New Board - Props and Slops

[Kristoffer O]

This thread is growing remarkably quick.

It made me wonder if there is a way to go to last read post like before. When I opened the thread I started at the beginning, so I went to the last page, and turned the pages back one at a time to find my own last post to know where to start reading again. A bit annoying.

Edit: Hmm, now I need to remember at what page I wrote this. I'll be gone for 3 days. No way I'll find the answer when I get back

[AgentZero]

I must say, I agree with CW. I mean, even MSN has offline message functionality now, and IRC is great for multiplayer games, because everyone involved can have a general discussion, with private messages zipping around in the background. And most IRC clients allow you to log your chats, for those of you concerned with posterity. And given how many services there are out there offering free, anonymous email, arguments about privacy are fallacious at best.

That being said, I rather like the new look. I'm using a 22-inch widescreen monitor, and I actually like the fixed width, because it makes posts much easier to read than on forums that don't use a fixed width. I remember in some graphics design class or another, the teacher telling us that the human eye will only track over a certain number of words or letters before it starts to have trouble maintaining a fix on the line. I definitely notice that on forums that stretch posts out to the full width of a maximized window, but here, everything is nice and readable.

The text in this reply box was a little small but for those of you running firefox, hit CTRL + once or twice and it'll look all nice & big. Not the best solution, but a reasonable stopgap until something better is implemented.

Now, I will admit, my first reaction to the new forum was "What the hell is this crap?! Where's my stuff? I can't find stuff!" But that is how most people react to change, and after fiddling around with it for a while, I've found most of my stuff. Still looking for some of my stuff, but that's how we learn so I don't mind. I think any time anyone has ever come up with a new way of doing something, all back through history, there have been people who didn't like it, who thought the old way was best, and that we should get rid of this strange new thing and bring back the familiar old thing. Fortunately, we've an equally long history of not listening to these protests, as evidenced by the fact that I'm sitting in front of a computer munching on a tasty grilled ham & cheese, instead of sitting in a cave gnawing on a half-cooked skunk. ;-)

[lch]

Originally Posted by Kristoffer O

When I opened the thread I started at the beginning, so I went to the last page, and turned the pages back one at a time to find my own last post to know where to start reading again. A bit annoying.

I've always done it this way. You mean to tell me there was an alternative before? You're telling me this NOW?

[Richard]

So I think we've listened to folks, and their complaints, and the be honest I think we've already started making some changes that are resolving some of the issue people brought up.

To make this a little easier to manage I am going to suggest that going forward all suggestions for changes and such be handled the way we did this during the last forum upgrade, through PM's. Going forward please PM Mindi with any issues you see and we'll add them to the list and consider them.

Like all adults we're going to agree and disagree on how best to do things so my guess is some things folks want to see happen will happen and some won't and in the end we'll have a better forum experience.

The staff at Shrapnel Games have spent the last 6 months carefully planning this board upgrade and running literally the entire process through a test board over 10 times to ensure we minimized impact to you are customers. We've all spent many hours during this weekend, adn during the last week have gotten very little sleep, to ensure that you were impacted as little as possible. I have seen a lot of forum moves, iinlcuding previous ones we have run, and for the most part this has gone very smooth;y. In recent months some of our competitors have done similiar moves and have been without functionality for weeks. We have worked VERY hard to ensure that you guys were not impacted.

When we also planned this board move out we looked at what a lot of other forums do, and what our software did before it became broken a few years ago, and we implemented what are very liberal policies compared to most forums on the Internet. Mindi and I have started a number of communities, many of them larger than this, and have been very careful to keep those experiences in mind when planning out policies and procedures for the new board.

We've also went to long extremes to add functionality that had been requested by many of our users and to bring this board to a more modern standards when compared to other Internet communities. Some folks aren't going to like the new features, or changes, or new rules. But you know what I don't like every single one of them. Mindi doesn't lik every single one of them. Tim and Annette don't like every single one of them. But in the end we're all adults and we try to reach the best compromise possible.

So going forward please forward any functionality or bugs to Mindi via PM. As far as the site design those issues can be forwarded to Mindi but the site design was done by Tim so we'll have to run those items by him to get changed. Again some things will be addressed, some won't, but that's what happens in the real world when folks have differing opinions.

We have gotten very little sleep in the last week and we need a break. Again please PM issues to Mindi and this weekend we will look over the list and decide how to move forward. And with the new PM export feature it will make it even easier to manage .

[llamabeast]

If you use the edit buttons like bold/italic or smileys now, it actually changes the things in place, or what you have selected. AWESOME!

Ooh, that is awesome!

It made me wonder if there is a way to go to last read post like before.

There's a down arrow appears just to the left of the thread name. That'll take you to the first unread post. Not especially obvious, but it works well.

[BadCompany]

Originally Posted by Kristoffer O

This thread is growing remarkably quick.

It made me wonder if there is a way to go to last read post like before. When I opened the thread I started at the beginning, so I went to the last page, and turned the pages back one at a time to find my own last post to know where to start reading again. A bit annoying.

Edit: Hmm, now I need to remember at what page I wrote this. I'll be gone for 3 days. No way I'll find the answer when I get back

I'm a afraid that by tommorrow this thread will be at page 20 or more.I'm saying this again,this thread should be a sticky.

[Kristoffer O]

> I've always done it this way. You mean to tell me there was an alternative before? You're telling me this NOW?

That was automatic as far as I know. If you clicked on the thread name you got to your last read post. Where did you click ???

---

Another topic: The bug shortlist in the dom3 forum looks sad. I hope there is a way to make it look nice without having edi edit all the posts there. It is a very useful thread and I wouldn't want it to be lost.

[Jazzepi]

One remark.

I completely agree with what Baalz said, 100%. I found Mindi's tone aggressive, at the very least, to suggestions. To quote,

"but mostly what I'm hearing is "we decided to do it this way and its not open to discussion. Don't bug me with suggestions". "

that's exactly how I'm reading a lot of the comments. Especially when Minid puts a post up containing

"Also as previously stated, we may up the limits for PMs after things settle down on the new board; however, any of you who are hoping for a ridiculously high limit of 1000 per person will be greatly disappointed. You may think that those numbers are reasonable but I can assure you that most users were well under that number and that you are the ones in the severe minority if you need that much space"

Really, Mindi, you need to stop being so derisive of your user base for asking for functionality / making comments. There's a reason people have a lot of PMs on the forums, and one of the first things I noticed was the extremely low ceiling on the PMs. Personally I think that 300 is still far too low. 500 would be the bare minimum for me to feel like I haven't lost any functionality. I highly dislike the new site layout, which effectively does less per square inch. And taking away editing completely is really irritating from a user's standpoint. I edit posts /all the time/, especially when I hosts games, or when I'm writing a long reply.

I think an ideal solution would simply be to change the edit feature. Instead of replacing the OP with the edited post, the edit function should store the OP, then post up the edited post. This could be done each time an edit is made. Once the OP is 1 month old, and it's clear that the new post that has been edited in isn't there to cover up something inflammatory, automatically delete it. This would keep your overhead low, but allow you to see an edit by edit history of the posts, basically creating a paper trail to catch trolls and mediate disputes while maintaining the original functionality of the forums.

Jazzepi

[Kristoffer O]

> There's a down arrow appears just to the left of the thread name. That'll take you to the first unread post. Not especially obvious, but it works well.

Nice. That is a 'thank you' sir!

Edit: no such luck. Seems I can't thank anyone anymore. My reputation might be too low. I'd better quaff a blessed raise level potion and earn some experience. My forum skills are limited.

[lch]

Originally Posted by Kristoffer O

That was automatic as far as I know. If you clicked on the thread name you got to your last read post. Where did you click ???

There was a tiny icon next to the users name who did the last post. You had to click the icon, NOT the user's name like you would do it most commonly in other forum software, because that would have taken you to his profile page. Then you'd get to the last post in the thread. From there on, I'd backtrack to the last post that I read like salmon in the river.