New Tom’s Forum Announcement & Feedback

[King Dranzer]

I noticed that it only marks it as edited if you come back later and edit it. But if you make a post, and then without leaving the page edit the post, it doesn't get marked.

Exactly, that is causing lot of confusion.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Exactly, that is causing lot of confusion.

I kind of like that feature. I make a lot of typos, so its nice to go back and fix them quickly right after without the post being marked as "edited"

 

[Solandri]

I kind of like that feature. I make a lot of typos, so its nice to go back and fix them quickly right after without the post being marked as "edited"

Most of the sites I use which have that feature just give you a short time window to edit the post. Like if you edit it within 5 minutes, it won't show up as an edit. After that, it shows up as an edit.

 

[Math Geek]

i like that cause i tend to edit my post 5 times within 2 minutes of posting it. keeps it tidy a bit better than before

 

[Colif]

i like that cause i tend to edit my post 5 times within 2 minutes of posting it. keeps it tidy a bit better than before

No edits in this post so you don't always need it

I like this feature as almost all of my posts have something wrong in them at first

After the 5 minutes, it ads a little note in bottom right of message saying edited by and the time.

 

[King Dranzer]

No edits in this post so you don't always need it

I like this feature as almost all of my posts have something wrong in them at first

After the 5 minutes, it ads a little note in bottom right of message saying edited by and the time.

Some times or if we edit a post without leaving or in specified time limit it doesn't show up as edited as it used to do in old forum.

 

[Colif]

an admin might have to tell us what duration is, I am not 100% sure its 5 minutes. People could edit posts without leaving on old forums and it would work even if post was closed, not sure if that works now or not.

 

[drivinfast247]

I am getting ads again! They are getting out of hand! I was browsing a thread with about 13 posts in it and had 7 ads!!! Basically an advertisement every other post.

Chrome on Android 8.0

 

[Gam3r01]

I am getting ads again! They are getting out of hand! I was browsing a thread with about 13 posts in it and had 7 ads!!! Basically an advertisement every other post.

Chrome on Android 8.0

This is a known issue and is already being worked on. Stand by.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Any chance this means at least bringing the number of embedded videos in tutorials back to what it was in the old forum? Currently it's at least 7 to 8 times less than what it was before.

Can one of the mods please answer this? I've been patiently waiting for a reply for 2 weeks now. I'd also like to know if you have a rough timeline yet on when the old forum content will be fully ported to the new forum? Last I checked my GRW tutorial was still at only 60% of the content it was supposed to have before I started re-adding a lot of the videos, only to find we're still limited to a lousy 15 embedded content when the supposedly much inferior old forum easily handled all 114 of them.

I basically surf for at most a few min on ave per day here anymore, compared to anywhere from 30 min to a couple hours before. So far this is not at all the experience I was hoping for, and judging from the apparent waning activity, it seems others feel the same.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Can one of the mods please answer this? I've been patiently waiting for a reply for 2 weeks now. I'd also like to know if you have a rough timeline yet on when the old forum content will be fully ported to the new forum? Last I checked my GRW tutorial was still at only 60% of the content it was supposed to have before I started re-adding a lot of the videos, only to find we're still limited to a lousy 15 embedded content when the supposedly much inferior old forum easily handled all 114 of them.

I basically surf for at most a few min on ave per day here anymore, compared to anywhere from 30 min to a couple hours before. So far this is not at all the experience I was hoping for, and judging from the apparent waning activity, it seems others feel the same.

Unfortunately we don't have an answer. There are many projects being handled by the site management and dev team, and unfortunately I can tell you there are some very important site breaking issues that are taking priority over this. They do have a list and they do monitor this thread, so trust me they know as your issue also affects others, including many members of the mod team. So trust me when I say, we know. Theres only so many people working on this and only so much they can solve per day.

I will say I don't know where you get the idea about waning activity, this forum is as busy as ever.

 

[Frag Maniac]

...there are some very important site breaking issues that are taking priority over this.

So I guess then there's other big issues besides that one they discovered that was causing the forum to be slow? Unfortunate indeed.

I guess I'm going mostly by the activity on the PC Gaming Forum I mainly surf on. While there is indeed the normal number of new posts being made, there doesn't seem to be as many people replying to unanswered threads. And I DO mean unanswered, not unsolved.

All I can say is hopefully things will go back to normal once the fixing, updating, and porting is finished. And I know (and have said before) that you guys are doing the best you can, albeit with a skeleton crew, so props for that. 😉

 

[Math Geek]

for now, you can create your thread and then immediately respond to it a handful of times. no one will get any in during that first minute so it'll be easy to get them in. some simple math will tell you how many posts in a row you'll need. then do one more just in case.

then you can post the max videos on each post until you get them all in. not the best solution but one that will work for now.

i did this and just responded with a placeholder message like "post 1" "post 2" and so on just so it will let you create the post. then go back and edit the posts as you add in the content.

 

[Rogue Leader]

So I guess then there's other big issues besides that one they discovered that was causing the forum to be slow? Unfortunate indeed.

I guess I'm going mostly by the activity on the PC Gaming Forum I mainly surf on. While there is indeed the normal number of new posts being made, there doesn't seem to be as many people replying to unanswered threads. And I DO mean unanswered, not unsolved.

All I can say is hopefully things will go back to normal once the fixing, updating, and porting is finished. And I know (and have said before) that you guys are doing the best you can, albeit with a skeleton crew, so props for that. 😉

Its to be expected when transferring an old proprietary forum software to a new standardized package which also has a LOT of options and customizability. I'll say theres nothing to worry about, the place isn't going to crash or anything like that. But there are issues that are just more global. There is also a lot more to come and even some features that aren't active yet.

Anytime you have a platform change like this you'll have some changes and turnover, but in the end this place has a coupe million accounts, and it will work itself out. There have even been a couple regulars who basically turned around and said "I don't like this" deleted their account and left. But this place is a lot bigger than one person, and it will still continue to grow.

Thanks for the support, we will get there.

 

[Frag Maniac]

for now, you can create your thread and then immediately respond to it a handful of times. no one will get any in during that first minute so it'll be easy to get them in. some simple math will tell you how many posts in a row you'll need. then do one more just in case.

then you can post the max videos on each post until you get them all in. not the best solution but one that will work for now.

i did this and just responded with a placeholder message like "post 1" "post 2" and so on just so it will let you create the post. then go back and edit the posts as you add in the content.

And that works not just in regular threads but also tutorials, or "Articles" as they call them now? If so, that's fine, and I actually had to do it that way on the two other forums I posted that tutorial on.

 

[Math Geek]

i assume it works on tutorials but i have not made one with the new forum yet. i assume if you can comment on the post, then you can do it this way.

 

[Frag Maniac]

i assume it works on tutorials but i have not made one with the new forum yet. i assume if you can comment on the post, then you can do it this way.

OK, fair enough, I'll give it a try and report back my findings.

Thanks 👍

 

[cryoburner]

What ever happened to including links to forum threads at the bottom of each article for discussion and feedback? Initially when they switched to the new forum software, there was about a 50/50 chance whether they would bother to spend a minute linking to a forum thread or not. Now, next to no articles get a corresponding thread. Not even big articles that lots of people would want to comment on, like the 1660 graphics card review.

I get the impression that the management might be trying to phase out comments to avoid negative feedback about the declining quality of many of their recent articles. It's the only reason that makes much sense, considering how easy it should be to add links to discussions, even if they are not natively integrated into the page. There are only around 10 new articles posted on a given day, after all.

 

[Rogue Leader]

I get the impression that the management might be trying to phase out comments to avoid negative feedback about the declining quality of many of their recent articles. It's the only reason that makes much sense, considering how easy it should be to add links to discussions, even if they are not natively integrated into the page. There are only around 10 new articles posted on a given day, after all.

Thats completely not true. Its a feature thats being worked on, currently because the article system is on a different software than the forum it doesn't work. It is part of the next phase of updates.

 

[randomizer]

It's the only reason that makes much sense, considering how easy it should be to add links to discussions, even if they are not natively integrated into the page.

It's a manual step which means it is often forgotten (or possibly not considered worthwhile for a given article). Once article comments are properly integrated again this problem will go away.

 

[cryoburner]

Thats completely not true. Its a feature thats being worked on, currently because the article system is on a different software than the forum it doesn't work. It is part of the next phase of updates.

This makes zero sense. Again, I'm not talking about having comments necessarily integrated into the article itself, which logically could take some effort to get implemented, but having a simple link to a corresponding forum post for each article in the mean time. That does work, and that's what they were doing for a while, albeit not always consistently. Recently, they stopped adding links to discussions entirely, and there's no good reason for it.

It's a manual step which means it is often forgotten (or possibly not considered worthwhile for a given article). Once article comments are properly integrated again this problem will go away.

Again, these links disappeared entirely over the last week or so. It's not just a matter of them getting forgotten. Even big articles like reviews that undoubtedly took days to prepare are not getting discussions anymore. We're talking about a site that typically posts fewer than 10 articles a day, and making sure each has a corresponding discussion thread would take very little time or effort. It's simply a matter of opening a forum thread in the relevant section, and pasting a hyperlink at the end of the article. All of one minute's worth of effort.

 

[Rogue Leader]

This makes zero sense. Again, I'm not talking about having comments necessarily integrated into the article itself, which logically could take some effort to get implemented, but having a simple link to a corresponding forum post for each article in the mean time. That does work, and that's what they were doing for a while, albeit not always consistently. Recently, they stopped adding links to discussions entirely, and there's no good reason for it.


Again, these links disappeared entirely over the last week or so. It's not just a matter of them getting forgotten. Even big articles like reviews that undoubtedly took days to prepare are not getting discussions anymore. We're talking about a site that typically posts fewer than 10 articles a day, and making sure each has a corresponding discussion thread would take very little time or effort. It's simply a matter of opening a forum thread in the relevant section, and pasting a hyperlink at the end of the article. All of one minute's worth of effort.

The people whom write the articles and the people whom manage the forum are separate. The forum people need to make those links, and they have been working non stop on forum related issues, so this likely fell by the wayside. I'd bet my moderator position here there is nothing nefarious afoot as we (the mods) are in constant contact with them and they are shorthanded and running at 150% right now.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Just a heads up that what Math Geek suggested of making separate replies to your own thread/article, then adding more embedded videos that way, works. So mods, you may want to specify when you say there's a 15 media embed limit, that it's per post, not per thread/article.

Thanks Math Geek! 👍

 

[cryoburner]

The people whom write the articles and the people whom manage the forum are separate. The forum people need to make those links, and they have been working non stop on forum related issues, so this likely fell by the wayside. I'd bet my moderator position here there is nothing nefarious afoot as we (the mods) are in constant contact with them and they are shorthanded and running at 150% right now.

This explanation doesn't hold up particularly well when you consider that it's the site's assistant managing editor who had been adding comment posts for articles, not the "forum people". Obviously those posting the edited articles on the main site should also have staff privileges on the forum, and creating a forum thread to go with an article shouldn't involve anyone else.

Maybe someone just went on vacation or something, but it would seem like opening a handful of forum threads each day shouldn't be that complex a task for a site that describes itself as "the leading destination for tech enthusiasts".

 

[randomizer]

I don't know why they're not posting links and frankly I don't really care. I am only interested in proper comments integration.