ch-ch-ch-changes

i keep reading on here "SG changed", "SG is so different", etc.
i'm new here, what the hell changed? what was it like before?

There were puppies and everything smelled like roses.

Oh, this'll be good.

It looked like this:

http://suicidegirls.com/technology/


The end.

And everyone spoke in rhymes

aw, that brought a tear to my eye.........

I used to post on the boards.

Then, suddenly, everything got.... better...

I loved it!

i know this isn't the super old old or whatever, but i took this screenshot, apparently, because i refreshed the page and it turned all cockamamie on me:

i agree! i wanna see the real REAL old site

yeah, i remember someone posting a screen shot of the super-olde site, maybe it was FreakPirate?

the contrast between then and now is mindblowing.......damn, which board was that posted on??

ps.......yeah, i'm a relative newbie but let me have my nostalgia damn it!!

This appears to be the first incarnation


2.0

Here's a (kind of broken) screenshot from 2002, thanks to the Wayback Machine

^^Holy shit! Remind me never to bitch about SG 4.0 again.

wow. you actual said "cockamamie."
i love you.
marry me?

I only vaguely remember 2.0. I wasn't a member yet, but I played around on it. I think it was preferable to 4.0. By the time I joined 3.0 has been released. I found it extremely user friendly. If my first encounter with SG had been 4.0 I doubt I would have joined.

Holy fuck that's old! That was my first newswire article.

ahhhhhhh, thank you very much the first one is before my time, but 2.0 is the one for me

turn and face the strain

Wow. This really made me laugh. Nice work Idjiit. You're a clever guy .

so, why all the resistance to 4.0? is it too slick looking? personally i think it looks a thousand times better than those earlier screen shots posted. there's so much more texture and design to the site now.

it's not so much the looks it's the functionality. Some things have been much harder to do and some features such as bookmarking interesting threads have been removed altogether.

Also the introduction of some pretty pointless flash effects such as the logo haven't gone down to well.

It comes down to people not liking/fearing change, but also the SG seemingly rushing ahead with releasing an incomplete/buggy build of v4.0. Saying that they are fixing things and responding to changes, so eventually everything will hopefully be fine.

Every time the site has changed format, there have been several months of people complaining that it is too feature-heavy, too hard to use, they can't find anything, too flashy, too newfangled, too different.

Every time the site has changed format, staff has listened for complaints about true usability problems and corrected them.

Every time the site has changed format, unexpected bugs have popped up due to the multitude of browsers, operating systems, and use habits of users, and every time, staff has worked to fix the bugs.

Every time the site has changed format, many people loudly threaten to cancel their accounts but usually end up staying. A tiny minority of people scream and scream incessantly about every tiny little thing they don't like or can't figure out and accuse the staff of ignoring bugs or not testing enough before rollout, while the vast silent majority of people go ahead and learn how to use the new features without comment and wait patiently for staff to fix the problems that come up on a site with as many users as this one.

Every time the site has change format, the membership has increased.

*shrug*

Next step, IPO.