To be perfectly honest, the farking ad between the forum posts does make me want to leave gdnet. If that's the direction the staff wants to take the site then I don't want to come along.
I sincerely hope that we're not going to get bitter over what we have to do to keep this site afloat. We simply cannot fund this site without advertising, and the ad you see at the top of the page is not paying what it used to. So right now only members and guests see that ad.. gdnet+ members do not.
Let's just say that after seeing user after user complain about the piss poor vertical space usage, seeing you guys add an ad between posts after all that screams to me: let's listen to our users and then do the absolute opposite of what they want because we want to devalue our brand that much. If you want to call it getting bitter, fine, but doing that after all the complaints says that you guys just want to take a public dump on the people complaining. Way to go customer relations.
I'm curious to know how many users are like me but , as far as i'm concerned, i don't just skip over the main page quickly, i only have the forums bookmarked and never go throught anything else.
The one thing GDnet brought me was "click here , got what you care for with relevant people", i don't care for networking with those people, nor with feeling part of a community, i care much more about finding my forum grouping back which allowed me to skip over all of the forums i don't care about and get to the revelant stuff.
About once or twice a year i visit another forum than those in my favorites, the rest of the time (i visit gdnet forums once to twice a day and usually read every new post in .net / lounge at least while tossing in for begginers and dx/xna every other day) i don't even want to see them.
With the huge advantage of grouping i'm surprised (i don't think , with such a breadth of subject, that most users visit more than 10% of topics on an individual basis, so i'd assume everyone loved that) that you considered a regression because i'd think community done right + all the other comments fixed would still lead to a worse site. Trading forum grouping for community seems like a bad deal in itself.
read in a lot of post in answers to "make the forums the focus again" that the goal is just to add focus to the rest by linking them with the forums, but i think it may have been a better idea when renewing to focus only on the forums and actually, simply drop the rest of the website if you wanted a real change, the news could be consumed in a news forum fashion and most of the rest of the site is (was) obsolete last time i looked. This may actually have increased the number of people who see the news.
So overall, and please don't take this as something harsh but i really think it's important to be honest with it since you seemed open about wanting feedback, i feel that even once everything will be fixed, this will be a total regression, what we gain (once the issues are fixed) isn't worth what we loose. We loose a great forum and get yet another community website.
I'm also not "leaving" gdnet, it makes no sense to "leave" something you're not formally introduced into but i can see myself loosing the habbit of coming daily to check, i come only for the forums , anything outside of this isn't a selling point for me , actually if you had removed the rest of the website i'm fairly sure i wouldn't have noticed (forums bookmarked directly).
Now i understand that you need to keep gdnet afloat as you say so, and i hope you'll see throught that i mean no insult but am genuinely concerned, as a part of the solution to get the old features back , i'm willing to donate 250$ to get the old forums back , the old width space usage, the old groupings, (i don't mind if the ratings go). In a functional sense it fited it's role as i never thought "i'm limited by lack of features X" in the old forums so i couldn't see a need for a change, while everything screams "unfit" on the new ones, and most of that everything is the community stuff, the large area for user presentation vs small area for post content etc.
I'll understand if this posts get nuked but if not please take note of my sincere proposition for individual funding and maybe make a thread about it because i'm sure others would join me in the "support the old site financialy" move while it's still probably technically feasible?
I think our biggest fear this time around was in publishing information about the new site and not being able to come through with it. Our software was aging and we couldn't maintain it.
So, basically GameDev pulled an OpenGL. You should know better Gamedev. Never pull an OpenGL.
Is there a way of getting a longer list of recent forum posts? There's a list on the forum front page, but it only has 5 things in it. Is there a preference to change that, or another page which will give a longer list?
Is there a way of getting a longer list of recent forum posts? There's a list on the forum front page, but it only has 5 things in it. Is there a preference to change that, or another page which will give a longer list?
I love the new forums, personally. Avatar support for everyone, along with the changes to signatures (enabled by default and styled differently from post text), offers a more social experience. No longer are users seen as "just text." While it can be argued that this distracts from the content of the post, I think it's for the best overall.
I think the point Mike was trying to make about is that where as on the old site the forums where 'front and centre' with a quick link from the front page (in fact 3 quick ways; active topics, left hand link and the link from the drop down menu) now I either have to navigate a slightly flakey drop down menu system (which is annoying to use on IE9) or if I want to check if there are any active threads I'm intrested in I have to scroll a massive distance down the front page past an advert, jobs, events, featured book and recent articles (half of which is mirroring information already above the news section) before I get to it.
This alone feels like the forums are being placed a very distance 2nd in the 'way things are going' on the site.
I just go directly to the forum from my browser. In fact when I type 'g', the Gamedev forums page is the top result so all I do is 'g', ENTER. Is a bookmark so hard to setup so you can skip the front page?
IMO, the new forums are extremely painful to read. We'll see how long it takes for my eyes to adjust. I was just getting to where I liked the last style better than the old black layout.
I suggest you visit an optician if you're in pain from reading. Or possibly, grow up and stop being a little baby.
Let's just say that after seeing user after user complain about the piss poor vertical space usage, seeing you guys add an ad between posts after all that screams to me: let's listen to our users and then do the absolute opposite of what they want because we want to devalue our brand that much. If you want to call it getting bitter, fine, but doing that after all the complaints says that you guys just want to take a public dump on the people complaining. Way to go customer relations.
Ads are supposed to grab your attention. It's not whitespace but content too. I don't like them either but I'm sure it'll soon get filtered out, and you can just pay for GD.net if you want to avoid them. GD has costs to cover, you suggest a better alternative for the real world?
Really? I guess I shouldn't be surprised but hearing that a handful of times already is still uncomfortable. GD has never been "pretty", it's a technical content site. I would visit if it were on raw text files, because when I am developing games and I ask a question, I get a competent answer usually in minutes.
So you like the old site better, great. Complain about it. But if you're leaving over it then you're here for the wrong reasons.
On that note, thank you staff for working hard on the new site, I'm sure it was a hell of a lot of work.
