What's wrong with the new forum design.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

You are not listening because you are dealing with something you do not understand.

I understand it very well. You believe ideal, completely intuitive & self-obvious design solutions, plus simple & direct documentation, are achievable & would eliminate the need for the "sludge" you see as clogging this user-driven support system.

I believe that while that is a worthy goal, it isn't at all realistic. There is no such thing as that kind of "one size fits all" solution in the real world. What is obvious or intuitive depends in large part on past experience & education -- what you might call comfortable ruts. Documentation, no matter how clearly written, won't do much good if people don't want to read it. Many do not, or don't have time for it.

You seem to be in that category, at least for ASC. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as you recognize it for what it is & are willing to work within the limitations it puts on the use of the site.

I'm not thrilled with the new design either. Like everybody else I have my comfortable ruts too. But I recognize that this is a work in progress, hopefully one that will be shaped by the needs of a very diverse group of real world users into something better than the last one. Accordingly, I don't just judge it by my immediate needs alone. I think you started off doing something like that but got sidetracked by the lure of an impossible ideal.

In short, we get it. The ideal solution would be great, but it isn't a practical one.

RC-R wrote: In short, we get it. The ideal solution would be great, but it isn't a practical one.

Not only not practical, but no amount of complaining remonstrating (we've all been doing that since day one) will bring back the previous "intuitive," incarnation of the forum. And, we've been "getting it" right along. None of what Peter is saying is news.

Almost all of us, except a few of the more adventurous, aren't happy campers now. I will learn as much as I need to about using all the widgets and other bling bling to get by and probably leave the rest of it alone. I just don't have all that much patience for it.

I think Tuttle's attitude is probably admirable and I even wish I had more of his enthusiasm for learning how to use the new design. But when I'm here, I just want to get busy reading and answering, not experimenting -- at least not all that much. And, I haven't eaten a hamburger in over twenty five years.

WZZZ wrote:

I keep hearing Apple had no option but to use this Jive abmonination. But hard to believe that Apple, with all its heft, couldn't have forced Jive to come up with something better or ordered up something custom made from another developer or even from its own people.

Jive SBS is largely comprised of well regarded & actively supported open source technologies. I'm not sure which version the site runs on (the product documentation page lists three possible current versions), but any of them is likely to be much more mature & well developed than anything Apple could start up on its own or order from another developer.

The old "don't use version one of anything" rule applies here, probably a lot more so than it would for end users.

Thanks. I missed that less than useful option. Might as well not have it: e.g., kernel panic doesn't fit any of those criteria and I have no idea what the difference between a community, project, or group might be about.

WZZZ wrote:

Almost all of us, except a few of the more adventurous, aren't happy campers now. I will learn as much as I need to about using all the widgets and other bling bling to get by and probably leave the rest of it alone. I just don't have all that much patience for it.

I'm pretty much another unhappy camper, but I do want to learn about what the new design offers that I might find useful. However, I'm in no rush to do that, mostly because things are still changing & it's frustrating to have to unlearn something that no longer applies.

Of what I have learned so far, maybe 20% is from the site-supplied documentation, 30% from personal experimentation, & the rest is from other users. I think that is a pretty good ratio, quite fitting for a user support site. 😉

baltwo wrote:

Thanks. I missed that less than useful option.

Like anything else, it isn't useful until you learn how to use it. I doubt any of use were born knowing how to do much. We mostly learn by trial & error, by observation, & by being taught by those who have already done that.

This isn't that much different. For sure, it could be a lot more intuitive, but now that you know how it works, nothing is stopping you from using it as suggested.

Of all what Peter has said, the one most useful thing that stands out is the suggestion for the hosts to have a comprehensive FAQ. Maybe, much of this information is already elsewhere. But assembled in one easily accessible FAQ and, if done right, this could be very helpful.

It could be broken down into two parts: one for those asking questions, the other meant especially for those, like most of us reading this thread, who are answering questions -- including a clear message, for the benefit mostly of newcomers, to try to be as sure as possible of the correctness and appropriateness of their answers.

For some reason, the new design seems to be inviting in a lot more new people who are just blowing off superficial, irresponsible answers without any regard for consequences. They should be made to realize that what they say can have a real and, possibly negative, effect on others.

There was already some bad advice before, but I'm seeing many fewer of these posts being caught than before. I hate to think that people will come here and get more ****** up because of it.

Doesn't help at all. kernel panic in either results in the same listing, always popping up as relevant and no way to initially set as date. Go to http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search&locale=en_US&q= and see how it could be useful or incorporated. Still no differentiation among search terms: community, project, or group. BTW, intuition has nothing to do with this, it's simply learning.

I think what is delaying the creation of a comprehensive FAQ is that the site is still changing & not everything is even online yet. For example, the Managing email subscriptions tutorial shows summary preferences that don't yet exist.

I know everybody wants everything fixed & operational yesterday (& so do I) but realistically that isn't going to happen, at least if we don't want the whole thing to spend more time crashing than up & running.

baltwo wrote:

Go to http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search&locale=en_US&q= and see how it could be useful or incorporated.

Not a good comparison because the Apple Support database is tiny compared to the AD/ASC message one (I figure from message ID numbers it contains well over 14 million accessible messages & is growing at more than a thousand a day) & the KBase is written by employees using consistent technical language.

It's like saying what works for searching a neighborhood should scale up to work just as well for searching a state.

I'm going to add one thing: reply and read counters. They were very useful to quickly detect problems in new products or in the products I was interested to buy. A thread with hundreds or thousands of post was the most trustworthy track of a real bug.

(I suspect Apple is conscious of it and maybe is the reason they has made them disappear…)

Trinity wrote:

I'm going to add one thing: reply and read counters. They were very useful to quickly detect problems in new products or in the products I was interested to buy. A thread with hundreds or thousands of post was the most trustworthy track of a real bug.

(I suspect Apple is conscious of it and maybe is the reason they has made them disappear…)

They are still present -

Not counting this post, this thread has 28 replies and 910 views (or reads).

Trinity wrote:

I'm going to add one thing: reply and read counters. They were very useful to quickly detect problems in new products or in the products I was interested to buy.

The counters are also at the top of each discussion page:

But they never were that great an indicator of anything besides interest in a discussion. Any provocative title, whether accurate or not, will generate lots of page views & usually lots of replies debating the validity of what it claims. If you went by these counters alone, every product Apple has released is deeply flawed, will destroy your equipment, & maybe kill your dog, too! 😝