Boards.ie New Site bugs and features

gandalf

Esel wrote: »

The generals have decided on a new weapon.

We, the troops, have to learn to use that weapon.

No we don't, we can choose to cease using the site.

Lets see how the "generals" fair when their "products" and content generators dissipate.

Esel

gandalf wrote: »

No we don't, we can choose to cease using the site.

Lets see how the "generals" fair when their "products" and content generators dissipate.

I probably should have used an emoticon.

Either way, there is only one way. March, or die. The train can't stop between stations. Other trains are following. It's not a space race, but we're shooting for the moon. The launch countdown has begun. Set the controls for the heart of the sun. Careful with that axe, Eugene. Money. Taste. On the Boards. What's Going On?
David Gates. Bread. If. Only music can heal this hurt. In my yurt. Electric picnic, Kevin Mitnick. Hack me harder; raid my larder. Tough? Enough! Get with the program, or hear that door slam.

tl/dr Blast off!

How Strange

I still can't use boards (without the risk of serious eye strain) on my phone. However, while I was in the Netherlands over the weekend I was able to use a different format - more like a mobile site. Now I'm back home I'm back to the standard site.

I've been a member of boards for about 9 years but I think I'll just give up using it if this is the only format I can access. It's totally unusable on a phone.

degsie

If I was an advertiser, I'd be nervous at this point.

the groutch

Esel wrote: »

I probably should have used an emoticon.

soon they'll have us using emojis, that's the new hipster thing innit?

gandalf

No updates still from the Management. It's getting pretty obvious that the users of the site are viewed as an annoyance at this stage.

I pissed myself when I switched to the legacy site and then wanted to change back to the new one to check differences and saw it was called "responsive" site. You can't even browse the forums off the front page and the new site has more scrolling not less.

How could they have thought it was a good idea to default to this view and have it as an opt out for all instead of an opt in given it's current state?

Poll's get massively stretched in new view, though I'm sure that's been worked on. Hey at least the ads are still the same on both

Pelvis Parsley

Deleted User wrote: »

Poll's get massively stretched in new view, though I'm sure that's been worked on. Hey at least the ads are still the same on both

That's the first thing to be looked at, followed by TALK TO (in as prominent a position as possible!)

Adverts and the "success fee" furore come to mind.

Esel

On touch (in this thread), I clicked Responsive Site for a quick look.

Slow to load, much less data per screen.

Clicked Legacy Site.

Now, when I click into this thread from My Threads, I am consistently brought to page 1 rather than first unread post.

Edit: brought to page 1 after submitting this post.

Wibbs

gandalf wrote: »

No updates still from the Management. It's getting pretty obvious that the users of the site are viewed as an annoyance at this stage.

Jesus G, while I think the new beta yoke a bloody disaster, what the hell do you want the "management" to do? Show up self flagellating in sackcloth? Ashes optional.

gandalf

Wibbs wrote: »

Jesus G, while I think the new beta yoke a bloody disaster, what the hell do you want the "management" to do? Show up self flagellating in sackcloth? Ashes optional.

That would be a good start.

Hey Wibbs this thread was started by their representative and then they went silent around a week and a half ago. Either they want to engage or they dont, half hearted engagement where heads are buried in the sand because the users are saying bad things is even more damaging.

New Home

Didn't Dav say he was going on holidays? I think that might explain the lack of communication.

gandalf

New Home wrote: »

Didn't Dav say he was going on holidays? I think that might explain the lack of communication.

There is another Community Manager employed by boards.

nibtrix

Was just about to post that! Dav said it would be 2 weeks before he updated:

Dav wrote: »

Meanwhile, over the next 2 weeks, the team will continue to work on the issues listed above. Further bugs etc will be added to that list of course. I'm off on a much needed week off next week, so when I come back I'll go through this thread, update the list and will hope to publish the updated list with our progress to day 2 weeks from today.

aw

Perhaps it has been mentioned, but the search function is poor on the new site.

Often I use boards for a specific purpose, to find relevant information on a topic.
A useful function of the old site was "search within this thread" or search within a forum and then arrange results by best match or most recent, etc.

I do not see this on the new search function, just a filter within a search for last day, last month, last year. This is not as useful.

gandalf

nibtrix wrote: »

Was just about to post that! Dav said it would be 2 weeks before he updated:

He said that he was off for a week. Given the overwhelming to near total rejection of the new site I would have expected a more proactive approach from someone in boards office. Fine I can't wait to see the line that's trotted out next week. At least it will be entertaining.

B00!

How long do you think we can continue reverting to the Legacy site, as needed?

baby and crumble

Hey guys, I just tried to reply when logged out to a PI post (anon) but it won't let me. Option is there only to login to reply.

wotzgoingon

I have a bug and it seems someone else has it as well as they posted in the thread reporting the same problem. Happens only while on the mobile site.

http://www.boards.ie/b/thread/2057593132#99690831

Brief_Lives

wotzgoingon wrote: »

I have a bug and it seems someone else has it as well as they posted in the thread reporting the same problem. Happens only while on the mobile site.

http://www.boards.ie/b/thread/2057593132#99690831

I get this bug also...


1 other thing, in the old site, when you want to change your notifications to followed threads, it was on your followed threads page, at the end of each thread..
where can I change my notifications option for the new site..

after I write this message, I will go to the legacy site, and change my notification fromo Instant ... to ... no email notification..

Decided to have a look at the desktop site as I'd only tried the mobile one, and it's even worse. Turned off my ad blocker too for the full experience and immediately switched it back on. I understand a site has got to generate revenue and boards doesn't usually have excessive or annoying ads but my god that scrolling ad over there on the right is a travesty.

On the plus the Topics menu is better than what is currently there on the legacy site and requires no clicking until you find what you want. Skin needs a dark option though, I'm being blinded as I type this

Dav

Hello everyone, thanks for your patience. I can indeed confirm that taking a week off is only ever going to result in having to do 2 weeks worth of work to catch up

So where are we?

Well first things first, work continues on our bugs list - I can see I have a few more things to add to it, so thank you for that. I've updated it and you can see it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UMjefklBy6DneP2U9QsJ5Oc40ojMLvs0fLRrh6QIDiU/pubhtml

We've now got a couple of weeks of analytics data as well as your feedback and that all confirms what so many of you are saying - there are important issues that need to be addressed with the new site. "Well duh Dav" you'll say, but as I've always tried to stress, these decisions are made with numbers and facts and as little guesswork as possible. You cannot make a decision solely based on the opinions of less than a thousand people when your overall readership is over a million. Yes, that thousand odd people are the most important of the million, but they're still 0.1% of the total readership and cannot be the only part of our decision making process. Even within all the criticism we see polar opposite opinions on what's best and what's a disaster and so on. There are, for example, people who swear by touch. and those who think it's appalling. I'm not trying to single any one argument out though, I'm just using this as an example to highlight that this is a very complicated process. We have very distinct and disparate groups of members and readers all of whom want something different from the site. We also have an 18 year legacy to protect and maintain and a future to carve out with you all. I have explained several times that we have as much, if not more feedback from people who aren't contributors who's barrier to entry is the vastly confusing idea of what a forums site is and how we present our content. This might seem daft to some of more experienced heads, but to give you a personal example, I found the Facebook interface absolutely and completely mind bending, but my almost 70 year old mother flies around it without any problems. Go figure

So what does this mean? Well work on the ​new​ site isn't going to stop or anything like that, but ​based on your feedback​ we've obviously ​got to revisit some parts of it. This means that the Legacy Site as we've been calling it will remain on active duty as the default interface (any other old and unsupported skins will also remain usable) ​and we have suspended our plan to default some users who are currently using the Legacy site to the new site.​ This is not some sort of dastardly trick where we're saying "yea we'll keep the Legacy site​" and then one day make it go away all of a sudden - it's staying for as long as it makes sense​ and if that's going to change, you'll get lots of notice.

I will be back to this again in two weeks to update you with our progress on not only the bugs list, but ​any changes to the new site we'll be embarking on. I know I speak for all of us in the office when I say that we're doing all this for you and with you and that's not some sort of empty platitude, it's how we do things here.

anothernight

Dav wrote: »

You cannot make a decision solely based on the opinions of less than a thousand people when your overall readership is over a million. Yes, that thousand odd people are the most important of the million, but they're still 0.1% of the total readership and cannot be the only part of our decision making process.

I'd just like to point out that without that thousand, you wouldn't have most of the content read by the million readers. Don't forget that this isn't a blog but a discussion forum. You don't feed us content. We create it for you.

The new layout goes out of its way to make content creation difficult. Your less than a thousand people shouldn't be the only part of your decision making process, but more thought should have gone into what systems they need to create content, which is the life and blood of an internet forum.


Still, thank you for keeping the legacy better site for a bit longer!

Bazzo

Don't see a few things I've posted about in the list, namely:

No option to delete a post when editing it.
No way to link to a specific post as you could with the old site.
Adding someone to your ignore list a bit convoluted, much more difficult than the dropdown menu on the old site.
Ignore lists still not funtioning(for me at least).

gandalf

So basically no real response at all. Use statistics to avoid the fact that a overwhelming portion of the sites real users who generate the content that brings in the lurkers hate the look of the new site. Without meaningful content being generated you will lose the lurkers.

No apology to the users for forcing a half baked site on them, especially to the overseas members of the site who have had serious problems reverting back to the older site.

So basically it's plough ahead and **** the lot of ye attitude we are getting. You talk about legacy Dav but in reality boards management are pissing all over it.

B00!

gandalf wrote: »

So basically no real response at all. Use statistics to avoid the fact that a overwhelming portion of the sites real users who generate the content that brings in the lurkers hate the look of the new site. Without meaningful content being generated you will lose the lurkers.

No apology to the users for forcing a half baked site on them, especially to the overseas members of the site who have had serious problems reverting back to the older site.

So basically it's plough ahead and **** the lot of ye attitude we are getting. You talk about legacy Dav but in reality boards management are pissing all over it.

you. have. got. to. be. kiddin'. me.
They have worked for six long years to give us all a free place to continue to share together, and still have the capacity to expand. May I remind you that Boards operated in the red for a time - all for our benefit! This new site may not be ideal for some of us, but can we not attempt to work with it as graciously as the admins have tried working with us?....or is that beneath us??? The new site has many lovely attributes with a great deal of promise and Dav has been gracious enough to open this dialogue and thoughtfully attempt to address ALL of our endless, disparate, multiplicity of concerns, comments, irritations... and for what? To be told none of it is good enough?! That's some cajones you have, sir!

B00!

B00! wrote: »

you. have. got. to. be. kiddin'. me.
They have worked for six long years to give us all a free place to continue to share together, and still have the capacity to expand. May I remind you that Boards operated in the red for a time - all for our benefit! This new site may not be ideal for some of us, but can we not attempt to work with it as graciously as the admins have tried working with us?....or is that beneath us??? The new site has many lovely attributes with a great deal of promise and Dav has been gracious enough to open this dialogue and thoughtfully attempt to address ALL of our endless, disparate, multiplicity of concerns, comments, irritations... and for what? To be told none of it is good enough?! That's some cajones you have, sir!

Well Said Boo. Dav and the boards team are damned if they do and damned if they don't. When the guy did come and address the problem on this thread he was criticised. Before he addressed it he was criticised for not doing so.

I don't envy the position of being employed by a discussion site and trying your best to make changes and have a user friendly experience for all only to constantly come up against it.

gandalf

B00! wrote: »

you. have. got. to. be. kiddin'. me.
They have worked for six long years to give us all a free place to continue to share together, and still have the capacity to expand. May I remind you that Boards operated in the red for a time - all for our benefit! This new site may not be ideal for some of us, but can we not attempt to work with it as graciously as the admins have tried working with us?....or is that beneath us??? The new site has many lovely attributes with a great deal of promise and Dav has been gracious enough to open this dialogue and thoughtfully attempt to address ALL of our endless, disparate, multiplicity of concerns, comments, irritations... and for what? To be told none of it is good enough?! That's some cajones you have, sir!

Are you seriously saying the drivel that has been served up has any real merit. Seriously it has been panned, the fact it has taken them SIX YEARS to produce this is even worse. May I remind you that boards is nothing without its contributing members, now according to dav their opinions are not worth considering. Dav is gracious enough to open dialogue will you ever get a grip, he is the Community Manager HE IS SUPPOSED TO ENGAGE WITH US.

From reading Davs posts on this thread and on others it appears the future for boards is some dodgy facebook, reddit hybrid that is based on tags and not on a classic bulletin board format. If that is the case then boards is ****ed.

You have some cajones telling us to be happy with something that should never have seen the light of day. So you have to be kiddin me mate.

RDM_83 again

Deleted User wrote: »

B00! wrote: »

you. have. got. to. be. kiddin'. me.
They have worked for six long years to give us all a free place to continue to share together, and still have the capacity to expand. May I remind you that Boards operated in the red for a time - all for our benefit! This new site may not be ideal for some of us, but can we not attempt to work with it as graciously as the admins have tried working with us?....or is that beneath us??? The new site has many lovely attributes with a great deal of promise and Dav has been gracious enough to open this dialogue and thoughtfully attempt to address ALL of our endless, disparate, multiplicity of concerns, comments, irritations... and for what? To be told none of it is good enough?! That's some cajones you have, sir!

Well Said Boo. Dav and the boards team are damned if they do and damned if they don't. When the guy did come and address the problem on this thread he was criticised. Before he addressed it he was criticised for not doing so.

I don't envy the position of being employed by a discussion site and trying your best to make changes and have a user friendly experience for all only to constantly come up against it.

What ever about the layout is it much to ask for a site thats actually workable even if inferior to be rolled out, I would like to complain about X Y and Z in terms of "design" of the new site because there is a lot wrong with it. But at the minute its nearly completely functionally broken for me on mobile (where I used to check up on threads) and and just worse in terms of the main desktop site (I am abroad but at the minute giving the "new" site a go).
In these threads normally I would complain about moderating etc but the site is just banjaxed at the minute, look how much slower After Hours is now in terms of new respnonses

Do some of you have no choice but to use the new site or what's the craic there? I'm using the old touch on my phone and the legacy version on my laptop. I'll continue to do so until the new site is sorted out.