread and not the top.

[Zeldor]

Mindi:

No threats intended Just some advices, I did see some online communities collapsing in my life and I really don't want to see anything bad happening with the great thing we have here.

[archaeolept]

Christ almighty.

the forums have gone from being ugly and functional to being ugly and non-functional.

I am assaulted by flashing adds and animated gifs at the side of thread titles. These make it impossible for me to stare at the page. I'm pretty sure it was discovered back in the internet prehistory that flashing objects, animated gifs, and the like are at best extremely distracting and at worst impossible to look at.

I had to block all images from shrapnel in order for me to be able to read the forums

It seems, however, that little things like "reply" buttons (and all the others) are also actually images, and so blocked.

Hence, the whole forum is currently a disaster.

[Mindi]

Okay, for those of you who found the animated images distracting, I have removed how many of them you can see on the page before clicking 'more' to get additional smilies. I don't know what I can do about the post icons, I will have to look into that one.

[Dedas]

I would also hate to see the more dedicated part of the Dom3 community move to another forum better suited to their needs. That would be a very unfortunate event indeed - for all parties involved. But things like childish advertisement (we are wargamers after all, we like to be taken serious ), a cluttered and hard to use interface and other similar things will go a long way in making that come true.

Most of us are of course patient, especially so soon after the software change. But at least I got a little worried after seeing the new forum, if not chocked.

[Mindi]

Originally Posted by archaeolept

Christ almighty.

the forums have gone from being ugly and functional to being ugly and non-functional.

I am assaulted by flashing adds and animated gifs at the side of thread titles. These make it impossible for me to stare at the page. I'm pretty sure it was discovered back in the internet prehistory that flashing objects, animated gifs, and the like are at best extremely distracting and at worst impossible to look at.

I had to block all images from shrapnel in order for me to be able to read the forums

It seems, however, that little things like "reply" buttons (and all the others) are also actually images, and so blocked.

Hence, the whole forum is currently a disaster.

The only addition to the ads is the one on the side. The one at the top of the forums was there before and considering we shrunk the latest news blocks on the side, the ad box takes up no additional space. There is no animated gifs at the side of thread titles unless someone has chosen a animated post icon of which there are only 2.