Beta Feedback Thread

[Topaz]

Animated/gif avatars don't seem to work.

Also, what does the "Cover" button do?

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Also, what does the "Cover" button do?

You get a spiffy little picture in the top background of your profile.

 

[Topaz]

You get a spiffy little picture in the top background of your profile.

Ohh, I see. It's like a twitter header. Looks snazzy.

 

[bluegate]

Cool thing I can do, is actually put your post counts at the amount you had from the previous forms.

What's the point though? Isn't the legacy badge enough of an divider between old users and new users?

Threads older than 1 year stop showing up on the old forum's index, so it's not like they are verifiable or viewable, post count basically becomes a number that says; "I have been here since version 1", a message already covered by the legacy badge.

 

[Adam Jensen]

First impressions are good. It's a very modern, very slick looking forum. I hope it's soon populated with a lot of users. Otherwise, what's the point?

Cool thing I can do, is actually put your post counts at the amount you had from the previous forms.

Legacy join date might be cooler. It shows how long we've been a part of this community.

 

[09philj]

I'd like it if the profile pictures next to users posts were a touch larger, but generally everything seems to work fine.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Original join dates would be good. Most of us have been on the Escapist for around 10 years and have a perverse sense of pride about just how many years of our lives we've wasted here.

Avatars are too small, for sure. Avatars are too small for sure. Avatars are the easiest way to recognize someone so you shouldn't need to squint to make them out. Even at my usual browsing setting of 170% zoom they are too small. Also, not a fan of the 'online' icon covering up part of the avatar, it looks ugly.

I'm not a fan of white text on dark background personally. Some of the color choices for font are not good either. Username blue is a little hard to read, and the name of the person quotes is borderline illegible

That's all I can think of for now.

 

[Nick Calandra]

First impressions are good. It's a very modern, very slick looking forum. I hope it's soon populated with a lot of users. Otherwise, what's the point?


Legacy join date might be cooler. It shows how long we've been a part of this community.

For the first week we're just opening it up to Legacy and Discord users to get feedback in and make changes before opening up to the general public. We've got over 600 people on Discord, so I'm betting we'll get a pretty good chunk of people in here...plus we've got other things cooking you'll hear about soon.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Original join dates would be good. Most of us have been on the Escapist for around 10 years and have a perverse sense of pride about just how many years of our lives we've wasted here.

Avatars are too small, for sure. Avatars are too small for sure. Avatars are the easiest way to recognize someone so you shouldn't need to squint to make them out. Even at my usual browsing setting of 170% zoom they are too small. Also, not a fan of the 'online' icon covering up part of the avatar, it looks ugly.

I'm not a fan of white text on dark background personally. Some of the color choices for font are not good either. Username blue is a little hard to read, and the name of the person quotes is borderline illegible

That's all I can think of for now.

Easiest way to do that would be just to put your original join date in your signatures, otherwise I'll have to go in manually to every account to change that and I won't have time to do that for awhile.

 

[SupahEwok]

Something that annoys me is that on the top Forums level, there's symbology for new postings in a subforum, but once you enter the subforum, there's no quick indication of which thread has an update. Unless I'm missing something.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I kind of feel like email notifications should be off by default. Maybe I'm wrong, but do most people really want 20 emails a day when someone quote's them, or posts in a thread they posted in? Also, auto watching threads should be off by default. Just too much notification spam.

This forum is going to allow signatures? Good lord! One of the best things about the old forum was it had no signatures. I hope you will at least put a character limit and not allow any embedded images or videos, if there must be signatures.

APPEAL SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATION
This is a WIP with the new forums system. Currently you'll receive a warning on your account if you break a rule, and a second rule violation will result in a temporary-ban. A third will result in a perma-ban.

This seems far too strict. We got 8 chances on the old site and people still ended up getting banned for stupid stuff like posting single sentence reply once every 2 months or whatever. Obviously this depends on the severity of the infraction, but for a lot of things I've seen moderated this is too much.

Also mentioning 'that topic' is an instant ban with no appeal? Are you joking? It's about 6 years too late, and at this point the ban on it comes off more as Holocaust denial than anything else.

 

[Nick Calandra]

I kind of feel like email notifications should be off by default. Maybe I'm wrong, but do most people really want 20 emails a day when someone quote's them, or posts in a thread they posted in? Also, auto watching threads should be off by default. Just too much notification spam.

This forum is going to allow signatures? Good lord! One of the best things about the old forum was it had no signatures. I hope you will at least put a character limit and not allow any embedded images or videos, if there must be signatures.

This seems far too strict. We got 8 chances on the old site and people still ended up getting banned for stupid stuff like posting single sentence reply once every 2 months or whatever. Obviously this depends on the severity of the infraction, but for a lot of things I've seen moderated this is too much.

Also mentioning 'that topic' is an instant ban with no appeal? Are you joking? It's about 6 years too late, and at this point the ban on it comes off more as Holocaust denial than anything else.

Appeals System and Communication is a WIP like it says. Right now, while we're getting this place up and running, that'll be the standard, especially when we open it up to to the general public in a week. It's gonna need to be tightly moderated for a bit till we get in the groove of things.

We're not going to ban for stuff like single sentence replies or anything like that.The moderators and I are working together on this and the main things we'd ban for right now are personal attacks, hate speech, trolling, etc. That sort of stuff. You can easily get in touch with us on these forums, so if you have a question, we'll be around to answer it for now.

Treat this as a tech test for the moment, and a time for us to get feedback and we'll make the needed changes and updates as we go.

 

[Nick Calandra]

I kind of feel like email notifications should be off by default. Maybe I'm wrong, but do most people really want 20 emails a day when someone quote's them, or posts in a thread they posted in? Also, auto watching threads should be off by default. Just too much notification spam.

This forum is going to allow signatures? Good lord! One of the best things about the old forum was it had no signatures. I hope you will at least put a character limit and not allow any embedded images or videos, if there must be signatures.

This seems far too strict. We got 8 chances on the old site and people still ended up getting banned for stupid stuff like posting single sentence reply once every 2 months or whatever. Obviously this depends on the severity of the infraction, but for a lot of things I've seen moderated this is too much.

Also mentioning 'that topic' is an instant ban with no appeal? Are you joking? It's about 6 years too late, and at this point the ban on it comes off more as Holocaust denial than anything else.

Also to reply to the notifications, this is something that will stay on by default because I think the majority will want the notifications, but you can update these to your own liking by clicking on your profile on the top right and going to "Preferences" and at the bottom you can adjust what notifications you'd like.

 

[Nick Calandra]

One we get enough questions or feedback in here, we'll create a FAQ for certain stuff, like how to change your notification settings, or upload an avatar etc.

Keep the feedback coming, it's useful and I'll have tech get on certain things like updating avatar size etc on Monday.

 

[SupahEwok]

I kind of feel like email notifications should be off by default. Maybe I'm wrong, but do most people really want 20 emails a day when someone quote's them, or posts in a thread they posted in? Also, auto watching threads should be off by default. Just too much notification spam.

This forum is going to allow signatures? Good lord! One of the best things about the old forum was it had no signatures. I hope you will at least put a character limit and not allow any embedded images or videos, if there must be signatures.

Email notifications would be nice to have off by default. I used the site options to turn off email notifications for all the stuff I could find, but I was still getting some, so I used an option in the emails to opt out of any more emails.

As far as signatures go, you can set an option under Preferences to hide everybody's signature.

As far as the forbidden subject goes, it's irrelevant in 2020 for any reason other than to dredge up old wounds and cause strife, so I applaud forbidding it.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Email notifications would be nice to have off by default. I used the site options to turn off email notifications for all the stuff I could find, but I was still getting some, so I used an option in the emails to opt out of any more emails.

As far as signatures go, you can set an option under Preferences to hide everybody's signature.

As far as the forbidden subject goes, it's irrelevant in 2020 for any reason other than to dredge up old wounds and cause strife, so I applaud forbidding it.

Yes. We want to be as far away from GG and anything about that as we can. A whole new team is working on Escapist, and I've spent my entire time since becoming EIC working to build the platform around positivity and being welcoming to everyone.

We'll even have some updates on our general work flow and branding soon to reflect that.

It's been working very well, even on YouTube through my community posts there, there's a lot of positive energy. It's been surprising, but yea, no plans to retread that stuff, no plans to give it any legitimacy...none of that.

I'm digging into how to turn off email notifications by default, but for pure traffic (business) reasons, we're more than likely going to leave it on and leave it up to users to decide to turn it off or not.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Yes. We want to be as far away from GG and anything about that as we can. A whole new team is working on Escapist, and I've spent my entire time since becoming EIC working to build the platform around positivity and being welcoming to everyone.

We'll even have some updates on our general work flow and branding soon to reflect that.

It's been working very well, even on YouTube through my community posts there, there's a lot of positive energy. It's been surprising, but yea, no plans to retread that stuff, no plans to give it any legitimacy...none of that.

I'm digging into how to turn off email notifications by default, but for pure traffic (business) reasons, we're more than likely going to leave it on and leave it up to users to decide to turn it off or not.

I don't actually want to talk about GG, I just think it's weird to have it under zero tolerance offenses. Also, did you just apply a word filter to it? Because:

ZERO TOLERANCE OFFENSES
This section of the Code of Conduct includes special circumstances that overrule any other type of warning and result in immediate removal of your posting privileges. Note: These circumstances cannot be appealed and will not expire.


*********
That topic is not allowed here.

:P

 

[Nick Calandra]

I don't actually want to talk about GG, I just think it's weird to have it under zero tolerance offenses. Also, did you just apply a word filter to it? Because:
:P

Ha, didn't think about that. Fixed it.

It'll remain a zero tolerance offense, but we'll look at each case individually obviously.

--

While it wasn't turned on for people currently registered, new users will have the option now to set email preferences when they register, so that's been solved.

 

[Houseman]

@Nick Calandra Regarding the rules, you seem to be inheriting a lot of them from the old administration. Do you actually agree with all of them, or is it just a kind of "Well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it" sort of thing?

I know a lot of people, myself included, had and continue to have disagreements with some of these rules. A lot of people view Escapist as too strict, to the point where it stifles communication instead of allowing it to flourish.

Would you be open to taking feedback on these rules?

If you'd rather be focused on tech first, that's understandable. But will there ever be a proper time and/or place to give feedback on the rules?

 

[Nick Calandra]

@Nick Calandra Regarding the rules, you seem to be inheriting a lot of them from the old administration. Do you actually agree with all of them, or is it just a kind of "Well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it" sort of thing?

I know a lot of people, myself included, had and continue to have disagreements with some of these rules. A lot of people view Escapist as too strict, to the point where it stifles communication instead of allowing it to flourish.

Would you be open to taking feedback on these rules?

If you'd rather be focused on tech first, that's understandable. But will there ever be a proper time and/or place to give feedback on the rules?

Tech first.

I'm not as strict as you probably think. We're pretty lenient on the website in allowing discussion, along as it remains civil and arguments don't become personal. Plus all the usual stuff like racism and all that.

Let's put it this way. I'm the opposite of how Kyle Gaddo was managing the forums when V2 was launched.