Will there be a way for me just to get the bullets without the explanation of the sections back?
I just want each forum to have its name on a different line.
So here's my vote towards going back to simple, compact, bulletted lists. Give everything its own line, but keep it small and we don't need a short novel describing it.
I'll join you guys in that preference. Whats a DM/Player To Do are now waaaaaaaaaaaaay down the list and as for the settings forums, you might as well catch a bus...
Not to mention the poor CharOp board. I think it's in its own postal code separate from the other boards now.
Seriously though, can we get the subforums condensed a bit and the formatting to where it doesn't take forever to scroll to the board you want?
So whatever format works for the most people, is what it's going to be.
Problem is, if it's not the format a particular person wants, they won't believe that more people actually prefer that format. After all, I like format X, and I'm an intelligent person, so clearly, liking format X is an intelligent thing. So for whatever reasons, I can't believe format Z was more popular, WoTC must be lying to us.
What I find funny, is that when the new forums went live, they said they set it up that way, so that people didn't have to scroll down so far (Because people will only scroll so far). And people complained about it.
Now it's like the old way, and people are saying, man, look how far down you have to scroll.
It's a no win for WoTC. Do it one way, and someone complains, switch it around, and more complaining.
[...]
Now it's like the old way, and people are saying, man, look how far down you have to scroll.
1) The problem is, that WOTC switches around without giving ANY THOUGHT to user-interface design.
Yes, now you can find out what the forums are about easier. Yes, it's more structured. But: the catch of it is, that they just took to much space in reaching that. The index alone is 1024x20828 pixels. Nowadays, the typical Vieport height is between 800 and 1200. that makes between 18 and 30 pages to scroll through to get to the end. The old interface was already bloated, the new one to compact. Instead of revisiting what they want to do, they just did something to appease to some people - This way, they'll never reach a reasonable conclusion.
2) it is NOT like the old way. The old way had about 5-8 pages, not 20-30.
It's a no win for WoTC. Do it one way, and someone complains, switch it around, and more complaining.
...
What I find funny, is that when the new forums went live, they said they set it up that way, so that people didn't have to scroll down so far (Because people will only scroll so far). And people complained about it.
Now it's like the old way, and people are saying, man, look how far down you have to scroll.
It's a legitimate complaint, and there's no reason to think the Old Way was right in the first place.
Standard web-building guidelines recommend keeping all the important information in the first 2-3 pages. People don't like having to look for things on a website. Same with Newspaper articles; The article is summarized in the first three paragraphs or so, and you often have to turn the page to get the details.
Besides, the Old Way had +/- buttons to colapse forum groups you didn't want to see, which could easily halve the content you had to look at, assuming you take the time to change the settings.
I like the idea here, but I'd agree taking out the descriptions (maybe putting them in a tooltip) would be a good idea. I'd also love to see compression of subforums, because the 4E Books Errata forum in particular is taking up way too much space right now.
They could group books by category, which should free some room.
Also, I think this list should be put in a different order (Core 3 & Power books on top), because listing them alphabetically is just weird. Of course the entire rest of the page is alphabetic, so maybe not...
I think bolding recent printings (say, last 6 months or so) would be a good idea; help people find things easier. Right now, some newish books are at the top of the list...
4E BOOKS ERRATA
> Player's Handbook, Player's Handbook 2, Player's Handbook 3
> DMG, DMG2, DMG3
> MM1, MM2, MM3
> Martial Power, Arcane Power, Divine Power, Primal Power
> Adventurer's Vault 1, AV2
> Draconomicon 1, Draconomicon 2, Demonomicon
> Dungeon Delve
> Manual of the Planes, Open Grave, Plane Below, Plane Above
> Forgotten Realms PG, FRCG
> Eberron PG, ECG
> Dark Sun books
> Dragon Annual 2009
The old format was a little tight, but like OP said, you knew what and where everything was anyway.
I would suggest some compromise, bullet list (not paragraph list) with short descriptions of those that need descriptions.
1) The problem is, that WOTC switches around without giving ANY THOUGHT to user-interface design.
Do you have anything to back that up.
2) it is NOT like the old way. The old way had about 5-8 pages, not 20-30.
personally I have 12 pages under the new design.
I know you have had problems with the format not liking your system, so it is likely that problem cropping up in a new way.
1) The problem is, that WOTC switches around without giving ANY THOUGHT to user-interface design.
Do you have anything to back that up.2) it is NOT like the old way. The old way had about 5-8 pages, not 20-30.
personally I have 12 pages under the new design.
I know you have had problems with the format not liking your system, so it is likely that problem cropping up in a new way.
I have about 8 pages under the new design, which is still a lot of scrolling.
I should also clarify my earlier post since I realized I was being a bit inexact. When I said "CharOp" I should have said D20 CharOp.
1) The problem is, that WOTC switches around without giving ANY THOUGHT to user-interface design.
Do you have anything to back that up.
Well, the forums layout has obviously never been wireframed, or given any thought, this is clear from the result as well as the changes being done. They are obviously hasty, unrefined changes. I of course can not back that up with any insight or WOTC statements - if I had that kind of connections towards them, I'd already given them hell via other means. They should call in specialists to make these kind of decisions... And not amateurs. I'm working in the field my whole life... and I know when I say: It's far cheaper to hire a specialist upfront than to try to do it properly yourself. The D&D Website and the WOTC forums are a testament to their inability to do so.
The D&D page is big without reason (3141 KB), but this is mainly due to the sheer amount of images present in it. The Forum has no such excuses, but it is still very big - 1633 KB. (1918 KB uncompressed) Even though traffic is not any more an issue these days, those are numbers that still have to be taken serious. Load time is usually an issue when you deal in web-applications, as are accessibility (epic fail for the community page, normal fail for the D&D page), Browser Indepence (they got better at that in the last few months), small-screen rendering (both do miserably at that) and Usability (again, not very clearcut layouts, not very easy to navigate - yes, you find your way, but you need to WORK your way through - and you should not have to)
---
As for the paging issues: 6 pages if you only count the Dungeons and Dragons Forum. over 20 if you go to the whole forums-index (click Classic View) The forums main index page is over 20000 pixels in height - tested in firefox, IE, opera, nautilus and safari. If you have only 12 pages, this means your resolution is about 2000 pixels in height - possible, but unlikely.
And it's not like the format is not liking my system, it's that the format is not liking anything beyond 1200 width, or below, say 900. (not sure on those exact measures) - It just does not scale to larger or smaller screens. But this has nothing to do with paging.
And I always laugh at the people who say things like, This way is a bazillion pages worth of scrolling! The old way was only a few, cause sure enough, someone will come along and show they are exaggerating.
If you have to exaggerate to make your point, all people at WoTC are going to do is think that you are just being reactionary, and are one of those people that just either complains about everything, or doesn't like change. So they end up ignoring those people, while acting like they care. In short, you've hurt your chance of being heard, because of the fact that you think exaggerating helps.
Nor does suggesting that they don't give any thought to what they do. If that was true, they wouldn't have tried something else, they would have done one thing, and either deleted all posts about it, or just blindly ignore complainers.
All that does is subtle insult the people who do the work, and are less likely to give anything said by people who take this approach any weight, because the first thought that probably comes across their mind is, "It sure is easy for you to criticize someone else's work, burger-flipper."
Just say you don't like the new format. If you have valid reasons, or even better, suggestions on what you would like to see, in a poilet way.
I never said it wasn't a legitimate complaint. But if it's legitimate, so is any complaint about not liking it the previous version. Both are legit, but have to take one over the other, which means whatever WoTC decides to do, someone isn't going to like it and demand that it be the way they like it.
Well both this and the previous version sucked. I think it's less an issue of one person likes it one way while another person likes it different. I think almost everyone here agrees that they both suck. This is, however, a step in the right direction. They just need to reformat it so it's more compressed and reduce the size of some of those unnecessarily long descriptions. Even though they can't please everyone, a few more changes and they could probably please most people.
Anyway, if you don't complain, nothing gets changed.
BTW, we can now see the thread we're responding to. So it's not all bad.
I agree with bone_naga. Having used the current format for a couple of days now I think it's better than the last one but still has a long ways to go. At least WotC are listening and slowly acting on feedback.
I never said it wasn't a legitimate complaint. But if it's legitimate, so is any complaint about not liking it the previous version. Both are legit, but have to take one over the other, which means whatever WoTC decides to do, someone isn't going to like it and demand that it be the way they like it.
Well both this and the previous version sucked. I think it's less an issue of one person likes it one way while another person likes it different. I think almost everyone here agrees that they both suck. This is, however, a step in the right direction. They just need to reformat it so it's more compressed and reduce the size of some of those unnecessarily long descriptions. Even though they can't please everyone, a few more changes and they could probably please most people.
Anyway, if you don't complain, nothing gets changed.
BTW, we can now see the thread we're responding to. So it's not all bad.
I never said don't complain, I said how you do it will determin if someone is going to listen to you or not. If you have issues, the trick is to make the person want to make you happy, not alienate them.
Much of the complaining on here doesn't do much but alienate, since often its filled with exaggerations, mistaken information, and insults.
As an example, you started out with saying both versions sucked.
If I say, would you like it if someone came up to you and told you that your work sucked, both past and present, what would be your answer?
If you answer is, if I put out something like what they did, yeah, I would expect it someone in my company to call me on it. To that I say, if the person put out something that sucked, because they didn't care, and the management approved it, that's a completely different issue.
So I'm going to assume that you don't put out work that sucks on purpose and the people that do these forums don't put out work that sucks on purpose.
There are many factors to consider.
There are many people that feel the forums are to confusing to know where to post. Hence the long descriptions. There are many people that feel that certain subjects need there own thread, and shouldn't be lumped in larger subject threads. There are some people that feel that some sections are not needed, and others who live their forum lives only in those sections.
Take the first point, Confused as to where to post. To make sure people are posting in the right forum, you need to tell people what that section is about. Now it's too much text. Not enough and people will start posting were ever, once they quickly get frustrated trying to figure it out.
It needs to find a balance is the issue. Enough info to guide new posters, but not to much to annoy older posters.
Because honestly its the more experienced posters that seem to have the most issues, though that doesn't mean new posters might not. Meaning, because they have a lot of internet forum experience, they don't need much or any explaination on what different sections are, what to do and so on.
What I wonder, if there can be an option that allows a poster to see the forums how they like. That way you can see it how you want, and others can see it how they want.