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ResetEra Tech Thread (Report Bugs Here)
- Thread starter Cerium
- Start date
This is bad way to implement new feature. Instead of keeping one thread officially open for discussion, all threads were actively locked.
Biggest plus point (even on old Neogaf) was that forum has simple interface. Main focus is on content not all flashy new features which clutters UI.
I can understand having to support lots of different combination can be problematic if people are working on it as "whenever they get time" type side work. But would be nice to have one working minimalist site design where you can turn off these flashy options.
Browsing resetera on mobile is already annoying. Here is what I see when site is loaded. There are always 3-4 pinned threads. Without scrolling you can't read any new threads unless you have HUGE phone.
Now it has distracting tags for almost all threads. Would be nice if they are light color and used for only few things, for exa. all games OTs.
Biggest plus point (even on old Neogaf) was that forum has simple interface. Main focus is on content not all flashy new features which clutters UI.
I can understand having to support lots of different combination can be problematic if people are working on it as "whenever they get time" type side work. But would be nice to have one working minimalist site design where you can turn off these flashy options.
Browsing resetera on mobile is already annoying. Here is what I see when site is loaded. There are always 3-4 pinned threads. Without scrolling you can't read any new threads unless you have HUGE phone.
Now it has distracting tags for almost all threads. Would be nice if they are light color and used for only few things, for exa. all games OTs.
This looks great, hope you go with this rather than scrapping the feature entirely.
Thread Tags - Official Feedback Thread |OT| News
Most recent admin comment: The only place to communicate so far was a Resetera Tech Thread in the announcement section from a year ago. Every other attempt to discuss this topic was locked and prohibited. Camjo summarized it well: First thread that had a couple of pages: The f is this ---...
www.resetera.com
Why are feedback threads locked? How many users are going to know that the bug report thread for the 5/24/19 Site Update in a subforum that doesn't even appear on the Quick Jump menu is the place to leave feedback?
I'm going to be straight with you all, there has been a frankly ludicrous amount of hostility over what is essentially a minor visual change and huge QoL improvement for many users.
There's been users that have compared this to coronavirus and staff members to Donald Fucking Trump. That is not ok and I will not give such people a platform to continue doing that shit. There has, over the last six months or so, been an unacceptable amount of hostility toward a group of people who are unpaid volunteers and we will have a longer talk about that at some point because that is not healthy for anyone.
We will make adjustments and improvements, but this is here to stay. There is no turning it off. That defeats the entire purpose of it. When we finalize all the changes based on what useful feedback we could find between the outright hostility and insults lobbed by some members, there will be an announcement thread explaining all of the new features.
EDIT: Anyone deciding to continue with said outright hostility is going to receive a hefty ban.
There's been users that have compared this to coronavirus and staff members to Donald Fucking Trump. That is not ok and I will not give such people a platform to continue doing that shit. There has, over the last six months or so, been an unacceptable amount of hostility toward a group of people who are unpaid volunteers and we will have a longer talk about that at some point because that is not healthy for anyone.
We will make adjustments and improvements, but this is here to stay. There is no turning it off. That defeats the entire purpose of it. When we finalize all the changes based on what useful feedback we could find between the outright hostility and insults lobbed by some members, there will be an announcement thread explaining all of the new features.
EDIT: Anyone deciding to continue with said outright hostility is going to receive a hefty ban.
Why is communication so hard? I don't get it.
Edit: Oh.
I mostly just wanted to know if this was ever going to have an option to disable, so hearing that it won't changes that. Not sure why there was so much time spent dragging out "no", and that there will be an announcement thread in the future for a feature far after it is implemented.
I will dust off my crystal ball to read the future on how to properly react for the next feature added to the site.
Edit: Oh.
I mostly just wanted to know if this was ever going to have an option to disable, so hearing that it won't changes that. Not sure why there was so much time spent dragging out "no", and that there will be an announcement thread in the future for a feature far after it is implemented.
I will dust off my crystal ball to read the future on how to properly react for the next feature added to the site.
Then say as much. I'm sorry if some people are hyperbolic in comparing this to Trump of all things (seriously who does that?!) but the lack of communication on the topic has been really strange.
I don't like the tags but I can put up with them if they're better implemented.
If we're stuck with them - for whatever reason - you should've said so in the first place instead of leaving everybody hanging and locking threads with no reason provided. Then the people that don't like them can block them and everybody moves on.
I am one of these people who appreciate the tags as a qol change. I'm looking forward to the improvements outlined in your screenshot (like having the tags below the title and not at the beginning).
Just to give some positive feedback...
Does this refer to ad hominems or people complaining about the tags and how they were rolled out?
It's really frustrating to see the complete disregard for any and all feedback that doesn't praise the change. If the mods and admins don't understand why people are upset, even if they dislike the way it has been said, then why should the users have any respect for the mods?
Thank you for the update, and I'm sorry people have been making ridiculous comparisons, ultimately we do all appreciate you're unpaid volunteers and you shouldn't have to face any abuse.
If this was posted 3 days ago then it would have prevented a lot of confusion and resentment though. I'm happy we at least know they're here to stay and won't be able to be disabled, now we can just focus on sorting out browser extensions that remove them and move on
I get that too occasionally. I think it's when people embed an imgur gallery into a comment. Not sure, though.
Edit: Nevermind, there isn't an imgur gallery in your link.
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I did post something to this effect 3 days ago. Everyone ignored it.
Everyone ignored it because you never put it in a banner announcement.
They can't see something they don't know exists.
Would it be possible to still get a simple option to disable the tags, for people who don't want to use them? I disable tags and flairs on reddit just because I don't like the look of them, and I'm going to inevitably do the same here, but it would be nice if there was an official option to do so, instead of me having to mess around with browser extensions on like the 4 different computers that I browse ResetEra on.
"There is no turning it off. That defeats the entire purpose of it" makes it pretty clear that it won't be an option.
My complaint is that the tags are just too wide-encompassing. They need to be divided into smaller topics.
There is turning it off with browser extensions and css, and I was just asking if he would consider changing his mind to accomodate people who are going to do that.
And what I meant was that it seems pretty clear they're not considering that.
Twitter is frankly a horrible platform to try to integrate with. They love breaking sites & apps which pull or embed their content. There honestly isn't a heck of a lot we can do beyond make it render bare links. Which is horrible.
This is a hard coded limit in the platform, and is very unlikely to be increased as due to some design choices can result in poor performance.
There is an on-going support ticket on the platform (xenforo)'s official site, that has been on-off-again for the last year and a bit now. Try not to double tap enter is about all I can suggest :(
One of the problems with having so many features, is sometimes one of them is enabled by default and it takes a little time for people to find the button to turn it off.And why does the OP of the new NBA thread show up at the top of the second page (50ppp) also? That's horrible.
NBA Corona Cup | OT | The Happiest Basketball on Earth OT
It will be even harder to have a normal season during a time of the year that the experts are saying will be the worst in regards to the virus.
The defaults are reasonable. Then you look at them on the dark theme and not so much. I believe others who fight with CSS are working on improvements.
Yes. I've deployed a hostfix to change it to OR. While there was plans for a UI to expose and/or, that would take longer than a hotfix.
Nothing prevents multiple tags with the same text, but merging those prefixes is doable.So how does this work for existing threads? Will this only work on threads that were created after the implementation? I can still see the Black Culture and Animal Crossing OT tags.
As for the buggy ignore tag feature, there is some multi-feature complexity there which is likely causing issues.
A minor visual change and huge QoL improvement is adding some muted text that says "Ignore" next to a thread so you don't have to go into it to ignore it. Adding distracting colored tags in front of every thread to tell you something that you can glean from reading the title anyway is hardly minor and not much of a QoL improvement for many of us. I don't see how tags being mandatory from now on is incompatible with being allowed to turn them off. Force the OP to include a tag when making a thread much like how you can't post a thread without adding a title first, but allow the graphics for them to be turned off in settings so we don't have to see them if we don't want to. Is this not a win-win scenario?
In addition, it sucks that some people are being hostile to unpaid volunteers who obviously have more to do than cater to the every whim of forum posters 24/7. However, making a simple announcement thread for this feature where people could discuss it back when it went live (or preferably, a thread asking for feedback before it went live) would have surely cut down on many of those hostile posts complaining about a lack of transparency. Hopefully the staff has been able to distinguish the legitimate criticism from the inappropriate hyperbole.
1.) No you didn't
2.) What you are referring to was half way in the middle of a now locked thread with a non-descript title without as much as even a threadmark.
3.) Our attempts to get you or anyone to follow-up even just a little resulted in serial locking and shutting down of threads.
Hostility to me means personal attacks and I haven't seen that unless you're referring to private messages and the like. The publically available criticism has been frustration at the many facets of how poorly this has been handled.
The idea may seem like a Quality of Life improvement on your end, but it's a demonstrable diminishment in quality of life on the users as its implementation directly impairs usability and readability.
I don't see what the last six months has to do with this specific matter. Again, the comparisons you refer to must be happening directly to you and your team which, for the avoidance of doubt, I agree isn't acceptable.
But that still doesn't give you a pass to dismiss and obstruct genuine criticism.
At least finally we have this clarity and confirmation. It's baffling that we had to essential drag it out of you.
I haven't touched any sort of ad or script blocker in the two years and nine months I've been using this website. But it seems I'll now be forced to if you either cannot or will not offer a very simple choice to your users. And my mobile experience is going to be permanently decimated.
No you did not. The closest you got was committing to fixes and tweaks such as fixing the title appearing in tabs. You never addressed the possibility of being able to disable the feature (just visually) beyond a vague commitment to re-evaluate feedback further down the line.
We can't ignore what isn't there!
lol @ "ludicrous hostility". Yeah I sure am seeing some "ludicrous hostility" at the idea that this poorly rolled out "feature" isn't being met with universal praise. No discussion! Lock everything! Hefty bans! Jesus. Oh well, at least now we know there won't be an option to turn it off. Script blockers it is.
Hostility over a minor visual change? I feel like you either don't get what people are upset about or you're continually ignoring the issue. People are mostly upset about the lack of real communication. Posting about it after the fact in an undescriptive random thread without threadmarks and then not responding to 99% of critique and instead locking all threads about it and going as far as threatening users with "hefty bans" is not good communication and at least from what I can tell is what most people are upset about.
I don't care about the ugly, garish, format breaking, distracting UI change, but I do care that the staff here is allowing this to continue to escalate and are themselves continually contributing to its escalation.
I don't care about the ugly, garish, format breaking, distracting UI change, but I do care that the staff here is allowing this to continue to escalate and are themselves continually contributing to its escalation.
Well, no shit, to be frank. What purpose is it supposed to serve for people that want to disable it for themselves? I don't need a tag that clutters up the page to tell me what category a thread falls under.
Maybe you all could have put up a discussion thread about this feature and polled users? Then all this additional work could have been avoided.
How does it defeat the purpose by allowing users to turn off the flags if they don't want to see them?
I'm not saying that shit didn't happen, but I didn't see a single person referring to ya'll as Trump or this change to covid. Like, there are always one or two crazies in every thread, but when 99% of the negative feedback is totally legit and NOT that, it is crap the lock the threads and tell people to stop talking about it. Which is what happened after this feature rolled out.
Like yeah, ban those pieces of shit. And then talk to the rest of us.
Yeah, I don't get it either. Especially if it seems like MOST here don't like them (who knows if that's true since the poll thread was locked). Telling the majority opinion to get over it seems pretty crummy to me.
Like yeah, ban those pieces of shit. And then talk to the rest of us.
Yeah, I don't get it either. Especially if it seems like MOST here don't like them (who knows if that's true since the poll thread was locked). Telling the majority opinion to get over it seems pretty crummy to me.
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Thank you for the update. Are you guys discussing allowing users the option to disable the tags without having the threads blocked along with them?
Sigh... my dude. The overwhelming majority of us are not trying to be unduly hostile. We are just people in the Era community who want (a) the site to be a smooth visual experience, with regard to tags, and more importantly (b) for the site to be a better, more pleasant experience for both members and staff. Just because frustrations are boiling over into criticism does not make those core drives any less true.
While I never saw anyone make either of those particular comparisons you're pointing out, obviously both would be uncalled for hyperbole. You cannot, however, use such outliers to deflect all constructive criticism from the matter at hand, and continue to sweep the underlying issues -- which go well beyond an innocuous issue like unsightly tags -- under the rug.
From nearly the beginning, somehow despite the understandably high staff turnover since, and with the exception of SweetNicole's efforts, Era's staff have had serious issues with both communication and transparency -- two things which go hand-in-hand, and would engender a more positive atmosphere and probably stymie said turnover. That and that alone is the primary reason the community's frustration keeps boiling over time after ugly time.
And what's confusing from an outside perspective is, it's not some impossible or even overly difficult thing to begin fixing. Case-in-point: these tags. How should these have been handled in order to minimize community outcry and foster a more positive and productive discussion, free of reactionary vitriol?
- Create a stickied thread preemptively announcing the intention of implementing the feature.
- Show the community what it would look like, using the test site you just took a screenshot of.
- Take in feedback on said design before it's implemented, so it can be as palatable and cohesive as possible.
- Assuming this is technically feasible, or even necessary after design iteration, perhaps even allow people to turn off the tag visuals while mandating tagging in thread creation, both to (a) keep the functionality for search purposes, and (b) minimize workload on moderation to manually implement tags.
- (Although this goes against the stated intention that most threads would not receive tags -- if they were less visually garish and incongruous with the thread list to begin with, perhaps it would not be an issue for all threads to have a mandated tag during creation.)
- Assuming this is technically feasible, or even necessary after design iteration, perhaps even allow people to turn off the tag visuals while mandating tagging in thread creation, both to (a) keep the functionality for search purposes, and (b) minimize workload on moderation to manually implement tags.
Communicate with the community. Utilize the community. The majority of us, I'd wager, are working professionals as well, but would be all too eager to contribute in what ways we could if we were simply given the chance, rather than chided and condescended to like naughty children, when the ball to fix these problems is fundamentally in your court, as the keyholders of policy and power here. The diverse and wonderful community we have and would like to improve here is not the root of the issue. Staff conduct, communication, and policy is. Address that problem, and suddenly the community will be much less distrustful and bitter toward y'all, making everyone happier.
While you ruminate on the possibility of creating a thread chastising the community's treatment of staff, what is more needed -- and what would assuage the tension that keeps snaping back on y'all -- is a general community feedback thread, stickied permanently in place not in Announcements, but in EtcEra. Have a strict rule therein against unproductive tone or attacks in individual staff members -- absolutely -- but it needs to exist, because as it stands the only public place constructive discussion about the forum itself is allowed to happen is in the Meeting threads (e.g. Asian Era Meeting), which is unacceptable on multiple levels, and takes away from focus on those specific communities' issues.
(No, PMing staff members is not a solution, and it's shocking to me it's ever been thought of as a primary feedback venue, rather than a supplementary one for people uncomfortable with public feedback. It's antithetical to the forum format and precludes the possibility of larger-scale transparent discussion. The only purpose it serves is to disenfranchise members from communicating together about the forum on the forum, and while that secrecy might be thought to keep scrutinizing eyes away from staff, all it does is deepen community bitterness towards you.)
A couple more ancillary thoughts:
- The "Contact Us" form is not a great venue for ban contesting. IMO y'all should utilize other tools more often, such as banning from posting in individual threads, while still being able to observe them and learn -- or, in the case of "ignoring staff posts," warnings rather than bans.
- Such a community feedback thread needs to also allow for community contesting of controversial banning situations, such as the ketkat fiasco, or the Shamima Begum fiasco, where the moderation was inappropriate on several levels -- regardless of whether it was done by committee, and again with rules against harassment of mods. (Ever think your committees are prone to the same group think, peer pressure, and defensiveness as any other insular group...?)
- This would both serve to again stymie bitterness against moderation because people feel unable to voice disagreement without being banned, as well as prevent large-scale forum spillover with reaction threads that are inevitably locked, which also contributes to said uncomfortability within the community.
Hopefully none of this is perceived as hostility simply because it is critical, because its intention is the complete opposite. Such threats are not becoming of a community leader, by the by, and are only going to worsen the atmosphere. I completely understand y'all are stressed out, but let's try to fix that rather than bludgeoning members with your authority.
Hope y'all have a good day. And remember that this isn't just aggravating for y'all. I certainly didn't want to have to write this wall of text. I chose to, because I care.
how else will posters know a thread contains news or is an ot?
This is an amazing post. Just great feedback on how to improve the relationship between the community and the mods.
The fact that the latest mod response doesn't even seem to understand why people aren't happy with any of this and instead deflects the blame to the users while mentioning some extreme cases that don't reflect the majority of the feedback really is mind blowing.
The admins really need to look at their actions and understand how to better handle communication and the forum overall. This whole thing is a textbook example of how to not do things.
Disclaimer is right.
The story of era community relation is you all messing up and then lashing out at us when we call you on it and ask you to do better by us. It is a really bad look. Don't blame us. Do better.
Like I get that consumers can be annoying and frustrating to deal with. I get that expectations and displeasure can be hard to handle--especially for unpaid site moderation with little authority to do anything. Sort that issue out among yourselves and step down if it is too much for you. Don't throw that in our faces. You chose to run a forum.
Work harder to actually communicate with us, please. Don't have anger be your default response when we aren't all happy with what you did.
The story of era community relation is you all messing up and then lashing out at us when we call you on it and ask you to do better by us. It is a really bad look. Don't blame us. Do better.
Like I get that consumers can be annoying and frustrating to deal with. I get that expectations and displeasure can be hard to handle--especially for unpaid site moderation with little authority to do anything. Sort that issue out among yourselves and step down if it is too much for you. Don't throw that in our faces. You chose to run a forum.
Work harder to actually communicate with us, please. Don't have anger be your default response when we aren't all happy with what you did.
A measured and passionate response from someone who genuinely cares.
Please him them out. Staff members and regular users don't have to be in conflict with each other.
Perfect post, I agree with everything here, you said it far better than I ever could have. This sums up almost all of my issues with how the staff operate and how they treat the community, and I cosign all of your suggestions on how to improve things.
Explain this. How does it defeat the purpose if someone doesn't want to use it to begin with and just wants to hide it? If they can't hide it and still never use it, what is the point to that user? How is the purpose defeated by the user still being able to see it but never using it to filter content?
Here's the thing, if you didn't have time or couldn't be bothered to make an official announcement about this, maybe don't take the time to launch it then until you have the time to actually post about it? Why was there such a hurry that it needed to be launched but not have the time to make an official announcement? Why does the official announcement have to come later? I just don't see why you have to rush it out when there's no time to make an official announcement to go with it. Explain why the thread has to come days later?
And, this might be a sensitive subject, but about being unpaid volunteers:
Why? I don't claim to know Era's profitability -- indeed, none of us can -- but GAF was apparently lucrative enough to both (a) support its existence, as well as (b) provide Jackass-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named with an income sizable enough not just to live comfortably, but travel as well, solely off of it.
Is that not the case with Era, between ad revenue and "Era Clear" revenue? Maybe it isn't; I don't know, and if I was told it isn't, then I'd accept that. But if it does have similar revenue, then could staff not be given some small level of compensation, however thinly-spread? They certainly deserve it.
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I was writing a reply, but this breaks it down better than I ever could. Fantastic post.
A general community feedback thread is something I have repeatedly asked for, the last time when the tensions boiled over last November. See these posts:
Then there's the inability for users to talk about the way the site is run. This thread is a breath of fresh air, because for the first time in two years we are actually able to openly talk with an admin about site issues. There was that one thread about a year ago, where the staff asked for feedback, but that one was closed within 12 hours when the staff realized just how frustrated users were, and despite promises "to do better" nothing changed. I can only hope this new attitude lasts and, even better, an official feedback thread will be opened somewhere so that these conversations can be had at all times. I think this thread shows that it is very much possible for a large group of users to have a civil conversation about site issues.
So what ever happened to the transparency that era was founded upon?
I'm obviously not as well versed in this topic as you are so correct me if I'm wrong. But if a company that's an LLC gets in financial trouble the owner can bail out, but the company still exists. So somebody else can pick up ownership of that company with its debts and try to make it work. But...
Maybe an official thread would turn into a shit show. My point is that we don't actually know that for certain because we have never tried it. If ERA doesn't have an official feedback thread, I want it to be because it has proven to not be possible, not because we think it isn't possible.
There is also a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy aspect to it. That feedback thread I referenced earlier (can't link it, because it was quickly hidden by the staff) was full of people frustrated by the way the site was run. This frustration was the reason the thread was quickly locked and why, I assume, open site feedback has been aggressively supressed ever since. Except people might not have been so frustrated if they were allowed to openly express their opinions on the site and staff from the start.
So what ever happened to the transparency that era was founded upon?
I'm obviously not as well versed in this topic as you are so correct me if I'm wrong. But if a company that's an LLC gets in financial trouble the owner can bail out, but the company still exists. So somebody else can pick up ownership of that company with its debts and try to make it work. But...
This was over six months ago. Nothing has changed.
I can't claim to know every message board on the internet. But of all the ones I have visited over the years, this is the only one, together with the old place, where you are not allowed to openly discuss the way the site is run.
This is why the threat about "hefty bans" is once again so disappointing because to me it shows once again how the management team seems determined to foster a culture of fear and intimidation. B-Dubs, even when you are faced with hostility, which you no doubt are, you still have to recognize that you are an admin and we are not. You wield absolute power over us. At most we can fling insults at you, while you can effectively erase our presence from this forum. And now you threaten with 'hefty bans' to anyone who continues with 'outright hostility', a term that leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Don't you see what this looks like?
I know of a message board where both users and mods have sometimes heated discussions with each other over how the forum is managed and frequently call each other names. The users are allowed to insult the mods. The latter don't always like it, and they will ask the users to cut it out when they take it too far. But they never threaten with bans. Now I'm not saying we should start vollying insults here. But at least the mods on that forum recognize the position of power they are in, and the absolute necessity for regular, powerless users to express their opinions on their site freely and candidly. I wish the ERA team would, too.
Dismissing all the well-meaning feedback based on people being hostile isn't the way to go about this.
At the end of the day, this was rolled out badly and the initial messaging was bad. That can't be put on anyone else and that sucks and I know you don't want to hear that. I'm a founding member of this site - I was in the room when it was being created, I was part of the initial concept, I'm literally member number like 3 or 4 back when this site had member numbers. Even I was put off by how badly this thing was presented.
Honestly, if at the beginning you just said "Hey this isn't going anywhere" besides having a poorly-messaged hemming and hawing about it and saying maybe in the future it could possibly be turned off if everyone still doesn't like it, I would have just done the adblock script and been done with it. Dragging it out, locking all discussion of it in visible areas, and then blaming everyone else for it being an issue feels like throwing dirt on top of a molehill in the effort to make it a mountain, then asking who dared to call it a mountain when it's clearly a very large molehill.
I dunno, man. While the idea that the community doesn't know what it wants and has to be dragged kicking and screaming into anything new is probably objectively true, the second you start viewing it as the adversary rather than the audience, you're not going to be able to reverse that mentality. I hope it works out for the better next time, I really do.
At the end of the day, this was rolled out badly and the initial messaging was bad. That can't be put on anyone else and that sucks and I know you don't want to hear that. I'm a founding member of this site - I was in the room when it was being created, I was part of the initial concept, I'm literally member number like 3 or 4 back when this site had member numbers. Even I was put off by how badly this thing was presented.
Honestly, if at the beginning you just said "Hey this isn't going anywhere" besides having a poorly-messaged hemming and hawing about it and saying maybe in the future it could possibly be turned off if everyone still doesn't like it, I would have just done the adblock script and been done with it. Dragging it out, locking all discussion of it in visible areas, and then blaming everyone else for it being an issue feels like throwing dirt on top of a molehill in the effort to make it a mountain, then asking who dared to call it a mountain when it's clearly a very large molehill.
I dunno, man. While the idea that the community doesn't know what it wants and has to be dragged kicking and screaming into anything new is probably objectively true, the second you start viewing it as the adversary rather than the audience, you're not going to be able to reverse that mentality. I hope it works out for the better next time, I really do.