Help us improve this new community - share your ideas and feedback💡

wayfinder

When there are two new posts in a thread that appear in notifications, clicking on one only gets rid of one of the unread notifications, although you have now seen both new posts...

alec.tron

Matt @ NI said:

We actually remove the vote up and down across the community now as it seems to create confusion.

...

Regarding status update, it's part of the mechanism of the feature request section. Each post has a status attached to it and can be triggered whenever necessary. We'll share more about all this soon. 

Thanks for the info!

for quote 1 - neato, as outlined in my post.

for quote 2 - Looking forward to the status feature.

As for oddities - as you are asking for feedback in this thread:

- quoting (highlighted) sections of a post is not possible seemingly, a quote here always seems to quote all posts inside... that feels rather archaic when most modern forums have automated highlight quoting baked in.

c.

JesterMgee

Here are some more suggestions if they have not been made already.

User Profile Info
I find the user profile info rather limiting now in comparison to the last forum. No signature options I can see (useful for computer/setup info or a link to your work/website people can follow to know more about you) and also there is no way to detail any additional hardware info such as other controllers/software, plugins you use etc. Should be also an "Additonal hardware / software field", It would be very handy to have this info available for those to use as it does help to gain a bit of an insight into someone's apparent level of experience. I typically tend to review peoples info if possible since you can tell experienced users from new/fresh/young users as experienced users normally have all the useful info available for others to see. 

Also, it would be very handy even if people made their profile private to NOT make the PC details private and also have this displayed on the quick user profile view when you click a users image. I thought this was going to be a thing already ? Was going to paste an image of what I am referring to but this brings up the next issue I find... 

Cannot paste images!
The old forum allowed you to simply take a screenshot and then paste (CTRL+V) direct into a forum post without the hassle of save and upload. This now seems to not be possible and I really hope this will be addressed as it impacts the efficiency of helping users and it will seriously make me not bother in some cases if I have to bother saving and uploading an image. Seems a step backwards here as this was a great time saving feature. I use Chrome browser by the way.

Notification Bell
The notification bell is another issue I see. On the old forum when I would click a notice or just view the alerts it auto-acknowledged them. Now even if I click and it takes me to the post it still is highlighted and I need to click the "acknowledge all" to clear them.

Competition ladder (IMO) is just not needed
The "All Time Leaders / Monthly Leaders" on the side panel I don't feel is needed really, maybe as a stub somewhere people can view but not as a viewable competition ladder on every page (which is how it ends up on most forums I have seen). It promotes post spamming and jumping in on every conversation for simply boosting a post count to keep your make on display. After a few years the same few names will always appear on there so it's just extra clutter in view which I tend to just block with an ad blocker on every site. At the very least users should have the option to switch this on/off if they like

Reid115

It would be nice if you could set the text size. It's a little big for my preference.

ShelLuser

The new forum definitely looks very slick and first impressions are pretty good.

Basically I only have 2 gripes...  when writing longer posts (uh oh ) the box you're writing in expands and eventually this will result in the toolbar scrolling off the screen and that can become problematic because there's no BBCode which you can use to quickly format your stuff, and HTML is not as friendly to use IMO. So then you may end up scrolling back and forth if you want to add specifics like links, images or certain smileys for which you don't know the code yet.

The second is that you can no longer paste images directly into your post. I considered this a very useful feature because it made creating a quick visual example a lot easier. Now you have to set up your example, save it somewhere, then point the forum to it to have it included. And of course also not forgetting to remove the temp file again. Bit of a drag, but on the other hand I suppose this also helps prevent people from dumping images almost everywhere (not sure if that was a thing though).

But other than those two it looks pretty nice.

(edit)

Now, I don't care much about titles and all that and usually ignore the whole thing but having said that... isn't "noise" a little degrading (some pun intended )?  One could also get the impression that the overall idea is that new users don't really contribute much other than noise, not sure if that gives the positive vibes you're looking for. It sounds a bit odd to me. Why not static?

JesterMgee

ShelLuser said:

The second is that you can no longer paste images directly into your post. I considered this a very useful feature because it made creating a quick visual example a lot easier. Now you have to set up your example, save it somewhere, then point the forum to it to have it included. And of course also not forgetting to remove the temp file again. Bit of a drag, but on the other hand I suppose this also helps prevent people from dumping images almost everywhere (not sure if that was a thing though).

Good to see someone else has noticed and echoed this also. 

I also echo a similar gripe someone earlier in the thread said about highlighting a part of someone's post and "quoting" it, this is no longer possible and so now requires quoting a whole post and deleting the irrelevant stuff.

These seem like small things but honestly, these simple things are what we complain to other companies about toting how good the NI forums were for this kind of efficiency (Ableton I am squarely naming you for the oldest and worst managed forum on the internet now!) 

I've already skipped a few posts because I want to post a simple screenshot but it's too bothersome to do now. 

What is an otherwise great improvement overall just has a few of these niggles which are hard to move past when it now makes the simple job of helping people out a little harder. 

Also, can you set text size for a post? Text colours? 

ShelLuser

I am officially annoyed right now. I wrote up a post, also managed to cut up Jester's post in several quote sections (that wasn't easy!) and it was here, for all to see. So then I noticed that a word I used got censored, so I changed ****** into moly and lo and behold: now my entire post is gone! I did not press delete but did spent quite some time on that post that's now gone

Anyway, now a shorter reply for @JesterMgee above me...

Have to agree with you Jester...  in some specific areas this feels like a step backwards. I think one part of that is the change to HTML markup vs. BBCode markup. Take this textbox, I still need to test with Edge (using Opera right now) but the textbox gets bigger and bigger until eventually the toolbar scrolls off screen. I even had my browser maximized (using 1920x1024 resolution) and it still happened. I'd expect the text box to get a fixed maximum size after which a scrollbar gets added to ensure your post stays on your screen, but nope. This is annoying because the only way to add a link is to select text, scroll back up, click the option, scroll back down...  eeww...  this used to be as easy as [url=link]text[/url].

I mean...  <a href="link">test</a>?  I suppose it's "doable" but... eeew.  Makes me wonder if that even works...  hmm, lets google it!.

I suppose it does

But one thing is for sure: quoting is now a disaster    I'd have added this to my previous post but can no longer edit it (which was to be expected, and nothing bad perse).

Matt_NI

ShelLuser said:

But one thing is for sure: quoting is now a disaster    I'd have added this to my previous post but can no longer edit it (which was to be expected, and nothing bad perse).

I'm wondering what you actually see on your side because I can definitely edit my quote here.

I'll comment more on other stuff brought up by everyone but generally we're going to have move away from a lot of the options we had on the old forum, that's expected with such a change. It's never going to be just like you had and there will be compromises. 

It's also important to see that compromises will have to be made based on what the majority of users is using/doing. For example the whole BBCode and HTML markup is being used by a handful of people. This is really not something the large majority of folks, especially not new users, are doing when posting online.

I certainly agree that some bits are a bit annoying but let's not forget that this is not the end point. What you see today isn't what the community is going to be for the years to come. There will be more and more features / improvements rolled out. 

Matt_NI

@ShelLuser Your post did not disappear FYI but ended up in the moderation view. I'll have to review it to tell you why but for example if you use swear words, it goes there. 

Nico_NI

ShelLuser said:

Now, I don't care much about titles and all that and usually ignore the whole thing but having said that... isn't "noise" a little degrading (some pun intended )?  One could also get the impression that the overall idea is that new users don't really contribute much other than noise, not sure if that gives the positive vibes you're looking for. It sounds a bit odd to me. Why not static?

Noise doesn't sound negative at all in my opinion, it's an essential part of sound design and synthesizers. A lot of things can come out of it.

wayfinder

i'm not sure I'm with you on either "things are changing, some of that will be for the worse, that's just natural" or "most people don't use these features, therefore nobody can have them"

Imagine these were applied to the products? Yeah new version of Massive X, we noticed that only a handful of really REALLY dedicated sound designers used the chorus so we removed it, and that'll be okay because it only affects a small minority of users! We realize your old projects sound different now. When a new version comes out, it's normal that things change. One of the changes is that there's no chorus any more. You'll be alright! 



edited to make it really explicit: the posting functionality that "only a few power users are using" allows some of these people to make more, better, and more helpful Good Posts™ that raise the value of the forums for everyone. It's short-sighted to say that the features are superfluous because only a minority of people use them. They're not necessary for someone asking why their Traktor waveform looks blurry, or posting "+1" despite being asked not to. That's not who they are for in the first place though. If you want power users, you gotta enable them.

Matt_NI

wayfinder said:

i'm not sure I'm with you on either "things are changing, some of that will be for the worse, that's just natural" or "most people don't use these features, therefore nobody can have them"

Imagine these were applied to the products? Yeah new version of Massive X, we noticed that only a handful of really REALLY dedicated sound designers used the chorus so we removed it, and that'll be okay because it only affects a small minority of users! We realize your old projects sound different now. When a new version comes out, it's normal that things change. One of the changes is that there's no chorus any more. You'll be alright! 



edited to make it really explicit: the posting functionality that "only a few power users are using" allows some of these people to make more, better, and more helpful Good Posts™ that raise the value of the forums for everyone. It's short-sighted to say that the features are superfluous because only a minority of people use them. They're not necessary for someone asking why their Traktor waveform looks blurry, or posting "+1" despite being asked not to. That's not who they are for in the first place though. If you want power users, you gotta enable them.

I didn't use the term worst because I don't think neither of our editors are worst.
They offer different value for different users. It's true that they are designed in a way that is more accessible to a larger portion of users. Is that a bad thing? shortsighted? I don't generally think so. 

I also don't see how it would prevent a power-user to do helpful good post. There are elements like quoting that could be improved but posting in a way that is practical and digestible by readers is still possible (regardless of the two editors we are trying). When I talk about compromise, I meant that we can't always find something that has every capabilities. Here for example, we wanted to get something that was accessible, can be integrated to our internal systems and offered good moderation/anti-spam features. 

Again, tons of improvements are coming in and they will include features for the editor. This platform is used by tons of communities and it's not a static product. 

Just like with any transitions, things are moving and we didn't expect this to be an exact replica of the NI forum in terms of features. It will take time for us to adjust to how things are but that's part of the process 🙌

Matt_NI

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to write an additional note about our editor (since a lot of questions seems to be about that).

Since yesterday, we tried different options to try and find what was the most comfortable but also stable solution. For the past day, you have been using what is called a WYSIWYG editor. After we originally tried a more modern one. 

Unfortunately, this editor is not as stable as we anticipated and is also going to be EOL by our provider pretty soon. We understand their might be some limitation with the one we are going to start using for the next few months (called RICH editor) but we currently feel it's the most suitable solution. 

If you want to learn more about the RICH editor, please head over here: https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/13-rich-editor

We're capturing all your feedback (including from our mods) and so please don't hesitate to let us know what you like and don't like about it so we can pass everything over to our provider. They are currently evaluating options. 

Again, this community is not a static platform (no pun intended @ShelLuser) and it will be improving over the next few months. We'll make sure to share more about our findings and progress as we move along.

🚀 

GoKeez

So far digging the new forum. I’ve seen the things I’d improve mentioned but none of them are making my blood pressure rise.

I do think whoever is moderating has gotsta chill. Who is it the Pope? I typed an acronym and it got replaced by ******. It wasn’t even a swear in my language (US English). The other was an expression to mean great (bad a55). Who is offended by that?😳

Other than the ultra conservative moderation I dig it!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Matt_NI

@GoKeez These are automated system settings triggered by a list of words. It's pre-populated with mostly pretty offensive stuff. I suppose you'll find more common terms in there too. We'll check to make sure there isn't anything over conservative.