official Welcome to the new forums!

[richfiles]

I think the point trying to be made, is that regardless of if you change it yourself or not, being silent is USELESS. The option to change it should be available BY DEFAULT. It will never GET changed if no one speaks out.

The BAD thing to do is to "shut up and mod it".

I use my phone, computers in the break room at work, and multiple browsers at home. I don't have the option to mod some of those (like the work ones), and the utility that at least one mod for the site uses only runs on Firefox and Chrome. "Just mod it" is a horrible response! It literally is the response of "I don't care to actually get anything fixed". How about you stop trying to put down the people who want REAL fixes. They aren't lazy. They are arguing for change. You're just settling with a quick fix... the true lazy act.

[Sean Mirrsen]

28 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Okay so you hate it and won't change it. I can't argue with that.

Literally. I can't. It's useless.

1 hour ago, Sean Mirrsen said:

See, the point is not that I can't do it. It's that not complaining, and dampening the impact of the change for yourself because you can, enables those who make the changes to keep making such changes without regard for those who can't because nobody tells them it's wrong.

I do believe you missed the point. I can alter the forum (the color scheme only, actually) for myself. Whether or not I actually feel like I need to alter it, and whether or not I do alter it, is of no consequence. I do know how the forum looks unmodified. For all you know I am looking at a perfectly eye-friendly page color combination right now, but you assume I am not, because I am complaining. What I want to change is not the look of the forum right now, I want to preclude the notion that just because the end users may be able to change some of the look, everything else can be left as it is and need not be pointed out.

It may well be a futile effort, and technically against the forum rules (see: p.3.4 "Open discussion of staff decisions is strictly prohibited"), but I want to show that I don't like what I see, because maybe if enough people do that it will change.

edit: and ninja'd.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Sean Mirrsen
richfiles is a ninja and this forum needs a "posts have been made while you were typing" alert

[Van Disaster]

I just tried inserting a screencap the way I usually do, with an 800x600 preview image in the post and a link to the original ( I use Flickr ) - on the old board I'd use the conveniently preformatted BBCode link Flickr provides, but the current editor refuses to parse it - I don't know why it doesn't accept it as valid BBCode because I can't see what valid BBcode is. Who decided ctrl-rightclick on the image in the editor was the only way of adding a link to a pic? not only is it awkward & paradigm breaking ( everything else you use the toolbar at the top for ) but I have to spend ages shuffling everything around so FF's rightclick popup menu isn't in the way. This doesn't even seem to be a standard Invision thing because other Invision boards I use let you swipe embedded images as text elements & link them like normal.

Back in another week, I guess.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Van Disaster

[swjr-swis]

1 hour ago, John FX said:

EDIT : Also, could people who encourage others to mod the forum start providing a link to the instructions on how to do that? I`ve seen so many comments saying `just mod it` yet no link to how to do that or to a thread with clear instructions (I know it`s obvious if you know but it isn`t if you don`t). If that could happen that would be great, thanks.

 

[cantab]

4 hours ago, Sean Mirrsen said:

Define "major websites". Most books are that too, but that's because books are not back-lit, and black paper isn't that easy to mass-manufacture. When I'm browsing, I'm finding themes such as Darkling on Bay12Games forums far superior to even their defaults.
That, plus most sites aren't consisting primarily of text. And most (good) sites don't want to look like Facebook.

And really, "it's that way everywhere" is hardly a good justification for keeping a bad thing, even if the 'badness' can be expressed as mildly as "it's bland".

I know a major website when I see it. The overwhelming majority use black text, white background. That includes the text-heavy site par excellence, Wikipedia. Maybe some have a little more grey or colour, but usually not by much.

So as I see it there are two possibilities:

Either the vast majority of major websites are wrong, and yet they somehow keep being major websites with a style that is allegedly hurting most people's eyes, and in all the millions of pounds that's being spent all the time on web and UI design and researching usability this hasn't been realised by the experts, but some vocal forumgoers know the real truth

Or black text on a white backdrop is what most readers prefer and are comfortable with, and the people who have difficulty with it are in a distinct minority. A minority that is probably worth catering for with optional styles where practical, and on the forum it should be practical, but defaults are chosen for most people.

I know which I consider more plausible. 

And personally I hate dark-background, light-text themes. At best I have to increase the font size just to be able to read it. At worst, those are the sites that I have to find a way to change the colours on them.

Edited December 10, 2015 by cantab

[Sean Mirrsen]

39 minutes ago, cantab said:

I know a major website when I see it. The overwhelming majority use black text, white background. That includes the text-heavy site par excellence, Wikipedia. Maybe some have a little more grey or colour, but usually not by much.

"A little more grey" is usually all it takes. Black on light-grey is much easier on the eyes than black on white.

Also Wikipedia has a built-in styles gallery which includes at least one white-on-black arrangement that I found via cursory look-see, so I'm not sure what you're advocating here. :P

[DuoDex]

I still do not understand what the majority of the complaints are about. Most forum functionality is perfectly operable for users, and color scheme is not something that one needs to be as worked up about as I've seen quite a few people angry about. It's perfectly sufficient for reading posts, and that is all you need to do on forums. WYSIWYG editors provide 95% of the level of functionality that vBulletin did, and has been already begun to restore (on pause for the moment as Kasper has exams). So, I recommend that people stay calm.

p.s. by complaining about the forums "lack of usability" on the forums, you kinda invalidate your primary argument.

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

11 minutes ago, DuoDex said:

I still do not understand what the majority of the complaints are about.

18 minutes ago, DuoDex said:

So, I recommend that people stay calm.

They are about not letting the people in charge of the forum get a false impression that the new arrangement perfectly suits everybody. And if the proposed vision of 'staying calm' involves not pointing out every flaw I can see in hopes that maybe someone gets annoyed and fixes at least some of them, then I'd very much rather be quite uncalm.
 

16 minutes ago, DuoDex said:

It's perfectly sufficient for reading posts, and that is all you need to do on forums.

Well, empirically, no. At the very least you also have to be able to post on them. What you described there is a blog.

 

18 minutes ago, DuoDex said:

p.s. by complaining about the forums "lack of usability" on the forums, you kinda invalidate your primary argument.

Just because my car can still get to a repair shop under its own power, doesn't mean it doesn't need repairs.

[Red Iron Crown]

7 minutes ago, Sean Mirrsen said:

They are about not letting the people in charge of the forum get a false impression that the new arrangement perfectly suits everybody.

I can assure you that no one is under that impression, such an outcome is not even possible.

[DuoDex]

No arrangement ever perfectly suits anybody. If you can read and write your posts, I would think the forums seem to be quite functional for you.

You seem to be quite able to drive the car wherever you want, so maybe commenting about how you can't is a little premature ;)

 

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

31 minutes ago, DuoDex said:

No arrangement ever perfectly suits anybody. If you can read and write your posts, I would think the forums seem to be quite functional for you.

You seem to be quite able to drive the car wherever you want, so maybe commenting about how you can't is a little premature

Rather aptly to the simile, our car recently had a failure of the central heater fan. In winter. In Russia. So while it was otherwise perfectly driveable anywhere, fuel costs aside, it stayed parked under our windows for several days barring occurrences of actual immediate need to be somewhere fast. It just wasn't comfortable to use (to put it mildly). Thankfully that was just our car, and not a whole series of commonly used cars having the same fault simultaneously. Car companies tend to get into a lot of financial trouble when that happens.

Honestly though, I'm a highly tolerant guy. I can drive this here car in any state so long as it drives, thankfully I don't need to get out often and I'm russian so I'm used to things being rough around the edges from a little too much applied sledgehammer in manufacturing. However, I know I'm tolerant, and I know that a lot of what I tolerate can annoy the hell out of others. And I really don't like it when other people start trying to rely on people being tolerant of things they want to do.

If you want to pass this forum move as an upgrade, especially after all the shenanigans with RB, you really should stop and consider what your creative, rocket-building, tinker-happy community thinks about features they used since forever being changed or removed.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Sean Mirrsen

[sal_vager]

Frankly I am very disappointed with the conduct some members have shown in this thread.

You've made your points clear, and this was only necessary once, but you seem to be under the impression that continued complaints for several pages is somehow going to enact an immediate official response or change.

Unless you didn't notice IPS is very different software to VB, it is made by different people with different ideas on how forum software should function and what features it should have.

You also failed to notice that work has been done to enable as many features as we were used to as was possible, others will occur in time, including themes which was planned prior to the move but are considered, and quite rightfully, not to be time critical.

So I'm afraid many of the complains levelled so far are redundant, and show a lack of patience.

As has already been mentioned, if you are so offended by the colour scheme of this forum then you can change it by using browser extensions until the issues are addressed, there is nothing to be gained by refusing  to do so.

Claims that the forum functionality differs from what you are used to are also redundant, it's a new forum, it will be different, this is to be expected.

Things will improve but change comes slowly, feedback is received with much more welcome than repeated complaint and is much more likely to effect the change desired in time.

The current feedback from those who would like more features and themes is noted, but the endless complaints are neither required nor acceptable, I'm sure that some members will gleefully try to pick my post apart with multiple quotes and continue to push their arguments, but further non-constructive complaints in this thread will be removed.

[sal_vager]

Of topic post removed, if members would like to collate features they would like to see on these forums they are welcome to start a thread for this, though members need to be aware that IPS, like all software, has limitations.

I can't guarantee any specific request will be honoured though.

[Virtualgenius]

@sal_vager People are unhappy because subscriptions where lost, bb-code is broken, people who spent a great deal of time posting tutorials etc are broken,the colour scheme is horrendous, for some odd reason I cant post web links using chrome. The problem is we got basic functionality where we had full functionality under VB yes its different software yes it takes time to configure but we have actually received less than what we already had, it has a few things which work but at the end of the day the forum is what makes the community its what binds us all together. Its like living in a 200 room mansion but then shoved in to a 1 bedroom apart in the basement with no windows, people dont know how to use the software, they cant find the normal way of doing things, none of the community where pre-exposed to IPS perhaps if we had, the feedback received may have mitigated the complaints and anger. Squad as usual hasn't taken the time to gather client response to proposed changes or bother to run a trial of the software to expose people to the potential change, its very similar to the spaceport debacle and thats why your receiving the backlash.  People dont like change it upsets there routine and frustrates them I have been trying to get used to this new platform since it was released its very frustrating and when people get frustrated they get passionate if you can just return what people are familiar with subscriptions and contacts as well it will blow over very quickly but ignoring the community's constant requests will end badly for all.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Virtualgenius

[Elthy]

While i still hate the editor and its bugs im very satisfied with the benefits of the forum upgrade. The new "go to first unread post" is awesome and works way better than on the old forum. Of course there are other thinks me and other dont like that much, e.g. the "like" button, but most of those are simply because sometimes its hard to accept change. I think that the "like" button also has its benefits, e.g. now its easy to identify helpfull posts by their like number (at least in theory).

Edit: Sometimes im also annoyed by the theme of the forum, but that seems easy to change, ill try it.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Elthy

[Sean Mirrsen]

1 hour ago, sal_vager said:

The current feedback from those who would like more features and themes is noted

You know what's been missing this entire time? This. Someone relevant to come by and say they've heard the complaints and will (hopefully) look into them. All I've seen up to this point was dismissals and "it'll get better in time just stay calm", which doesn't seem like a good point to end a fruitful complaining campaign (complaign?) on.

 

42 minutes ago, sal_vager said:

if members would like to collate features they would like to see on these forums they are welcome to start a thread for this, though members need to be aware that IPS, like all software, has limitations.

Can we do it from the other end first? Because we, as a somewhat inferior species (aka non-webmasters, at least most of us), don't intrinsically know what the limitations you are alluding to there are. Just going by the old forum functionality that was lost and that you (as in the entirety of forum management staff, not just you personally) are aware of, cross-referenced with known IPS limitations, could you estimate what will end up being definitely impossible? It tends to help cut down on the useless/pointless suggestions, should such a thread be created.

[Elthy]

Now ive installed the posted Stylish config on desktop and phone, works very well. The biggest issue i had with the old theme were low contrasts between posts, thats way better now. If you dont like that stylishconfig for whatever reason, you can also create one yourself...

Edited December 10, 2015 by Elthy

[sal_vager]

@Virtualgenius, you are mistaken if you think the community is being ignored, but there's nothing that can be done right now, people have made their thoughts known and that is enough, to keep repeating them is not going to effect change any faster.

Instead what it is doing is causing members to argue and to bring these arguments to the attention of the moderators.

I already said IPS is different software, it is not and will not be the same, and Squad has already spoken about the need for the move in their devnotes.

I can't help you with Chrome, maybe look for problems in Chrome such as conflicting plugins, as for the forums we'll make them our own over time, the change is still recent and while people do not like change it wasn't viable to keep using vBulletin.

I'll add that there is no "normal" way to do things, VB is very different to simple machines which Squad used before.

And eventually when IPS becomes old Squad will keep their community here going by moving to another forum, and no doubt there will be people unhappy with that move as well, because Squad wants to provide somewhere for their players, the players are important to them, but a new colour scheme can wait.

@Sean Mirrsen, As was mentioned in the devnotes, Kasper is away for his exams so I am taking notes, I don't work for Squad though so that's all I can do at the moment, as for IPS's limits, I don't know, if people can find plugins for stuff we can ask that they are added, this was done with VB as well.

[Claw]

27 minutes ago, Virtualgenius said:

People are unhappy because subscriptions where lost, bb-code is broken, people who spent a great deal of time posting tutorials etc are broken,the colour scheme is horrendous, for some odd reason I cant post web links using chrome.

Yes, and that's all very understandable. I'm not sure how often it can be said that the subscriptions and friends list had to be removed for technical reasons (i.e. the forum was broken, and was made unbroken by removing the old data). My tutorials and posts also look horrible, and it's taking time to fix them. So yes, I agree and understand the frustration. The color scheme does need work, but considering the things that were broken, it's not been high up on the priority list yet.

I use chrome on my desktop and my mobile, and posting links seems to work. So (like many other issues), more info is needed there. (But probably not in this thread.)

 

27 minutes ago, Virtualgenius said:

Squad as usual hasn't taken the time to gather client response to proposed changes or bother to run a trial of the software to expose people to the potential change, its very similar to the spaceport debacle and thats why your receiving the backlash.

Again, I keep posting that it's much more helpful to consolidate "client feedback" somewhere, rather than forcing Kasper to sift through hundreds of posts that say @.Kasper. Though the top three complaints keep getting repeated over and over, (BB code/editor, subscriptions, color scheme). Got it.

Also, there was a trial run of new forum software a year ago, and it was canned because it was deemed not up to snuff. There's only so long you can work for a "perfect solution" before it's time to push the big "GO" button.  That doesn't mean the input is being ignored or that we don't care, it means that sometimes you have to move forward.

So back to sal's point, we are listening, but a lot of the feedback is getting drown out in conspiracy proclamations. Fact of the matter is that the forums are stable now, and Kasper is busy elsewhere at the moment. Input isn't being ignored and the forums will move as quickly as the manpower allows. Constantly posting the top three complaints over and over (BB code/editor, subscriptions, color scheme) isn't going to get it fixed any faster. All we are asking is that people stop assuming that "the moderators just don't care and are trying to squelch the forum down."

We do care, we are reading, and we'd rather have a consolidated list of things that need fixing. That makes it a whole lot easier for someone to work on issues in an efficient manner.

 

27 minutes ago, Virtualgenius said:

People dont like change it upsets there routine and frustrates them I have been trying to get used to this new platform since it was released its very frustrating and when people get frustrated they get passionate if you can just return what people are familiar with subscriptions and contacts as well it will blow over very quickly but ignoring the community's constant requests will end badly for all.

We can't help it that people don't like change. I don't know if there's a different system available for subscription-like feeds, but my point with this quote is that asking about something specific is certainly better than "my subscriptions are lost!" Also, you can still follow people, which works very similarly to the old contact list. You can even customize what kind of notifications you get when they post, and what kind of notifications you get when someone posts to a thread you follow (subscribe, or call it what you like). Then go to "Manage Followed Content" and your entire list of subscriptions/follows/stuff you want to read about is displayed, customizable per thread.

[steve_v]

7 hours ago, cantab said:

Glitches have been fixed, though I expect the post editor will remain as always.

As for the theme, I'm fine with it. It's bland, but in my view if you're finding a mostly-white web page "eyeball searing" then you should consider turning your blooming monitor brightness down. Most major websites are black text, white background.

------

Right, since I'm currently on mobile (FF/Android) and can't escape the quote box in this laggy, brain-dead excuse for an editor - I guess I'll just type here.

This is horrible, my cursor just goes where it likes and keystrokes register ~0.5 seconds late. But I digress.

Bugs are not fixed, two off the top of my head: Changes to default activity streams do not save, "threads I posted in" stream shows only my last post and one zombie from last year.

Why is this post so messed up that it makes me want to go use a real website? Beats me, but this mobile experience is pretty bad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mr Shifty]

I'm fairly sanguine about the forum change; I visit once a week or so, but am only active sporadically. That said, it seems like announcements leading up to the forum change didn't mention all of the problems that have come to light since. It might have been useful to provide preview screenshots and mention that BB code would break and that subscriptions would have to be recreated (unless I've missed something and this was mentioned somewhere.) This would have allowed the community to process the change before it happened and perhaps prepare a bit. I've been managing people for a couple of decades and the one big principle I've found is valid no matter where I work is "More information to your people is always always always better than less." 

To that end, it might be smart to make a thread here or somewhere else prominent with an OP that notes community complaints about the forums, contains information and updates about whether and when those concerns will be addressed, and provides a forum for suggestions in the thread. That seems simple to me, and I'm not sure why it hasn't been implemented.

I really miss Felipe being the public face of this project, rather than the rotating roster of marketing people, particularly when the marketing people seem to constantly be at odds with the game's community -- from CurseForge to Flying Tiger and the console ports to the precipitous beta and 1.0 release to the new forums. These announcements/changes engender a considerable amount of head scratching about what Squad's plans and priorities are for KSP, which could be mitigated simply by communicating more. (Didn't KSP exhibit at PSX last weekend? Why has there been zero news about it except for a vague line in the weekly devnotes?)

I love KSP, and I don't think the product I love is really hurt by all this, but the community was a big part of the game's appeal for me when I joined a couple years ago, and I don't think there's been sufficient care to preserve that.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Mr Shifty

[DuoDex]

1 hour ago, Sean Mirrsen said:

Could you estimate what will end up being definitely impossible? It tends to help cut down on the useless/pointless suggestions, should such a thread be created.

Nope. Not possible. IPS4 is very customizable, and since Kasper has taken a vacation no one can properly fool with the settings.

[sal_vager]

Removed post, I did say non-constructive complaint posts would be removed.

[cantab]

For what it's worth, IPS feels pretty similar to vBulletin and most other forum software really. It's not Discourse, Reddit, the StackExchange network, or *chan, all of which work very differently, and for that we can be thankful.

[Vanamonde]

Quote

You know what's been missing this entire time? This. Someone relevant to come by and say they've heard the complaints and will (hopefully) look into them. All I've seen up to this point was dismissals and "it'll get better in time just stay calm", which doesn't seem like a good point to end a fruitful complaining campaign (complaign?) on. 

Then you're not counting the numerous things which have already been fixed. 

Quote

And herein lies the problem, everybody is entitled to holidays, but who decided to launch this thing shortly before the only person who can fix the inevitable issues goes on one? It boggles the mind.

Scheduling software modifications and employee vacation times are not always going to coincide neatly. This can be unfortunate, 

Quote

Because PR companies are never wrong, and never do any mistakes. 

If this is meant as the same old accusation that Squad is a marketing company, folks really need to educate themselves on the subject. Several members of Squad started KSP while they were working for a marketing company. Squad itself is not and never has been a marketing business.