New Forum Structure

Well, Doug probably meant that you didn't sound very friendly...

I think you have a point tough... There are changes to be made, as the staff knows (there is some positive feedback in this thread, just look closely), and I'm sure they will be rolled out soon.

 

The changes that Tim mentioned were ones they had thought about in the office, these should have been tested on a seperate server before this rollout. From the sounds of the administrators posts they knew they would need to implement these changes. Lack of planning in my view.

 

No, not lack of planning... On a smaller scale the filters work great... therefor in the testing stage problems like these won't be noticed... And then there is the <insert bad words here> resistance to change of the majority of the users...

 

The main thing we're trying to promote is thread visibility. Before what we'd have is (say) 20 people spread over 10 forums. What resulted from that was very little activity overall because each person was only going to one tiny area to catch up on a tiny amount of new posts and threads.
They'd "miss out" on the other threads which they may have otherwise been interested in, even if they wouldn't end up contributing, in the other forums simply because there wasn't really any incentive to go there.

Infact, half of the problem in years gone by is that we'd spot a new topic coming up in conversation a lot (Apple, for example) and then create an Apple forum. More often than not, what that did was kill the topic. Two or three people would post in Apple and because it appeared to be dead, the 18 or so other people would not even bother looking in there. Result? Dead topic and a dead forum

Don't come back at me with the "Well I don't care about Topic XYZ anyway so I never would have gone to Topic XYZ's forum!" argument because I don't believe you. Something may take your interest enough for you to click on it and give it a read.

I lost count of the amount of times I used to eventually find interesting threads that I wish I had found earlier.

Now what we have is 40 people all in Hardware & Software. As said before, all of the threads on that topic are in one place and not in 10 different dormant places. You can now find threads that even if you've nothing to contribute may make interesting reading anyway. If you want to catch up on all of the threads in one area then you can still do that with filters. The tags are there as a visual indicator so you can quickly spot the topics that you're into. If you're into windows, you can easily spot those topics by just skimming the page for the green-looking tag.

One thing i'll say right now that we're going to do is make some of the tags clearer. The Word/Image combination hasn't worked too well. More use of predominant colors and either word only or picture only will make the tags much better. Stay tuned

 

No, the changes I have talked about in this thread are changes that we have discussed in the office, not changes that have exclusively been thought of in the office. The changes we will be making are based on what has been suggested by the posters in this thread (having been discussed internally after the suggestions have been made, not before). There are some other usability improvements (some of which we'd thought about earlier) that we will be making too, but it's not a case of "haha, yeah, we've already thought of that".

Thus, suggesting a lack of planning is an incredibly short sighted and sweeping statement... it's called getting feedback from a wider selection of people that use it.

 

No, I mean the sub filters on the main page, Tim said the idea had been in the office to have them there, but they weren't implemented yet (even though I scripted them in less that an hour).

Also 20+ filters on an individual forum and 4 filters meaning exactly the same thing on the tech support forum should have been noticed in testing.

 

They were thought of over the weekend in a discussion I had with Geoff while sitting eating my dinner on the sofa. Not all of us work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

 

Which is where beta testing occurs.

I've built a system here which is designed to maintain easy access to changes across multiple systems and departments, originally it was quite small, just meant for our departments use. Through intial testing of 20 people it was decided to develop the system further and make completely different to the original specifications. As we gradually rolled it out to sister departments, more problems were noted, discussed and added or removed.

Our Beta testing consisted of 150 people using the system for 2 months. After which further changes were implented, and rolled out to 300 people.

Then after that was all cleared it was rolled out system wide and is now in use by over 3000 people.

Just dumping a change on people is not good development.

 

Testing, lol!

 

I love this style... NOW I love it.. It's easy on eyes and soft!!

guys find way to fix that tags thing.. This is the problem now.. but every thing else is KICKASS

the tags is sux really sorry to say that.. but I have to say that to make bi-tech better and better

take care

 

The biggest problem I'm having, apart from the fact I can't find jack anymore, is that in your efforts to "help" me find one new topic in 20 years that I might not have seen before, you're effectively spamming me with all the junk that I wouldn't read.
"THATS WHAT THE FILTERS ARE THERE FOR!"

Yes. But then, thats what the search engine is there for. If I want to read general discussion, I don't want to have to trawl through 7 forums to find the one to have the filter to get to the room I want to catch up on today's laid-back gossip. It doesn't make the forums a fun viewing experience. I'm not saying I'm resistant to change, per se, but I think we should have the option to go back to how it was IF WE WISH TO.

 

The bit tech forum members do appreciate the hard work put into maintaining and developing the site although we probably don't tell you guys how well your doing often enough. In fact it is testament to HOW GOOD bit-tech is that you get such a response when changes are made. Bit has always been one of the easiest to read and navigate forums out there, helped by the structure and consistent look. IMO the forum changes have had a negative on the ease of use as i have previously stated. The filter icons are so inconsistent in their appearance and numerous in numbers that it is visually very confusing to look at and use. I think the filter idea could be great but the forum needs to be broken down into some more sections first imo.

It is also interesting to see that a lot of the complaints are coming from long term members who have seen the previous changes and grown used to them. These are also the people who probably have the most affection for the forums so it is no surprise that they are complaining when they see something they care for take, what appears to them, as a step in the wrong direction. When i first joined Bit i used to avidly read all the forums, over the years that has dwindled to a few of the sections that interest me and it appears from the reading the feedback thread a lot of long term members do the same. Contrary to what RTT says I genuinely do not want to see threads on topics I'm not interested in and it is a chore to go through the various filters instead of just browsing the sections i like.

Anyways your work is appreciated guys and I'm sure you will come to a solution that has a more favourable response.

 

Indeed. I often don't have the time to cover the topics that I *do* like, so I'm certainly not going to waste time on new topics. I already knew what the site covered - I don't need it waving in front of my face. On occasion, when I had plenty of time to spare, I'd browse through forums that I wasn't generally interested in, like Apple and Modding.

I think the merging of sub-forums was a very big failure, but the biggest failing was the lack of a beta running in parallel. There is no technical or logistical reason why this couldn't have been done. It would have highlighted many of the key areas of contention without having to alienate so many visitors. I can only assume that the team we so confident that the changes would generally be accepted by the majority, which obviously they haven't been.

I also think it's important to re-iterate that just because many people have strong objections to the changes overall, most people have found something they like. I don't think our objections can simply be put down to resistance to change; the fact is that certain changes would have been welcomed if applied to the old forums.

Edit: Out of interest, what happened to the poll results?

 

I like the bit-tech nav in the top of the scan forum.... Nice and clean lookin'.

 

agreed...

the navigation with the new system sucks... now I have to weed through a ton of threads to find the ones I might actually be interested in..

Rather than just come to the forum home, and click on the subforum i actually want to read through, i now have to add 2-3 more steps, and not all the relevant threads are shown...

it's ugly, and takes longer to load (esp on slower connections)

 

No offense, but I figure the average BT user can decide for themselves what interests them. With the new structure, the majority of people who find the site to be more difficult to navigate, will enter a forum and immediately use one of the filters anyways. So not only do they skip the stuff they would usually "miss out" on, but now it's much more difficult to do so, leading to frustration.

I still do not see the problem with 37 forums, even if a handful of them were slow. Now you will have a bunch of filtered groups that are slow... six of one, half a dozen of the other. I don't think any amount of forced viewing of software development (for example) will make me consider posting there, as I am not a programmer and am not interested.

 

just please no picture only tags. - Icons are good once you are familiar with them but can be very confusing at first and what is intuitive to one person my be counter-intuitive to another.

 

When the tags are tweaked a bit it should be much easier. Right now we're all still adjusting to the new tags. I couldn't tell you off-hand what the overclocking tag looks like, but you'll probably soon come to recognise the tags you are interested in, and you'll skip out the rest without really thinking about it.

Old:
Load forum index
* load apple in new tab
* load development in new tab
* load a/v in new tab

New:
load forum index
click hardware/software
* load apple tag in new tab
* load development tag in new tab
* load a/v tag in new tab

what's that, just one extra step?

I can't really argue about the slower connection issues other than to say your browser cache should take over once you've downloaded them all once.

 

I wasn't suggesting that you guys don't know what does and doesn't interest you. We've got filters so you can narrow down when you want to.
The old forums tidied far too many things away where people would never see or find them. All we're thinking is that with less forums we'll have a much broader range of actual discussion via increased thread visibility. The old solution did not promote discussion. There most definitely are areas of discussion that we can all dip into, and this is what we're trying to revive