New Board - Props and Slops

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Tim Brooks

Tell us what you 'really' think, Edoperez.

I told what I didn't like about the new page, and about the new forum. It's still under construction, and I pointed out what I'd rather see changed. In hindsight, using such a harsh tone meant that even if I had a point, it would be ignored because I wrote it in such a hostile way. I apologize for that.

I still think the site could be improved. Perhaps it's just my small monitor, but the blue cd in the frontpage takes up the whole middle section of the new page, and about half of the visible area is blue. Scrolling down or changing into fullscreen improve things a lot, but something of a different colour (like the wizard in Dom3 game page) works better for me.

Besides that first view of the frontpage, I don't have problems with the visual look of the page. Things like images not being links yet or the exact catchphrase above some section are just nitpicks. As I said, I'm sorry my dislike came out that harshly. That's partly because I was shocked at seeing something quite dear to me (I've spent years in these forums) change so much.

EDIT: I just discovered the button for thanking a person for a spesific post, and that's a wonderful "social networking" tool. That's great!

[Annette]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

I still think the site could be improved. Perhaps it's just my small monitor, but the blue cd in the frontpage takes up the whole middle section of the new page, and about half of the visible area is blue. Scrolling down or changing into fullscreen improve things a lot, but something of a different colour (like the wizard in Dom3 game page) works better for me.

Besides that first view of the frontpage, I don't have problems with the visual look of the page. Things like images not being links yet or the exact catchphrase above some section are just nitpicks. As I said, I'm sorry my dislike came out that harshly. That's partly because I was shocked at seeing something quite dear to me (I've spent years in these forums) change so much.

EDIT: I just discovered the button for thanking a person for a spesific post, and that's a wonderful "social networking" tool. That's great!

What resolution is your monitor set at?

[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.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Mindi

As I told llamabeast, kindness and patience would go far in being heard. Threats will get you no where.

Mindi, I have to say you're coming across as extremely defensive and basically attacking the people in this community who are overwhelmingly being polite and offering constructive criticism, and feedback on how they use the forum and their preferences (note: everyone should follow this example). Llamabeast's posts (as always) were extremely polite and he was voicing opinions which seem to be overwhelmingly the sentiment of the people I've talked to in the community. Responding with a "STFU, this is how it is and you can take it or leave it" is an astoundingly great way to get people to do exactly that. I'm a professional software developer myself (as are several members of our community), and am quite familiar with the unsatisfiable demands of unreasonable customers and the difficulty of having people criticize something you've just spent a lot of time and effort on. I'm also realize that well thought out feedback is absolute gold and telling your users that they should just do everything differently because it works fine for how you use it is a great way to alienate your user base.

It's perfectly valid to say "I hear what you're saying, but we can't do it that way because of technical/business reasons". You did that a couple times, 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".

The people in this community are invested in it, and you've got to realize it feels a bit like somebody just came into the corner pub where we've been hanging out and remodeled everything, changing the beer on tap and the music played. The dart board's not there anymore and, well I'll stop the analogy there but the point is that we *want* to like the new board and simply telling us to get used to the new music is mind boggling if your intent is to keep the same community - which is what *everyone* here wants.

I don't want to beat a dead horse on the issues that have already been brought up, but the reason that people are complaining about the PMs is because this is a pretty central facet to the MP community. Chopping off functionality here is a dangerous thing, and it does seem a bit surprising given the cost of disk space and Llamabeast's suggestion to put up a donate button.

The reason people are complaining about not being able to modify their posts is that this also a central facet of this community, from keeping lists of strategy guides up to date to maintaining a hall of fame. I often update my posts for anything from typos and misspellings to revising a strategy guide in light of something new I learned. This gives people a sense of ownership for the things they post, and chopping out intangibles like this is a dangerous game.

The above two changes, at least to me, make this feel like a less intimate site. This is also I feel the root of many of the smaller complaints from the fixed width to the smaller number of visible posts to the cooler tones being used.

Anyway, I realize a whole lot of effort has gone into this change, please take these suggestions as feature requests from people who are invested in seeing the site and community flourish.

[Micah]

Regarding the editing issue, is there a possibility of allowing free editing and simply backing up previous posts to some moderator-accessible archive? This would allow people to report any abusive posts that come up so that the mods could review the previous edits of the post and take action if needed. It could also be used to restore content from any disgruntled users (with a bit more work from the moderators). Luckily, I believe that both of these scenarios have been rare enough that it doesn't make sense to impact the functionality of the entire forum to deal with a very few bad eggs, even though it would require more work of the moderators when stuff like that does come up. Software limitations may, of course, prevent this from being a workable solution, but I thought I could ask. =)

[Mindi]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Mindi, I have to say you're coming across as extremely defensive and basically attacking the people in this community who are overwhelmingly being polite and offering constructive criticism, and feedback on how they use the forum and their preferences (note: everyone should follow this example).

I disagree. First off I have been fixing things all day based on feedback. The only thing I have gotten irritated about is the fact that certain things (some of which I have repeated said we have to examine all our options for) are being continuously brought up. The more I have to address the same issues that I don't have an answer for yet the less work on the forum I can get done. The less I can get done the more those things some of you are complaining about have to be put off and the longer it goes that any changes are delayed the more posts we get for the same exact things. It's cyclical and I've just asked for some patience.....i.e. waiting a bit before continuously harping on the same things. I don't think that's too much to ask.

Llamabeast's posts (as always) were extremely polite and he was voicing opinions which seem to be overwhelmingly the sentiment of the people I've talked to in the community. Responding with a "STFU, this is how it is and you can take it or leave it" is an astoundingly great way to get people to do exactly that. I'm a professional software developer myself (as are several members of our community), and am quite familiar with the unsatisfiable demands of unreasonable customers and the difficulty of having people criticize something you've just spent a lot of time and effort on. I'm also realize that well thought out feedback is absolute gold and telling your users that they should just do everything differently because it works fine for how you use it is a great way to alienate your user base.

It's perfectly valid to say "I hear what you're saying, but we can't do it that way because of technical/business reasons". You did that a couple times, 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".

First off, I'm not going to discuss the llamabeast issue with you but it has to do with most of the same things being discussed in the moderator forum and our expectations for moderators. I would disagree in saying his post was polite given the circumstances, but that's between me and him at this point. Second off, there are certain things at this point that just CAN'T be changed and there are certain things that are out of my control. Everything else I have asked for patience on (I didn't say they wouldn't be changed at all, I said give us some time to evaluate options) and instead the same things keep being brought up. See the cyclical comment above.

I don't want to beat a dead horse on the issues that have already been brought up.

Again, see cyclical comment above.

[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.

[Mindi]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

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

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.

Ahhh, basically taking that away would take away a poster's ability to post a seperate title to their response. The reason you are only seing a piece of paper is because no one who has replied has titled their response differently than the OP.

[Mindi]

Those of you who are being auto logged out, are you clicking the "remember me" box when you log in? As long as you have clicked that box, you should not be logged out.