Mod Browsing Overhaul Discussion

[Isguros]

16 minutes ago, Iluviel said:

We're working on improving this by making the search look at keywords in the title, summary and description. Historically, search only ever looked at title. The 'Description contains...' field will be more robust and look at all keywords on a mod, becoming a 'Keywords' filter.

This will be coming soon.

Soo... until then you can't search by name. Gotcha.

[zloybelka]

7 hours ago, CharlieBarber98 said:

Not just for general clarity, but accessibility too —many people use this site, and accommodating people with poor eyesight is a good thing. 

As a person with bad eye sight I can tell you, the new layout is not as accessible for me now. As we've discovered last year on user profiles beta, redesigned color palette is only more accessible for people whose eye condition requires high contrast theme and less accessible for people with other eyesight conditions.

[Iluviel]

6 minutes ago, Isguros said:

Soo... until then you can't search by name. Gotcha.

Until we do get that change shipped, you can search by mod title using the search: 

Further filtering your results by title is missing until then, yes. Please, bear with us as we continue to make further improvements, it won't be long.

[JobiWanUK]

Have to say, removing features and hoping to bring them back, sometime, maybe, is a pretty poor way to do things. An 'improvement' should do everything it did before, but better than before. Not worse than before, but 'bear with us while we bring back stuff we never should have removed in the first place'.

I'm disappointed with the changes themselves, but even more so in the general attitude from Nexus in response to mostly constructive criticism.

[Isguros]

Usually sites would replace the features they removed during the beta.

What's that proverb again? 'Measure twice, cut once'? Not 'Cut everything, mehh'.

[supremo7]

is the staff here even aware that one of the premium features for paying customers was custom date range? which you took away with the new design.

if you truly want to see how people feel about the new UI, do a poll on games hompage for registered users. 

[Overlord299]

WTF? You removed the option to search within date margins? That's a feature I actually use a lot. Sometimes I stop playing a game for a while and I want to check within a specific time frame for new mods, not just broad categories like "last year" or "last month". Just another change of many that is going to keep turning users against what used to be a great modding site. Also, just an FYI, dismissing any criticism as being "in bad faith" or "from a vocal minority" is not a great way to run a business!!! It seems like the only reason Nexus isn't hemorrhaging users is that it has a complete monopoly on modding, no alternatives exist that have even half the amount of staff, games, and maintenance. I've been a user for 10 years, I owe a great deal of gratitude to these guys, but one thing I don't owe them at this point is respect.

[Iluviel]

2 minutes ago, JobiWanUK said:

Have to say, removing features and hoping to bring them back, sometime, maybe, is a pretty poor way to do things. An 'improvement' should do everything it did before, but better than before. Not worse than before, but 'bear with us while we bring back stuff we never should have removed in the first place'.

I'm disappointed with the changes themselves, but even more so in the general attitude from Nexus in response to mostly constructive criticism.

Sorry if my responses aren't quite up to scratch.

The rationale for most of these changes is that we needed to move our frontend code into a design system that was easy to develop. The "old" UI was not that and now we're at the stage where further changes can be made with relative ease.

I certainly am taking an approach of not letting "perfect" be the enemy of good. Yes, we're still working on adding/moving things like date range selectors, keyword filters and tracked content updates. No, we're not willing to let adding those slow down our development.

Will those things come back sometime, maybe? I'll do you one better and say definitely and in the coming weeks.

[JobiWanUK]

Just to add, another way of viewing a 'vocal minority' in a more positive light, rather than an excuse to dismiss their opinions out of hand, is 'those passionate enough to speak up about something'. I'm sure the majority either don't care or can't be bothered because they will quite likely just get fobbed off anyway.

 

[Iluviel]

10 minutes ago, Overlord299 said:

WTF? You removed the option to search within date margins? That's a feature I actually use a lot. Sometimes I stop playing a game for a while and I want to check within a specific time frame for new mods, not just broad categories like "last year" or "last month". Just another change of many that is going to keep turning users against what used to be a great modding site. Also, just an FYI, dismissing any criticism as being "in bad faith" or "from a vocal minority" is not a great way to run a business!!! It seems like the only reason Nexus isn't hemorrhaging users is that it has a complete monopoly on modding, no alternatives exist that have even half the amount of staff, games, and maintenance. I've been a user for 10 years, I owe a great deal of gratitude to these guys, but one thing I don't owe them at this point is respect.

You'll be glad to hear then, that the date range filter is still in development and is being added to the new pages. My previous post explains our rationale.

There's no need to be offended by this, but it is a factual statement that a minute percentage of the site's users are in this thread. I'd hope that my replies to many users over the past day shows that we're not dismissing anything and are engaging in constructive conversation.

3 minutes ago, JobiWanUK said:

Just to add, another way of viewing a 'vocal minority' in a more positive light, rather than an excuse to dismiss their opinions out of hand, is 'those passionate enough to speak up about something'. I'm sure the majority either don't care or can't be bothered because they will quite likely just get fobbed off anyway.

 

Well put. I do hope that it is not felt that we're not dismissing you. We are trying very openly to engage with you right now. I believe what I'm trying to convey is that, although there are a small number of users in this thread giving us passionate feedback, there are millions of users on the site who are not and seemingly have no issue. Your feedback is doubtlessly going to improve their experience as we take it on board and make further changes.