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General Discussion: [Sink] Am I the only one that doesn't like this forum system?
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CJ.H
Mar 31st 2008 edited
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TheLeggett
Mar 31st 2008 edited
Posted By: Ruuka
The signatures under posts system that Greycobra had in place allowed a person to know right away (in the most part) who had made the post and gave a peek into their abilities as an artist using a format such as Photoshop.
I personaly would look for specific individuals to read their comments and their comments only based on who they were. The Name for me was not enough. In essence, a name does not always mean much though a picture (Sig) is worth a thousand words. By having a signature at the end of the post allowed the reader a quick glance at the abilities and talents of the poster and gave a sence of individuality. Its the same things as two guys haveing the same car but one painting his black with racing stripes and the other guy painting his red. Its a way to distinguish between the hundreds of personalities on the site and to give that sence of individuality. Without them i feel as though we are all just numbers on a site that is very mundain.
Let's set aside lag, terrible page load time, poor optimization, extra scrolling, and all of those things for the moment.
Signatures in the sense which you are used to are simply a form of self glorification. Now, I have NO problem whatsoever with sharing work that is meaningful in some way or another, and spend a good deal of my time on design forums/blogs myself enjoying other peoples artwork. Let's just get it out there that Signatures are not art. You don't post artwork at the bottom of every post you make online.
I think I understand what you and others who miss the signature system are trying to convey. Graphic signatures allow you easily see the abilities of another. In turn, this allows you to convey your abilities to everyone else (which can be a turn off to users with lesser ability). There are a few reasons why this is a bad thing.
- We are not only planning to be a design community.
- We'd rather not focus on a make believe art form here at T9, where we hope to broaden our horizons to the likes of things such as writing, scripting, blogging, simple life tasks, among other things.
- They are just viewed in a negative way by so many people out there. I think that if they do have a place, they belong on younger communities, that are not associated with furthering abilities in design.
Now, all of that said, we have implemented a NEW system which we believe will do a lot of the things you mentioned, as well as have users speak rather than base identities off of a 400px wide graphic.
We have an awards system, where we can give users medals for doing cool things. For example, if someone is incredibly helpful, they might win a medal for being such a distinguished member (which is shown next to all of there posts, and on there profile page). Users can win multiple awards for doing various things around Tutorial9, or winning contests we plan to host in the future.
It will allow the community to easily pick out distinguished, helpful, and kind members on the forums at a single glance. And these awards are based on merit and good things done on the forum rather than a self-proclaimed identity.
I really think you'll end up liking this new system better in terms of constructive, intelligible conversation. We'll have to wait and see I guess. -
MPCoyote Mar 31st 2008I still think this is a great idea with attainable goals and have no complaints thus far haha. Can't wait to see when the site really picks up.
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MikeWilson
Apr 1st 2008 edited
My quick two cents before I retire; I was never a fan of signatures, and though some may see them as a personal reflectance and ability to express oneself, that doesn't belong in content. Tutorial 9 is now a content driven website, it is here to communicate ideologies, theories, practicums, and design thoughts and techniques to those near and far. Essentially, we are here to deliver messages, and the forum is here to have this interchange of thought for everyone. As said by some others, the forum just requires a little adjustment, but I firmly stand behind David and his course of action for this website and community, and as many of you old members may have noticed, I haven't been active as of late due to post secondary schooling. However come late April, I should be able to become more active, participate and aid David, Fredrik, and the rest of the staff, and brew up tutorials I've been contemplating and manufacturing the last few months.
Cheers. -
Pseudonym Apr 1st 2008 editedIn an attempt to move away from the controversy of signatures and provide some deeper insight as to why people aren't thrilled with the new forum, I thought I'd mention something Leggett said that stuck out to me.
Posted By: TheLeggett
We are not looking to create a forum where "Support" is low on the priority list. Most support forums (including the old GreyCobra) have Support WAY DOWN in the list of things, and our intelligent users almost never had the opportunity to lend a helping hand in the community. Tutorial9's new forum format shows lists of ALL RECENT messages on the front page, allowing everyone to see what's new immediately, and also offers a means of navigating the forum MUCH MORE QUICKLY than any other software I've used. I can easily see what's drawing attention by "Hot" topics, and also quickly navigate to discussions I've taken part in recently. At the same time, we don't lack the organization you see in other forums as categories still exist, and can be individually navigated.
I understand the theme of support, and whole-heartedly support the crew's decision to make a move in this direction, however, I'd like to voice a subtle dissenting opinion on how the new forum should achieve this goal. I'm not sure that a post based forum is the right direction to help new and old users alike to find what they're looking for. I'll try to illustrate my reasoning for both cases.
When a new user first comes to a "support" forum, he usually has a specific question he wishes to be answered, or task he wishes to learn how to perform. Correct? With this in mind, it seems more helpful provide the new user with a hierarchical list of topics which he could navigate through to find the solution to his specific need than it is to bombard him with a list of most discussed topics. From my experience, I am usually more frustrated by post-based forums than topic-based ones. I would be curious to see what others' experiences have been with Vanilla style boards.
In the case of a returning user, a similar scenario might take place. Even though sometimes he may be returning to check on a topic that he's posted in recently, he might also be looking for something new to peak his interest. Again he runs into the issue that post-based boards don't offer any great way to find threads with a specific topic. Once he is guided into a vague "Category," or attempts to use the poorly optimized search engine, he is left to his own waning patience to surf through likely hundreds of threads. This neither provides a timely service to either the user or the admin who have to maintain the forum.
Wrapping this up before it becomes entirely too long, I think the main problem with this style of board is that it's not scalable. It works great at this point in the beta, because there are a relatively small amount of threads. However, once it increases in popularity (as it inevitably will), it will become a hassle for users to navigate, and all but the most recently posted threads will merely collect dust on the 37th page of topics. -
TheLeggett
Apr 1st 2008
I'm not sure how you're distinguishing Topic from Categories. Consider the categories to simply be sub-forums of the entire Tutorial9 Community Forum (just as we have in the past with IPB on GreyCobra). It's really the exact same thing.
Actually, I believe it's much more scalable than our previous style. It takes up much less room than our previous look, and we have the opportunity to add many more categories in the future as we grow. If you believe we are lacking a category or sub-forum, we'll happily consider all suggestions made by our community!
I've spent time in various forums that use Vanilla, and have always been able to find the exact thread I've been looking for, I'd argue even faster than I would on IPB. Part of this is thanks to the speed and light weight of Vanilla, part due to the organization of everything, and the great search engine features. -
Pseudonym Apr 1st 2008I'm sorry for the confusion. By topic I meant thread, or, as this forum refers to them, "discussions". The lack of categories is not a problem as, like you said, more categories can simply be added. My qualm is just by sheer number of 'discussions', often it is necessary to have sub-categories, or even sub-sub categories to keep the 'discussions' organized. Please enlighten me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Vanilla discussion boards have this ability, do they? The search feature is wonderful for finding 'discussions', but it is severely limited right now (unless you have added functionality to it) because it does not order posts by relevance. When one searches for "CSS Rollovers", he'll end up with many 'discussions' which just happen to mention them, and are probably not helpful to his cause.
Hopefully this is a bit more clear. I hope I'm not being rude in any manner, I'm absolutely enthralled with the direction the website and community is taking and everything you've done so far, I just thought I'd nitpick. -
TheLeggett
Apr 1st 2008
No, you're not coming off rude at all, no worries on ever stating your thoughts here.
Sub-Categories are actually possible as well, and we were using them prior to the private beta here on the forums. We decided not to use them (at least not yet) for several reasons, but mostly because we felt the simple approach was better, and easier to navigate. If we ever discover otherwise, we'll probably experiment with other methods of organization, but from my experience with this forum software, we're probably going to end up liking this style a lot.
As for the searching, I've never had any trouble using it to find what I'm looking for. I can either quickly send a search off on the normal search page, or enable Advanced Searching, and make it only select comments/threads from specific categories. So if I were looking for "CSS Rollovers", I'd probably type that into "Discussion Comment Search", and limit it to the "Web Development Support" category. -
JAZCASH
Apr 1st 2008
What about written signatures then? No images, just text? -
CJ.H
Apr 1st 2008 edited
^ Yes I think that would work. Maybe just a line or two to put a link to someones portfolio or deviant art.
And one small complaint I have about this fourm is the lack of a way to post pictures. It is after all, a site about graphic design and photoshop. Many other fourms use BBcode, and so to post a picture you can simply write [img](img url goes here)[/img] and the picture pops up in the persons post. Just a small suggestion. ;)
BB code however, would be a nice addition.
Still, Good enough for me!