Feedback

[Marshredder]

1) Improve the user interface.  Thread titles are about 5% of the screens width.  Just remove the blue picture bits and work on making the whole thing easier on the eye.  Advertising is fine, but keep it on the top and bottom of the page.

2) 150x150 avatars again.

3) Keep the language filter on by default, but allow it to be turned off.  After all, language is a tiny part of what google classify as offensive material.  A picture of a tree, if linked from a site of questionable content, will be flagged by them as offensive as well, so its impossible to police it 100%.

These are the three things that most people are after.  Fix those and you might just stop the mass exodus.  There have been several competing forums popping up, of which I have joined and are posting mainly at, and these WILL take most of the users if these problems are not sorted out in a timely fashion.  WE are your target market, this website is the product.  If the product does not appeal to the target market, they will not buy.  End of.

Many thanks.

[Anderton]

All I can say is...thank you. Posts like yours validate what Phil and I had been saying prior to the launch, and will be very helpful in terms of effecting change.

[Lou Speed's Alt]

+1,000,000

[kboo]

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Marshredder wrote:

1) Improve the user interface.  Thread titles are about 5% of the screens width.  Just remove the blue picture bits and work on making the whole thing easier on the eye.  Advertising is fine, but keep it on the top and bottom of the page.

2) 150x150 avatars again.

3) Keep the language filter on by default, but allow it to be turned off.  After all, language is a tiny part of what google classify as offensive material.  A picture of a tree, if linked from a site of questionable content, will be flagged by them as offensive as well, so its impossible to police it 100%.

These are the three things that most people are after.  Fix those and you might just stop the mass exodus.  There have been several competing forums popping up, of which I have joined and are posting mainly at, and these WILL take most of the users if these problems are not sorted out in a timely fashion.  WE are your target market, this website is the product.  If the product does not appeal to the target market, they will not buy.  End of.

Many thanks.

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150 x 150 Avatars????

Are you crazy? You need to get with the times. Take a look at "modern sites" and the sizes of their avatars. Nobody would waste that much space for an avatar. 

Yes the wallpaper can go away but then you're just left with a bunch of space because obviously

the interface will not stretch out to fill it. Then you'll start to cry that there is nothing on the sides. LOL

[Marshredder]

People like them because they're one of the only 3 ways which we have to give ourselves a "face" on a busy internet forum. We have our username, our avatar and our signature. As it stands, about 40% of the page width is wasted, and yet 150x150 avatars would not use any extra real-estate as it stands at the moment.

It is one of the most requested updates, and perhaps we should also say that we need an option to turn them off so those like yourselves also have a solution.

Obviously removing the pictures was not what I suggested, but to expand the page out to fill the area where the pictures are at the moment.

[Phil O'Keefe]

FWIW, the small size of the avatars was something I commented about very early on in the development process. I know that a lot of people identify other users by their avatars - for some, they rely on that even moreso than screen names, and as it is now, IMO, they're too small to easily do that.

I'm definitely in favor of returning them to the same size we had on the vB site. In fact, as Craig and I have repeatedly said since the beginning, the more that this site looks and feels like the previous site, but with actual performance improvements (no database errors, page timeouts, etc.) the better. While I'm happy that there are cool new features available here, and that this site can do things the old one couldn't, I think the focus needs to be on that core look, feel and functionality, and that the other features should be addressed, added and / or refined only after those essential core items are in place and looking / working the way we want them to. 

To me, that includes things like:

Making the text darker - yes, darker still. It's still too light of a shade of grey.

Making the subject line wider. Replies, New, Author, Kudos, Views and Latest Post fields can use a smaller font and / or be much narrower IMO. I'm glad those fields are there, but the subject line should get the space priority.

Turning off, or greatly dialing back the smut filter. If it can be set as a user option, even better, but as it is now, if your name is Richard and you want to use the most common nickname that goes along with that, you get bleeped. That's just ridiculous.

Making the avatars larger.

Creating a single, master list of forums somewhere that is easily accessible to one and all. I don't dislike the current navigation, but there should be a master forum list in one single spot for those who prefer accessing them that way.

Obviously there's more I could list, but that's the general idea. Again, IMHO, the more it can look and feel like the old forums, the better. Once that's established, then we can add, tweak, and improve to make it even better.

[steve_man]

If people get all hurt and leave, then let them. Seriously...this site is SO much faster than it was 2 weeks ago.

However, I agree that the thread titles NEED to be longer, and maybe reduce the size of the pictures in the margins. Also, if there is any way to make the background a bit darker (maybe grey)...the white really burns into your retinas...

[rushtallica]

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Marshredder wrote:

1) Improve the user interface.  Thread titles are about 5% of the screens width.  Just remove the blue picture bits and work on making the whole thing easier on the eye.  Advertising is fine, but keep it on the top and bottom of the page.

2) 150x150 avatars again.

3) Keep the language filter on by default, but allow it to be turned off.  After all, language is a tiny part of what google classify as offensive material.  A picture of a tree, if linked from a site of questionable content, will be flagged by them as offensive as well, so its impossible to police it 100%.

These are the three things that most people are after.  Fix those and you might just stop the mass exodus.  There have been several competing forums popping up, of which I have joined and are posting mainly at, and these WILL take most of the users if these problems are not sorted out in a timely fashion.  WE are your target market, this website is the product.  If the product does not appeal to the target market, they will not buy.  End of.

Many thanks.

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Agreed! I just posted what I thought would help on an amp forum thread, and it pretty much matches up exactly with what you've said:

1) increasing the avatar sizes
2) a choice for each user to turn on/off the censor
3) the right margin going away or otherwise at least being decreased, maybe as part of a user preference
4) word wrap working a little better on standard replies

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I believe those things should probably be fairly simple to implement, as well.

[rushtallica]

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Phil O'Keefe wrote:

FWIW, the small size of the avatars was something I commented about very early on in the development process. I know that a lot of people identify other users by their avatars - for some, they rely on that even moreso than screen names, and as it is now, IMO, they're too small to easily do that.

I'm definitely in favor of returning them to the same size we had on the vB site. In fact, as Craig and I have repeatedly said since the beginning, the more that this site looks and feels like the previous site, but with actual performance improvements (no database errors, page timeouts, etc.) the better. While I'm happy that there are cool new features available here, and that this site can do things the old one couldn't, I think the focus needs to be on that core look, feel and functionality, and that the other features should be addressed, added and / or refined only after those essential core items are in place and looking / working the way we want them to. 

To me, that includes things like:

Making the text darker - yes, darker still. It's still too light of a shade of grey.

Making the subject line wider. Replies, New, Author, Kudos, Views and Latest Post fields can use a smaller font and / or be much narrower IMO. I'm glad those fields are there, but the subject line should get the space priority.

Turning off, or greatly dialing back the smut filter. If it can be set as a user option, even better, but as it is now, if your name is Richard and you want to use the most common nickname that goes along with that, you get bleeped. That's just ridiculous.

Making the avatars larger

Creating a single, master list of forums somewhere that is easily accessible to one and all. I don't dislike the current navigation, but there should be a master forum list in one single spot for those who prefer accessing them that way.

Obviously there's more I could list, but that's the general idea. Again, IMHO, the more it can look and feel like the old forums, the better. Once that's established, then we can add, tweak, and improve to make it even better.

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Great post! 8)

[GCDEF]

Rather than making avatars larger, I'd favor being able to turn them off.  The less irrelevent fluff on the screen, the happier I am.  I'm not sure how the OP thinks he's speaking for 90% of the users. It'll take more than that to make a functional forum.

[trevcda]

This seems like as good a place as any to add my two cents. Is there a thread preview function on this software? Where you hover over the title and it shows the first few lines of the thread? That's a great thread tool if it's available. I'd also like to see a check box to permanently dismiss the New Forums announcement at the top of the page. That takes up a huge chunk of real estate and once I've seen and read it once, it just gets in the way of getting comfortable with the new software. Oh and shouldn't the Rack gear in the live sound area be back in guitar stuff? It's typically been about guitar rack topics in the past. Meanwhile, I think the new software will be fine. It just takes a few tweaks and some time getting used to navigating around, like any other new UI. I'm just glad you didn't lose years of posts, user post counts and signatures in the transition.

[Zooey]

My recommendation would have only 1 step: use modern, industry standard forum software. I know that's a wholly unreasonable suggestion, though.

[guido61]

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Phil O'Keefe wrote:

Creating a single, master list of forums somewhere that is easily accessible to one and all. I don't dislike the current navigation, but there should be a master forum list in one single spot for those who prefer accessing them that way.

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I think this is pretty important.  Right now, there's no way to know which forums exist, and for what purpose they serve, unless you actually go into each catagory.  And you don't even know they ARE catagories with subforums contained within until you click on it and go inside.  Who's going to know, for example, that two separate forums -- one called Open Jam and one called Political Party -- exist under "Off Topic Forums" which itself exists under "General Forums"?

Yes, those of us who have been here forever know where everything is, but for any newcomers?  I think it would just be a confusing mess.  Plus the old format had nice little explanations telling people what each forum was for on the first page.   Somebody new might start spouting political garbage in the songwriting forum only to be admonished to "take that to the Political Party" and have no idea what they are being told to do or where to go.

[Elias Graves]

There's a lot to like about the new place, but much seems counterintuitive.
I've yet to figure out how to quote someone or post a pic. Basic functions like that ought to be obvious on how to do it.
I'm generally quick to pick up changes but ill be **bleep** if I can post a pic or quote someone.
Should it really be a scavenger hunt for these things?

[Phil O'Keefe]

To quote, hit the reply button at the bottom of the post you want to quote. In the reply box that opens up, the quote button is located in the upper right hand corner, in a blue box right next to the Spell Check box. Click on that and it will insert a copy of the post you're replying to as a quote in your reply box.

At the moment, you can't "split" the quote box, although you can remove lines or sections out of the quote, and you can hit the quote button a second time to enter the quoted material again, and then edit that box separately - that allows you to reply to multiple questions or comments "in line" if you like to do things that way.

Unfortunately, there is currently no multiquote. I asked Lithium about that well before the launch, and they currently don't offer that feature, but they seemed to "get" the usefulness of it, and I think they'll probably add it to their software's capabilities in a future build.

[Phil O'Keefe]

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GCDEF wrote:

Rather than making avatars larger, I'd favor being able to turn them off.  The less irrelevant fluff on the screen, the happier I am. 

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I agree that this should be a user-specified option, although I think it should default to "on" since the majority of people prefer to use them. However, there definitely are people who prefer to have them off, and I think they should be accommodated too if at all possible.

[lefort_1]

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Phil O'Keefe wrote:

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GCDEF wrote:

Rather than making avatars larger, I'd favor being able to turn them off.  The less irrelevant fluff on the screen, the happier I am. 

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I agree that this should be a user-specified option, although I think it should default to "on" since the majority of people prefer to use them. However, there definitely are people who prefer to have them off, and I think they should be accommodated too if at all possible.

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Some do get a little NSFW (not pr0n, but a bit racey) so an ON/OFF button may be necessary for some folks in some work environments.

[Phil O'Keefe]

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lefort_1 wrote:

Some do get a little NSFW (not pr0n, but a bit racey) so an ON/OFF button may be necessary for some folks in some work environments.

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We've always had a PG-13 policy. If you can see it on a magazine rack, or in the checkout line at the supermarket, then it's probably okay to post here. No nudity, no G-strings, nothing overly sexually suggestive, etc. However, even that might be too liberal for some employers, or in some situations, it could cause issues, so the ability to turn off avatars and posted images entirely on an individual user's preference basis is definitely something I agree that we need to have.

[jimash]

Yup.
I find I m squinting at it. The white with the light gray is not good.
What was it before ? Blue and black ?
Larger Avatars. fer sure.
Insert Code ? Really ?
The videos post in a funny size.
The graphic separators are ok but stuff is still kind of "not boxed".
Do we have upload places ?
In the past I uploaded an mp3 and it wouldn't post. Can we do that now ?
IS there any indication of threads we might already have posted in ? ( I might be missing it)
I have found that to be a helpful feature.
Anyway, pretty good job guys.

[peskypesky]

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Zooey wrote:
My recommendation would have only 1 step: use modern, industry standard forum software. I know that's a wholly unreasonable suggestion, though.

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How dare you make such a **bleep** insulting suggestion?