The state of this forum

[FloatingWaffles]

TalonMan said:

FloatingWaffles said:

I've been here since 2015 and I still view the site regularly but I can also say that my posting has also dropped a bit, at least compared to what it used to be. There's just not much interesting on this site currently, especially after the sales charts went away, but in that case I fully understand why that happened and how it's better for the site ultimately.

As others have mentioned though:

1) Attempting to use this site on mobile is literally pointless as it's a nightmare that has still not been fixed. The site shows up as unsafe on desktop/mobile and the amount of ads make it unusable, at one point I was honestly worried that it might have put a malware/adware on my phone because one of the ads got selected by mistake because of how messy the site is so I don't ever bother trying to view it there anymore.

2) For as much improvements there have been made to the site the past few months, there are still some things that make no sense for what should be a modern website. A while back I was trying to look up what were considered "classic" threads on this site for a good laugh and wanted to find the "Are you a virgin" thread since I remembered that one and you would think a simple google search or website search would find it but nope, it's like it doesn't even exist anymore no matter what I typed. Why is even trying to find something as simple as a single thread here still so complicated/impossible?

3) I think overall the mod team does a good job and doesn't really restrict conversation, outside of super extreme situations, but there have been times in the past where I remembered seeing people get banned/warned/moderated for such simple posts that I ended up thinking "Wow, they got banned just for that?" to myself. It happened so often that at one point I remember making a post thinking I would probably be banned for it despite not even saying anything really bad in said post, just because someone or a mod might take it that way. I'm not sure how often this happens now, or if it's even an issue anymore, but I do think that probably contributed to some leaving as well over the years.

4) I do think the sales charts, which should have been the differentiating feature that brought people into the site, ultimately might have hurt it more in the long run. A lot of the time they were incorrect, to the point where it got the reputation of being super inaccurate and not to be used seriously, etc. Even for people who used this site it became that same thing of not even using them because who knows if they are correct or not, which is why I say while it sucks since they were fun to look at, I think it's ultimately better for the site that it goes with actual shipping data instead. 

Ever since 2015 this is really the only site I use for talking about video games outside of reddit, so hopefully things can get better, and the amount of site improvements over the past few months are definitely a good start. With next-gen around the corner hopefully that can be a fresher start. :P 

1) Fair enough - I think we're all pretty much in-tune to the fact that shoe-horning a website from 2006 into a "mobile friendly" environment (with a team of one or two developers), is a pretty daunting task. That said, beyond just saying "it's a nightmare", why not offer some specifics so I can help? We have an entire board dedicated to fixing and enhancing the website, and I'm ALWAYS open to helping people with fixing stuff (hell, I spent an entire day cleaning the profile pages to ENSURE they would work nicely on mobile, with guys like @Ryuu96 nitpicking every border and pixel he could find!!) - so long as your sole idea isn't "These ads need to go away" (as this has been discussed, ad nauseam). So, if you have some specific problems - why not spend a few minutes and let me know what they are???

2) If your sole example of this, is the thread searching - then there's not much I can do to help. The forum searching was fixed awhile ago, and (so far as I know) works just fine. If, however, you are searching for an incredibly old thread, there's a good chance it's just gone or unsearchable. I don't know the specifics (it's something that apparently happened before I came back), but really, really old threads seem to have disappeared from the site at some point. There's also a limitation that was added to the search (it only goes back 90 days) - I assume it was added for performance reasons, but I have no idea. 

1) Oh yeah, for sure. Sorry, didn't mean to just sound as if I wasn't trying to offer anything helpful, it's just that I don't know the specifics of this stuff so my descriptions might sound dumb lol. :P Would you happen to actually know why this site shows up as not secure for people? I've always seen it but never known why and I could see that turning people off from posting if they think it's unsafe doing so. I also feel like the layout where it's basically just everything from top to bottom could be better improved if things were possibly compressed to show more on the screen at once. As i'm attempting to scroll back up on the main site on mobile it's also taking really long because it's dragging down the entire page as well instead of just scrolling back up.

2) It's not exactly my sole example of it, it's just one of the more recent ones i've had where it was for some reason super complicated and basically impossible to find an old thread, where as usually on any other site you can quickly find through a website/google search. The only way I actually ended up being able to find some older threads (even some from 2008) was by going through ioi's post history because I remembered him posting in that thread lmao, so surely they must still exist then? It's just finding them specifically that is weird for some reason. :P So basically any thread that is 90+ days old is unsearchable then unless we can find the specific link through other means? If so that's a shame. :(