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[HadToRegister]

Are there settings to reduce the default fonts for the forum, they are very very large, even "TheVampireDante's" name gets messed up when they post and now it shows in the Author column as:

TheVampireDan
te

 

[Eolhin]

9 hours ago, Demorphic said:

It would be good to understand how you were using friends as a feature. Are you using this to track content from other authors etc? Would it be redundant with a more effective notification centre?

I used Friends to keep a list of...  *shock and amazement*  Friends, acquaintances, and collaboration contacts on Nexus who were NOT necessarily mod authors I was following, but were rather people I was likely to want to look up, message, or otherwise contact or be associated with in the future, but I did NOT want to be notified every time they posted anything.

The Friends list, the Kudos, and the post counts all served both a social purpose, and a more practical is-this-someone-who's-opinion-I-should-give-any-weight-to purpose, as well as determining if they had been around and involved in mods long enough to perhaps know what they were talking about.  Those three systems also gave a feeling of accomplishment and being well established in the community.  Gaining respect, and knowing who to give respect to.  Yeah, we managed to keep Kudos, but it was the combination of those three different systems that filled that set of rolls.

 

On a related note, I see that while the post count has been removed on the mods side, there is still one on the forums side...  Only before the separation, I had a post count well into the 6-thousands (unfortunately, I did not get a recent screenshot before it was removed, but it was over 6K as of two years ago, the last screenshot I can find showing it).  Those were almost all posts that also existed on the mod Forums side, and were often in response to questions posted on the forums side that were also reflected on the mods side.  Now it only shows some ridiculously small post count on the Forums side that in no way accurately reflects my community engagement.  Indeed, it is more of an insult.  If you (not you personally, rather whoever is making these decisions) are taking away the post count from the mods side, then why did you leave it there on the forums side, but only count posts made using the forum software?  This entirely ignores the fact that up until now, the two systems were intrinsically linked, and so any assessing of community engagement was also intrinsically linked.  The very least you could do is give us back our ACTUAL post counts for the whole site on the Forum side, though clearly I would prefer to have the count back on the mods side as well.

I don't know what the badges that have been popping up are based on (other than the obvious, like been here a year when the person has actually been here for 15 years, etc.), but they do not seem to be taking into account things like the previous post count.  Not knowing what the badges are based on, I can't assign them any merit, and so they have no usefulness for me.  It feels more like Steam achievements, which are entirely dependent on the game, and can get horribly spamy and meaningless.  I hope someone wasn't trying to copy those.

 

I mentioned several pages back not getting notification/indication on the mod side when we receive a PM, which, as far as I know, is supposed to be the site-wide system for private messages (including permissions for various things, communications between authors, etc.).  There is also no easy way to check the mod-side profile of someone who messaged me for permission on something.  (Someone helped me figure out how to use a bot-search command in the Nexus Discord to get to the profile... but that is REDICULOUS!)

Sorry for the wall of text, cumulative frustration.

[Guest deleted34304850]

6 hours ago, Eolhin said:

I used Friends to keep a list of...  *shock and amazement*  Friends, acquaintances, and collaboration contacts on Nexus who were NOT necessarily mod authors I was following, but were rather people I was likely to want to look up, message, or otherwise contact or be associated with in the future, but I did NOT want to be notified every time they posted anything.

The Friends list, the Kudos, and the post counts all served both a social purpose, and a more practical is-this-someone-who's-opinion-I-should-give-any-weight-to purpose, as well as determining if they had been around and involved in mods long enough to perhaps know what they were talking about.  Those three systems also gave a feeling of accomplishment and being well established in the community.  Gaining respect, and knowing who to give respect to.  Yeah, we managed to keep Kudos, but it was the combination of those three different systems that filled that set of rolls.

 

On a related note, I see that while the post count has been removed on the mods side, there is still one on the forums side...  Only before the separation, I had a post count well into the 6-thousands (unfortunately, I did not get a recent screenshot before it was removed, but it was over 6K as of two years ago, the last screenshot I can find showing it).  Those were almost all posts that also existed on the mod Forums side, and were often in response to questions posted on the forums side that were also reflected on the mods side.  Now it only shows some ridiculously small post count on the Forums side that in no way accurately reflects my community engagement.  Indeed, it is more of an insult.  If you (not you personally, rather whoever is making these decisions) are taking away the post count from the mods side, then why did you leave it there on the forums side, but only count posts made using the forum software?  This entirely ignores the fact that up until now, the two systems were intrinsically linked, and so any assessing of community engagement was also intrinsically linked.  The very least you could do is give us back our ACTUAL post counts for the whole site on the Forum side, though clearly I would prefer to have the count back on the mods side as well.

I don't know what the badges that have been popping up are based on (other than the obvious, like been here a year when the person has actually been here for 15 years, etc.), but they do not seem to be taking into account things like the previous post count.  Not knowing what the badges are based on, I can't assign them any merit, and so they have no usefulness for me.  It feels more like Steam achievements, which are entirely dependent on the game, and can get horribly spamy and meaningless.  I hope someone wasn't trying to copy those.

 

I mentioned several pages back not getting notification/indication on the mod side when we receive a PM, which, as far as I know, is supposed to be the site-wide system for private messages (including permissions for various things, communications between authors, etc.).  There is also no easy way to check the mod-side profile of someone who messaged me for permission on something.  (Someone helped me figure out how to use a bot-search command in the Nexus Discord to get to the profile... but that is REDICULOUS!)

Sorry for the wall of text, cumulative frustration.

the removal of friends, post count recalculation and other mod-side adjustments have come together to create a negative impact.

my only take from this is that the forum software only cares about the forum - so if you have done a lot of work on the mod side of the house, all of that has now vanished.

i am hoping that the data is still there, and could, possibly, be restored somehow, somewhen, but this whole forum reorganisation has kind of bombed because the combination of the theme, the lack of ability to search and other half-baked ideas like communities and activity feeds don't really work, and using the forums is quite an ordeal and not at all intuitive.

i'm not saying regress back to how it was a week ago but i am saying that when you make any update that has wide-ranging ramifications you give people what they have already - you don't remove tons and tons of functionality in one hit - that's really not a good plan regardless of how well the upgrade was managed.

all these mod-side feature removals were not documented and users were not made aware. this is a huge and fundamental flaw in the process.

there's a lot of damage done here, and i'm really not sure what the goal was. in the blurb around this, it was stated that the forums would be the community hub, but massive chunks of what made the community have gone and aren't coming back.

Edited November 28, 2023 by 1ae0bfb8

[Zanderat]

Couldn't have said it any better myself.  Losing mod side post counts, friends list, etc. weren't well thought out.  I feel like the devs only looked at what they considered "practical" (as example the misguided  posts by devs missing the whole point of how the friends list was used by most people) not considering the social aspect at all. 

Today, as it stands, (IMO), the Nexus has lost more than it has gained (even I acknowledge the need for the forums to have needed updates).  To me, the bare boned acceptable fix would be to restore the friends list, ideally as it was.  Or at least migrate it as "followers" on both the forum and main site and to restore/sync post counts on the mod side, where most of us most are most active.

 

why does this say "hidden" not "spoiler"?

[LenaWolfBravil]

I would like to suggest to simplify naming of things. Call things what they are in plain English. For example, at the top of the page you have "+Create" button that opens a submenu with a single item "Topic". Given that this is a forum, why not replace the whole thing with a simple button named "Start a new topic". Wouldn't that be clearer?

Similarly, rather than use a vague and generic "activity", why not just say "posts", since this is the only type of activity you can have in a forum? Then instead of "activity streams" you would have "subscribed topics" for example? Or something like that?

Equally, I think there's a difference between "content" and "post". "Content" in my view would be a screenshot, a video or a mod, given the nature of this website. Not a comment in a topic. So when I see a button "find content", I expect to find actual media or mods posted by that user, not every comment they ever made. If I wanted to see their posts, I would expect a "find posts" button.

[Demorphic]

17 hours ago, LenaWolfBravil said:

Thanks.

Does this forum come with a manual? For people who cannot telepathically figure out that threads that I follow could be found under an "activity stream" under "activity" (whatever that may be).

There is also no Help button.

It's good feedback and I agree, this menu could be more intuitive. It would be good to get your thoughts on how it might be better structured.

[LenaWolfBravil]

30 minutes ago, Demorphic said:

It's good feedback and I agree, this menu could be more intuitive. It would be good to get your thoughts on how it might be better structured.

Thanks. See my post above about using simpler names for things. I think that alone would already improve things dramatically, even keeping the same structure as now. There is nothing wrong with the structure, it's just that the labels are not descriptive enough to someone who is not familiar with the "forum jargon". Like I had no idea that "posts" are now called "activity". (Sorry, that's not obvioius.)

EDIT: Looking at the menu under "Activity", I don't understand what is the difference between "Community Activity" and regular "Activity". Why do we have "Unread Content" in that menu and also "Unread Content" under "Activity Streams"? It seems like the same thing.

Edited November 28, 2023 by LenaWolfBravil
Added something.

[Zanderat]

FYI.  Robin has commented on the friends list issue.  I find his response disappointing, but not unexpected. 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/topic/13454073-friendlist/?do=findComment&comment=130357636

[LenaWolfBravil]

Another suggestion: could the banner at the top be made sticky, please? Like you have it on the mods side of things. By banner I mean the top line with notifications icons. Otherwise we keep scrolling (RSI alert!).

[showler]

Black Tree is far too small a company to be able to make their own customized forum software.  They have no choice but to use what is available for purchase/lease from a company like Invision Community.

They will likely work on making things better over time, but for now they need to get the basic functions working properly  and reliably.  Adding Themes or other customizations at this point would likely make things harder.

And the main thing to remember is that this was absolutely necessary.  The integration of the forums and the website was preventing either of those sides from being updated.  This was causing security concerns and performance concerns.

It's been a week since the new forums went live.  They're not going to catch up to twenty years of customization in a week.