Request for Timeline.

This is probably the wrong place to enter this comment but I'm here now so... what would have been useful, Craven, for all of us, including yourself, was if we'd been given a link to this new site (not live, of course) say a couple of months prior to it going live. Then we could have adjusted to the new look, usability, etc., and I bet you would not have received this much grief and frustration with the repetitiveness and whining.

Well, I have not had the same impression as it seems you have; possibly in part because I have not read all the threads on the subject which you seem to have.

Not all of us have three solid days to spend playing with the new site, and there's nothing wrong with respectfully presenting your frustration. And I think I'm far from the only one who feels the way that I do (which isn't all that bad really) so I honestly wonder why you are annoyed.

Cycloptichorn

I think one thing we should all remember is that we get to play here and do our thing for free. That means we are Craven's guest and dependent on his generosity and good humor to have this site at all. However much it annoys him, I think appreciation is in order and it is incumbant upon all of us to be good guests who are imposing on his hospitality.

I think he thinks it is okay for us to request an 'ignore a thread' button without having to vote it down. I have requested that.
I would like for the voting up or down various members to be discontinued--an ignore button should be sufficient to remove annoying members from ability to annoy. I have requested that.
And I would like a more user friendly way to change around and re-organize my tags. I have requested that.

And the host is certainly within his prerogative to explain that I am cordially overruled in my requests. A good guest accepts a Pepsi instead of a Coke when the host has Pepsi to offer.

If I am made to feel unwelcome here, I will leave as any good guest would. Otherwise, a good guest shouldn't complain about the quality of the wine or caviar,

i am among those lucky ones who absolutely love and prefer the new site, layout, functionality, and design. i get a LOT more out of this site than i did from the old forum, because it's entirely customizable to my particular interests. Therefore I get more faster. But like soz, I love playing with new technology and learning things. i must say i don't miss the old format for one second.

i feel that we had tons of fair warnings of the switch... for years it was talked about, with much greater intensity in the last months and weeks. there were announcements, there were links.

it is not a paid service. how much do we pay out of pocket to come play here every day? Exactly. how much do we pay for cable tv? do we expect them to let us test their new layouts and walk us through any changes they make holding our hands? honestly, some of the requests i see here have me just shaking my head.... they would be a lot for a team of 20 full time staffers. we know who does the site and on what kind of a budget. just a reality check.

I'm going to stop answering stuff at the rate I used to (so I can go back to work I have backing up), but I will post this guess:

I guess that in between 2-3 weeks 90% of the things missing that really make a difference will be available. Namely:

Last poster name on topic grid.
Quoting button preference.
Tagging control overhaul (the form you tag from will change to work a lot better).
My posts grouped by topic (do all the different sorts on a view of your posts grouped by topic).
Tag navigation (tag search, seeing more tags than are currently listed etc)

There are a bunch of other little things that are adding to the frustration for previous members but they've not explicitly said anything about it so those will just go away before they figure out what it was.

Excellent news!

Any word on when we will have access to PM's - at least the historical data, if not sending new ones?

Cycloptichorn

Nope.

I thought you were the champion of change?

I lost/forgot my passwords so I had to re-register.

We'll get used to it.

Send a ticket to help desk if you want help retrieving your old password/username.

Craven, Any approximate date on PMs?

c.i., that was answered 2-3 posts up - there is no particular date set yet.

Change, change, change, cyclops, I thought you liked change? And I can't resist, this is a perfect illustration of exactly why we should keep drilling, while we continue to develop alternate energy solutions that are only marginally capable of replacing a small amount of oil demand here in the U.S. today.

Although we seldom agree, this new format is so far a loser. As a guest, I should not complain, but we are also potential customers, aren't we? Part of the reason given for this upgrade I think was because of being able to handle increased traffic, but what if alot of guests are lost, the need for upgrade then goes away, doesn't it? Surely there was another solution to keep most of the programming, but tweak what was wrong to fix it? I have noticed a huge dropoff in user participation since this happened, at least in the threads I participate in.

As a person also that has owned a business, I also recognize the need for moving forward, constant improvements, most of the time they work, sometimes not, but I think the new format will work, give it some time to incorporate alot of the complained shortcomings. One of my complaints is the lousy colors, just my opinion. I really didn't see any problem with the previous format, and if not broke, don't fix it, but oh well. Now I feel better.

okie, just read some of craven's explanations on the previous pages of this thread.
the previous format WAS broken and not fixable, it was going to die. the fact that we didn't see it does not mean that the system was working well. but anyway, craven explained it many times before.

You can only drive your 1982 pickup so long. At one point, the upkeep will outweigh its usefulness.

Okay, I am willing to accept that explanation, but I guess my question is why not new programming with the same features? Surely the features that made the site successful were not broken? So I am assuming the programming to get the features may have been broken? And as cyclops complained, progress should be progress. If the old car had an automatic transmission and push button windows, why go back to a stick on the column and manual window cranks? If you buy a new car, it should run better and be more enjoyable to drive, not the other way around. Again, I think alot will be tweaked, as any new model of car will be, so a little more time is in order to see how it progresses.

Anyway, don't take my complaints too seriously. I am not married to A2K, I have enjoyed the political debates, and I won't give up on the site now, but just as anyone else, I will give it a chance over time, but if at some point it is just not that great of an experience, I will go somewhere else.

i think we are operating from a completely different platform (as far as i understand things). everything had to be done from scratch...and that is of course an immense job. i'm sure the details will be tweaked as we go.

I don't think the features were broken. I think, as dag said, that this whole website has been rebuilt from scratch. Implementing the same features as in the old website wouldn't have meant keeping those features, but rather re-building the same features from scratch. (Not speaking with any authority, just as I understand it.)

What features are you missing exactly, okie?

At the risk of looking foolish, I admit I have not devoted tons of time acquainting myself with learning the details of this new site, so some of my answer may have solutions, but I will try to list them here.

I don't like the colors or readibility, that is probably number one complaint, however, I realize this might be a matter of personal taste, so I don't know whether others agree or not.

Secondly, I would like to one click to all threads that I have participated in most recently, and see the latest post there. I realize now I can get there by customizing the tags, and I have done that, but it takes time, and my primary interest is posting and seeing opinions, not customizing my site on a continual basis. I don't much care about constantly playing with preferences, tags, etc., I am more interesting in reading and posting opinions in the threads I care about, and whatever makes that easier makes me happier.

I would like to be able to easily show quote boxes for the person I am replying to. That can be done, but not as easily. Also, alot of scrolling seems to happen now, not an improvement.

I don't stay logged in very long, so by the time this post is formulated, I have to log in again, what about that?

Thats just a few concerns.

I think that Craven said that the actual layout and graphics of the website was not that high on their priorities list.... that their main concern was to get the site up and running, and in a way that it would be in danger of crashing completely any second now - as the old site apparently was. It seems that work on the layout is therefore not finished, and is still going on behind the scenes.

Personally, I must say it took me a bit to get used to the new layout, but by now I do like it by now. Of course, if Craven is working on some feature that would even allow us to customize the layout, that would be the best of both worlds.



That's a good point. As far as "features" go, this actually seems to be a feature that is missing from the new A2K. On the other hand, the new tagging system, while an extra step (you have to type in a tag to find the thread again later, in "My Tags"), provides the same function overall.

I agree that that means you have to do a lot of work now, after he switch, if you want to get the old function back. However, over time, I'll probably just tag a couple of threads every day. Doesn't seem to be too much of an effort.

Also, as Craven has pointed out, I guess we'll only see some of the benefits of the new system in a couple of weeks (while we're aware of the 'disadvantages' right now). At the moment I see that I have to do the extra work of tagging all the threads I want to keep track of. Annoying. However, in a couple of weeks from now, the collective tagging effort will leave us not only with a politics "forum", but also with a McCain forum, a Global Warming forum, or a forum just about Polls...

You're right that the tagging essentially constitutes an ongoing "customizing" effort. But I think that we'll soon come to appreciate the advantage of having a specific "forum" for all these different topics.



Yes, that's a valid point. Again, I've read that Craven is acknowledging that the current function is awkward to use, and is working on improving it.

For me, that not really a big deficit. I've been pretty much using the quote function the way it is now implemented (copying and pasting the stuff I wanted to respond to, and manually adding the [quote] tags.

But yes, there's stuff going on behind the scenes....



Dunno....? I've read that other posters have the same problem. Maybe a bug? Have you posted it in the New A2K bugs or New A2K Annoyances threads?

I don't think it's something the developers want to be that way....

It seems to be fixed by making sure to choose the "remember me" option on the log-in page. (It remains a problem for those who don't have the luxury of doing so, because they're at work for example.)