How can we make the 405th great?

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Art Andrews

Community Owner
Community Staff
As mentioned elsewhere, we are very excited to be managing this community! We think it has a tremendous amount of potential and want to see it grow and flourish, but we need YOUR help to do that! This thread is for posting your thoughts and ideas about 1) existing changes as they are made and 2) changes you would like to see made.

Please bear in mind that there is only a handful of us and 10s of thousands of you, so we may not respond to every post or comment on every idea but we WILL read and consider every idea, comment and even criticism. Some things we should be able to implement quickly and easily while others may take time or not be feasible at all. Be patient with us as we already have a tremendous backlog of things that need to be done, but one-by-one, we will get to them.
 
You do realize that trueachievements.com HAS a forum but is NOT a forum, right? There is a massive difference in their layout as their front end is more of a blog that also happens to have a forum on the backend... so we aren't entirely comparing apples to apples there.

As with anything else here, if the community wants something that requires manpower, the manpower will have to come from within the community itself. Take our file area for example. We bought and installed the software, but to date, we haven't uploaded a single file. YOU, the community (primarily rundown) have populated the file archive.

We are here to provide you the tools and to serve you from an infrastructure side, but if the community wants news and updates, it is something that members of the community itself will have to step up and provide.


To be honest, Trueachievements.com has that feature, and a few of us have already mentioned it as something we would like to see here, but I agree that it can seem spammy.

On Trueachievements.com, there is a notification that stays up until you click on Site News and go to the page, then it goes away.
I would absolutely love it if the majority of the notifications weren't just Podcasts at least 50% of the time rather than actually being relevant to site changes and such.
If I could disable the notification for certain types of Site News it would be great.

Having something like this in our Settings for Site News would be outstanding:
☑ Upcoming Server Maintenance / Site Down Warnings
☑ Site Change
☑ Site Poll
☐ Podcasts
☑ Upcoming Event Information​
 
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You do realize that trueachievements.com HAS a forum but is NOT a forum, right? There is a massive difference in their layout as their front end is more of a blog that also happens to have a forum on the backend... so we aren't entirely comparing apples to apples there.

Yes Art, I understand that.

As with anything else here, if the community wants something that requires manpower, the manpower will have to come from within the community itself. Take our file area for example. We bought and installed the software, but to date, we haven't uploaded a single file. YOU, the community (primarily rundown) have populated the file archive.

We are here to provide you the tools and to serve you from an infrastructure side, but if the community wants news and updates, it is something that members of the community itself will have to step up and provide.

Am I the one making changes to the site?
No.

Am I the one that knows when the site will go down for maintenance?
No.

How am I or the community supposed to do that?
Art Andrews, I'm not talking about articles or featurettes or news clippings or anything like that. So I don't need to hear that schpeal you have about how its the community's job to provide a changelog of the changes that happened to the site.
We can do articles and blogs and that type of thing.
We can't do Site News.

I don't know what belt you changed on the car's engine, and I have no idea what kind of belt you are using... hell you could be using a chain for all I know.
All I can do is tell you that the car is making a funny sound.

The site was down for me the other day, and I don't know **** about tweeting, nor do I want to.
Having a "heads up, site's gonna be down an hour from now" would have been nice to have as a notification at the top.

You could put the warning into this Site Support and News section, but when it comes to a warning about the site being down temporarily, I definitely think we need a notification up top.

You want to delegate the duty to one of the other admins?
That's fine, but you'd be telling them everything to add to the changelog they would be posting, and at that point you might as well post it yourself.



Why can I see the background grid image only at the very bottom of the page?
Why even have it?
 
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There is no need to get defensive.

You simply aren't going to see us posting up trivial site updates in a big splash header. If it is something like server downtime, we do our best to post up a notice and obviously, if we close the site for some reason there will be a notice, but I am simply not seeing the value in posting an ongoing "we changed this little thing or that" at the top of the page. Those who want to know about it will make their way to this forum. The masses (who don't care) won't be bothered.

In regard to the site being completely down, I don't show any downtime in out logs at all. Do you remember specifically when it was?


Yes Art, I understand that.



Am I the one making changes to the site?
No.

Am I the one that knows when the site will go down for maintenance?
No.

How am I or the community supposed to do that?
@Art Andrews, I'm not talking about articles or featurettes or news clippings or anything like that. So I don't need to hear that schpeal you have about how its the community's job to provide a changelog of the changes that happened to the site.
We can do articles and blogs and that type of thing.
We can't do Site News.

I don't know what belt you changed on the car's engine, and I have no idea what kind of belt you are using... hell you could be using a chain for all I know.
All I can do is tell you that the car is making a funny sound.

The site was down for me the other day, and I don't know **** about tweeting, nor do I want to.
Having a "heads up, site's gonna be down an hour from now" would have been nice to have as a notification at the top.

You could put the warning into this Site Support and News section, but when it comes to a warning about the site being down temporarily, I definitely think we need a notification up top.

You want to delegate the duty to one of the other admins?
That's fine, but you'd be telling them everything to add to the changelog they would be posting, and at that point you might as well post it yourself.



Why can I see the background grid image only at the very bottom of the page?
Why even have it?
 
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Just a note. When you put in an HR, like this it makes it very easy to miss things as it looks like part of your sig...

You only see the background at the bottom because your screen res is below 1600px. On larger screens larger than 1600px the grid shows on the sides as well.



Why can I see the background grid image only at the very bottom of the page?
Why even have it?
 
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I cannot for the life of me remember when it was down.
It was either Thursday, Friday, Monday, or Tuesday, and I know that doesn't help at all.

Just a note. When you put in an HR, like this it makes it very easy to miss things as it looks like part of your sig...

You only see the background at the bottom because your screen res is below 1600px. On larger screens larger than 1600px the grid shows on the sides as well.

I did what I could to try and make my signature pop out that it is a signature.
At least it's a lot better than those who had a line of text, such as a quote or message, in their signatures. No offense, but before that extra line was added to separate signatures out, I read every single one of those signatures over and over.

If you have an idea as to what could improve my signature (other than just not having one), I would be glad to hear it.
Clearly I have not done a good enough job to distinguish my signature.

Personally, I would love to have a banner that had Regions within it that would take you to different links (not just one link per the entire banner), but that's way easier said than done.

I don't even hit the HR button. I type the code out each time.
I use HR a lot because it breaks up topics in a post, and I will continue to use it.

I can be pretty scatter-brained sometimes in terms of forming thoughts within text. For instance, in this post alone, I've probably rearranged things at least twice and I've gone back and added or edited text at least 3 times.

I like to break up my thoughts, especially since I get distracted quite often. If I didn't, the lack of transition between thoughts would likely be quite confusing.
 
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Only noting that since we use an HR to separate signatures from content body, if you use an HR in your content body with only a small amount of text below it, those who have "signature blindness" like me and are programmed to skip anything below the line, might mistake your HR for the signature break...
 
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Art Andrews; said:
Take our file area for example. We bought and installed the software, but to date, we haven't uploaded a single file. YOU, the community (primarily rundown) have populated the file archive.

I will be uploading several files unfolded for compatibility with Silhouette cutting machines, and some amazing Ultra-High Detail files - they're just simply not ready yet.
 
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Is there any way to streamline/speed up the process for deleting private messages and thread subscriptions? Maybe it's just me, but it feels so clunky and unwieldy having to click the "selected messages" menu, then check the box for "delete," then have to click another button to carry out that action. Just feels like that's two more steps than there should be. I know it's a little thing, and I know it's cleaner to have all the options in a pop up menu rather than having a dozen buttons strung along the bottom of the page, but speaking for myself, personally, I've never used any of the other options on that menu. I haven't even bothered to read all the other options on that menu. I don't know if there are any others in the same boat. If it's just me, I'll deal with it as is, but if there are enough others who feel the same way, could we just get a delete button separate from that menu?
 
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This may have been mentioned elsewhere, but what happened to fonts in the signature? Suddenly my font tags are appearing in the signature. I fixed it now, but are fonts coming back?
 
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For the past few days I have noticed that the "405th Feed" on the right side of the home page is not keeping up with new post, until a few minutes later. It always worked good before. As soon as I would make a post, and go to the home screen it would show up on the mini side feed. But thats not happening now.

The actual "405th Feed" page works great though. So I don't have any good ideas as to what could be causing the lag.

Edit:
It's as far back as an hour now!.
 
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For the past few days I have noticed that the "405th Feed" on the right side of the home page is not keeping up with new post, until a few minutes later. It always worked good before. As soon as I would make a post, and go to the home screen it would show up on the mini side feed. But thats not happening now.

The actual "405th Feed" page works great though. So I don't have any good ideas as to what could be causing the lag.

Edit:
It's as far back as an hour now!.

Not only that, but some new posts aren't even making it into the feed. The new formatting of the feed is also less user-friendly than it used to be (almost need a magnifying glass to read the feed items).
 
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Is there a way to have edits to a post cause its thread to raise as if a new post was added and have the edit appear in the feed? Something similar to the "<user> replied to a thread <thread> in <forum>" such as "<user> edited in a thread <thread> in <forum>"? Also have subscribers notified of the edit? Then additions to existing posts (a recommended practice over back-to-back posting) would be more visible to people interested in a thread instead of quietly going by unnoticed.
 
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Is there a way to have edits to a post cause its thread to raise as if a new post was added and have the edit appear in the feed? Something similar to the "<user> replied to a thread <thread> in <forum>" such as "<user> edited in a thread <thread> in <forum>"? Also have subscribers notified of the edit? Then additions to existing posts (a recommended practice over back-to-back posting) would be more visible to people interested in a thread instead of quietly going by unnoticed.

Because edits are recognized by the system and new posts, there is no way to do this. :(
 
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So, if we can now attach images to forum posts as attachments (and I remember reading that this is encouraged rather than linking to external images - however I still prefer external links due to download speed and not needing to click on a thumbnail).....why can we not include attachments when sending private messages, only links to external images? Sometimes maybe you'll want to send an image to someone privately but not want to upload the image to a file hosting site.
 
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So, if we can now attach images to forum posts as attachments (and I remember reading that this is encouraged rather than linking to external images - however I still prefer external links due to download speed and not needing to click on a thumbnail).....why can we not include attachments when sending private messages, only links to external images? Sometimes maybe you'll want to send an image to someone privately but not want to upload the image to a file hosting site.

So... you don't want to upload images locally to the site like we have noted that we prefer... but you want to know why we don't have it in PMs... Right? ;)
 
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Yep, that's kind'a what I asked. It's about longevity and download speed. Then there's that consistency angle too, that thread posts may have local photos, but PMs cannot. Just was wondering why the new local images feature was rolled out to the forums only.
 
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If it is about longevity or download speed, uploading photos locally is the right answer...

In regard to images in PMs, because PMs are so transient for most people, it isn't a feature natively built into the software.
 
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If at all possible, we might want to reinstate the ban on new members posting in the classifieds. I've been noticing a rather rampant trend lately of freshly minted recruits making their first venture into the forums by necro-posting on ads that are over a year old asking if the stuff is still available. For one: necroposting. Two: all of these ads ask that anyone interested or who has questions send a PM, not post in the thread. And three: the ban was there for a reason, to encourage new members to at least try to make their own stuff before looking for someone else's cast offs. Without that restriction we seem to be having an influx of new members who are only here looking to buy a finished suit and then leave (without even bothering to read rules, view the orientation, or really get to know the 405th as anything other than a place to buy what someone else has made), which by my understanding is not what the 405th is about, nor why this community exists.

At the very least we need someone to go through the listings and delete/archive/lock everything that's already been done. All sales items that have been sold, all barter lots that have been traded, and all want ads that have been fulfilled. If nothing else that will keep the necro-posters away from the stuff that isn't even an available option any more.
 
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