Vanilla Forum Migration Status Update 6/22/15

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Comments

  • gfreeman98
    gfreeman98 Posts: 872 Arc User
    I must echo what others have said: the formatting needs work.

    Problem with Readability:
    The color scheme is hard on the eyes. Lighten the white text or change the color a bit.

    Problem with Quotes:
    There's almost no indentation to differentiate a quote from new material, nor any font, background or color change that would help achieve same.

    Problem with Sigs:
    OK animated sigs can be cool, but not when too big. The SNR ratio is really poor; 75-90% of many posts is what that guy thinks is a clever .gif, versus one line of text with his brilliant response. There's a problem when the sig represents the majority of the content.

    Problem with Navigation:
    Someone mentioned pagination; back/fwd buttons should be both at the top and bottom of the page. Overall determining where you are is harder than it should be.
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  • gfreeman98
    gfreeman98 Posts: 872 Arc User
    <-- Oh, and I'm still not a Champions Online User.
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  • opkossy
    opkossy Posts: 11,177 Community Moderator
    For the visual issues you mentioned, check out http://perfectworld.vanillaforums.com/discussion/7895/testing-bug-hunting-and-finding-exploits

    The tools listed in that first post solve pretty much all of those concerns and make the forums in general much easier to deal with. With the amount of bugs, glitches, and exploits they need to address right now, aesthetics likely won't be improved upon for some time and that resource does a world of good for alleviating the wait.
    (Insert fancy image here)
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  • gulberat
    gulberat Posts: 400 Arc User
    Where the forum rules at? I can't seem to find a link anywhere on the forums homepage or STO forums. Would be nice to know the rules, especially if anything has been changed. :error:

    Edit: I guess it's the 'Terms of Service' at the very bottom. Upon inspection of the ToS it seems to relate to the games. I'm not seeing anything specifically related to using the forums.

    There's a link to it in my sig. I'll post it here: http://perfectworld.vanillaforums.com/discussion/1191393/perfect-world-entertainment-community-rules-and-policies

    Thank you. I hope they can have a link to it at the top of every subforum section for the STO forums. I have no idea how to even find it.

    Yeah...there are a LOT of people in the STO area that genuinely have no idea right now that this exists. Anything you could do to make sure it's clearly visible to everyone would be a good thing.

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  • gfreeman98
    gfreeman98 Posts: 872 Arc User
    opkossy wrote: »
    Wait, so you're saying I need to download and install some unknown scripts to make the forum better? Thanks for the tip but, um, no.

    Even if those scripts work great and are safe and not malicious, the purpose of this feedback thread is to get the forum admins to improve the site on their end.
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  • opkossy
    opkossy Posts: 11,177 Community Moderator
    gfreeman98 wrote: »
    opkossy wrote: »
    Wait, so you're saying I need to download and install some unknown scripts to make the forum better? Thanks for the tip but, um, no.

    Even if those scripts work great and are safe and not malicious, the purpose of this feedback thread is to get the forum admins to improve the site on their end.
    No. I'm saying that it's there to alleviate the aesthetics issue while they focus on all the major non-visual things that the forums currently have problems with. I think you'd place things like IP addresses being visible to anyone, HTML spoofing allowing people to impersonate staff and add invisible malicious links, private messages becoming open to anyone, and so on as slightly more important than making the place look better, yes? While what I've just listed has been fixed, there are still many issues that have not been fixed. The style changes that I've linked to (PWE staff is, as a matter of fact, fully aware of them and quite fine with it being used and spread around while major issues are focused on) are something to alleviate the visual issues until the major problems are all dealt with and they get to dealing with the forum's aesthetics.


    To be clear to you, in case that wasn't. I am not saying you should consider these permanent and only use them. I'm saying that there's enough messed up right now that aesthetics are kinda low on the priority list for PWE even though they are aware of those issues too. Thus, the link provides a temporary solution until PWE does make things look better on their end.



    And yes, the code is completely safe and non-malicious. It's also totally open source and commented so you can see exactly what each part does and even look it up if you're uncertain and want to double check.


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  • gfreeman98
    gfreeman98 Posts: 872 Arc User
    edited June 2015
    I appreciate what you're saying, and the effort those users put into making those client-side improvements. I just want to make sure PWE doesn't think it's on us, the user community, to fix their issues.

    The old forum wasn't perfect by any means, but I don't know why they decided to move to this Vanilla platform. Clearly not ready for prime time, especially after the major issues you mention. :o
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  • naicalus
    naicalus Posts: 639 Arc User
    Not that the old forums were useable on mobile, but they were at least navigable and readable.

    This new mobile site is unusable. No way to skip to the last page of a thread or even see how many pages, back button in browser does not take you back as it should, doesn't take you to new posts when you open a previously read thread, strips all useful information, no way to navigate the forum at all... it's a cluster.

    Requesting the desktop site gets me that, but unlike most forums it doesn't work on mobile and can't be scrolled horizontally.

    Let me describe the back button behavior:

    There's no navigation at the top on the mobile version, so I'm going to have to rely on back to return to a category without having to go to the main page for all forums and go back to Neverwinter and drill back down, right? No big deal, used to do it before.

    So I go to, say, General discussion. I read a few threads, now I want to go to PvE discussion. So I hit back on the thread I'm reading and then back on the general Index to go back to the PC discussion category, right? Wrong. Back on the index for general takes me to the previous thread I read! But I hit back on that too! So it behaves in an unhelpful and illogical manner that does nothing but frustrate and annoy me.

    The desktop version on a desktop isn't any better.

    The previous forum software was a million times better.
    Largely inactive, playing Skyforge as Nai Calus.
  • krittycat
    krittycat Posts: 4,187 Community Moderator
    naicalus wrote: »
    So I go to, say, General discussion. I read a few threads, now I want to go to PvE discussion. So I hit back on the thread I'm reading and then back on the general Index to go back to the PC discussion category, right? Wrong. Back on the index for general takes me to the previous thread I read! But I hit back on that too! So it behaves in an unhelpful and illogical manner that does nothing but frustrate and annoy me.

    The desktop version on a desktop isn't any better.

    The previous forum software was a million times better.


    Wait, you're saying the behavior you mentioned occurred on mobile and desktop? Because I can't reproduce the issue you're reporting in Chrome. When I hit back twice, I end up on the home page of the forums...

    Just to clarify: What version of the forums are you browsing? arcgames.com, or perfectworld.vanillaforums.com? The Arc version is horribly broken (the shell is super-glitchy and laggy on some lower-spec PCs), so I recommend using the stripped-down version.

    Also, there was a lot of stuff broken behind the scenes on the old forums... some of it integral to how the forum worked. Just because you didn't see it didn't mean it didn't exist, and this forum doesn't have those inherent broken issues - it just needs some work over time to get it up to the standard that we as consumers expect.
  • bioshrike
    bioshrike Posts: 137 Arc User
    I really wish the forums would stretch to fit the entire width of the screen - all that black space on either side is just a waste. I'd also like to see animated avatars, sigs, and attachments prohibited/disabled.
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  • eldarth
    eldarth Posts: 4,366 Arc User
    edited July 2015
    bioshrike wrote: »
    I really wish the forums would stretch to fit the entire width of the screen - all that black space on either side is just a waste. I'd also like to see animated avatars, sigs, and attachments prohibited/disabled.

    Take a look at these themes and enhancements:
    nrglg's Forum Visual Mods: https://github.com/Goodlookinguy/pwvnrg
    Asterelle's Forum Editing Mods: https://github.com/asterpw/pwevanillaenhance

    Especially probably the "Fluid Width" addon/theme -- should do exactly what you want.
  • jcsww
    jcsww Posts: 1,607 Arc User
    Is there any word on our forum titles? I have noticed that moderators now had that title. I am hoping the Career Officer and other titles return soon.
    Reminder: Put something here!
  • katamaster81899
    katamaster81899 Posts: 869 Arc User
    egg-14.gifegg-14.giffish-2.gifmonkey-2.gifvQTD03D.png

    I have to say, Asterelle's Forum Editing Mods are pretty amazing. Y'all should get them instead of waiting for the PWE fixes that aren't going to be coming anytime soon.​​
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  • krittycat
    krittycat Posts: 4,187 Community Moderator
    edited July 2015
    jcsww wrote: »
    Is there any word on our forum titles? I have noticed that moderators now had that title. I am hoping the Career Officer and other titles return soon.


    I believe we have the titles because we were added to a user-group - which would be why they don't specify which game we're from. It would take considerably more time to go back and figure out what users to add to specific user-groups to ensure that all who are entitled to a certain title have it.

    Like has been said before about other more cosmetic features - give them some time. It's not on the top of their to-do list, and they still have to investigate whether it's even possible with the new software.

    bioshrike wrote: »
    I'd also like to see animated avatars, sigs, and attachments prohibited/disabled.


    I think you're probably in the minority with this. While I can understand certain animated signatures/avatars being an issue, tastefully done ones (like my Ninja Mod signature, or Kossy's anime signature, for instance) shouldn't be restricted because a few people abuse the system. Rather, the ones that abuse it should have the offending signature/avatar removed, and be forced to pick a new one.

    Rather than eliminating them entirely, instead monitor the usage of the system.
    ​​
  • jcsww
    jcsww Posts: 1,607 Arc User
    Thanks for the update, @krittycat. As much as the titles would be nice sooner than later, I am hoping page numbers and the ability to go to the next page from the bottom comes first along with the ability to have less posts per page. Reading down post after post to have to go all the way back to the top of the page to continue reading on the next page is a bit discouraging for reading some of the longer and more active threads.
    Reminder: Put something here!
  • lordhavelock
    lordhavelock Posts: 2,461 Arc User
    Any word on getting a Dev Tracker?​​
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