What do you think of the new forums?

[Randazzo]

Well, obviously not everyone is happy with the changes, but I think it's been pretty neat to see the progress made with many of the problems that existed after the change. Stuff a lot of people will never even notice, such as the view counts.

 

 

[Tex_NL]

If you don't have the time to fix things. Fine, then you get help from someone who does.
If you don't know how to fix things. Fine, then you get help from someone who does.

But if you're doing nothing just to take a crap on people. Yes, then you're doing an excellent job.

Edited January 2, 2016 by Tex_NL

[DuoDex]

We are not "doing nothing". As I said, "We'll be trying to fix the bugs that come up in addition to the ones that have already been reported.". This includes reporting the critical bugs to IPS, keeping the forums' software updated as they release new versions, and occasionally adding or modifying certain functions on our end. As I said, some of the "broken" things are intended behaviour that you're just not used to yet, but we are looking at some of the truly misbehaving features.

[Virtualgenius]

I understand if things haven't been addressed as quickly as we would like, we just had a major public holiday and the forum staff have been enjoying the festive season with there family's. However the timing of the implementation of the new forum software begs to be answered why implement a change that close to a major holiday, why not leave it till the New Year to implement when staff and resources are at there highest and potential issues could be addressed immediately, I am sure VB would have survived another month. I am still not warming up to this forum software at all and struggle with just the basic features but that's just me.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Virtualgenius

[KSK]

9 hours ago, Virtualgenius said:

I understand if things haven't been addressed as quickly as we would like, we just had a major public holiday and the forum staff have been enjoying the festive season with there family's. However the timing of the implementation of the new forum software begs to be answered why implement a change that close to a major holiday, why not leave it till the New Year to implement when staff and resources are at there highest and potential issues could be addressed immediately, I am sure VB would have survived another month. I am still not warming up to this forum software at all and struggle with just the basic features but that's just me.

My thoughts exactly. Goodness knows that KasperVld well deserved his holiday/study break, even without that crunch weekend he put in to migrate the forums and I'm never going to criticise anyone for taking their annual leave. It did make the decision to migrate the forums that weekend look very odd though, given that the forum admin was due to take a break directly afterwards. I also get that VB was getting well creaky under the hood - but was it quite so creaky that it couldn't have hung on until now?

Edited January 4, 2016 by KSK

[Red Iron Crown]

Water under the bridge, we can't exactly unring the bell, as it were.

[Sean Mirrsen]

/me engages conspiracy-theorist mode.

It could have been done deliberately. To create an extended period of time when no changes could have been made due to entirely valid reasons. Actual technical issues could undoubtedly arise, but even a cursory look at the sheer format differences between the forum software packages would allow to predict that the majority of issues would be ones of usability, created by sheer ontological inertia. The period could thus have been engineered to force the dissenters encourage prior users to adapt to the new software rather than have to change anything major due to community pressure.

What can I say, the whole situation does lend itself well to this kind of thinking.

[Corovaneer]

One word.

Bloated.

[Virtualgenius]

2 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Water under the bridge, we can't exactly unring the bell, as it were.

Very true but you would think we could learn from our  mistakes the handling of the spaceport migration and again now with the forums the two biggest client impacting applications haven't exactly been smooth sailing . I hope moving on into the future more consultation and user testing can be considered before making major changes to lessen the impact on clients

[Green Baron]

This new forum is very annoying and i try to avoid using it. For example:

- I allways have to take care where to put the mouse or i'm disturbed by popups blocking the line of sight.

- When signed in, on every change of a page or window i have to click away the notification notification. Okay. that's a browser problem (Iceweasel/Firefox), but we haven't got much of a choice here do we ? It even happens when all notifications are disabled.

- It's slow. Slow as a space-slug glued to an A-class asteroid.

The forum is a nice example for overeager software engineering. Less is more, since before all this is a forum for a (very good) computer game, not some sort of "social network". It steals way too much time and attention. (personal opinion of course)

k

[Red Iron Crown]

12 hours ago, Virtualgenius said:

Very true but you would think we could learn from our  mistakes the handling of the spaceport migration and again now with the forums the two biggest client impacting applications haven't exactly been smooth sailing . I hope moving on into the future more consultation and user testing can be considered before making major changes to lessen the impact on clients

The Spaceport -> Curse migration went fine, aside from fearmongering among some users that Curse was going to infect our computers with malware and take over our community completely (which now can be seen to be non-issues).

Here's the thing: Any change will be met with resistance from some portion of the userbase. With the new forum software there is a (very) vocal minority airing their gripes repeatedly, a few people expressing that they like the new software, and the big majority who just don't care that much. That's not to say that we just ignore gripes about the new software, it is still being improved and constructive feedback is welcome, but to point to the few people who are really upset about it as representative of the community at large is misleading.

1 hour ago, kemde said:

- When signed in, on every change of a page or window i have to click away the notification notification. Okay. that's a browser problem (Iceweasel/Firefox), but we haven't got much of a choice here do we ? It even happens when all notifications are disabled.

I found this annoying, too, so I turned off notifications from the site in my browser. Problem solved.

[Virtualgenius]

@Red Iron CrownIt was a bit of fear mongering about curse but all in all it was about not being told or even notified that they where moving it to curse, originally told spaceport 2 was coming BOOM next its curse so not a lot of consultation with the community or addressing our concerns so I call that a fail. As for the new forum software to be perfectly honest I hate it, I struggle with it and I don't think I am the only one, again some consultation, user testing etc, break the community in slowly to it would have been much better.  V bulletin wasn't ideal but for the most part people where reasonably happy with the ease of use and functionality. I agree with you change is always met with resistance but if you make the community part of the change so they feel included it goes alot better. Its all about managing expectations and communication which we all seem struggle with, moving forward hopefully we can improve.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Virtualgenius

[KSK]

58 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Here's the thing: Any change will be met with resistance from some portion of the userbase. With the new forum software there is a (very) vocal minority airing their gripes repeatedly, a few people expressing that they like the new software, and the big majority who just don't care that much. That's not to say that we just ignore gripes about the new software, it is still being improved and constructive feedback is welcome, but to point to the few people who are really upset about it as representative of the community at large is misleading.

I'm not disagreeing but you but, with all respect, you're just ducking the issue. Rolling a major software update just before the person responsible is due to go on leave turned out to be a bad idea and I think Virtualgenius made a reasonable point about keeping that in mind for future reference.

You also (to me) come across as being rather blase about the silent majority. Silence does not necessarily equal assent - there's a big difference between genuinely not caring that much, caring enough to voice your concerns but not to bang on about them repeatedly, or caring enough to be concerned but staying silent because your concerns seem to have been adequately aired by other people.

Take the silent majority for granted and you'll end up with a lot of people like kemde who simply choose to disengage from the forum. If you're lucky they might tell you about it.

Edited January 5, 2016 by KSK

[Murph]

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

… and the big majority who just don't care that much.

Included in that big majority are, I believe, a significant number of people who have been driven away from participating in these forums, and will continue to be driven away from them, by this truly dreadful failure of software and user interface design.

I've been periodically looking back in to see if there's any sign of the terrible interface improving, or if it would become less objectionable over time, but I continue to be profoundly disappointed by it to the point of having lost nearly all interest in any form of active participation (and I'm not even really passively participating any more — I've almost entirely stopped randomly browsing the forum due to the new software).  Honestly, if the forum software had been this terrible when I first heard of KSP, it would very likely have had a major negative impact on my decision to buy.  I have now, reluctantly, deleted my positive Steam review, as I am not able to recommend a game in good conscience when the primary support mechanism uses this software.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Murph

[Sean Mirrsen]

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

With the new forum software there is a (very) vocal minority airing their gripes repeatedly, a few people expressing that they like the new software, and the big majority who just don't care that much.

Make a poll on the General Discussions board. Not down here, where hardly a third of the forum activity happens, but up where most of the players can see it. Maybe mention it in the next Devnote Tuesday? Actually ask your userbase whether they like the change done to the forum or not, and make it clear you will listen. Then you can say whether or not we're a minority.

I won't even mention the number of people the change might have driven away (because I have no data on that).
(or the number of people who left because you've killed RB for violating a rule specifically created to kill RB. :| )

Edited January 5, 2016 by Sean Mirrsen

[Red Iron Crown]

52 minutes ago, Virtualgenius said:

@Red Iron CrownIt was a bit of fear mongering about curse but all in all it was about not being told or even notified that they where moving it to curse, originally told spaceport 2 was coming BOOM next its curse so not a lot of consultation with the community or addressing our concerns so I call that a fail. As for the new forum software to be perfectly honest I hate it, I struggle with it and I don't think I am the only one, again some consultation, user testing etc, break the community in slowly to it would have been much better.  V bulletin wasn't ideal but for the most part people where reasonably happy with the ease of use and functionality. I agree with you change is always met with resistance but if you make the community part of the change so they feel included it goes alot better. Its all about managing expectations and communication which we all seem struggle with, moving forward hopefully we can improve.

I am unaware of a way to introduce forum software gradually, it's not like we could have both software running concurrently for a variety of reasons, some technical, some practical. vB was unsustainable as the basis for our forum, so a change was necessary and, as said, any change will be met by some resistance.

37 minutes ago, KSK said:

I'm not disagreeing but you but, with all respect, you're just ducking the issue. Rolling a major software update just before the person responsible is due to go on leave turned out to be a bad idea and I think Virtualgenius made a reasonable point about keeping that in mind for future reference.

You also (to me) come across as being rather blase about the silent majority. Silence does not necessarily equal assent - there's a big difference between genuinely not caring that much, caring enough to voice your concerns but not to bang on about them repeatedly, or caring enough to be concerned but staying silent because your concerns seem to have been adequately aired by other people.

Take the silent majority for granted and you'll end up with a lot of people like kemde who simply choose to disengage from the forum. If you're lucky they might tell you about it.

I am assuredly not blase about the community's response to the new software, both as a heavy user of the software and participant in the community, and as a person with a small part to play in managing it.

31 minutes ago, Murph said:

Included in that big majority are, I believe, a significant number of people who have been driven away from participating in these forums, and will continue to be driven away from them, by this truly dreadful failure of software and user interface design.

I've been periodically looking back in to see if there's any sign of the terrible interface improving, or if it would become less objectionable over time, but I continue to be profoundly disappointed by it to the point of having lost nearly all interest in any form of active participation (and I'm not even really passively participating any more — I've almost entirely stopped randomly browsing the forum due to the new software).  Honestly, if the forum software had been this terrible when I first heard of KSP, it would very likely have had a major negative impact on my decision to buy.  I have now, reluctantly, deleted my positive Steam review, as I am not able to recommend a game in good conscience when the primary support mechanism uses this software.

Do you have any data to back the assertion that a significant portion of the community has been "driven away" by the new software? 

I have to say that making choice of forum software be the critical factor in your review of a game strikes me as foolish but it's your review to write, of course.

26 minutes ago, Sean Mirrsen said:

Make a poll on the General Discussions board. Not down here, where hardly a third of the forum activity happens, but up where most of the players can see it. Maybe mention it in the next Devnote Tuesday? Actually ask your userbase whether they like the change done to the forum or not, and make it clear you will listen. Then you can say whether or not we're a minority.

I won't even mention the number of people the change might have driven away (because I have no data on that).
(or the number of people who left because you've killed RB for violating a rule specifically created to kill RB. :| )

What purpose would such a poll serve? We're not going back to vB, full stop. We're not changing to a different forum software platform, full stop. 

[Murph]

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Do you have any data to back the assertion that a significant portion of the community has been "driven away" by the new software? 

I have to say that making choice of forum software be the critical factor in your review of a game strikes me as foolish but it's your review to write, of course.

IPB is simply such dreadful software, with so many visible complaints, so many aspects of the user interface and general functionality that I detest and consider to be terrible design, that I find it inconceivable that there are not a significant number of people who are simply silently very unhappy about it.  That leads me to conclude that there must be a significant number of people driven away from the forums by it, both presently and in the future.

No, foolish is giving out a positive review when you have major concerns about the entire product experience.  When the primary support mechanism is no longer a good user experience, and the community forums are no longer a good user experience, and I see strong evidence of bad management decision making around those areas, then I can no longer give a public positive recommendation.  I have a high standard before any game gets a positive public review, and KSP no longer meets that standard.  It is still a good way above getting a public negative review, at present, but I can no longer give the positive review, so after some consideration it has been deleted.  You may, and should, consider this a "vote of no confidence" in the web/online side of KSP and the staff (the employees, not the volunteers) responsible for it.

[Sean Mirrsen]

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

What purpose would such a poll serve? We're not going back to vB, full stop. We're not changing to a different forum software platform, full stop. 

Then you are an evil organization that pursues its own needs without any regard for its customers' feedback and abuses the fact that said customers are mostly no longer able to withdraw the money they've given it. You've not only failed to so much as mention the extent of the changes you were bringing (by, say, providing a preview or pointing to an existing forum where the software is set up), and not only managed to select the kind of software that is different in such a fundamental way as to break every conceivable workflow and established usage parameters, but also did the move when the primary maintainer of the forum was due to leave for vacation, broke half the forum's formatting in the move, deleted part of the forum in the move under a laughable pretense, and, in combination, failed to so much as give a transient aerial rodent's hindquarters to all fundamental complaints directed at your decisions.

Also seconding the "vote of no confidence", as little as such a notion may apply in this situation.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Sean Mirrsen
Removed the unnecessary jab at promoting piracy... for now.

[Red Iron Crown]

43 minutes ago, Murph said:

IPB is simply such dreadful software, with so many visible complaints, so many aspects of the user interface and general functionality that I detest and consider to be terrible design, that I find it inconceivable that there are not a significant number of people who are simply silently very unhappy about it.  That leads me to conclude that there must be a significant number of people driven away from the forums by it, both presently and in the future.

No, foolish is giving out a positive review when you have major concerns about the entire product experience.  When the primary support mechanism is no longer a good user experience, and the community forums are no longer a good user experience, and I see strong evidence of bad management decision making around those areas, then I can no longer give a public positive recommendation.  I have a high standard before any game gets a positive public review, and KSP no longer meets that standard.  It is still a good way above getting a public negative review, at present, but I can no longer give the positive review, so after some consideration it has been deleted.  You may, and should, consider this a "vote of no confidence" in the web/online side of KSP and the staff (the employees, not the volunteers) responsible for it.

So no data. Got it.

You are of course free to review things based on whatever criteria you consider important. I can assure you, though, that your view of the IPS software is by no means universal.

36 minutes ago, Sean Mirrsen said:

Then you are an evil organization that pursues its own needs without any regard for its customers' feedback and abuses the fact that said customers are mostly no longer able to withdraw the money they've given it. You've not only failed to so much as mention the extent of the changes you were bringing (by, say, providing a preview or pointing to an existing forum where the software is set up), and not only managed to select the kind of software that is different in such a fundamental way as to break every conceivable workflow and established usage parameters, but also did the move when the primary maintainer of the forum was due to leave for vacation, broke half the forum's formatting in the move, deleted part of the forum in the move under a laughable pretense, and, in combination, failed to so much as give a transient aerial rodent's hindquarters to all fundamental complaints directed at your decisions.

Also seconding the "vote of no confidence", as little as such a notion may apply in this situation.

"Evil organization" is rather hyperbolic, don't you think? It's not like Squad is doing anything malicious to their users. The old forum software was not sustainable, and they invested in new forum software (twice!) to keep the forum viable in the long term. The new software was chosen by the people paying for it and maintaining it, with many criteria that are not visible/obvious to the end user (though of course the end user experience is also considered). 

"Break every conceivable workflow and established usage parameters" is also a bit over the top. WYSIWYG is familiar to anyone that's used a word processor in the last three decades, so there are obviously conceivable workflows for the new software. They are different from the old software, certainly, but not "inconceivable".

As for failing to give feedback consideration, you are dead wrong. Useful, constructive criticism is always welcome, and some of that feedback has already led to new features and others are likely to follow. 

[KSK]

3 hours ago, Sean Mirrsen said:

Then you are an evil organization that pursues its own needs without any regard for its customers' feedback and abuses the fact that said customers are mostly no longer able to withdraw the money they've given it. You've not only failed to so much as mention the extent of the changes you were bringing (by, say, providing a preview or pointing to an existing forum where the software is set up), and not only managed to select the kind of software that is different in such a fundamental way as to break every conceivable workflow and established usage parameters, but also did the move when the primary maintainer of the forum was due to leave for vacation, broke half the forum's formatting in the move, deleted part of the forum in the move under a laughable pretense, and, in combination, failed to so much as give a transient aerial rodent's hindquarters to all fundamental complaints directed at your decisions.

Also seconding the "vote of no confidence", as little as such a notion may apply in this situation.

Aye-aye - that's a bit over the top. I think the new forums are a step backwards for many reasons (A WYSIWYG editor does not improve the mobile experience for one) but they don't make Squad evil. Personal peeve - I'm tired of the New Internet definition of evil as 'company doing something I disagree with' but that's beside the point. As for withdrawing money - we're paying for the game not access to the forums, so I don't think that's a fair complaint either.

Some of your other points though, I fully agree with.

[Virtualgenius]

I disagree with your point of introducing things slowly, a locked or limited test site could have been setup with the format that was going to be used and the layout and color scheme so it  could have been reviewed by the users, you could have even used it  to see how long the migration was actually going to take and used that information to inform the user base that the forums where going to be down for 48 hours. I would like to see the technical reasons why it couldn't be done (I work in the IT field) and the practical reasons I am guessing is lack of resources/staff. I suggest take a look at the IPS community product feedback board https://community.invisionpower.com/forum/481-product-feedback/ and make your own judgements like its been said we cant go back we can however move forward and try and make it as usable and pleasant experience as possible.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Virtualgenius

[DuoDex]

2 hours ago, Virtualgenius said:

I disagree with your point of introducing things slowly, a locked or limited test site could have been setup with the format that was going to be used and the layout and color scheme so it  could have been reviewed by the users, you could have even used it  to see how long the migration was actually going to take and used that information to inform the user base that the forums where going to be down for 48 hours. I would like to see the technical reasons why it couldn't be done (I work in the IT field) and the practical reasons I am guessing is lack of resources/staff. I suggest take a look at the IPS community product feedback board https://community.invisionpower.com/forum/481-product-feedback/ and make your own judgements like its been said we cant go back we can however move forward and try and make it as usable and pleasant experience as possible.

Perhaps you missed the thread posted more than a week before the upgrade started, stating that there would be a period of downtime. Additionally, instead of the forums returning an error when attempting to be accessed during migration, a page with funny text and a comment about forum upgrades was displayed.

[Red Iron Crown]

4 hours ago, Virtualgenius said:

I disagree with your point of introducing things slowly, a locked or limited test site could have been setup with the format that was going to be used and the layout and color scheme so it  could have been reviewed by the users, you could have even used it  to see how long the migration was actually going to take and used that information to inform the user base that the forums where going to be down for 48 hours. I would like to see the technical reasons why it couldn't be done (I work in the IT field) and the practical reasons I am guessing is lack of resources/staff.

A locked and limited test site was made with a full test migration of the database before the move, with a small group of users testing it. A full scale public test was not possible due to load issues (the test server is way less capable), as well as the potential for confusion among users about which they should be using, and the associated merge issues after that. The migration happened much faster in the test than in the actual move (the reasons for this are not clear to me, sorry), and some features which worked fine in the test instance did not work when subjected to the full load of the public server. This resulted in some unfortunate regression and invalidation of the testing.

Quote

I suggest take a look at the IPS community product feedback board https://community.invisionpower.com/forum/481-product-feedback/ and make your own judgements like its been said we cant go back we can however move forward and try and make it as usable and pleasant experience as possible.

 

Look at the feedback board for any forum software, or most any software in general outside of games and you'll see similar; people don't tend to give a lot of feedback unless it is to complain about something not working. It is definitely our intention to keep improving the user experience on this platform moving forward. I think we can all agree that IPS is definitely not perfect (no software ever is), we are doing our best to make it the best it can be.

[Virtualgenius]

Thanks for that Information maybe next time we should max out the test server and see what breaks 

[Sean Mirrsen]

Being over-the-top was rather the point. And as for this..

11 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

As for failing to give feedback consideration, you are dead wrong. Useful, constructive criticism is always welcome, and some of that feedback has already led to new features and others are likely to follow. 

So, how likely are you to implement BBCode and post preview, on a forum platform that has dropped support for both? Last time I saw someone pull something like that off was in The Martian, and that involved digging through rather a lot of fecal matter.

Either you don't consider those to be worth looking into (as seems to be the case right now), or you're going to be jumping through so many hoops you'd be better off finding a new software to migrate to.

There are limits to how "constructive" a given criticism can be. I positively hate the WYSIWIG-only setup. I had to connect the keyboard dock up to my laplet just now, because I couldn't hit the "move quote" control with my finger on this thing's 1080p screen. Because it ends up being tiny, and is the only way to move a quote block embedded in the top of the post. "Mobile-friendly software" my donkey.