Worth waiting for 10 years for someone to actually listen to the membership, respond to them and not have it filtered :thumbsup:
A big part of what Community (my team) does is sifting the noise to signal ratio in a thread like this. 15 pages of feedback, dozens of instant messages and a big pile of conversations later, we have what is in essence the boiled down, concentrated feedback of the userbase. I'll be forwarding this along to our development team for prioritization and assessment on each item.
Bear in mind, while every piece of feedback was listened to, not all made the cut to the final list. And, not every item listed here may come to fruition within the fullness of time. This is a tentative wishlist, culled from your directed feedback and input.
Technical:
Add more emoticons
Update vBulletin theme, bring in line with Anandtech logos and colors
Provide alternative vBulletin themes (low light, high contrast, etc).
Address formatting and alignment issues to make forum viewing more user-friendly
o Left-side navigation should scroll with the page
Server Issues: Reduce or eliminate scheduled downtime (Underway)
Introduce custom titles & flair
Add flair/icons for threads based on type or prefix to make at-a-glance viewing easier.
Tie article commentary to forum threads (new articles posted should produce a new thread as comments in the forum) instead of standalone.
Update Tapatalk plugin, removal of Tapatalk popup when accessing mobile forums.
Allow embedded videos (YouTube). May be an administrative option.
Update Search functionality
Update/migrate vBulletin to the latest version (3 or 4, not 5)
Infrastructural/Policy:
Restructure community titles, including Administrator, Moderator.
Update Moderator Abuse Report process to include review and appeals using a neutral third-party arbiter.
Add new private subforum for users with Lifer rank or higher
Add new Android section
Merge/Eliminate categories with low traffic, include merging miscellaneous categories back into Off-Topic. (Note: Retain Distributed Computing)
Increase prominence of Rules of Conduct across the forum as stickies/announcements
Codify Politics & News rules
Will let you guys know where these items go and chime in with additional information as we get updates.
-JP
Please keep the garage in its own section.
I think the garage and home and garden could be combined. It seems like small engine is dominant in home and garden at times, and to me I encompass anything garage/home and garden together most times.
That said, I think we should have a review thread after implementing some of the changes. There's a saying, "careful what you wish for", and it may be that some of our ideas don't work as well as we hoped. It would be nice to be able to discuss the changes, pros and cons, and any potential tweaks that may improve the new implementation/s.
I think the garage and home and garden could be combined. It seems like small engine is dominant in home and garden at times, and to me I encompass anything garage/home and garden together most times.
I also ask for the OP of a thread to be differentiated. Maybe a darker post box or something. It would make it easier to read.
One of the nice things about ATOT is you never know what you'll find there. Except that it won't be pron and it won't be nasty politics. I like that. But now you won't find health & fitness discussion. Or car discussion. Or home & garden discussion...
What I'm wondering is if it's possible to make a "forum" in vBulletin, which you can't post to, but which shows the posts from all sub-forums? For example, look here. That forum has lots of subforums. You can't post to that forum, but you can post to any sub-forum, and the post will appear in the main forum. Edit: But, of course, that's not a vBulletin site.
If that's possible, I'd like Off Topic to be a main forum, that you can't post directly to, and have Health & Fitness, The Garage, Home & Garden, and almost everything else (edit: everything else social, that is) be sub-forums that you can post to. Obviously there should also be a catch-all for anything else - it's just that if the parent is "Off Topic" I don't know what to call the catch-all forum.
As for what not to put in this "Off Topic parent" forum, I would exclude Politics & News - they have different moderation requirements and can be nastier. Maybe Discussion Club as well, but I'm not sure. I would also exclude Love & Relationships. As users who aren't logged in can't see posts in L&R, they shouldn't see the posts listed or blank spaces for them in "Off Topic parent".
An update to my post:
- This looks like a plausible mechanism to implement what I'm requesting in the post I linked to above. (But I really don't know since I can't see the code.)
- This could apply to lots of other sections, to fix what [post=37007401]Dullard wants fixed[/post] without actually eliminating the subforums.
I really, really like this idea, down to the granular level of leaving P&N and L&R out of what would look like the OT of old that so many of us miss. :thumbsup:
Thought about this earlier and I think it might work. Not sure about H&F as they seem to be their own subcommunity in some ways so not sure if all those articles will still work out as they do now if they have to so into the OT subforum. Yet those same discussions may now get OTers who never go into the H&F subforum so there are might be various possibilities to consider on this problem.
I wish to highlight this suggestion once again. If feasible to do here, I think it could be the salvation of OT.
Incidentally, I just reviewed your claim. It's false. http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2358643 -Admin DrPizza
What exactly would you like to see?can we make the "AnandTech Bench" more organized ?
Hello Sir ,What exactly would you like to see?