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21

Paul, my point was that in the previous forum software there was an option to “Display All Threads” that did so at the top forum level with no division into sub forums and listed the active THREADS with the most recent THREAD at the top. There were readily identifiable buttons that would indicate unread posts and you could easily and relibly enter that thread and be taken to the first unread post. I find that posts WITHIN the thread listed oldest to newest top to bottom are far easier to consume than reverse chronological order. This is not to be confused with listing THREADS with the most recent at the top.

Sorry for the yelling but I feel that there is a communication gap and I am trying to highlight certain critical details that seem to be misinterpreted.

J.P.

22

I suspect the reason more people aren’t annoyed is either that they are and are tired of complaining or that they aren’t as ODC about reading every post or they just haven’t noticed that they aren’t seeing a lot of posts.

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Paul McGowan said
Peanut Butter said Does this mean I'm going to have to learn how to find things all over again? As it is, the forum has become like the junk drawer in my garage - it's a complete mess, there is no order, but at least it's settled to a predictable state of chaos and I can occasionally find what I'm looking for.

Really? I wonder if you could help me figure out what’s “a mess”. To me the new forums are soooo much easier to use, see what I like and read posts than any we’ve ever had, that I guess i am stumped by your comments.


The combination of the giant header; the sticky posts that look the same as regular posts that throw the posting sort order off; the huge chunk of space taken up by member avatars, post count, nickname, forum rank, socioeconomic status, geographic location, credit score, and other stuff that I really don’t care about; the large fonts that make for very short thread lists; the multiple very similar forums that may contain very similar topics; and the non-intuitive, cluttered interface have made adjusting to the new forum unfun. I never thought I’d say it, but I kinda miss Vanilla. No, not really. But I dread trying to find something here.

For instance, my Bridge lost its poor little mind today. I’m sure that somewhere in here is a post that might have helped with the problem (like what’s the best gauge of shot to use), but I sure can’t find it. I tried searching for +bridge +ip and got a thread about Hungarians fighting.

I’m tempted to extend my rant to include the file naming conventions for the software downloads. Oh, OK, I will:

I carefully save every firmware update in case I have to go back to an older version or recover something (like today).

So, here’s what’s in the folder:

Directory of C:\Software\ps audio

07/31/2014 02:29 PM .
07/31/2014 02:29 PM …
07/10/2014 01:45 PM 531,577 11-054-01-X-FMC-25.zip
07/31/2014 12:46 PM 852,233 11-061-01-1-FMC-07.zip
07/10/2014 01:58 PM 851,935 11-061-01-1-FMC-6.zip
07/10/2014 01:46 PM 391,344 11-066-11-X-FMC-10.zip
07/02/2014 08:30 AM 15,719,536 Git-1.9.4-preview20140611.exe
10/23/2013 07:26 PM PSAudio-USBAudio2.0DriverLatest
10/22/2013 12:04 PM 1,611,083 PSAudio-USBAudio2.0DriverLatest.zip
07/10/2014 02:19 PM 1,611,083 PSAudio-USBAudio2.0DriverLatestA.zip
07/31/2014 02:29 PM 13,158,028 upgrade-0.2.15.ub_.zip
07/01/2014 09:54 AM 1,415,888 vcredist_arm.exe
07/01/2014 08:14 AM 7,188,536 vcredist_x64.exe
07/01/2014 09:56 AM 6,498,200 vcredist_x86.exe
07/01/2014 08:10 AM 19,351,559 WaveStreamInstall.exe

Now, which one is the latest DS firmware? Which one is the Bridge driver? FIIK. I’m thinking the ones that have ‘USB’ in the name might have something to do with the USB drivers, but I’m not going to bet on it. I’ll have go back to the downloads page and try to match up names to products. Yes, I should be creating sub-folders for each product, but if things were just named better I wouldn’t have to. It’s as bad as IBM’s downloads, and that’s quite an accomplishment.

24

ODC? Obsessive Dyslexic Compulsive? :))

I too have a strong urge to read EVERY post, and this latest forum software has made that rather challenging.

Ted is probably right, there are probably basically three camps: Those of us who must read every post, the subset of those who are tired of the fight and have given up trying and/or complaining, and the more sane group who are happy to read some posts in a few threads of particular interest…

J.P.

25

What did the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac do?

[spoiler]Lay awake at night wondering if there was a dog.[/spoiler]

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There is no Dog… but there are two cats in my house. :slight_smile:

J.P.

27

@adminpaul

As a minor example every time I’ve come back to the forum today it said that I have more unread posts in this thread and the “take me to the first unread post” button takes me to post #13.

That’s especially interesting since I’ve post multiple times in this thread today and it still doesn’t think I’ve read any posts.

28

I had exactly this just happen, on this thread.

29

Well, here’s the deal. We can make this forum respond anyway we wish. Ted, Wingsounds and Peanut Butter seem pretty clued in. Does anyone want to volunteer to help me straighten these out and get them the way we want? Is it possible to get a consensus?

Elk? Forum Leader? Ted?

I am willing to invest the time and programming money to get these forums back t what you want. For me, these forums work great because i get an email message whenever anyone posts anything. I read it, decide to respond or not and move on. It’s easy. So I am not a good and reliable source to ferret this out.

But we do want this to be useful, fun and productive. If we can find someone to lead the charge, I can get it programmed.

Any volunteers?

Peanutbutter mentions the giant header. That’s just a theme issue. Again, we can get this managed any way we want.

What I am hoping to avoid is switching software programs again. It’s a royal pain in the arse. Our website is a Wordpress based site and as such, the users and registrations are now on one database, where with Vanilla they were separate. I don’t want to go there again.

Let me know.

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Paul McGowan said

What I am hoping to avoid is switching software programs again. It’s a royal pain in the arse. Our website is a Wordpress based site and as such, the users and registrations are now on one database, where with Vanilla they were separate. I don’t want to go there again.


I agree: let’s tune what we already have.

31

I am happy to help, but if one of the more detailed oriented, OCD types is willing to assist this would be great!

I do not even notice the vast majority of the quirks others mention. Those I do notice do not bother me. I would hate to mess things up further.

32
Ted Smith said What did the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac do?

Lay awake at night wondering if there was a dog.

“The other day I was in a bookstore and I started talking to a French-looking girl. She was a bilingual illiterate. She couldn’t read in two different languages.”

“Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.”

Steven Wright

33

Two more issues;

  1. I want only one single email notification for one subscribed topic. I have to visit the community forum again before I get a new one

  2. If I try to edit a post after some time, there will be a automatic note in the post saying when the post was last edited

I also commented these issues on the Vanilla forum.

34

Who wants to step up to the plate on this? Peanutbutter? Reese, you’re a smart guy … maybe smart enough not to volunteer? devil_gif

Or …

35

Sorry, I seem to be having trouble getting the latest posts in this thread. The last thing I see is some of Mr. Wright’s humor.

36

This site is getting better, slowly. Might as well have a go at making it work for us as well as possible. I have already posted the most significant issues that I have with it…

What can I do to help?

I won’t be of much use for coding as I have not done any programming in decades and I don’t think that this site is built in Fortran. :slight_smile:

J.P.

37

Peanutbutter has graciously (or foolishly) offered to spearhead the fixing party. Let’s just use this thread to start feeding him a list of complaints, feature requests and things we want to see tweaked. Here’s what I would appreciate, however. Let’s not get carried away as we tend to do. He will eventually need to develop a clear and concise list of what changes we want the programmer to make. Programmers need clear direction, not lists of gripes.

For example, peanutbutter mentioned the oversized header and footer cluttering up the page. I agree with him. But I can’t tell the programmer “it’s too big”. He just comes back and says “what do you want in them?” So, someone needs to take a look in the header, for example, and say we need the following:

  • Drop down list of forums and threads
  • Search
  • Breadcrumbs
And then we need a list telling him what to lose.

So maybe we can make this a community effort. It would be appreciated. Peanutbutter can be the aggregator, the community can chime in with what they want. Then, and only then, I will prepare the list, engage the programmer, he will go to work and give us what we want. Then we test.

Make sense?

Let’s make this as organized and fun as we can. Lord knows we all spend enough time here. Might as well be a nice place to hang out, eh?

38

Thank you, Peanut Butter!

I am curious to see what others find important and how they would like the forum to look and work.

I suggest making the “Add Reply” button four times bigger, and minimizing the size of the “Quote” button to discourage quoting the last post in a thread just to add a response. :)

39
Elk said

I suggest . . . minimizing the size of the “Quote” button to discourage quoting the last post in a thread just to add a response. :)


. . .unless the system sends you an email when someone quotes something you wrote. This would make it a lot easier to respond in a timely fashion to the help threads. Any quotes could be limited to a display length of five or six lines (enough to get the idea) with a link to expand to the full length of the quoted text.

40

It might be a good idea to write your reply in an editor and then post it if your response is lenghty.

Without a quote you risk that a few others have already posted while you are editing, especially if the thread is very dynamic/hot.