New Tom’s Forum Announcement & Feedback

[Frag Maniac]

Ah, sorry, I didn't know by subtle differences he meant the boldness of the fonts. Probably why I've never noticed it. I am however using Dark Reader until they can manage to get dark themes working, which may exacerbate the problem.

At any rate I still stand by what I said that I feel it's ironic this supposedly way better forum software makes you constantly click on this and scroll a lot just to see new responses in threads you're participating in. It's like having zero relevant activity tracking vs what we had before.

 

[drivinfast247]

I'm having another issue and it is the website loads very slowly. Whether I'm clicking on a new thread or pressing the 'next page' button it takes upwards of 10+ seconds. This is on Chrome on Android. It doesn't matter if connected to wifi or 4g LTE.

I have cleared the cache.

 

[Math Geek]

I'm having another issue and it is the website loads very slowly. Whether I'm clicking on a new thread or pressing the 'next page' button it takes upwards of 10+ seconds. This is on Chrome on Android. It doesn't matter if connected to wifi or 4g LTE.

still part of the migration. they are still working on the forum and slow downs and minor outages are to be expected here and there. this is not a patch or minor adjustment of the old forum, but rather a complete restart. small problems are to be expected.

bear with it and it'll get back to where it should be as soon as they can get it finished implementing

 

[drivinfast247]

still part of the migration. they are still working on the forum and slow downs and minor outages are to be expected here and there. this is not a patch or minor adjustment of the old forum, but rather a complete restart. small problems are to be expected.

bear with it and it'll get back to where it should be as soon as they can get it finished implementing

Roger.

 

[Colif]

The slowdown has been noticed and is being worked on.

@Frag Maniac Its a little rough comparing the new forum software that we only been using for a while, to an implementation that had 15 years or so to get to where it was. I know you frustrated and want forums to get back to how it was... so do we. But the old software was held together by the memory of string and we had to jump off before it sank, taking us with it. We will get through this and be better off for it.

 

[Frag Maniac]

@Frag Maniac Its a little rough comparing the new forum software that we only been using for a while, to an implementation that had 15 years or so to get to where it was. I know you frustrated and want forums to get back to how it was... so do we. But the old software was held together by the memory of string and we had to jump off before it sank, taking us with it. We will get through this and be better off for it.

I know you guys are doing your best to make it work smoothly. I'm just looking at it from a perspective of if I don't see any of you say it's possible to make things like alerts for instance more automated like before, without going here, clicking that, scrolling though this, then I see it as a lack of convenience features in the software.

 

[randomizer]

I'm just looking at it from a perspective of if I don't see any of you say it's possible to make things like alerts for instance more automated like before

Alerts are automatic as long as you've set your profile preferences to watch threads automatically if you participate in them. I think you might even get alerts for threads that you are not watching because the alerts cover a broader number of things (eg. likes) than on the old forum, which only alerted you to new replies of watched threads (when it was working properly anyway). Within the context of keeping up with threads you're participating in, the biggest issues with what we have at the moment IMO are:

• Thread watching was not enabled by default for all users, which is a significant and unnecessary deviation from the previous forum behaviour.
• There is no way to see a list of watched threads with new replies on any page of the forum. Notwithstanding its usability issues, the old forum had this. Basically we want the threads in the Watched Threads page which are marked as unread (ie. they have bold titles) to be displayed somewhere always visible. The Alerts link up the top does not cover this use case because alerts becomes "stale" after a while and are removed.

 

[Colif]

I wouldn't mind having tabs for different types of alerts so I can look through them all in my own time and not miss anything. Currently as soon as I look at them, the number disappears and I have to go to to the show all page which only remembers 3 pages worth of alerts.
The show all page should have different tabs for each type of alert

• Tab for replies
• Tab for LIkes
• Tab for Best Answers
• etc.

If system is going to tell me about Best Answers via alerts, I wouldn't mind a way to have them longer. Some months its possible to get over 3 pages of Best Answers in a day and I have no way of looking at the messages once they off the 3rd page. Old system at least let you get an email for them, this offers no choice. So a tab for Best Answer replies that is longer than 3 pages would be nice.

Current system is almost not worth using. I click on it once to get rid of number and then just use the Threads with your posts feature, like everyone else.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Alerts are automatic as long as you've set your profile preferences to watch threads automatically if you participate in them. I think you might even get alerts for threads that you are not watching because the alerts cover a broader number of things (eg. likes) than on the old forum, which only alerted you to new replies of watched threads (when it was working properly anyway). Within the context of keeping up with threads you're participating in, the biggest issues with what we have at the moment IMO are:

• Thread watching was not enabled by default for all users, which is a significant and unnecessary deviation from the previous forum behaviour.
• There is no way to see a list of watched threads with new replies on any page of the forum. Notwithstanding its usability issues, the old forum had this. Basically we want the threads in the Watched Threads page which are marked as unread (ie. they have bold titles) to be displayed somewhere always visible. The Alerts link up the top does not cover this use case because alerts becomes "stale" after a while and are removed.

Oh I HAVE tried the Automatically watch content you interact with option, but I was getting on average (as I said before) about 20% of the alerts being relevant to what I'd actually interacted with. The rest I had zero to do with.

It's possible that feature was minimalized by my having put the main forum I surf on Watch. So for the heck of it I just re-enabled auto watch on content I interact with (without any forums on Watch), in hopes it might actually work as desired this time. Given what the new forum's definition of Watch is regarding forums you surf though, I can't say I'm optimistic.

I'll end by saying I've had zero forums on Watch for a little while now, with Auto alert for content I interact with disabled as well, and I'm still getting alerts for this forum. So please explain that? It seems most of the problem is features not working as they're supposed to, rather than members setting their preferences wrong.

 

[Solandri]

New problem. Normally I'll open an index page (like New Posts), and ctrl-left click on the posts which look interesting so they'll open up in the background in new tabs. Once I'm done with this, I'll read through the new tabs one at a time. This saves me from having to wait for the posts to load, since they load in the background while I look for more posts to ctrl-click on. This was originally working fine when we switched to the new forums.

A couple days ago (I think), this changed. Ctrl-click opens up the link in a new background tab as before. But it also does the equivalent of a regular left-click on the link. That is, it also opens the post in the index page, which completely defeats the point of ctrl-clicking.

I get the same behavior in Chrome and Firefox. Oddly, Edge works correctly. The ctrl-clicked link is opened in a background tab, while the current page stays on the same page.

Edit: The menu links on the top left work correctly. If I ctrl-click on "Trending", it opens up the link in a new background tab, while the current tab remains on the current page (instead of opening up "Trending"). It only seems to be the post links which are misinterpreting ctrl-click as both ctrl-click and regular-click.

 

[King Dranzer]

If a thread reaches to second page, then the profile pick on the bottom corner of threads listing disappears. I noticed it only twice as not many threads we reply reach second page.

 

[jpishgar]

Hey there all!

Good news - our developers have managed to identify the issue that was causing the major slowdown for the forums and it has been resolved. You should see load-times reduced significantly, and speed increased by 3-4x across all pages. This has been the largest, most pressing issue facing us since the migration, and I'm incredibly pleased that it has been fixed. Next up are quality-of-life fixes, themes, and new requested features.

Thank you so kindly for your patience in bearing with us!

Yours,
-JP

 

[Math Geek]

nice work. only took a couple days and it's back and good to go now.

easily 3-4x faster than it was now. really no lag time from when i click a link and when page loads now. drawing the page takes a split second but loading data is pretty much real time now. great work

 

[Frag Maniac]

Good news - our developers have managed to identify the issue that was causing the major slowdown for the forums and it has been resolved. You should see load-times reduced significantly, and speed increased by 3-4x across all pages. This has been the largest, most pressing issue facing us since the migration, and I'm incredibly pleased that it has been fixed.

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.

 

[Solandri]

Would it be possible to get a "mark as unread" option for a thread, so that it retains the not-yet-read bold indicator, even though you've already read it? I ran across a thread where I will need some time to write up a reply, but I don't have time right now. If I leave it for later, I may forget about it because the thread title is no longer bolded for me.

 

[WildCard999]

Did we lose the ability to stop tracking threads we've posted in? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

 

[Barty1884]

Did we lose the ability to stop tracking threads we've posted in? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

"Unwatch" not available at the top right of the page? Still shows for me

 

[WildCard999]

"Unwatch" not available at the top right of the page? Still shows for me

I see Watch but no Unwatch on the top right of the page. (Using Chrome).

 

[Barty1884]

Once a thread is "watched" the button should become "unwatch".

Provided your profile settings are set to auto-watch anything you respond in. If you're still seeing "watch", I would suspect you're not actually watching the thread.... Or there's a problem.

 

[WildCard999]

Once a thread is "watched" the button should become "unwatch".

Provided your profile settings are set to auto-watch anything you respond in. If you're still seeing "watch", I would suspect you're not actually watching the thread.... Or there's a problem.

Nope, still no Unwatch option, even on this thread. I've checked a few others and there the same. Didn't see anything useful for this in Preference.

 

[Barty1884]

Strange. Do you get a notification that I've posted here, if I don't tag you or quote you?

Are you actually following threads you interact with? Settings:

 

[WildCard999]

Strange. Do you get a notification that I've posted here, if I don't tag you or quote you?

Are you actually following threads you interact with? Settings:

Yup I do get the notifications for responses in threads I follow, quotes, likes, and solved answers.

 

[King Dranzer]

When we edit our post it is not displaying or being marked as Edited. This is leading to confusion in some cases. Hope it gets implemented and worked on soon.

 

[King_V]

I've noticed that when viewing a list of topics, CTRL-click opens it in a new tab (which is expected), but ALSO opens that topic in the same window I was in. This wasn't the case with the old forums, and is not correct behavior in a browser.

I typically will CTRL-click a few topics, then read them in the new tabs in order.

Is there any way to prevent the existing window from erroneously opening the link when a user does CTRL-click to open in a new Tab?

 

[Rogue Leader]

When we edit our post it is not displaying or being marked as Edited. This is leading to confusion in some cases. Hope it gets implemented and worked on soon.

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.