I see several posts on how to fix the new forum but that’s like trying to put new paint over wet wood to cover it up.
The problem is that the entire forum has changed. It is nothing like the previous forum. If you want guaranteed success making change you should never make more than a 20% change. In other words, improve the current system enough to make a difference but not so that it is foreign to the users. Otherwise you end up like it is now, everyone is confused, lost, and becoming frustrated.
Although a bit late now, it should have been tested out on your customers as you were designing and building it. Never surprise them. You may be proud of your work but surprises don’t go over well with user interfaces. Users hate learning curves, they want to get in and get their work done.
Unfortunately there has probably been a lot of time and money invested so now you have a problem. Is there anyway to change it like the old forum where you list the topics then clicking on one takes you to the dicussion where it lists a brief line of the discussion and the user’s name? In some situations I think frames work great but not here.
The biggest complaint I heard about the old forum was searching for something specific. However, the new search doesn’t seem to work well either. I tried a test on ME and after making two posts yesterday only one came back.
Don’t get discouraged. I think everyone appreciates the effort but maybe not so much.
Steve
Replies
Steve et all,
Thanks for the comments. The one thing that I would like to stress to all users here is that this change was driven by you folks. You may not remember but it is clearly etched into my memory banks all the complaints we got regarding site speed, poor search engine, site going down without us being able to communicate to you folks (to name a few).
What you see before you is alot of hard work on our part to bring you a forum that is very good. The difficult part about launching a new product like this is trying to anticipate what things you will like and what things you won't and making the ones we think you like even better. Over the past 24-30 hours I have been reading and watching the reaction to this change and I must say that I did expect a good deal of feedback from you all (both positive and negative) and I was not disapointed or discouraged with what I have seen so far. You are a passionate group of people that really care how your cyber "home" is managed and run. Which makes me think that if you are as passionate about your work as you are these forums I would hire you all in a second to come work on my house.
One of the things about the Prospero environment is that what you see is not set in stone and we can make changes and will be making them. We launched this site in "basic" mode knowing full well that you all would drive the way that we develop it. Think of it this way, Yesterday was the birth of a new child and all of us are the parents and we will all have the opportunity to help nuture and teach this child new things. I welcome whole heartedly the suggestions you have and will be working to implement as many of them as we can and are able to. But please bear with us as a child doesn't become an adult over night neither will this forum. We first have to resolve any problems that users might have then we will be focusing on making "improvements". If you are having techniccal issues orwant to learn more about some of the features please visit thesandbox as that is where I have been hangin out the most and if you post a question over there I will see it and respond I cannot promise that I will be able to answer all questions here but I wll do my best to try.
-Mark
SYSOP
sysop,
Thanks for the reply, you don't know how much better I feel with this statement. I hope things can evolve here to make a more enjoyable enviroment.John Svenson, Builder, Remodeler, NE Ohio (Formerly posted as JRS)
"You may not remember but it is clearly etched into my memory banks all the complaints we got regarding site speed, poor search engine, site going down without us being able to communicate to you folks"
I, too, remember all of that clearly. I am also certain that if, when you said "we are working on it" you had added "we are looking at other software to use that addresses these problems" that we would have said "Problems?? What problems? We like this, don't look at other software"
Having said that, my only real problem with this new software is the speed. Sometimes I have to wait several minutes for a page to load. Also, the software seems to make greater demands on my computer than the previous stuff, so my computer is also slower.
The only time I see frames now is after I post and then click "continue". I use Netscape. I right click on the blue "General Discussion" bar and open that in a new window. That then looks a lot like the old main page. I open any threads or folders in new windows by right clicking.
Rich Beckman
Rich,
part of the speed issue is that we are stilll importing data. WE had not completed bringing over the entire archives when we launched but we are still working on it. And should have it finished before the end of the day.
-MarkSYSOP