So Is Everyone Cool with the New Forum Functionality Now?

Everytime in my life that an organization I engage with changes the human machine interface that I engage with, I am initially somewhat miffed and then over time I get to understand things, get used to it and it becomes normal. This has literally been the story of my life since I engaged with computers with DOS. I remember going from DOS to using a friends Macintosh and I kept wanting to go back to the stupid DOS prompt. Even with DOS I would get irrititated that I could not access registers like I could with Motorola 86000 assembly language programming.

Every times something changed, I would get pissed off at the organization that changed things on meā€¦after a decade dealing with computer transitions by the time NCSA Mosaic and then Netscape Navigator came along, I realized that the problem was not the tech, but my human need for familiarity and not having disruption in my life.

So fast forward around 30 years and Ryan and Eric ā€œdumpā€ the new architecture on us and I found myself dealing with the same familiar feelings on every transition ā€œwhere is my blackberry keyboard, I canā€™t type on touch screen type of feelingā€ AGAIN"

So now that we are a few weeks in and weā€™re figuring it all out, what do you all like.

Personally I canā€™t pinpoint what I like, but I am not missing anything in the old system. This is feeling pretty good now!!!

In another world, when I go from my Electric VW Golf to renting Teslas I kind of hate their interface (it feels like I am driving a tablet with a car attached versus driving a car that has electronics to help), but after 5 rentals, I want to buy a Tesla because I like their interface !!!

Any major functionality that you all ae longing for, or did the team at ST get us over the hump?

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The way in which it happened probably wasnā€™t the most optimal way but in terms of functionality and look/feel I donā€™t really have a problem.

I think the idea of splitting everything into many categories was (is) a mistake. Outside of the Triathlon forum the rest of the sport categories are getting 1-2 new topics per week. Seems mostly pointless.

The only other frustrating thing is that old old topics are being revived, but maybe this is the benefit of an improved search engine. Could probably lock anything that hasnā€™t had a reply in 2 years or something to stop this happening though. A lot of the information in those topics is pretty redundant now.

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Iā€™m getting used to it. Thereā€™s definitely some good things about the new platform.

A couple of things still bug me:

  • Quotes from older posts are broken, so reading back through old threads can get confusing, and this site has an encyclopedia of knowledge across those old threads.
  • System logs me out automatically after some periodic amount of time, and I canā€™t seem to find a setting to keep me logged in.
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Not a fan but Iā€™m used to it. There are a couple of other forums that Iā€™m a part of that use this structure and Iā€™ve always found myself less active on those. Not surprisingly, I feel like Iā€™ve been less active around here since the switch.

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+1
we arenā€™t runners, cyclists and swimmers - we are triathletes.
splitting out the categories makes it harder to find the expertise of other posters, slower and more difficult to read the forums pertaining. That is a mistake.

I am guessing there is some algorithm trying to maximize ā€˜engagementā€™ that is pushing up the old topics, like so many daisies. As adgatri notes, the old topics are unreadable because the quote marks are broken. Either turn off the algorithm or tune it, and fix the quoting.

Normally a redesign like this would poll or otherwise engage the posters that provide the value to the forum. In this case it seems to have followed the Reddit model, impose a redesign based on some speculative fictions from the VC crowd..

itā€™ll probably all settle down in a couple of months, says he hopefully :wink:

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Im going to correct youā€¦ You are an endurance athlete and slowtwitch is an endurance site ( at itā€™s core ) we just need to keep working together (we do take feedback very seriously ) to figure out the best way to help eveyone including new people that come to the site find all the topics and inforamtion inwhich they want to collect and or express.

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Did you email Support@slowtwitch.com ?

PS Ryan had nothingto do with thisā€¦ you can blame me :slight_smile:

I wasnā€™t a fan, was putting me off coming back in here, im getting used to it more, the huge bonus is, I can now post pics into threads easy, which for whatever reason, couldnā€™t do before.

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Thatā€™s becuase it was from the 1980ā€™s :slight_smile: Glad you come back. We have some cool features we are working on.

Probably not a bug, but I canā€™t tell who you are replying to.

Comment still is true

I have enjoyed the changes. Thanks for making the investment into the site and taking on the challenge of updating.

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In your opinion, has Slowtwitch always been an endurance site? Was it ever a triathlon site?

Itā€™s a triathlete site. You ask a ultra runner about Slowtwitch and the reply will likely be WTF?

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Thatā€™s a good question. I havent always been on Slowtwitch so I cant really say it has or it hasnt. I will say that @Slowman never wanted it be pidgend holed into that. which is why its named iSlowtwitch instead of Triathlon or triathlete or whatever. I would say that most of our stuff has been focused on triathlon just from the nature of what dan loved to do. TT- Bikes, Wetsuits, Running. But I would say that over the last 5 years the industry and members have started to show that we are more then just ā€œtriathletesā€ that in the end we are endurance athletes that seek personal bests, we are also highly addicited to a healthy lifestyle in a almost non heathly way. The back end data tells us that more and more people are doing more then just Swim, Bike, Run " combined" and that is why Dan did what he did 23 years ago. and that is why we are doing what we are doing now. These are all thing the DAn and I spent years talking about before we took on the role of continuing what he satarted. We want everyone to come to slowtwitch so that our community can learn and share no matter what Endurance sport they are currently seeking adventure in.

that is and will continue to changeā€¦

@Jackets

yes. So how you replied to me, it is clear you replied to me
With how you replied to Jackets, itā€™s not

I donā€™t know if the buttons can be moved around to make it a more intuitive thing and to make following a conversation easier.

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Normally you just hit ā€œReplyā€ and it shows the chain rather well. Im also on a plane right now coming back from Niceā€¦ So maybe itā€™s that? Iā€™m going to look into it.