@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre wrote:Because if you don't vote them down all you see is stuff that you're not interested in at the time and trying to find something you are interested in becauses excessively time consuming and tedious.
Yeah, but on the last software you couldn't do that. You said this new software is worse for building community. When pressed for why you think so you basically say it comes down to the fact that you are voting down topics that you might later regret voting down.
Well the last site didn't have voting, and you didn't seem to complain about the need to not see stuff you aren't interested in, so if this is your big problem with this software, just don't frikin' vote stuff down.
Quote: Wasn't that the whole purpose in removing threads we weren't interested in?
Not if you are going to then turn around and complain that it makes it worse for you. You complain that by voting it down, you are deprived of finding it interesting later.
So just don't vote it down silly!
Quote:I rarely used 'new posts' on the old A2K but rather went to a few forums of interest to see if anything new was cooking there.
Then go to the specific tag pages here.
Quote: Now we are forced to use 'new posts' to know if there is anything new of interest for us.
At gunpoint or something? Look, from a read perspective, the tags work just like the old forums did.
Quote:Sigh. I must be communicating poorly. Right now there is one thread of interest to me on the entire first page of New Topics. I didn't check, but I don't know how many pages I would have to click through to find anything new of interest I might want to participate in.
But these pages sort the topics the same way the previous site did. This is nothing new except that you've decided that you are "forced" to do it this way.
Quote:When I would check in on the old forums, however, almost all the active threads I was interested in would be on the first page.
On the old forums, it would sort the same way. In this regard it's not software that has changed.
Quote:Because when the threads were organized into the smaller forum areas, a thread would be there on the first page for some time--certainly usually for most of at least a day, usually more--and that gave time for members checking in at different times of the day to see it and participate if they chose to do so.
Threads continue to be organized into smaller areas, just instead of calling them forums you call them tags.
Quote: Now a thread can cycle off the first page or two fairly quickly, especially when the board is really active, and many who might be interested in that thread or adding another post to it will never see it.
Yeah, and that would happen on the "New Posts" on the old site too, just use the specific sub-forums (tags!).
Quote:The problem is exacerbated in that some of us don't always remember to tag every thread we post in.
There's no need to tag every thread you post in, you couldn't do that on the old site and you don't need to do it here either. Why do you feel that you'd need to do this?
Quote:When have I ever blamed the software?
When you say you are now being "forced" to do things differently are you actually saying that humans are forcing you? You said that the new format is not good for building community and I take that to mean the software.
Quote: I am just saying that when my only options are voting town topics or not voting down topics, the board is way too much of a mess to be user friendly or conducive to community building.
And I'm just saying that those certainly aren't your only options, and am trying to show you how you can do things just like you did before.
Quote:Don't do what? A2K? I suppose if everybody leaves that I enjoy discussing things with I probably will too.
No, don't vote things down if you find that you later regret missing interesting content.
Quote:If I have been out of line, I apologize.
Don't apologize, figure it out. You have the mistaken impression that you are being forced to use new posts, and forced to vote things down that you later regret. You aren't being forced to do so, so it sounds like figuring that out would make your use a lot more palatable to you.
Quote:And I'll try to avoid putting my two cents in when somebody else brings it up.
Why? I don't object to you putting in your two cents. I just think that there are easy ways to address your complaints by not doing the very things you complain about being forced to do.
I've spent time explaining this because I think it sounds like if you stopped voting so much down you'd eliminate your objection to the new format. You describe use cases that you seem to think you
must use. I'm trying to explain to you that you really don't have to do it that way if you find it so objectionable.
If you want, you can still just go to specific tags of interest just like you could go to specific forums in the past. You just need to learn which forums were poorly named on the last software to know which ones are going to shift here.
For example, the old forums that were too broadly named (e.g. Philosophy & Debate, Religion & Spirituality, Science & Math) aren't going to be as natural to use in tags, so the topics that used to be posted there are more likely to be posted to more aptly named and specific tags (e.g. philosophy, religion, science, math).
One of the things we are working on, is filtering out tags you don't want to see in a global list (like new posts) or making an opt-in format where you can add tags you are interested in, and make a list only of those, but those would be things you couldn't do on the last software anyway, and there's really nothing stopping you from using the new tags like the old forums.
