[Idorsearogele]

What we need is virtual forums... it would solve all your problems [thumbup]

edit:
This is where in the control panel you "check/uncheck" what sections you want to see on the main index. BAM, instantly personable layout. I would only check GD/cpu/video sections. I think FM needs to do this asap

[parishilton]

The second part of your question has already been answered though, by all those who have spoken up about being effected. I know my work gave no second thought to FM.Yeah, it had a section on gaming, but that wasn't what the site was about, and its not what the filters saw. But now, with this Yougamers tag, filters need look no further than the title to see a reason to block it, even though FM still has nothing to really do with gaming.

Nothing? "The Gamers' Benchmark"?

Not that anyone cares, but I've joined 2 other forums recently and I barely visit FM anymore. If FM were to disappear from my browser's recently viewed list, I probably wouldn't bother coming back here at all.

I love the people here. But I think FM is catering to a different audience now, perhaps a younger one. Oldtime FM'rs are in the minority.

So it's the people that keep you here and not the forum? In other words, it doesn't actually matter what the boards are like then? Exactly how do changes to the discussion board, where nothing from the previous arrangement has been removed, indicate that the entire company is somehow aiming at a different audience?

[dayclaccikere]

Nothing? "The Gamers' Benchmark"?

OK, so its a benchmark marketed towards gamers. But the site was never aimed at GAMES. It was aimed at BENCHMARKING; to me, there is a big difference.

I don't recall the sites being merged - only the forums; if you think that all that matters to both sites is just the discussion boards, well I can't help you with that.

I won't speak for most users, but yeah, that pretty much is all that matters to both sites. Why? Because when i come here, I come for the discussion boards. Neeyik, you fail to understand why so many people are upset - for most, FM has always only been about two things:
1) The actual benchmark
2) The forum.
Everyone I have talked to here, has been here because of the boards, and the community around it. Sure, the other features of FM are nice, but when it comes down to it, it is the community that is the most important to users here.

Again, the sites haven't merged and remain separate.

Like I explained, the one important part of the site has moved. But heck - if the rest of FM is still just FM, why most the most important part over the to useless YG?

Define "good".

What do you want me to define about it? It was good, in that nothing about the forum itself needed to be changed. It was working just fine without YG, and it was working just fine the way it was previously set up. People were happy, and no one had a problem accessing FM. If that isn't "good", i don't know what is.

None? Leaving aside YG for the moment; a faster and more stable DB is of no use at all? That users can now comment on the news posts made each day for the users - that's useless to?

Of course a faster DB is useful - but its implementation didn't require the FM forums being jammed with the useless YG. As for the news stuff - i haven't looked at it, so i won't comment either way.

Oh the irony in that comment...

Take it as you wish. I haven't been trying to be rude, but yes, I am upset at what i see as a useless and troublesome change. MO/FM is a place I have called home for years, and when something like this does come alone, i feel like I have a right to be upset when the change is bad.

I have always respected you Neeyik, but I feel you are being a bit to harsh on people. Most people are just upset at what they see as a bad move for their community. Yes, some people are going about it the wrong way; but if anything, it is because they have such a connection here.

Though really, I guess there isn't much point in arguing more, is there? Despite the difficulties, it has already been expressed that the YG problem is just "tough luck"; I doubt it will change. It just sucks knowing I will be cutoff from FM while at work

[parishilton]

If there was an instantaneous fix for the web filtering issue, I have no doubt that we would implement it. However, since the forums are on the YG servers, I don't think that a simple solution exists but there again, I'm no coder.

I think I have a bit of right to being somewhat firm with my responses - myself and the rest of the team work bloody hard here and I mean seriously hard, regularly working long hours, to produce content, features and tools that we think are useful and pretty unique. We also respect the fact that that not everyone will like what we do or decide, but for people to come along describing what we do as "useless", "crap", "****" or whatever, over and over, is not something that I'm going to just simply sit back and ignore. I'll address the comments to the best of my ability and make my own points on the matter just as clearly as they've done with theirs. Now how many companies would do that? How many companies would actually take the time to directly address the users concerns? And we have done so with previous issues: user titles and reputation points were all introduced, and despite our best efforts to try and make them work, it became clear that it wasn't going to happen, so they went. No fuss, no tears, no drama - just *boink*, gone and move on.

As far as the forum changes are concerned, I can only see two things that have happened which people have complained about: introduction of YG sections and the use of forums. The former is the easiest to handle, because people either like it or they don't. If they don't , then sorry but that's just how it is. If it's so bad that people feel the need to leave the board then I'm not going to miss them; if they hate it so much that they feel rage everytime they expend 0.5J of energy scrolling past the In-house section to get to the other boards, then they're never going to accept any reasonable answer or change. I'd personally question their anger management and overall attitude, to be frank.

Merging the boards saves us a lot of time and resources, so we have every sensible right to do it - I had no doubt in my mind that some people would object to it, just as much as I had no doubt that some people would like to have the chance to respond to news items and so on. The majority of people just seem to get on with it though - well, just look at the number of different users who have vocally complained about the appearance of YG forum sections; it's barely into single figures as a percentage of the total number of daily visitors to the board.

The appearance of the YG section is no different to the appearance of any other new boards in a forum - if you don't like them, just scroll past.

With regards to the other complaint, I personally and honestly don't see why people find sub-forums all that much of an issue - the only real downside to them, that I can see, is that it's not easy to see the last post updated in them and thus one needs to rely on other means (e.g. using the RC, staying in the primary forum) to keep up-to-date with them. It's not an ideal way of handling that, so I'd be first in line to look at another way of doing it but still keep the overall board as streamlined as possible. There might be a way of implementing a user option to switch between "all primary" and "using subs" but I fear that would require recoding of the software, which we just don't have the time to do so at present (if at all, looking at the list of tasks that need doing).

For what it's worth, I am sorry that the changes have resulted in some people not being able to visit the site while they're on a lunch break at work or something - that companies choose to filter websites isn't something that we can be held responsible for though; if it's realistically fixable, then I should image that it will happen. If not, then again, I'll offer my apologies but that's how it is. For everything else - YG sections, sub-forums - I'm obviously not sorry at all but myself and others will take onboard the feedback and see what can be done to address some of the concerns whilst retaining our own desires for the discussion board.

And if that still fails to please people....well, then that's that. Make a decision: stay or leave; either way, there's nothing more I can do.

[syptopsygieds]

Why even bother asking the community for feedback and comments while you just hammer and being harsh to our feedback on this change? All I been reading was

"We're going to support the flop no matter what you think, it is easier for us, if you don't like it then GTFO"

seriously, bye

[RarensussyRen]

LOL (sorry) but whatever we say Onions there is nothing we can do about it !
i already post less (and that really matters ) , people leave , it doesn't matter to FM at all..

so maybe we should spare our fingers and let it sink in or something
i do hope the MO skins is available ASAP!

[parishilton]

Sorry if you think that this is what I've been saying. It's not though and I'll repeat this again - we are looking at everyone's comments, no matter how positive or negative they are. In an ideal world, we'd find a solution that would please everyone but that's just not possible. In a nutshull, the criticisms are as follows:

(1) YG content in the FM board.
(2) yougamers in the url causes web filters to block out the discussion board.
(3) Sub-forums make it harder to use the boards.

My responses to the actual points have been along the lines of:

(1) If one doesn't like them, then just scroll past them - it's no different to another board that one doesn't like in a discussion board. They're here to stay though.

(2) The use of web filters is not something we can directly solve. The location of the board on the YG servers brings more speed and stability than keeping it in Finland; I don't think there is a simple solution, other than renaming YG to a non-gaming name (YouRecreationalEnjoymentUsingAnElectronicSystem.c om?), that can get around this. We'll see if there is though.

(3) We're looking at how the use of sub-forums is affecting the forum. If the wholesale use of them is a major problem, then they'll go - no question about that. If it's a case that some sections are better off as primaries, then we'll alter those specific ones and leave the rest as they are. Either way though, we need to look at actual evidence (as well as taking onboard opinions) before making a decision.

[botagozzz]

Boys, boys, boys...

Do you think ANY moderator or admin on here will say anything bad about the subforums? Of course not. Every mod/staff so far has been in favor of it, although they might not be 100% honest. It's their duty to lie (even a little) to say a positive thing about the forums.

Personally I don't mind the new "FM+YG" thing, although it makes me nod my head and shake.

[parishilton]

You've not read my comments or at least, not completely so. I've pointed out that the use of the sub-forums does make it harder to keep up-to-date with the "last post" feature and that their usage hasn't been quite as we'd envisaged it; in other words, we know they're not a perfect solution to what we wanted. They are there simply to prevent having a discussion 90 million pixels in length - surely one wouldn't vote against a move to keep a forum streamlined and presentable? - and using a "seat-of-the-pants" judgement, their usage has not been a universal disaster as plenty of sub-forums seem to be as perky as they were in the past.

vBulletin does not, by default, give per-board statistics so we need to churn through the figures to see the actual result on each section and for reasons of reliability, one should just grab a small sample of value to analyse (i.e. we can't take just a few days of board usage and make a decision based on that). When we can do this, and we've gone through the numbers, we'll either make changes to some, all or none of the sub-forums; I can only ask that people remain patient whilst this goes on.

[inilbowly]

(2) The use of web filters is not something we can directly solve. The location of the board on the YG servers brings more speed and stability than keeping it in Finland; I don't think there is a simple solution, other than renaming YG to a non-gaming name (YouRecreationalEnjoymentUsingAnElectronicSystem.c om?), that can get around this. We'll see if there is though.

some filters only the domain name and browsing with the IP is still possible.
of course, only if you knew what the IP is...
[surrender]

http://72.32.205.162/forum/
(it currently works ONLY for the forum i think! [thumbup] )


http://72.32.205.162/
(but the main site is configured to change back to the domain name so no good! )

[parishilton]

Well, you learn something new everyday!

[Phassetus]

The subforums may still be there but their placement, text size, etc. is mildly annoying. They used to be easy to see and quick to click, but now they're sorta hiding in the shade of another section of the forum. Rather than being "RIGHT THERE" you have to do a small bit of extra work to get there. We all know how lazy the people here are. Asking them to remember that the subforums are listed in tiny text hiding under another forum, and expecting them to click a small bit of text rather than a large one is really asking a bit too much from us.

[parishilton]

The subforums may still be there but their placement, text size, etc. is mildly annoying.

I suspect that's pretty much why people aren't happy with how they've turned out and I don't think there's an easy/quick way to fix that. There might be but it's out of my knowledge limits to figure it out when I look at the vB control panel! Fortunately we have better people than myself to look at this...

[RarensussyRen]

Well, you learn something new everyday!

I thought it was mentioned already maybe in another thread

btw i didn't mean to sound hars with my post , i was typing to the Onions
i am getting used to it and love the speed of the forum right now!

and as i already said waiting for the MO skin...

Just posting a bit less but hey that's NOT a bad thing ...i've seen the sun again [thumbup]

[robinthesearchmasterh]

I have one major beef with it, if there is a new post in a sub-forum, the parent forum icon shows up as having a new post aswell.

I'd prefer if the sub-forum has a new post then only the sub-forum should light up.

sorry not read the rest of the forum.

[parishilton]

I have one major beef with it, if there is a new post in a sub-forum, the parent forum icon shows up as having a new post aswell.

Now that I really don't think one can do much about without recoding chunks of the software; on previous vB boards I've worked that's always been an issue.

[AntonioXYZ]

Well why FM doesn’t run survey - poll.
I bet it would be 80% against changes and 20% in favor.
But they will never do that, simply there is no way back.

[parishilton]

But they will never do that, simply there is no way back.

*sigh* That's simply not true - I'll remind folks again: remember the user title changes and the rep system?