Constructive Criticism

Nice bump!

I hope that the staff are able to sort through the hundreds of comments regarding the new layout and they are able to separate the legitimate concerns and complaints from the incredible amount of bitching. I think there are things about the new site that need to be fixed and I hope that the developers take some of the member comments to heart but at the same time I don't think they should suffer the kind of venom some people have directed at them.

I'm sorry if my comments were overbearing, I don't think they were in comparison to others I saw however, what I wrote was a response to the incredible change done to the design. I like the new features and all but the design is too light in color. It's much brighter then before and harder to read. Overall, I'm not a big fan of the design period however, if the coloring was given a darker hue, I would be more then satisfied.

just got my 'license to oogle' in the mail today! hooray me.

Thank you Tuffy! I have to say that for the most part many of the comments have been supportive, constructive, and well thought out. Others however were just..ewwww.

Here are the comments from when the boards were completely, and I mean COMPLETELY, revamped. We lost our post counts (and some people like Lesa were all the way over 1,000 posts!! :eek, we lost our member numbers, we even lost our 'member since' dates, things were just different!! Sound familiar?

For those of you who actually take the time to read this you will also see other very similar posts about the site running slower than normal etc. Also look at how the complaints were made though. Nothing hysterical, rude, belligerent or ugly.

Gleaned from the wayback machine

How do some members react these days??

Hey, some people STILL like to bitch.

Fuck 'em.

hey, you still = Awesome.

I like it, but I can't seem to figure out the "browse girls" thing... I guess I won't go into my "ah! how does this work?" thing here, but I'm still impressed by all the computer know-how required to design the new site. so I clap.

i think some of the rudeness and sarcasm is because of the fact that i find some of the design decisions on the new site to be simply unbelieveably... well stupid to put it lightly.

the entire place seems to be designed around the idea of "we're putting it in because we can", if it sparkles, shines, seems pretty, fancy, new tech it's here.
at the same time it seems like every decision where functionality and userfriendlyness comes up against design, design wins out.

overnight this site went from a paradigm of excellent webdesign to a rather extreme warning of over embellishing things over actual function.
because really, in my opinion the redesign is bad, very bad. it's pretty well hidden because it has a sugarcoating a mile thick.
in the end it's a website that kills it's own functionality with scores of bad decisions, it useable, but not enjoyable to use.

the real kicker here for me is how obvious it is, it's right in your face if you give it a second worth of thought but somehow no one stopped it and someone obviously thought it was a good idea.

I don't see how the obviousness of design mistakes justifies rudeness.

well we seem to be disaggreeing pretty badly at any rate, the topic list in the boards for example is a very nice example of what i think is a terrible decision.

in my opinion when you are reading a thread you don't need the topic list since you allready found a topic you want to read so you're past the point where you need a topic list.
at the same time it does reduce your screenwidth by about a third which i think is a pretty terrible result for something intended to be an improvement.
so while at first glance it seems like "oh neat, i can see my topics all the time now" it's really more of a 33% screen width price you pay for something fairly unnecesary.

another example is the menu at the top, the big items in the top row are nearly all high profile sections of the site that a regular user would probably visit less often than most of the smaller items in the bottom row. (ie. i go to the boards and groups more than say the interview page)
a person naturally scans the screen left to right, top to bottom, it's a small thing but it's still a step back from putting them all in the same row like the previous site.

it happens in a lot of places really, i can only see this many of my friends, only this many groups, this many group threads etc. at any given time without anything of real value given in return.
it's a lot of individually small complaints that all stack up to give me a very negative image of the end result.

in my opinion a website is a means of spreading information and aiding communication, sometimes for the purpose of entertainment like here.
i'm all in favour of making this look good but in the end the presentation is not supposed to reduce the actual function of the website, sure some consessions can be made but in this case it seems to push functionality to the back nearly everytime.

the boards are more narrow, lists of items are shortened and spread over more pages, prime screen realestate is wasted on graphics or items that are not all that necesary in that particular situation, usefull and oft used links such as "edit" are condensed into tiny icons that i actually have to focus on to click accurately. (i can't even tell what the edit and link icons are supposed to depict allthough considering the circumstances i'd have to guess a pencil and a pair of chainlinks)
in general the site is taking more clicks and more effort to use and navigate.

i realise i'm pretty vocal in my opinion of this and i also realise that a lot of people are far less concerned with the question of when things like layout and design interfere with what could be better functionality.
but considering i always thougth the previous site did a very good job of looking sharp while being quick and easy to navigate and use, i feel this one is a huge step back in a lot of area's.

Good disection of issues. I would like to add that I find the layout woefully inefficient. A webpage should load fast. When navigating the site only the content should change or reload not the entire page and graphics. Especially when the graphics are the same through-out the site. (backgrounds, containers, etc...)
Also there is now an area the says "Friends Blogs" and "Friends Pic". Technically speaking, these people are not "friends". I never sent them a friendship request nor was I ever sent a friendship request.
I'm not saying that I would like to be their friend but technically speaking....

A lot of work went into this redesign but really feel they missed the mark.

well in all fairness i've been considering to leave for a while now, i'm just undecisive as usual, the new design isn't helping but it's not the main reason.
when i say information and communication i mean it in a really broad sense, i come here to retrieve and enjoy photographs and interact with other people.

as for contradicting myself i think you're nitpicking a bit there, yeah i did say i'm in favour of more space and width but that doesn't equal to being in favour of teeny tiny icons.
like i said, i value functionality a lot, and i feel that in this instance for example a neat "edit" link would be easier and more convenient than a tiny button with a graphic i can't even recognize enough to associate with it's function.
things can be too condensed in some area's and not big enough in others, it's not necesarily a contradiction just dependant on the situation.

the topic list isn't exactly 33% of the content area of the site but it is close and it's a lot more than a quarter, which in my opinion is far more than it should take. (see screenie attachment)
browsing the topic list and reading/replying to threads are two different things, right now they are interfering with each other.
i'd prefer the extra space both for reading and posting images, i am aware that the attachment function resizes (or will resize in the future, haven't tested it yet) images, but i can do that myself. (yes some users or even most users can't)
point is, if i wanted small narrow pictures i'd have posted small narrow pictures, for the purposes of reading and viewing i'd say bigger is better and a reduction in width is not an improvement to the experience.

at any rate it's not my intention to start arguments, me leaving the site is not a silly threat as a direct result of the redesign and no i don't actually think they did this overnight without any consideration. (all the negativity around is rather infectious, not to mention that it's hard to articulate and express very well in a foreign language so sometimes you tend to lean towards the blunt side of things)

in fact my first impression of this site when going through the beta was something along the lines of "wow that's a really impressive, intricate, coherrent design for something with some many different parts making up the whole".
the problem was my second impression which was closer to "oh dear, i'm going to have to use this longterm, rather than just look at it."

even now rather than the site growing on me, it feels like i'm coping with it's shortcomings and just dealing with it, which works but isn't really what it's meant to do.

file meant for above, i just dragged a rectangle over the topiclist and duplicated it, the total width of the side is about three times the topiclist with a little extra.
so it's not exactly 33% but it's well over a quarter which is a lot of, in my opinion, wasted space.

If you dont like the site then leave and stop pestering people who work hard at something the rest of us enjoy. Just because you pay for something doesnt mean you get to tear people apart.

This reminds me of my x mother in law who would always complain and tell me "the squeaky wheel gets oiled", one day I told her smart people throw the sqeaky wheel the fuck out and get a new one.

If everytwhere else is so much better than this site then go there.

how about no ads please?

everything else is fine except for the ads on my "home" page. i see enough advertising as it is.

If advertising has to be here ... well fine then, but slap it on the front page and not on my "home" page please. It's kind of annoying and harshes up the page.

I do like the other improvemnets though, very impressive.

well all my comments are in the criticism and "hate" threads, while not all of it is perfectly worded it is relevant.
these people are all professionals, if i spend x amount wads of money on a redesign, or if i'm the one building it i'd love to have some commentary.

besides i'm not being pointlessly rude, i'm being vocal about what i think are serious shortcomings.

what happened to the banners in the Army section? those were awesome.

I don't dislike the redesign but it does need some fine tuning. Case in point, is it possible to make the box where you're looking through a model's pics so the arrow button you use to browse the pics doesn't move around when the pic changes shape?