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Forum could really use a proper cleanup


sirrah

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Ok, maybe I'm being kinda autistic here, but imo the forum has become quite a mess...

 

I understand that this is a result from over a decade of forum use and the evolvement of DCS in general, but really, current sub-forum layout is all over the place 😂

 

For instance (looking only at the ED module sub-forums):

image.png

(the list went on, but I ran out of printscreen size 😛)

 

Obviously it's way worse on the 3rd party section... but ok..

 

 

 

Also, the sub-forums themselves could use some extreme moderation. For instance, and I may have tackled the worst one here, these are the sticky threads on the "Missions and Campaigns" sub-forum. Page 1 is almost entirely filled with stickies of which most of them are never used by anyone...

 

image.png

 

 

Sure, I rather see DCS itself being worked on, but well... The forum is starting to look kinda unprofessional imo 

 

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i7-8700K @stock speed - GTX 1080TI @ stock speed - AsRock Extreme4 Z370 - 32GB DDR4 @3GHz- 500GB SSD - 2TB nvme - 650W PSU

HP Reverb G1 v2 - Saitek Pro pedals - TM Warthog HOTAS - TM F/A-18 Grip - TM Cougar HOTAS (NN-Dan mod) & (throttle standalone mod) - VIRPIL VPC Rotor TCS Plus with ALPHA-L grip - Pointctrl & aux banks <-- must have for VR users!! - Andre's SimShaker Jetpad - Fully adjustable DIY playseat - VA+VAICOM

 

~ That nuke might not have been the best of ideas, Sir... the enemy is furious ~ GUMMBAH

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  • 2 months later...

Id like to add to above the number of bug threads in existence that are annotated as "reported" and locked. It gives absolutely no indication to anyone if the bug is fixed or outstanding. Moreover it cuts both ways and a module that may have had a multitude of fixes could be represented as being bug laden basket case putting off potential purchasers. Starting any thread with "so whats the state" is prone to extremes in support and detraction making informed decisions almost impossible. Even reading through 4 years of change logs is no guarantee as fixes are sometimes not mentioned or problem reoccur. 

Appreciate it takes time to moderate but without such moderation as highlighted by Sirrah the forum becomes difficult to use as a tool to research and inform.

 

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  • 4 months later...

Good improvement ED :thumbup:


Edited by sirrah

System specs:

 

i7-8700K @stock speed - GTX 1080TI @ stock speed - AsRock Extreme4 Z370 - 32GB DDR4 @3GHz- 500GB SSD - 2TB nvme - 650W PSU

HP Reverb G1 v2 - Saitek Pro pedals - TM Warthog HOTAS - TM F/A-18 Grip - TM Cougar HOTAS (NN-Dan mod) & (throttle standalone mod) - VIRPIL VPC Rotor TCS Plus with ALPHA-L grip - Pointctrl & aux banks <-- must have for VR users!! - Andre's SimShaker Jetpad - Fully adjustable DIY playseat - VA+VAICOM

 

~ That nuke might not have been the best of ideas, Sir... the enemy is furious ~ GUMMBAH

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Good improvement? No, it isn't. Previously, I could access every subboard from the main page. Now, I have to actually go into a board and then I can see the sub-subboard. I can no longer see whether, say, the "bugs" section in the Hornet sub-subboard has new posts while browsing through the main page, the only thing it tells me is that the subboard as a whole has new posts, which is worthless because it's so active that it always does. The last post preview, likewise, got reduced to last post in the whole board.

This is trash, please revert. That, or give us an expanded view where sub-subboards can be easily seen and accessed, and the last post in every sub-board can be seen. In fact, it would be better, since it'd also fix the problem for 3rd parties, which were already set up that way.


Edited by Dragon1-1
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Funny how opinions can differ 😉

Seems you are quite angry about this change (at least that's how I read it when I see someone use the word "trash"). Hopefully you'll find a way to make the new forum index more suitable to your wishes.

 

I think the forum looks much cleaner now. also changing the overall missions sub-forum name to "User Created Missions General", is a good move imho, as this is a perfect place for multi aircraft missions like all the various DCE's.

I'm not really bothered by not seeing immediately if something new is posted somewhere (there always is when I visit here 😉). I receive a notification when there's a direct reply to me or any of my threads and I get notifications when something new I posted in threads I follow. Personally that's all I need.

Sure, now at start it might take some time to again find where you need to be, but that's just "change" playing with your mind and it will become second nature before you know it. 

 

Edit:

ED really tried to create more uniformity within the sub-forums, which imho looks a lot more professional. E.g., compare the names in the screenshot below, with my OP.

 

NEW:

image.png

(I tiny bit unlucky that they put an "&" in Bugs & Problems for the Apache sub-forum, where as the rest uses "and". But I guess that just me being a tad autistic perhaps 😋)

 


OLD:
image.png

 

Again, I personally think it is much more clean and straight forward to use now. Especially for newcomers!

 

 

EDIT 2:

I also notice the extreme reduction of sticky threads! Thank you ED!


Edited by sirrah
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System specs:

 

i7-8700K @stock speed - GTX 1080TI @ stock speed - AsRock Extreme4 Z370 - 32GB DDR4 @3GHz- 500GB SSD - 2TB nvme - 650W PSU

HP Reverb G1 v2 - Saitek Pro pedals - TM Warthog HOTAS - TM F/A-18 Grip - TM Cougar HOTAS (NN-Dan mod) & (throttle standalone mod) - VIRPIL VPC Rotor TCS Plus with ALPHA-L grip - Pointctrl & aux banks <-- must have for VR users!! - Andre's SimShaker Jetpad - Fully adjustable DIY playseat - VA+VAICOM

 

~ That nuke might not have been the best of ideas, Sir... the enemy is furious ~ GUMMBAH

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  • ED Team
1 hour ago, sirrah said:

I tiny bit unlucky that they put an "&" in Bugs & Problems for the Apache sub-forum, where as the rest uses "and". But I guess that just me being a tad autistic perhaps 

Im triggered also 🙂 , will mention it to @NineLine later today

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1 hour ago, sirrah said:

Sure, now at start it might take some time to again find where you need to be, but that's just "change" playing with your mind and it will become second nature before you know it. 

Sorry, that's a load of BS. Something used to be right there on the main index, with everything else. Now it isn't, and I need to click multiple places to get to it. This is an objective degradation in QOL. Yes, it looks cleaner. Just like a workshop table sure looks clean when you put all the tools into drawers under it. Just try working on something complex when for every tool you need, you have to fetch it from a drawer use it and then return it before you can pick out another, and you'll see why most shop tables don't look clean, but have all the frequently used stuff in hand's reach. People putting looks ahead of ease of use is something I despise. A forum is a place to get and share information, not an art gallery.

Notifications aren't for everyone. In fact, I don't use them at all. I "watch" entire subboards, because sometimes, someone makes a whole new thread. Other times, nobody does, and there's nothing new in places I care about. Having things collected on one page is a Good Thing. Hiding them under unneeded categories just to make it "organized" is a Bad Thing. Fewer clicks good, more clicks bad. Why is that so hard to understand? 

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I am loving the format...it meets the 3 click max rule to get to the information...

 

I'd make a suggestion to move "DCS World Topics" into "DCS World Tutorial & Training Range"...then rename it "User Created Content"
Since all of the info in both are by users for users...

Screenshot 2022-05-04 071607.png

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30 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Sorry, that's a load of BS. Something used to be right there on the main index, with everything else. Now it isn't, and I need to click multiple places to get to it. This is an objective degradation in QOL. Yes, it looks cleaner. Just like a workshop table sure looks clean when you put all the tools into drawers under it. Just try working on something complex when for every tool you need, you have to fetch it from a drawer use it and then return it before you can pick out another, and you'll see why most shop tables don't look clean, but have all the frequently used stuff in hand's reach. People putting looks ahead of ease of use is something I despise. A forum is a place to get and share information, not an art gallery.

Notifications aren't for everyone. In fact, I don't use them at all. I "watch" entire subboards, because sometimes, someone makes a whole new thread. Other times, nobody does, and there's nothing new in places I care about. Having things collected on one page is a Good Thing. Hiding them under unneeded categories just to make it "organized" is a Bad Thing. Fewer clicks good, more clicks bad. Why is that so hard to understand? 

Not sure what I've done to you to make you use such strong language, or perhaps I'm taking the "BS" and "People putting looks ahead of ease of use is something I despise" a bit too personal, but perhaps you could try and tone down a bit and write like you would talk when sitting next to me, with some mutual respect.

 

I understand that one now need to click a few times to get where you usually got with fewer mouse clicks. While this could indeed be more of a hassle, in my opinion this forum just got too big to put all sub-forums on one page. You'd have to scroll through all sub-forums to get to the one you seek. Personally I find the extra mouse click more convenient than scrolling through all sub-forums, but that's just my subjective opinion.
In your example about the workshop, it's not just that all tools where dropped in drawers, they also got sorted. And, as someone who worked a large portion of my career as a mechanic, I can tell you that a clean and neat workshop definitely improves your work and avoids technical errors (or sometimes even injuries). Oh, and we also had some "art work" hanging on the walls, although we had to remove that once we got some (very capable) female colleagues.


Edited by sirrah
Grammar
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System specs:

 

i7-8700K @stock speed - GTX 1080TI @ stock speed - AsRock Extreme4 Z370 - 32GB DDR4 @3GHz- 500GB SSD - 2TB nvme - 650W PSU

HP Reverb G1 v2 - Saitek Pro pedals - TM Warthog HOTAS - TM F/A-18 Grip - TM Cougar HOTAS (NN-Dan mod) & (throttle standalone mod) - VIRPIL VPC Rotor TCS Plus with ALPHA-L grip - Pointctrl & aux banks <-- must have for VR users!! - Andre's SimShaker Jetpad - Fully adjustable DIY playseat - VA+VAICOM

 

~ That nuke might not have been the best of ideas, Sir... the enemy is furious ~ GUMMBAH

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58 minutes ago, sirrah said:

perhaps you could try and tone down a bit and write like you would talk when sitting next to me, with some mutual respect.


I agree with you, this person was on the verge of entering my ignore list, as I "strongly dislike" rude people.

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1 hour ago, sirrah said:

Not sure what I've done to you to make you use such strong language, or perhaps I'm taking the "BS" and "People putting looks ahead of ease of use is something I despise" a bit too personal, but perhaps you could try and tone down a bit and write like you would talk when sitting next to me, with some mutual respect.

Well, in this case, maybe instead of a condescending "it's just a change, don't fight it", you responded with something constructive, you'd get softer language. Mutual respect has to be, well, mutual. If you spoke to me like that if I was sitting next to you, that's the exact answer you'd get. Way too many good sites, including this one (remember how nice it looked before they went with that IPS garbage?), have been rendered bad by a so called "upgrade". If more people pushed back at the loss of functionality instead of lying down and taking it (or worse, praising the useless chrome while ignoring the QOL loss), maybe changes like this wouldn't last. So yeah, people rejoicing at yet another forum getting harder to use, just because they personally didn't use the lost functionality much, is getting a little bit frustrating.


Edited by Dragon1-1
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  • ED Team
3 hours ago, sirrah said:

(I tiny bit unlucky that they put an "&" in Bugs & Problems for the Apache sub-forum, where as the rest uses "and". But I guess that just me being a tad autistic perhaps 😋)

Yeah it's on going work, we are not done, but thanks for the feedback.

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  • ED Team
5 hours ago, MPalmer said:

I am loving the format...it meets the 3 click max rule to get to the information...

 

I'd make a suggestion to move "DCS World Topics" into "DCS World Tutorial & Training Range"...then rename it "User Created Content"
Since all of the info in both are by users for users...

Screenshot 2022-05-04 071607.png

Yeah I was looking at that section, the Training Range, and if we need to do anything with it, the original idea was to have it the first stop for users having issues, but maybe it needs tweaking, for now we will just have a look and see how the new format plays out. 

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12 hours ago, sirrah said:

Good improvement ED :thumbup:

 

I quite like the cleaner look too, but there is a point to be made for being able to see the sub forums within a forum. If your a new user for example and you would like to add a wish for a new map/feature. You would have to know its nested in DCS World 2.7/Customer Support/Wishlist/Map Wishlist.

Even as a regular on the forum it took me several minutes to find it.

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1 hour ago, Callsign112 said:

I quite like the cleaner look too, but there is a point to be made for being able to see the sub forums within a forum. If your a new user for example and you would like to add a wish for a new map/feature. You would have to know its nested in DCS World 2.7/Customer Support/Wishlist/Map Wishlist.

Even as a regular on the forum it took me several minutes to find it.

Agreed. This is indeed a “cleaner” look, but that cleanliness is somewhat achieved by sweeping things under the rug that really ought to be exposed. This setup just begs for more threads being created in the first available first- or second-level forum rather than where it actually belongs, because there's little to no indication that those more appropriate locations even exist.

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Yeah +1, I can see people posting in an inappropriate thread out of convenience as a potential problem, but I guess the Mod's will have to wait and see if they are having to move threads to and fro.

On the flip side though, I really like how we now have all the WWII stuff in one place. I no longer have to scroll down to Ugra Media when I'm looking for something on Normandy, unless I want to.

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Also, more as a question to @NineLine, before we go off and try to think up other ways of structuring things, I'm guessing that part of this hierarchy is just inherent in how the forum software works? As in, you still want 3rd-party sections because you can set up moderator groups to give those devs a small section of their own to control without that spilling over into other parts and without having to create complex “a bit from column A, a bit from column B” control definitions? Same with the various bug forums that can then be handed out as limited-access control sections to various internal teams.

Because if that's part of the logic, that puts some limitations on what other groupings are even sensible and manageable to suggest.

 

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