In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.
I may be niave and a total ignoramous when it comes to social media - but where't the button to tag a post? Is it like a hash tag in twitter and it automagically does it for me?
And how do we know what tag to use for what game? I would have thought "Vendetta Online", not hypenated... or VO since that's how it's sometimes called... i don't know. So know when I go to tag my post, or search for tags, it's a mess.
I can understand the technical limitation being an issue, but ... the alternative isn't spelled out very well just yet.
Just type the name of the game in the tags section and it should auto-fill for you. If a tag for a specific game is missing, we can set it up for you (I'm going to create a thread for requesting tags). If you're just searching for posts on a specific game, all you need to do is just search as normal and type the name of the game in.
So basically, if the person who created the thread forgot to tag it with the game(s) it was about, or didn't anticipate where the discussion would head, or didn't know that it was possible to tag it, or started the thread before the forum transition, then the entire forum thread will soon disappear into the ether and no one who replies to the thread can do anything about it? But never fear, because there's a forum search function that won't find it?
Deleting a decade or more of accumulated knowledge in one fell swoop and then hoping that people will recreate it in a timely manner is quite a whoopsie. I hope you have good backups of this forum to be able to restore the many thousands of deleted threads and put them somewhere searchable.
Ahhhh.... because the search function in the tabs isn't the search function under the specific pub section.. which isn't marked.. it's just a square... and when you click it.. it doesn't populate a full search bar... just another square you can type in.
That is in no way convoluted.
There are two search functions. The general search at the very top of the site (which is also where you'll find advanced search) and something called Quick Search which, when not busted in theming as you have noticed, will look like a magnifying glass and pop out a search field. You'll be able to click it in a thread to search within a thread or within a subforum to quickly search within a subforum. It'll be pretty handy once it doesn't look like a mess. Indeed, there are bugs! We're doing our best to clean things up, but please bear with us.
In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.
I may be niave and a total ignoramous when it comes to social media - but where't the button to tag a post? Is it like a hash tag in twitter and it automagically does it for me?
And how do we know what tag to use for what game? I would have thought "Vendetta Online", not hypenated... or VO since that's how it's sometimes called... i don't know. So know when I go to tag my post, or search for tags, it's a mess.
I can understand the technical limitation being an issue, but ... the alternative isn't spelled out very well just yet.
Just type the name of the game in the tags section and it should auto-fill for you. If a tag for a specific game is missing, we can set it up for you (I'm going to create a thread for requesting tags). If you're just searching for posts on a specific game, all you need to do is just search as normal and type the name of the game in.
So basically, if the person who created the thread forgot to tag it with the game(s) it was about, or didn't anticipate where the discussion would head, or didn't know that it was possible to tag it, or started the thread before the forum transition, then the entire forum thread will soon disappear into the ether and no one who replies to the thread can do anything about it? But never fear, because there's a forum search function that won't find it?
Deleting a decade or more of accumulated knowledge in one fell swoop and then hoping that people will recreate it in a timely manner is quite a whoopsie. I hope you have good backups of this forum to be able to restore the many thousands of deleted threads and put them somewhere searchable.
There's not much we can do for threads pre-migration. Some things are gone, yes. Once thread tagging becomes a habit for users as they get more familiar with the forum software, it will be a lot easier to find things. Ben (Meddle) also listed a number of things we're looking into to make it all easier for you guys. Of course, you can also just search for relevant keywords (such as a game name) to find discussions for said game, so even if something isn't tagged for whatever reason, there's a good chance you'll find the thread anyways.
In addition, I am going to have my moderators check to ensure game specific threads are tagged properly and they will edit in the tags if they are not.
I can't speak for other games, but if you'd like to help me with an experiment focused on Uncharted Waters Online, go ahead and check your PMs.
I'd like to recommend rolling Forum Q&A Archives (only 16 topics) in with Site Suggestions, if that will free up a category.
We're actually pretty proud of hosting AMAs and now that we've switched to the new forum software we are going to be more aggressively pursuing the hosting of additional AMAs on a more regular basis. We'll be kicking things off on the new forums with @dsmart in the near future!
In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.
Now that's just ridiculous. Unless you create a very, very prominent way to push people to search by tags, no one will ever think that if only they search for tags, they can find information that they don't expect to exist on this site.
Removing the less active forums is like Microsoft removing the start button from Windows because people didn't use it that often. You don't need it very often, but when you need it, you need it and don't want to spend the next hour trying to figure out if Windows 8 has the same functionality buried somewhere that you can't find.
You can search by tags through the forum search functionality.
95% of the forums removed had like 0 activity in six months. Most weren't "less active" they were dead. Also, these removals were a necessity as our new forum software is not capable of scaling to the amount of forums we had, which is why we made the decision to cut a bunch of forums to begin with.
So you upgraded to something less capable than what was there to begin with? When I have a question about a game I used to be able to find info here. Now that has been sacrificed for less popular titles. Apparently this site has outgrown its whole purpose for existing.
In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.
Now that's just ridiculous. Unless you create a very, very prominent way to push people to search by tags, no one will ever think that if only they search for tags, they can find information that they don't expect to exist on this site.
Removing the less active forums is like Microsoft removing the start button from Windows because people didn't use it that often. You don't need it very often, but when you need it, you need it and don't want to spend the next hour trying to figure out if Windows 8 has the same functionality buried somewhere that you can't find.
You can search by tags through the forum search functionality.
95% of the forums removed had like 0 activity in six months. Most weren't "less active" they were dead. Also, these removals were a necessity as our new forum software is not capable of scaling to the amount of forums we had, which is why we made the decision to cut a bunch of forums to begin with.
So you upgraded to something less capable than what was there to begin with? When I have a question about a game I used to be able to find info here. Now that has been sacrificed for less popular titles. Apparently this site has outgrown its whole purpose for existing.
Tagging actually makes finding stuff easier when used properly. I've also got an idea for a solution that could supplement this pretty well.
So basically, if the person who created the thread forgot to tag it with the game(s) it was about, or didn't anticipate where the discussion would head, or didn't know that it was possible to tag it, or started the thread before the forum transition, then the entire forum thread will soon disappear into the ether and no one who replies to the thread can do anything about it? But never fear, because there's a forum search function that won't find it?
Deleting a decade or more of accumulated knowledge in one fell swoop and then hoping that people will recreate it in a timely manner is quite a whoopsie. I hope you have good backups of this forum to be able to restore the many thousands of deleted threads and put them somewhere searchable.
There's not much we can do for threads pre-migration. Some things are gone, yes. Once thread tagging becomes a habit for users as they get more familiar with the forum software, it will be a lot easier to find things. Ben (Meddle) also listed a number of things we're looking into to make it all easier for you guys. Of course, you can also just search for relevant keywords (such as a game name) to find discussions for said game, so even if something isn't tagged for whatever reason, there's a good chance you'll find the thread anyways.
In addition, I am going to have my moderators check to ensure game specific threads are tagged properly and they will edit in the tags if they are not.
I can't speak for other games, but if you'd like to help me with an experiment focused on Uncharted Waters Online, go ahead and check your PMs.
Manual game tagging is never going to be routine enough to be a viable replacement. If people have to treat this forum very different from everything else they've ever used to get it to work properly, it's not going to work properly.
If the forum software could search threads for particular game names and add the tags to the games automatically, that might work. Restoring the deleted threads to a new forum and adding tags based on the game forum they're recovered from might work. But fighting against your users accumulated experience from the entire rest of the Internet is a losing cause.
Tagging actually makes finding stuff easier when used properly.
Whoa there, wait just a minute...
I think you might want to clarify exactly what you meant by that statement, because the way you've written it comes across as if you're blaming the users of the forum for not utilizing the feature correctly.
The issue here is certainly not the end user, it is the current configuration of your forum software, which is presently less than adequate and appears to be a downgrade in functionality compared to the previous software.
Tagging actually makes finding stuff easier when used properly.
Whoa there, wait just a minute...
I think you might want to clarify exactly what you meant by that statement, because the way you've written it comes across as if you're blaming the users of the forum for not utilizing the feature correctly.
The issue here is certainly not the end user, it is the current configuration of your forum software, which is presently less than adequate and appears to be a downgrade in functionality compared to the previous software.
I think it was pretty clear. When leveraged properly, tagging is a powerful tool. It's got nothing to do with blaming anyone for anything. The old forums were basically unusable for a ton of people and difficult to navigate, nevermind the search basically not working at all. From our POV, and from the POV of many other community members, the forums are a clear upgrade (especially on mobile!). This won't be true for everyone, though, and we understand that. That said, we aren't going back to the old forums. Right now we're heads down on fixing bugs and theming issues and once that is done we'll be looking to improve overall functionality of the forums however we can.
Is it not currently being leveraged properly? and if not, who/what is responsible for that?
I personally think you're grossly overestimating the value of tagging and it would appear I'm not alone in that regard. Can you provide some examples of forums where tagging is regarded as the standard and functions as well, or better, than the alternative? I'm genuinely curious and would like to educate myself on this if at all possible.
The old search worked just fine for me whenever I had to use it. This new setup? Not so much.
Difficult to navigate? What exactly has changed about the way users navigate the site now compared to the way they did previously? I haven't seen any difference in that aspect at all, I still navigate the forum the same way I have for the last three years. Am I missing something here?
I find it very interesting that you seem to feel that many community members consider this new software to be an improvement, because so far I've mainly witnessed complaints from the individuals who visit the forum daily, and the only real improvements I've noticed are that you now have a more modern visual appearance and everything is "prettier" than it previously was, along with the addition of forum badges (useless fluff) and some additional posting/formatting options.
I don't think anyone here is anticipating that you'd even consider going back to the old forums, as Bill has already stated that you're (meaning MMORPG.com itself) no longer hosting the site - which basically rules out any chance of that ever happening.
Change is good, and I absolutely agree that not everyone is going to be all smiles over the upgrade, different strokes and all that. I suppose we'll just have to grin and bear it while we wait for improvements of the existing functionality.
Is it not currently being leveraged properly? and if not, who/what is responsible for that.
Us, and not really, not yet anyways. We don't allow you guys to create tags so we need to ensure that there are proper tags set up on the backend for games on our game list and newer games as they crop up. We also need to make users more aware of the fact tagging is even a thing and how to use it. Aside from that, @Meddle has mentioned a number of ways we want to make tagging a more obvious and intuitive feature through the presentation of the forums. Keep in mind, tagging is only really necessary for games that don't have forums. It's not like we won't be adding forums in the future. There's just a limit to how many we can have right now, so we need to be mindful of that, and that meant cutting forums in order to accommodate the transition.
The old search worked just fine for me whenever I had to use it. This new setup? Not so much.
Difficult to navigate? What exactly has changed about the way users navigate the site now compared to the way they did previously? I haven't seen any difference in that aspect at all, I still navigate the forum the same way I have for the last three years. Am I missing something here?
The old search (which is still available on the main site) is basically just a blank field that will search Google for you. It's like typing in your search term with along with "site: mmorpg.com" into Google.The search we had before that straight up did not work. The new search is much more powerful. You can actually search by title, author, category, include or exclude subcategories, search by tags, search by date range and so on. We also have quick search that lets you quickly search within a thread or subforum. These are obvious and significant improvements. The current issue is that the theming needs work. It's pretty ugly/broken (quick search) right now, but we'll be fixing that.
As far as navigation, we highlight forums a lot better now. The current site (and old forums) is a jumbled mess and it's hard to figure out where things are. Most people just didn't bother and relied on the realtime feed on the homepage to find interesting discussions. We've now got a simple, clean, well organized roll of forums and popular game forums also have huge icons in the left column. To you and I, the old forums make a lot of sense, because we've used them for so long. But our website and forums were basically a dinosaur and not at all designed to modern standards, which is a huge barrier to entry for most.
MikeB said: As far as navigation, we highlight forums a lot better now.
Mike,
Listen, I'm a curmudgeon. I get it. Most people see a post from me and realize that there's probably some bitterness and sarcasm in there.
But if you TRULY believe this, you need to go see a specialist. I dunno if it's mental or physical. The "highlight" the forums better has done nothing but made things worse. Unless you're one of the top 10 games to the left of the forum page. Everything is clustered, NOTHING is better.
I get that this is what the site is doing, and I just have to kinda grin and take it but this is NOT better. This is the opposite.
You're taking away everything that made MMORPG great. (i.e. the ability to find and discuss MMO's that aren't necessarily the same ol' WoW-Clone garbage/fetch quest type deal) The old "list" of MMO's on the left, EVERY ONE was alphabetized. Every one was included. Can you say that about the links now? No. In fact, if you're not a member of the "popular" kids club, you're not featured and people have to NOW actively search for you using a broken search function. Which means you have to KNOW the game name or the specific tag that YOU guys created (not us) in order to even find the damned thing.
Is it not currently being leveraged properly? and if not, who/what is responsible for that.
Us, and not really, not yet anyways. We don't allow you guys to create tags so we need to ensure that there are proper tags set up on the backend for games on our game list and newer games as they crop up. We also need to make users more aware of the fact tagging is even a thing and how to use it. Aside from that, @Meddle has mentioned a number of ways we want to make tagging a more obvious and intuitive feature through the presentation of the forums. Keep in mind, tagging is only really necessary for games that don't have forums. It's not like we won't be adding forums in the future. There's just a limit to how many we can have right now, so we need to be mindful of that, and that meant cutting forums in order to accommodate the transition.
The old search worked just fine for me whenever I had to use it. This new setup? Not so much.
Difficult to navigate? What exactly has changed about the way users navigate the site now compared to the way they did previously? I haven't seen any difference in that aspect at all, I still navigate the forum the same way I have for the last three years. Am I missing something here?
The old search (which is still available on the main site) is basically just a blank field that will search Google for you. It's like typing in your search term with along with "site: mmorpg.com" into Google.The search we had before that straight up did not work. The new search is much more powerful. You can actually search by title, author, category, include or exclude subcategories, search by tags, search by date range and so on. We also have quick search that lets you quickly search within a thread or subforum. These are obvious and significant improvements. The current issue is that the theming needs work. It's pretty ugly/broken (quick search) right now, but we'll be fixing that.
As far as navigation, we highlight forums a lot better now. The current site (and old forums) is a jumbled mess and it's hard to figure out where things are. Most people just didn't bother and relied on the realtime feed on the homepage to find interesting discussions. We've now got a simple, clean, well organized roll of forums and popular game forums also have huge icons in the left column. To you and I, the old forums make a lot of sense, because we've used them for so long. But our website and forums were basically a dinosaur and not at all designed to modern standards, which is a huge barrier to entry for most.
What you've done is basically like being asked to clean a house, deciding it's too cluttered, picking half of the stuff at random and throwing it in the garbage, and declaring the problem solved. Yes, it's easier to find the stuff that remains. But that solution is worse than the cure, as you're throwing away important stuff that you needed.
I think I've got a solution that would certainly be technically feasible if you were building forum software from scratch. It might not be feasible with the software you have, though, as features that are easy to implement if you design around them can be very hard to patch into existing software later.
What you do is to create one new forum for "Other Games". Take all of the threads from deleted forums, tag them with the game corresponding to the forum from which they were deleted, and dump them into the Other Games forum. Make it so that in order to create a new thread in the Other Games forum, you're required to tag it with a particular game. And then make a search by game tags feature very prominent in the Other Games forum, so that even though everything is technically in one forum, it's easy to filter down to the game you actually care about.
When you go to delete a particular forum for games in the future, you take all of the threads from it, tag them with the game, and dump them into the Other Games forum. If a game becomes popular enough that you decide it justifies having its own forum, you create a forum for it, grab all of the threads tagged with that game, and move them to the new forum.
There is nothing good or easy about this new switch. I've been a lurker for over 10 years here. I seldom ever post, but I /always/ read. Searching for posts /topics was always easy so when you say the new system is much easier, I am just baffled. I've had time to get back in to some games again, and I thought this was going to be my go to place to answer some old questions I knew would be archived, btu safely secured here at MMORPG, because well it had always been that in the past.
The attempt to go social networking with this new layout is absolutely horrendous, for me, and this is going to be my last post or time lurking on these forums as it's not what I have grown to expect from mmorpg over the last decade.
95% of the forums removed had like 0 activity in six months. Most weren't "less active" they were dead.
Vendetta was one of the lucky 5%, then. It was not dead, and if the wayback machine cataloged anything more recently than April 12, 2012, this would be apparent.
Now, not only has the dedicated subforum gone away, but so has the "Other Games" category, also. That's close to a hundred threads nuked, several of which included essay-length posts, with no warning whatsoever.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
Comments
Deleting a decade or more of accumulated knowledge in one fell swoop and then hoping that people will recreate it in a timely manner is quite a whoopsie. I hope you have good backups of this forum to be able to restore the many thousands of deleted threads and put them somewhere searchable.
Below is what it should look like once we fix it.
In addition, I am going to have my moderators check to ensure game specific threads are tagged properly and they will edit in the tags if they are not.
I can't speak for other games, but if you'd like to help me with an experiment focused on Uncharted Waters Online, go ahead and check your PMs.
So you upgraded to something less capable than what was there to begin with? When I have a question about a game I used to be able to find info here. Now that has been sacrificed for less popular titles. Apparently this site has outgrown its whole purpose for existing.
If the forum software could search threads for particular game names and add the tags to the games automatically, that might work. Restoring the deleted threads to a new forum and adding tags based on the game forum they're recovered from might work. But fighting against your users accumulated experience from the entire rest of the Internet is a losing cause.
I think you might want to clarify exactly what you meant by that statement, because the way you've written it comes across as if you're blaming the users of the forum for not utilizing the feature correctly.
The issue here is certainly not the end user, it is the current configuration of your forum software, which is presently less than adequate and appears to be a downgrade in functionality compared to the previous software.
Is it not currently being leveraged properly? and if not, who/what is responsible for that?
I personally think you're grossly overestimating the value of tagging and it would appear I'm not alone in that regard. Can you provide some examples of forums where tagging is regarded as the standard and functions as well, or better, than the alternative? I'm genuinely curious and would like to educate myself on this if at all possible.
The old search worked just fine for me whenever I had to use it. This new setup? Not so much.
Difficult to navigate? What exactly has changed about the way users navigate the site now compared to the way they did previously? I haven't seen any difference in that aspect at all, I still navigate the forum the same way I have for the last three years. Am I missing something here?
I find it very interesting that you seem to feel that many community members consider this new software to be an improvement, because so far I've mainly witnessed complaints from the individuals who visit the forum daily, and the only real improvements I've noticed are that you now have a more modern visual appearance and everything is "prettier" than it previously was, along with the addition of forum badges (useless fluff) and some additional posting/formatting options.
I don't think anyone here is anticipating that you'd even consider going back to the old forums, as Bill has already stated that you're (meaning MMORPG.com itself) no longer hosting the site - which basically rules out any chance of that ever happening.
Change is good, and I absolutely agree that not everyone is going to be all smiles over the upgrade, different strokes and all that. I suppose we'll just have to grin and bear it while we wait for improvements of the existing functionality.
The old search (which is still available on the main site) is basically just a blank field that will search Google for you. It's like typing in your search term with along with "site: mmorpg.com" into Google.The search we had before that straight up did not work. The new search is much more powerful. You can actually search by title, author, category, include or exclude subcategories, search by tags, search by date range and so on. We also have quick search that lets you quickly search within a thread or subforum. These are obvious and significant improvements. The current issue is that the theming needs work. It's pretty ugly/broken (quick search) right now, but we'll be fixing that.
As far as navigation, we highlight forums a lot better now. The current site (and old forums) is a jumbled mess and it's hard to figure out where things are. Most people just didn't bother and relied on the realtime feed on the homepage to find interesting discussions. We've now got a simple, clean, well organized roll of forums and popular game forums also have huge icons in the left column. To you and I, the old forums make a lot of sense, because we've used them for so long. But our website and forums were basically a dinosaur and not at all designed to modern standards, which is a huge barrier to entry for most.
Listen, I'm a curmudgeon. I get it. Most people see a post from me and realize that there's probably some bitterness and sarcasm in there.
But if you TRULY believe this, you need to go see a specialist. I dunno if it's mental or physical. The "highlight" the forums better has done nothing but made things worse. Unless you're one of the top 10 games to the left of the forum page. Everything is clustered, NOTHING is better.
I get that this is what the site is doing, and I just have to kinda grin and take it but this is NOT better. This is the opposite.
You're taking away everything that made MMORPG great. (i.e. the ability to find and discuss MMO's that aren't necessarily the same ol' WoW-Clone garbage/fetch quest type deal) The old "list" of MMO's on the left, EVERY ONE was alphabetized. Every one was included. Can you say that about the links now? No. In fact, if you're not a member of the "popular" kids club, you're not featured and people have to NOW actively search for you using a broken search function. Which means you have to KNOW the game name or the specific tag that YOU guys created (not us) in order to even find the damned thing.
I think I've got a solution that would certainly be technically feasible if you were building forum software from scratch. It might not be feasible with the software you have, though, as features that are easy to implement if you design around them can be very hard to patch into existing software later.
What you do is to create one new forum for "Other Games". Take all of the threads from deleted forums, tag them with the game corresponding to the forum from which they were deleted, and dump them into the Other Games forum. Make it so that in order to create a new thread in the Other Games forum, you're required to tag it with a particular game. And then make a search by game tags feature very prominent in the Other Games forum, so that even though everything is technically in one forum, it's easy to filter down to the game you actually care about.
When you go to delete a particular forum for games in the future, you take all of the threads from it, tag them with the game, and dump them into the Other Games forum. If a game becomes popular enough that you decide it justifies having its own forum, you create a forum for it, grab all of the threads tagged with that game, and move them to the new forum.
The attempt to go social networking with this new layout is absolutely horrendous, for me, and this is going to be my last post or time lurking on these forums as it's not what I have grown to expect from mmorpg over the last decade.
Now, not only has the dedicated subforum gone away, but so has the "Other Games" category, also. That's close to a hundred threads nuked, several of which included essay-length posts, with no warning whatsoever.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance