The Not So Random Thoughts Thread

[lupin]

Is anyone else surprised that, just before possibly the busiest time in the NBA Offseason - the NBA Draft - that The Powers That Be have gone to this chaotic mess? Didn't the whole board blow up last year on draft night? It is like clockwork. Ugh.

Hey, the new format sucks. Beyond that, we're missing a lot of threads - like the real "random thoughts" one.

[mhd]

Is anyone else having trouble posting?

[tkunit]

I also couldn't find the nba draft thread. I'm not a fan of this new style but we will see. Oh yea and working on sundays sucks.

[doclinkin]

It seems like we're now unable to post more than one paragraph. Also we've lost the rest of the classic threads. No point investing much energy or emotion into this thing. Could be just a big, but if not and this is the way they want the forums, well, I'll miss you guys as virtual pals and a community but if we can no longer develop a point or have a long-standing dialogue on a topic well, I've got no reason to care.

[MJG]

Things I don't like:

+ I absolutely HATE the slide thing on top of the forum. On the home page? Sure, that's fine. On the top of every single forum page? Just distracting. I didn't mind the old wiretap headlines, because that was small and plain text. This new thing is three times the size, constantly flashing. I'm already thinking of doing a Greasemonkey script to hide it.

+ Missing quick reply box. Is this intentional? I hope not. It's not a huge thing to always have to click into the full post page, but it's a lost convenience that I cannot think of a reason for.

+ Horrid quote box. I figure this is something that will get mass complaints and be fixed quickly, but for the moment, a major annoyance.

+ Technical issues. I'm sure all this will be fixed, but for the time being, stuff like the missing threads and post text being cut off makes the site almost unusable.

+ Overall look and feel of the forum is less clean, more cluttered. Bigger animated icons, larger font size on the main forum page, blue boxes around every single thing - feels like there's a lot less whitespace than before . This is just a personal opinion, and others may very well like the update, but I'm no fan.

I realize that whenever a web site gets an overhaul, there's an knee-jerk negative reaction to the changes that most people forget about two weeks later. But I think I've limited myself to complaints that I'm not going to get over as quickly (except the last one; even if I never like this layout as much as the last one, I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough).

[mohammed10]

Agree with above.

The new forum is horrible. Unfortunately, what can we users do about it? Protest? Not likely.

This is the only real forum where I can get my Wizards jones satiated.

Damn the new updates!!!!

[mohammed10]

BTW - Did anyone else notice that they have been 'demoted' by the moderator powers that be?

It used to be GM, assistant GM and so on. Now, there are all these lame titles as well. ARGH

[MJG]

New issue I've found: the "New posts have been added, you may want to review your post before submitting" page that comes up when you try to submit a post, where other people have replied to the topic since you started typing. I despise this already. Is it really such a big deal to use the Edit button if it turns out you want to change your posts in light of what others have said in the past few minutes? Versus the 98% of time when you don't want to change your text, but still have to click Submit two or three times to get through.

Blech.

[doclinkin]

Tried to post this in the New Forum thread.
----------------

Very slow, that's bad enough, but the Wiz board has lost a number of threads that had useful reference information, or well-loved institutions, etc. (The Visitors/links thread, Politics thread, Left-Field analysis thread, Wizboard Hall of Fame, Flamewar/Trolls thread, the Poetry Slam thread).

Some part of why our board has succeeded has been a long institutional memory, pooling intelligence, long running conversations on a particular topic. The last major board change (killing all threads over 100 pages) we were promised we'd have access to an archive of past posts. Over a year now and we're still waiting, and now any thread with a depth of discussion has been disintegrated and vaporized into the ether.

So again we skew the dialogue towards short-term memory, loud pronouncements quickly forgotten, lack of 'investment' in the community. The only institutional 'reward' for longstanding participation becomes the total post count. Quantity, not quality.

It's a real loss. I'm disappointed. I understand it must take a ton of work to keep things up and running, to support them, to predict and deflect crashes, to upgrade as traffic demands-- but from the user perspective it's important to let you know what the effect of your efforts are, and in this case the results are: a less enjoyable product/ experience.

Not to get too hi-falutin'-- just letting you know why a user like me, say, participates in the first place. Ultimately many of the better, smarter, busier participants in the discussion will lose interest and find better things to do with their time, since without History there's less emotional/intellectual investment. Novelty wears off, nostalgia builds loyalty. That's how, in sports, teams build lifetime diehards and a fanbase. Without memorabilia / tape/ film/ and a Hall of fame, replay of classic plays, additions to the 'Storied History' to be reflected on and enshrined -- it becomes clear you're just watching a bunch of genetic freaks running around in stupid clothing performing improbable but ultimately pointless acrobatics-- If we're honest about it. Nobody remembers the street mime they passed yesterday, even if it really looked like he was trapped in that invisible box.

Or something like that. Just saying. If you reduce the ego-investment, then wordy relatively bright bastids like myself start to care less and waste less time in the discourse and palaver. Which I read as a loss. That's what drew me to the board in the first place, and why I stuck around long enough to actually give a crap.

There have been some really great discussions on these boards. I count their disappearance as a real loss in my life, and you don't know me from Joe Jagoff, I understand, but I'm saying, it's not just me, seems like it matters.

Never one to give a complaint without a solution: we need that long-promised archive, and the ability to extract a quote or two from it, to re-activate the ability to say "remember when?' and reflect on posters now lost, or epic statistical swordfights, etc. Don't let the forums become a victim of their own success. [/jeremiad].

your pal.

-doc

[ZonkertheBrainless]

Testing... testing.




Hm.

[miller31time]

Have to say, I'm not a fan of the new layout. It's very crowded and seems to cater to the 12-15 year olds who need lots of buttons and graphics to keep themselves entertained.

However, two things...

1. Many of the bugs and/or problems we're all encountering most likely will be fixed and are just temporary. Downloading a new PHP is a lot of work and there are a million things that need to be done at once, so everything isn't going to be finished immediately.

2. Things like this generally grow on you, in time. I remember the last time they updated the PHP, everyone hated it and wanted it to go back to the way it was. Fastforward to today and everyone wants the current PHP to go back to the way it was. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, and see how much I like/dislike this in a few months.

[Wizards2Lottery]

My favorite quick reply feature is gone. That was extremely convenient to use during game day threads.

The quote feature sucks too.

boooooooooooooooooo

When will RGM chat be back up? This is lame!

[CrankyTodd]

The old look and feel was showing its age, but this update needs A LOT of work.

[Rafael122]

Why couldn't they just fix some of the graphics or designs or whatever and keep everything else the same. I didn't mind the old lay out. Old? Yes, but it was simple and it got the job done.

[miller31time]

Guys, I'm almost sure that the Quick Reply Box will be back, our archived threads will be brought back, and the "Quoted post" thing will be fixed.

Not promising, but the admins of this site asked us to list the things mods felt were missing and needed fixing. These were the among the top things (along with the PM system disappearing).

[fugop]

I agree with the negative reviews, a very poorly handled redesign/changeover. The lack of blockquote differentiation is painfully amatuerish. It's like they just upgraded their phpBB w/o doing any custom theming, going live with the barebones, out of the box template. Seriously, everything blue? Where the hell does that even come from?

[MJG]

I went ahead and did the Greasemonkey script I mentioned in my earlier post, and while it doesn't fix the biggest of problems, it does clean things up a bit. See some images:

Topics - Before
Topics - After

Thread - Before
Thread - After

I'm willing to share the script with other Greasemonkey users, though I make no promises as to it working the same for others (my setup includes Firefox, adblock, other Greasemonkey scripts, etc, so it's probably quite different from most others). I wrote it in about three minutes and don't really feel like refining or testing it on other computers or setups, since it works well enough for me for the time being.

[JWizmentality]

I just realised the quoting problem. Christ. There's going to be alot of misunderstandings.

That smiley looks fuggin (Please Use More Appropriate Word).

and WTF is this abomination supposed to be doing? Crying?!?

You call this blushing?? That's a frikkin Heat Stroke!!!

OMG the aliens have landed

[JWizmentality]

The hell??? The smileys morph upon posting?? Witchcraft!!!!

[Wizards2Lottery]

He just went 10/12 against me on NBA 2k8 online. I even had Tayshaun Prince contest every shot.

2k8 fails. I'm going back to live.