There are so many things about the new format that I’m annoyed at… but that’s because I’m stubborn, and dammit, who rearranged the living room while I wasn’t looking?
But leave? No way. I love this place, even if it looks and acts different.
(Same applies to my marriage, come to think of it…)
Or hey, maybe this is just a REALLY SHITTY INTERFACE. I’m a 12 year Redditor, a 10 year Twitter user, been on Facebook for yonks, have been part of all kinds of different message board styles and fora all the way back to dialup BBS days and I’m saying loud and clear–this is the shittiest interface I’ve ever seen. Pagination is apparently a philosophical hill on which the creators of this klugey mess have elected to die upon so endless scroll to find that one last “me too!” post is baked right in and will NEVER change. Elmwood posted a comment from here circa some years ago in which people were asking, nay BEGGING for page breaks and were snottily told that they were just stupid and it’s not gonna happen. So, basically, the SDMB went from ONE cadre of stubborn, annoying, “we know better than YOU, peasant!” managers to TWO layers of just the same type of mindless naysayers. HOW FUN. So stop blaming the victims and just accept the fact that of all the possible solutions to the SDMB’s hosting and software issues, they picked the stupidest, most expensive option, the one that’s basically guaranteed to drive off the largest number of people.
I’ll stick with Giraffe, thanks. At least it doesn’t look like a cheap Chrome knockoff with endless scrolling and ourr 50K+ chat thread doesn’t lock itself because the software can’t handle over 10K replies. Wow, that’s such a great feature for a message board that would like to be popular, a built in limit to how much you can reply to a given topic, that’s sure to drive lots of traffic. Oh, and the dead basic phone style emoji blow ass too.
Blockquote that little three line “hamburger” thing
So THAT is what it is called!
Ignorance fought, thank you.
(I obviously haven’t mastered the QUOTE function yet)
Newness. There’s no analog to the “new posts” button, which served up a simple list of thread sorted by most recent post and didn’t require you to go to each forum separately to see what’s new. I’m just not going to go clicking into every forum individually after seeing that the stickies are the only thing that shows on the front page–that’s just fucking stupid. If I can’t scan down a list of new replies to see if a thread I’m interested in has something new to read in it I’m just not going to bother. Ain’t nobody got time enough to piddle around to winkle out that one little crumb of interesting post from all the twaddle surrounding it. This site is the internet version of a white noise generator.
Oh, and where’s the fucking edit function? Fuck up your post and apparently you’re stuck with it forever, just like ten years ago on the Dope. Yay, progress. Oh yeah, and reserving the asterisk for random ass formatting instead of allowing it to be its own character is fucking lazy too. Use [b] or [i] like normal message board formatting so a person can do *flips bird* without it looking so fucking stupid, it’s not code FFS.
It’s the pencil icon at the bottom right of your post.
Here, let me give you a few 502’s, 504’s, spinning circles, and a Valium with an aperitif of your choice. Embrace change, it’s different yes. Everyday is different for most of us.
@SmartAleq…no disrespect meant.
It also fades into invisibility when you don’t mouse over it, so I don’t blame people for not noticing it right away.
ETA: Having useful stuff disappear on you seems to be the cool thing in web development these days. I’ve noticed in things like Word or Outlook Web Application, scrollbars disappear until you hover over them. Drives me nuts.
I don’t like it at the moment but I’ll be fine once I get used to it in a week or so. I love the WYSIWYG thing on the right while you make a post.
Is this what you wanted?
https://boards.straightdope.com/latest
It is so incredibly SLOW… the rest of the internet is working fine for me this morning, but this computer isn’t the fastest, and even just logging in took multiple minutes of staring at the little circle going round and round. I’d probably eventually get used to the appearance and the differences in navigation, but at this point I’d rather have 502/504 errors than try to scroll through a long thread.
Blockquote
Nope. Whatever migration event happened was without my assistance.
I can live with it, just want my Member status back.
I won’t say I like the new board, but it’s hardly the end of the world. A couple of minor adjustments - choosing a Theme* that was better than the default, and using Straight Dope Message Board - Your direct line to thousands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet, plus a few total dipsticks. as my starting page - have already made the new board much more tolerable than I found it at first glance. I expect I’ll trip over some more things that will make the board more pleasant as I get used to operating in this environment, given how little I know about Discourse.
-*- I’m happy with Discourse-classic, but others have had good things to say about Material Design and Sam’s Simple, so try them for yourself.
Yes, your account was migrated without your assistance, but rather than creating a new password to go with it, you created a new username. It’s okay, it can be fixed. There are several posts explaining how to log in and create a new password.
If you are using a fullsized computer to read the board, I would also recommend learning some of the keyboard shortcuts. For example # is useful, and so is g n. Just press ? to see it.
I guess I never used that feature. On the main page the right column is a list of the threads with the newest comments.
StG
That’s what I appreciate. I was so sick of 50x screens, and errors, and double posts, and waiting half an hour until “Whoa, suddenly everything’s working, I’ll quick open a dozen threads and reply as quickly as I can befor… oh, damn, it’s down again.”
So even if the forum was pink and puce with Comic Sans, I’d just be glad it’s working.
Yes, the keyboard shortcuts are nice. Just so no one gets confused, you hit Shift-? to bring up the shortcut table. Lots of useful stuff in there.
I find the new setup to be aggressively ugly and way too convinced that I need tons of empty space. I’m using Vincent which I found to be the best of a bad lot but it still looks more concerned with looks over content. That said, it still looks better than Reddit so I guess I’ll learn to live with it.
Gotta admit that the biggest plus about leaving DOS behind was not having to memorize a buncha stinkin’ keyboard shortcuts to do stuff.
Hey, just take a breath and start over. Maybe get someone to help you get your “real” name back. I was struggling and frustrated but repetition has helped and I’m getting it (I think).
Give it a week and see how much things improve. I find tech staff goes more smoothly if I’m a little buzzed. Maybe try again after a few beers. 