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There are extremely serious problems with these forums. I would like to address them now. Despite the sarcastic nature of my complaints, they are serious and absolutely must be dealt with.

All of these rules revolve around a common theme:
RULE ZERO: DO NOT MAKE ME CLICK WHEN I DON'T HAVE TO

#1. Signatures are hard coded into forum posts. This is a laughably bad offense. This is a FORUM, which by its very nature is DYNAMIC. On literally every other forum software created, if you change your signature, the change propagates to every post in the system because it's a dynamic system. A signature is a failure if it is not consistent on the website. FIX IT.

#2. The literally REQUIRED concept of "pagination" is non existant here. Pagination is a wonderful thing. It lets you navigate thread posts easily. A dropdown option/select box is NOT acceptable pagination. It's a joke that makes me click many more times than I should. SEE RULE ZERO: FIX IT.

#3. EMAIL. ADDRESSES. ARE. IN. PLAIN. TEXT.. This one is not hilarious. It's horrifying. If you choose to show your email address it shows up as a MAILTO link. The fact that you give users the choice to show their email is NO EXCUSE for this. On literally every other forum, if you choose to let someone email you, the SYSTEM emails you, so your email address is never exposed. To email someone you must fill out a form which never exposes the email address. Mailto links are literally only used by bots to harvest and spam email addresses. This is a serious security flaw in the forums and should be fixed.

#4. Links are not automatically hyperlinked in posts. Wait, what? Are you serious? If I put http://www.google.com , literally the most valid link possible, IT IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY HYPERLINKED?! I have to MANUALLY LINK IT MYSELF?! RULE ZERO. This rule alone ruins almost every thread made in the 3d forum, and I would personally suggest closing the forums until it is fixed.

#5. There is no preview post function. This might explain the low quality of threads on forums like Geek Culture. I want to know what I'm posting BEFORE I post it. I want to make sure my images look fine (SEE RULE #4). Again, this is a function of literally every other forum. Fix it.

#6. No ability to sort table column headers. Before you even THINK of a response, tell me what year it is. 2009?! And you can't click on a column like AUTHOR to sort it? RULE ZERO. Fix it.

#7. Code Snippets. If I could physically throw rule zero at you, I would. You have to click to see ANY code posted? REALLY? DO TELL ME MORE! Not only that, but do you know how many code colorizers there are on the internet? I swear, there must be hundreds. Use one. Any one. Please, god.

EXTRAS: THE LITTLE (HUGELY IMPORTANT) STUFF
- The "top" link at the bottom of each forum actually refreshes the page. I shouldn't have to explain why this is bad and how to fix it. NOTE: I just found the "back to top link" below each barely styled avatar. I feel ashamed of these forums now.
- You allow for uploading of bitmap files. Stop it.
- You do not auto-generate thumbnails for uploaded files. God do I love having no idea what I'm clicking on before I click on it. GOD DO I LOVE IT.
- Forum moderation: I have seen spam posts on forums that aren't deleted for DAYS. Genrally the mod team is good, but there are problems where spam is persistent and not seen.
- No maximum signature size. There are some nasty, oversized signatures on this forum. There needs to be a small, accepted standard for signature size. It breeds quality.
- The actual link feature sucks. It is horrible at determening what is a link and what isn't, EVEN THOUGH YOU SPECIFICALLY TELL IT WHAT IS A LINK. There's no way I'm going to bother posting examples, but it cuts off links at ? and # when it obviously shouldn't. Jesus.
- Post toggle link. Wait, there's a TOGGLE POST function?! That DOESN'T SAVE between page reloads!? That literally any user metrics performed would show that less than 1% of users use this feature? THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS.



These forums have been online for what, five years? Ten years? These are serious problems that, again, literally EVERY other forum software addresses. If you spent literally a tenth of the time working on the forums as you did generating the UNNECESSARILY COUNTLESS SMILIES then we would have a quality forum for use.



I understand that it is hard to implement features when a user tells them to you in a sarcastic, insulting manor such as this. But, AGAIN, these are problems you simply cannot ignore. Put them into your bug tracking system and fix them. You have a bug tracking system, right? I can't take the quality of these forums any longer.



PROPOSED SOLUTION #1:
File each of my issues as a bug. Fix it in your dev environment (you do have a dev environment, right? If not, fire your developer) one at a time. Test it, then deploy it.

PROPOSED SOLUTION #2:
Abandon these forums. Write a migration script to convert the database to vBulletin or SMF. Spend two weeks doing QA on the migrated server. Spend three weeks fixing the bugs you find and rewrite the migration script. Deploy to this website without warning.

PROPOSED SOLUTION #3:
Fix the problems one at a time and do live user testing. Deploy each solution one at a time as opposed to one big package.

PROPOSED SOLUTION #4:
Deploy each fix to x number of users (100, 1000) and use JavaScript homebrewed metric tools to make sure they work. Deploy to gradually more and more users. Create a bug report forum for user submittted bugs.



I can't take it anymore. No one should have to endure this. Do not ignore anything I say. It is all required for literally the bare minimum of a forum. Please, lord, hear my pleas. Thank you for listening.



THOSE WHO AGREE, REPLY BELOW, REGARDLESS OF CONTENT OF REPLIES:

This will just turn into a pointless rant, it would be best just to lock it now mods.

I agree with most if not all of the issues you put forward...thing is, I think TGC has better stuff to do. Think of it priority-wise. Which is better: a DBP upgrade\model packs\more software, or a preview post button?

However, I do agree that at least SOME fixes could be implemented over a period of time, but I'm not going to cry if that doesn't happen.

Thank you for signing your agreement to my post.

This reminds me how much the quote feature sucks. You actually have to highlight text and then click the quote button? #1: Thanks for documenting that. #2: RULE ZERO. You should be banned from your own forum. Look at literally any other forum. Dear lord.






If the same people that are developing Dark Basic are developing the forums then I am going to vomit on the ground. I am going to turn left and literally vomit on my hardwood floor. People get paid for specialzing in fields, not bumbling between web and C++ development.

I'm going to have to burst your bubble but this is certainly not the most important post ever made.

And honestly, who cares?


Holy crap! You have to take one hundredth of a second of your time! Man we do have it rough here.

I am going to let you fill in the blank here. Read carerfully:
CLUE #1:
HC_

I am going to give you, and the Apollo forums a second chance in case you did not guess the first clue
CLUE #2
HUMAN COMPUTER I__________

If you did not guess clue 1 or 2, please do not take the time to reply to this thread. Your opinions will not improve the quality of this post or these forums, and are not worth sharing. Thank you for your time.




EDIT: THAT REMINDS ME
The best part about the quote feature is how it gives no indication of who you are quoting. AFTER ALL, WHEN USING THE [B]QUOTE[/B] FEATURE, WHO CARES WHO YOU ARE "QUOTING?" Once again, look at LITERALLY. ANY. OTHER. FORUM. SOFTWARE.




I have turned and vomited once. This is partly due to my drinking. I don't want to do it again. Don't argue with me unless you can guess clues #1 or #2, and then I will consider you opinions possibly valid. Again, thank you for replying to and agreeing with my post.





EDIT #2: AHAHAHAHHAHAAH. [B] THESE BOLD TAGS DON'T BOLD? IT HAS TO BE A LOWERCASE B TAG?!?!?! [/B] I could cry right now. I might do just that.

While the severity of your anger towards the web development side of TGC is a bit extreme, I do have to admit, I would agree with the issues that you have put forward. Having only been involved with FPSC in detail, and not really into DBP, I have no problem delaying DBP developments. I do realize that it's selfish and unfair to say that, but I also realize that any developments on DBP would eventually lead to a development for FPSC somewhere along the line. Granted, I don't use FPSC like I used to, so a forum upgrade before anything else wouldn't bother me in the slightest. I think that TGC is understaffed for the amount of people that they are catering to. In this months newsletter (I think it was this month with that Q&A section?), they told us that they have something like less than 10 people working on all of their products. When you're catering to over 20,000 people, I would imagine that it's important to have some sort of proportionality there. I'm not saying that TGC is doing this all wrong, but it creates opportunities like this where because of lack of time/manpower, things are unable to be done to the liking of everyone. This has been brought up before in the past, and each time it's been shrugged off as a non-issue, but I personally think that TGC is getting to the point where they could afford to hire a new member or two who would focus on certain aspects, instead of being a jack-of-all-trades like they are now. This is just my opinion, and I can understand if you disagree with it.


Just don't slip in the new vomit. Then you might hit your head, and that wouldn't be good.

Overdose on these.

Oh god, I had to CLICK! WHAT'S THIS WORLD COMING TO!

Personally I think you're being extremely pedantic. The fact that you took the time to write a giant post about having to do some clicking tells me you have far too much time on your hands!


I think if you check the page source you'll see that they are not! The spambots can't harvest your email address from the big email button under your posts, as far as I know.




I seriously doubt that. A spam bot who signed up would be on the same post approval as everyone else who signs up. You would not see any spam posts.


Yes there is it's 600x120... if a moderator sees a signature larger than this it gets deleted. But as you pointed out signatures are not dynamic so you'll still the large ones that have already been posted before being removed.


Yeah you have to click a code snippet... If someone has 200 lines of code they want you to look at, you expect everyone to have to scroll down the page to see if there is a reply rather than click their mouse once?

Oh and I don't see what point you were trying to make with Human Computer Interaction.

I agree with most of your points. However the code snippets are extremely useful. Quoting Thraxas:



I too would rather click than scroll if I've already been on the thread and know what the code contains. That and it's nice here in Geek Culture when someone's writing about a movie and wants to talk about it without revealing spoilers. I also use the toggle post when a picture stretches the page since I'm on a netbook right now (although it would be nice if the forum remember which were toggled). Everything else though, yeah you're right and I agree with you, but maybe not so vehemently. Most of the time, I barely notice most the stuff you mentioned.

So what, not everything is perfect, grow up and stop whining.

Look at code scripts. Most display ~10 lines of code and put a scrollbar with a Flash based copy-to-clipboard button, and colorize it. Better than the discrace of this forum's click to see ANYTHING code snippets. There are literally hundreds of better ways to do it than "Apollo's" "techniques."


Literally any other forum ever made had a SPOILER or HIDE BBCode tag which negates the stupid use of the awful CODE tags to hide text. Thank you for pointing out another disgusting flaw in these "forums"


Wow, again, thank you so much for pointing out a horrible flaw in these forums! LITERALLY ANY OTHER FORUM uses style sheets correctly so that IF A POST BREAKS THE TABLES it only does it for THAT POST, and does not stretch the rest of the forums. To elaborate: On good, normal, or better than this crap forums, if a single post/image is wider than your monitor, ONLY THAT POST is shown as wider. Every other post is the same width as your monitor. Wow, I am amazed at how much you guys are on board with me and showing off how much these forums suck and deserve to be shut down forever and replaced with a common forum alternative. Thank you guys so much!! I couldn't have done it without you.

Yeah this is going to go nowhere, you've made your point. You don't like the way the forums are set up don't use them.

1. Nobody makes you use this forum
2. These are not problems, they do not stop the forum operating as a forum
3. This is quite a vindictive post considering you haven't raised the issues before.
4. Over a million posts suggests the forums are working
5. Over a hundred threads of your own plus all your responses in others says you've managed ok until now
6. Changing the forums will not improve the products, and will not improve your ability to use them