Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

This thread is for complaints/concerns/opinions on site design/functionality/whatever. We welcome these opinions we just ask that you post in a respectful manner and understand that we reserve the right to change (or not change) any of these things based on what we think is beneficial to the company and to the community as a whole.

There is an often quoted proverb which states that you can please some of the people, some of the time, but you can't please all of the people, all of the time. With a site conversion, this is definitely the case.

Posts about broken functionality will not be addressed, please put your posts in the proper thread.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Oh, oh! Me first! Me first! Oh I''m gonna have FUN with this thread.....!





No I'm just kidding. I love you Mindi, I knew this was just an oversight. <3

Now, where did I put my my leather bound tome of ~Complaintes, Concernes, et Opinionae~ ?

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Now why do I get the fealing that this isn't authentic latin?

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

It's not, wanna fight? :o


Okay, I had a complaint. :mad: I swear I had broken 1000 posts before the site conversion. I swallowed down the odd bump down to about 800, as a gesture of cooperation and fair play. However, I swear that at that time I had ~790 posts listed (when the new site went live), and now it's only going down! O.O

I was a Captain before - I will not give up my chair just because someone doesn't think all of my posts are useful! :eek:


Now look what you've unleashed..... :bug::bug::bug::envy::bug::bug::bug:

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I rebuilt the post counts which should go and look up the exact number of posts in the system at the time and you should now have an accurate post count based on those numbers. If you have had posts deleted, those will not count.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I really don't care for the background color of the forums. It just looks dirty to me. Everything else looks ok-even the predominant darker blue. But the background is completely unappealing to me. A nice, clean, slightly greyish/tannish, old parchmenty white color (not pure white, please) would still blend with the blue, while making the whole look less like unfiltered aquarium water.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I don't see how light blue is dirty.I can only see it as a screen being dirty.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

HB,
You really shouldn't use bleach and gasoline to clean your LCD monitor. :)

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

:)

It's not light blue, it's dirty blue, dirty like the soul of a rich politician, it is!

That's how it looks to me, and I'm sticking to my guns. :P

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Hey, we're both Majors now! < salutes! >

Though, I should always state it as Major _______ James Douglas Morrison, you know, in case someone wants to insert something descriptive. :p

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

The new forum at http://forum.shrapnelgames.com is blocked, or on a server that is blocked. I cannot reach it at work even during lunch or after I get off. The old site at http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com was not blocked. I don't know if a vanity URL or other link changes would fix this.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

It probably has a filter picking up on the "games" in the URL.

Why it would be fun to be a drill-sergeant.
 

Ladies and gentlemen, as your commanding officer, let me reassure you that their will be certain changes around here. I use the term "reassure" because it is apparent to me, as it may or may not have become apparent to you in the course of your lives, duties, and idle personal philosophical contemplations, that life consists of, and is only, change. Change, which is the only constant in the constant, varietous cycle of alteration, consideration, dissemination, and decision, of and upon the facts of any given reality you may find yourself within.

Let me further reassure you that the reality you have currently found yourself floating around in, like the happy little sparks of divine light that you are, does in fact belong to me. Allow me expand upon my possession of the substance of All That Is, Was, and Ever Shall Be-In the essence of every molecule of air, physical law of the universe, gravitational wave, string-dimension. From every element of matter to every coil of DNA-yes, everything from your life-giving gonads to your fragile little teacups, from the dirt on your boots to the evil thoughts in your heads, to the hell that awaits, looming before you for thinking such blasphemies, closer with every passing minute you stand within my presence-has my name, and only my name, tattoo'ed on it in blocky, immutable, insoluble letters, prefaced in all cases by the abbrevation 'Maj. Gen.' Should I at some point achieve some higher rank-God perhaps, or Maj. God.-then this will be updated apace-and thorough-and you will be informed.

This singular reality that you have the special sort of karmic luck reserved only for the holiest of men and women, and for soldiers such as yourselves, to have found yourself within, shall be run as any respectable reality should be-on a divine timetable, which allows for mistakes, idleness, or whimsy, with precisely the same tolerance given by the very sun blazing over our heads, were the person or persons so willing to refute the laws of reality itself, to find themselves crashing into it at high velocity. Gentlemen, ladies-consider me that sun-for I am, from this point forward, the source of all meaningful life as you know it. More than your father, more than your mother, more than the passions of faith that beat in your breasts for the mysteries that confront you and confound you, I am henceforth your salvation-should you respect my orders enough to carry them out, and your distruction-should you fail to abide by the laws of my Universe.

You are-other than from my all-seeing, all-knowing eyes-dismissed.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

???

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Just wanted to ask what are these page paddings for? On my display with 1280x1024 resolution I see the 150px left and right paddings which means 300px of unused space.
As a web developer and a bit designer I just can't explain myself the reasons due to which that space is wasted. Can anyone?

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

From the "PLEASE READ RE: site conversion" thread:

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I've noticed when browsing between topics it takes anywhere from 7 to 12 seconds to load unlike the old forums. When visiting other forums on different websites the browsing between topics it loads 3 seconds or less.

I'm suggesting shrapnelgames does a quick investigation in comparing their forum browsing against other forums.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Does this happen consistently? I'm wondering if maybe you caught us during a backup or while Richard and Mindi were working on the search database.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Okay, I just spent the past hour playing Space Invaders only to get to the end and find that my score wouldn't be saved! That's when I realized that I was no longer logged in. Is there a timeout for forum inactivity that would have caused that?

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

There is, in fact. I hate it. :mad: Did you seriously just play Space Invaders for over an hour straight? :o Ouch!

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

That's strange. I have not been logged out a single time.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I'm still trying to figure this one out because I can't duplicate it. In the last week I have been on over 12 hours per day, easily and have never been auto logged out as long as I had clicked the remember me button. Also, in Jim's case he has a complaint about it updating his new threads to read.....and I don't have this problem either....so right now I am at a loss in trying to diagnose this. I'm still looking into it, but under the same conditions, I am not having the same problems.

Same goes with NT Jedi saying it takes him 7 to 12 seconds per page load. We're not having a load anywhere near that unless some sort of high spike in overall traffic has happened or we're running some utility. Other people have said their load times take about the same as before, maybe slightly slower for some but no where near what NT is experiencing....so again, I am scratching my head on that one.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Could your browsers be set to clear cookies on some kind of schedule, or on close? Also, Firefox has an option for remembering passwords. I leave this turned on and for most sites I answer "No", but I bet for this one that I answered yes (on my home pc at least). I also have my cookies set to never expire and then I manually delete the ones that I think need refreshed via Firefox's privacy options menu.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I just had a peek, and most of my shrapnel cookies are set to expire in July of 2009. You might check to see what sort of expiration yours are showing. This might give a clue as to what is different.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Thanks for bring that up Ballbarian, Richard and I were also wondering if it was browser security settings.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Ouch, indeed. By the end my eyes were crossed and my hands crippled into claws. Oh, for want of a pause button. But it was all going to be worth it for that score born from blood and fire. But then... :doh:

Ya know, even though I have the "Remember Me" check it never does remember me. All my settings are default (using Firefox 2.0.0.16). Going into the cookies for the forum some of the cookies are set to expire in a year but others are set to expire at the end of the session. These are:

bbsessionhash
bbform_view
ibPAcookiecheck
gpstarted
bbthread_lastview
gidstarted

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I may be way off track, but can you confirm that you have bbpassword & bbuserid, and that they have the 2009 expiration? I assume that you do, but just in case.

Otherwise, all of the ones that you have listed expire when the session ends for me as well, plus a few that you do not have listed.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Well, Firefox is set to keep cookies "until they expire", and to ask me before clearing any personal data. I haven't really ever messed with the settings at all, so I didn't think that was it.

I was under the impression that it was the site that was logging me out, not my browser. If that's not the case, then I'm mystified.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

It's the site. I have my settings set to keep cookies until I close Firefox, then delete everything. Just leaving the forum pages open and logged in and doing something else for half an hour or less when I don't have any activity on the forum and it automatically logs me out.

Unless I checked the "Remember me" checkbox when I logged in, in which case it keeps me logged in until I log out. The autologout timer really should be set to more than 30 minutes. About two or three hours would be good, because it is VERY easy to have something come up or needing to do something. Sometimes it has taken me well over half an hour to just format a post correctly and it's a goddamn pain in the *** to have to log back in and maybe even lose all the text I typed, so copy-pasting into a text editor before you hit submit is a good idea.

The current autologout limit is extremely user-unfriendly.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

The session expiration is set for 60 minutes......so again it doesn't make any sense.

I will try to see if I get the same results on firefox. I usually use IE so that could help narrow it down, but again based on the information in the back end, there is no reason the site should be logging you out in less than 60 minutes and personally even if I have been idle for over an hour, the site never logs me out. Again though, I primarily use IE.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Firefox 2.0.0.16 here.
I left the browser open and sitting here idle over night and still logged in.

Edit:
I would say this is the solution. I bet that I ticked that ticker when I logged in.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I've let my session on firefox sit idle for an hour and a half and no log out here.....again as long as you do the remember me button. That is the way vbulletin is set up and that part we can't do anything about.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I'm on Firefox 2.0.0.16 myself and as reported earlier, I have frequently experienced the auto-logout myself. I usually don't shutdown my computer, but just let it suspend to RAM or to disk. With the old forums, I could be logged in with the same session for weeks. The only reason that I had to log out was because the functionality to show which posts are new and which you have already seen stopped working at some time.
I was getting the same when I've been playing some Arcade game for about 25 minutes. I logged in and used the back and refresh button a couple of times and luckily it registered the highscore that I reached after some time, even though it took a number of tries. You might have been able to save it.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Same here. Also after an inordinate amount of time, it would stop showing an icon for new PMs, so I left my Inbox in another tab, ready to refresh. :p

And now, with "remember me" (grrrr, I hate being remembered!), I still get auto logged, I just don't see that part because it logs me back in automatically. But I can tell I was forced off, because any thread with new posts that I hadn't read yet, is marked as not having new posts anymore.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

vbulletin failes to properly auto-parse urls in posts that end in ). It cuts the link off before it is finished, missing the closing ). For example:

http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.php/Mods_(SEV)

You need to upgrade your browser.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Can we get that 60s timer between PMs turned off? At least for users with some post count...


P.S. Thanks for turning off autosaving of sent items.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Zeldor,
They were discussing this in another thread:

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I tried and failed to find an option to re-enable the auto saving of sent items in the UserCP. I am happy to delete my old messages manually, but it is very frustrating (especially as a Moderator) to forget to tick the box and then not have a record of the message sent. My memory certainly isn't what it used to be. :p

Please point me in the right direction if I have simply overlooked it, otherwise I wonder how much trouble it would be to add this as an option?

(Did you ever notice how hard it is to make everybody happy? :D )

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

But I wanted mine with SPRINKLES!! :(

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

As this is also a thread about opinions... I still don't identify the new color scheme with Dominions discussion, but now I can see what you meant by the improvements on the user side. You've done a great job, and it's clear you've been working on this a lot. Thanks for the work.

P.S. I suggest that everyone who likes the changes goes and uses the new "thank-you" feature on various threads that announce addition of new features you like.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Ballbarian:

That's why it would be good to remove that or decrease it for users with let's say 100+ posts.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Upgrade do what? 2.0.0.16 is the current version from the 2.x branch. Maybe there's another workaround to make the browser vBulletin-friendly?

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

3.0? :) But that auto-logout should have nothing to do with 2.x or 3.x firefox version, unless forum is bugged.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Like I told folks earlier the auto-logout is a browser thing. What I would recommend for folks running into the issues is two things:

A) Make sure after you see the logout happen check your cookies location for your browser and make sure you have a cookie saved for forum.shrapnelgames.com.

B) If you have a cookie present then we may have to have you send it in to determine why the browser/application combo is not reading it properly.

Like I said this is all browser driven so having a cookie saved for forum.shrapnelgames.com should enable auto-login unless your browser is somehow munging the cookie in some way or saving it under a different domain, etc.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

The current version of the browser, obviously. You're only going to run into more problems over time running obsolete software (esp. since FF 2 will not see new updates to the Gecko rendering engine, ala FF 3). If you're worried about screwing up your profile, just make a backup copy of it before upgrading..

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

I'd rather let the bleeding-edge adopters shake out the new bugs for a while. I'm not planning to switch to FF3 until they stop updating 2.x in December.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Ditto. :)

Besides, I hate IE7's layout and FF3 seems to be emulating their gui layout. I am hoping that when I finally make the switch that there will be (or are) themes to switch things back to the old 2.0 style.

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

You can't deny Mozilla for wanting to keep user experiences consistent. FireFox 3 is a very solid product and the customize tool bar function lets you put it back to the FF2 style more or less.

Besides, Firefox 3 isn't even bleeding edge anymore. FireFox 3.1 is already on its way and IE8 is in alpha.

besides, here's the FF2 theme for FF3
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6898

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Thanks Azselendor.
I may give her a spin tonight. :)

Re: Official Complaints/Concerns/Opinions
 

Yep, but don't forget some addons are still out of date for FF3. If you have critical need for tools like Firebug or the XML Developper Toolbar, you'd better still wait a for a while. But OK, very few people endure such needs as critical :smirk: