teo wrote:

I've just rolled out some updates to the Forums. The user-created forums are now called "Groups" and are located at http://www.discogs.com/groups (link in the top navigation bar). And the main Discogs forums are now known as the "Help Forums" and are located at http://www.discogs.com/help/forums (links in the help docs and page footer)

The biggest change is when you view a group it shows the latest submissions from members of that group, with a link to view all submissions from the group. And the members list now designates which members are moderators. Ideally this will encourage submitters and moderators to form small teams focused on certain sections of the database, without getting overwhelmed by the main pool of submissions.

Groups also show the Top Artists and Top Labels for that group. This is updated daily and is based on the favorites data. We will also use this data to show the "Related Groups" on artist, label and release pages.

Finally, Help Forums and public Groups now have RSS feeds for the topics list and individual topics.

xdefenestratorx wrote:

Yuck

xdefenestratorx wrote:

Bug #1: once you submit a post, your text is still down in the text box... (Mozilla on Win32).

This is really cluttered... and the "recent submissions" thing is waaay too big and should not be at the top... leave the front page of the forums as-is, maybe add links to recent submissions....

corne_mo wrote:

- Can you please align all column on the left side of the screen as it was before?
- And make the posts column that wide that it fills the screen? Half of my screen is blank now.
- In the moderator forums we can only see the first 10 !! topics. This is not usefull imo.
- agree with xdef that the releases shouldn't be mentioned above the topics, especially not in generic forums like the moderator forums.
- and the same bug for me ff 2.0.0.7 on WinXP

dmaxx wrote:

Nice way to fuck up Discogs.

By the way, http://www.discogs.com/help/forums/topic/146401 is not being shown at "Discogs General".

Jegger wrote:

I like it

Finn wrote:

"Hi Finn, nice to meet you in this group. Can you please take a look at my submissions?"

Lostsignol wrote:

wtf! not amused...

inexpressible wrote:

Erm... I want to see the "activity" of ALL forums, including Discogs' own forums. Not only my "groups".

Edit: what was wrong with the old forum system?

AtomicCow wrote:

Things change.

This seems ok. Although I wish the main discogs forums were more easily accessible.

royb0t wrote:

Is there anyway to see in the Help Forums "show only topics I've posted in" here? Or am I missing it somewhere? Gonna take some adjusting/testing before I can give adequate feedback.

julesparis wrote:

can the tag "franais" be corrected to "français"
how are the tags created? based on what?

julesparis wrote:

oh
and yes i want the Discogs forums to show up on the least activity page, too

AtomicCow wrote:

Hmm...ok. Is it possible to move the topics to the top of the screen? I don't join groups to do updates to the database but just to shoot the shit. And since it just lists submissions of all members whatever they are, any given group will have lots of updates I am not in the least interested about.

djindio wrote:

?!

xdefenestratorx wrote:

black magic.

The 'favorite' artists, etc. seems a bit nonsensical too, unless i'm the only person who doesn't have any favorites selected? (It seems to be a rather pointless feature if you use a watchlist.)

want to see discogs forums on the main page too..

kompressorkanonen wrote:

Can subforums have the option to switch this "most popular artists" stuff off please?

xdefenestratorx wrote:

the Jump To drop-down menu seems to only show up on some pages... or maybe it's only in the /groups/board/XX paths... this was really helpful to have everytwhere before

kompressorkanonen wrote:

"Group submissions" - I like the sound of that. Have you paged dr. Freud recently, Kev?

djindio wrote:

!? -_-!
.
?! -_-
.
?? *_*..(#@*!)
.
!? -_o
.
?! O_o..(?)
.
!! ^_^

azymuth74 wrote:

I may be missing something but 'stickys' seem to have disappeared?

corne_mo wrote:

A couple of old forums I belonged to just fallen out of my Groups you belong to.
I'm really not interested in finding back all these forums.

Haze wrote:

LOL nice

White space bug still not fixed.

Long overdue improvements to the mod interface? Not yet.

But hey, we have groups now. What do we need more?

doctor_trance wrote:

Yes, not only have the stickys dissapeared, but they have gone to locked status!!!!

Even though I had a 180 day limit set, my sticky topic now went to locked status with an "older than 90 days" notice on it, and it can't be posted to anymore! What the heck??

Even if it got bounced from sticky status, it shouldn't have gone locked per 90 days, as my limit is 180. The crazy thing is, it's still showing as it's sticky when you are inside the post, so you can't even set it to sticky again!

azymuth74 wrote:

Also, I think the 'track IDs' forum or group could do without all the submission crap at the top and the favorite artists/label stuff at the bottom....bit irrelevant for that forum me thinks

META wrote:

Ditto here!

xdefenestratorx wrote:

to see sticky threads at the top, you need to hit the 'Discussion' link at the top. way too convoluted and complex.

didn't the old forums have a parity check thing where every other thread was a different color? or am i imagining things? i do remember that it was visually easier to scan the pages...


rollback to the previous version on the live site.
& please beta new features in the future...

marcelrecords wrote:

same here, where do I find these????

djpepsi wrote:

centred sux, left justified plz ,and erm yeh, it's getting a bit clinical round here :X

marcelrecords wrote:

and I cannot find ''development'' anyWhere....?!

Pauli wrote:

It's about time to hire real professionals. What you did now teo is another good way to ruin discogs Birma way. What a mess, you better stay off this kind of stuff my friend, you obviously don't know what you're doing.

marcelrecords wrote:

here too......

wrote:

this is shitty

i cant find anything anymore lol

wrote:

fuck this shit i dont want to be in any groups and see what they have added or what the favs are in that group


i just want the forums

royb0t wrote:

Preliminary testing/feedback:

* In the new footer, having "Groups" down there too would be nice, just after Wantlist.

* Is the My Groups link really necessary if it's just going to show you a page that has only the groups you belong to, whereas when you first click Groups, it shows up with all of them (unless this main page has a limit for "Groups you belong to" to display there)?

* Help Forums show up in Popular Groups, should this be if you're separating the two?

* Adding to the right column where "Browse Groups By Tag" and "Discogs Help Forums have been moved here".... why not just add the 5 Discogs Help Forum links there? It takes much more clicks to navigate from a Group topic to the Help Forum should you need to bring something up.

* So the "Submissions" is based on the submissions of the Group Members? Very cool! Likewise I really like the quickview of 5 Submissions with the image if applicable.

* I don't want to test the "Quit this group?" for Moderators! Shouldn't it be mandatory for Mods to be in those groups?

* Where'd Stickys go? Maybe those should have their own subsection above "Discussion"?

* The post column is a bit too narrow I think. There's plenty room to expand it out a bit, even if you want it to be centered and look nice with whitespace on the sides - but as is you're going to be scrolling a lot more which is less ideal.

* Search sorts based on most recent post not the earliest - finally fixed! Maybe a built-in highlight function? Which I have in Firefox when I do a search, but a default highlight would be nice too.

* Are Top Artists and Top Labels pulling from group member Favorites? Neat.

* Expand/shrink message area. Neat.

* My post is still in the message area after this was submitted. USER_AGENT: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7

deejsasqui wrote:

I'm most surprised about the lack of warning - no beta forums area, not even some graphics with "this is how it could look"

teo - if you're getting tired of music database tweaking, just say so. I'm sure there are people who'd love to wonk around with the music database and fix all the weird issues we still have.

deejsasqui wrote:

Yeah, the text stays put in Win XP Pro - Firefox 2.0.0.7 - and that's annoying. Or should I be allowing scrpting from yahooapis.com ? I have NoScript running on Firefox.

And it's odd that once you're in a thread, the general layout looks to be pretty much the same. There's more weird stuff on the bottom (My Submissions and Help) which is cute, and not really obtrusive, but an odd addition. At least it's clean, and you haven't allowed avatars, taglines and graphics in general. Good gawds, the day that happens, I'm ignoring the forums (not that I venture too far now-adays).

Sputnik86 wrote:

No, me neither!
Looks shite too

deejsasqui wrote:

@ nik or teo: can you list out all the changes and perhaps map how we get things done now? I'm sure it's all there, but in the efforts of streamlining everyone learning the new layout, please provide some info!

Part of me likes the fact I can "discover" new elements of the altered forums / groups. Part of me thinks that having to "discover" elements of what was previously obvious is a rather major design flaw.

Lostsignol wrote:

Why not put submissions from group in order of oldest to newest so mods can see what needs attention first. As of now the newest submissions pop up, annoying!

azzurro wrote:

just my first thoughts:

* current submissions: Sorry, but when I'm on the forums, I'm not modding or checking submissions, I'm there to post / read the forums.

* I'ld like to see ALL groups that are important to me (= the groups I signed in to) on 1 list, so including the help-forums. Or as suggested above, at least a direct link to the help forums.

* Also the Browse groups by tag, popular groups and newest group are IMO too big in contrary to the groups I belong to. Again, If I'm on the forums, I'ld like to see the things I'm interested in, and not some random groups (not speaking about the tags section, which seems to be placed in completely random order. Might be most appearing on top, but that's thr same as stepping into a library and finding the most popular books near to the entrance...). Maybe this can be made a bit smaller, and/or placed at the bottom.

* Just 10 recent topics is IMO way to less for active forums like the general moderator forum.

* And everything looks a bit squeezed, I think because of the white space especially on the left, but maybe that's just something I should get used to. But I've got a feeling there's something missing over there

* There's a bug, your message stays in the box after you've posted it

MetallicRaver wrote:

Me too!

It's always the same: If something is different than what you're used to, it's said to be worse.

Crappcyd wrote:

Pfffttt... No bad idea, but bad implementation. Interface is odd needs some adjusting. Number of threads shown, general listing of groups old-style (there are no cathegories now I guess) etc.

This screws some of the biggest forums/chat/whatever, there are a lot of offtopic or not music oriented forums as well as as other music forums which are quite general. It would be nice if groups admins could select between 'forum' style - discogs help forums like this one - or 'group' style - new style -, so these forums won't become useless.

Seriouslly, this was not hard to test before implement damn it.

I repet I like the idea, but it works only for some forums, unless you want to remove majority of these old forums and we can't have more egneral talking or usefull stuff like Mixes sections, Track IDs or whatever.


Ok I hope they give 'admins' the possibility to select between one or other style, and they tune design/interface BTW, looks ugly and unusable now.

Knuckles wrote:

Looks as if the page hasn't loaded properly.
Horrid design.

azzurro wrote:

Another thing, but maybe it has to do with my browser-settings:

Before, discussion you already visited were different coloured (in my case, purple instead of blue). This was handy to check whether or not you've read the discussion (e.g. in the moderators forum, or the news forum). With all the posts, I can't remember what I have read and what I didn't.

MetallicRaver wrote:

Is there something like the former "Browse public forums" to list all groups?

royb0t wrote:

I guess the ones that get the most attention should show up first. Though maybe also have a 2nd row for Oldest Submissions that are unmoderated, because those too need attention as well.


I don't really use the forums, er Groups, to chat, but I can see having the Current Submissions being relevant. But for Groups like Chat, etc... those folks are probably not discussing current submissions much at all. Maybe an option for the admins to show/hide the Current Submissions section?

* Is there anyway to browse all Groups in a list?

Personally I think it's more stylish, just needing some fine tuning. I do have to agree with just about everyone though, these types of changes should really not just suddenly happen. There needs to be more thorough cycle of: 1) Open Discussion, 2) Warning/Announcements 2) Testing/Beta (which I'd totally volunteer for everytime), 3) Announcement prior to implementation, 4) Implementation, 5) Feedback/Bug fixes/Enhancements.

royb0t wrote:

I think they're all on new pages is why the links are showing up as blue again. Just gotta click and check them out again and make sure not to clear your cache if that's how you roll.

corne_mo wrote:

Apperently the three major discogs forums have 0 members: see at the bottom of the page. teo fix this asap !
I also don't want to see forums like ""Discogs Submission Limits Suck Anus" Bitchfest" grouped with the "official" discogs forums btw.

legumes-SALES wrote:

WHY?

X(

djpepsi wrote:

lol@mixes forums tags,,,

legumes-SALES wrote:

Thank you Axefield?

Anyway.

The new layout is very hard on the eyes... and what's with all these tags?

BUG: I can't post new threads anywhere.

md wrote:

Another superb step back for Discogs. Rather than bug fixing the shit that's going on in the database, that mods kindly listed out in one (long) thread, let's make the substandard forums even worse.

md wrote:

And was it another "development" idea to remove the only important public forums from the "recent activity" report? Genius.

md wrote:

Also add the "Jump To" function back into the help forums and all main forum pages. Why restrict it to the thread pages? To avoid clutter with the additions that everyone will ignore?

phish63 wrote:

this is horrible. hate hate hate hate.

way to fuck up the discogs experience.

bad change IMO.

what a turn off.

i can see spending less time here, thus buying less records.

i hope this works out for you.

md wrote:

and add the help forums to the list.

phish63 wrote:

groups are ghey. this isn't myspace. actually, it's your space, but still.....

phish63 wrote:

buggy too. i posted my last topic and it posted AND stayed in the 'reply to this topic' box, rather than i nice clean fresh one......

phish63 wrote:

i can't seem to post anywhere but in the discogs help forums as well, server error.

Haze wrote:

You will get this error in all forums but your post should be in. Just refresh the thread after your post and check it.

Nectar_Card wrote:

too old to cope with change, it was better back in the day, keep it old school etc etc

I like it.

Haze wrote:

.

md wrote:

Except that there are no members lists for the help forums, which is the only place it's important to know whether someone is a moderator or not. So actually it's totally fucking useless.

legumes-SALES wrote:

On a second look, it's not all bad. Some changes are cool, to lazy to point out which.

I could have done without the tag-bizness, though.

AtomicCow wrote:

Ok, here's an idea. Roll back the changes immediately. Fix the problems. Then try again.

legumes-SALES wrote:

BTW, I want a Blog feature. Thx.

swattan wrote:

teo, how to browse all 'groups'?

legumes-SALES wrote:

Ahem, I cannot access my Ignore list.

Do you know that old post bug? you have 400 posts in a thread, so page 5 begins. when you ignore a user, you are still stuck on page 4, because of the 400, only say 390 ar ebeing displayed. then the reply box disappears.

workaround was changing the numbe rof posts displayed, so not starting with 300 but with 320. (url)

but now that the url is about the pages, there is no workaround for this!!!!!

and i can't change the ignore list.

several large topics are locked for me now.

:(

md wrote:

Formattign Codes

AtomicCow wrote:

rollback my selektah!!!

Bissia wrote:

there is a problems when an Admin save a change in the Admin section, we get: Server Error

We're sorry, this page generated an error. This is a problem with Discogs. This error has been logged and the administrators have been notified.
---

andya wrote:

when i went to the top level of Electronic Music, i didn't dig it, not one bit.

then i hit the "Read all Electronic Music's discussions" and its more old school. acceptable for me.

the best yet is the rss feed; avoid everything!

update: broken rss feed for Dub [Techno]

Bissia wrote:

there is a problems when an Admin save a change in the Admin section, we get: Server Error

We're sorry, this page generated an error. This is a problem with Discogs. This error has been logged and the administrators have been notified.
---
Nothing personal against dmaxx but i am not against surprises.
I assume that with our positive feedback things will get tweaked for the better for the most…
---
In this multiverse change is the only constant.
Even a death corpse is very lively.
Thank you teo to cope with rains of negative comments each time you attempt a change. It's good if it helps the database and
when i first noticed this i moderated a few more entries from ze Group!

Bissia wrote:

I can trace back Saved Topics but i wonder how i can Save new ones now. lemme know or please fix.

jimthing wrote:

..sounds GOOD, very swish idea!


It'd be nice to have them included under "groups" --*as well as* the forum thing on bottom of pages-- perhaps under a separate menu to the side.
Also, I personally like the "latest post: x" function that was and is still listed under the main help forums before. It might be really nice if the same could be applied to the Groups in some way.

neocactar wrote:

So, I'm automatically a member of the Help forums upon registering as a user, but they're not listed on "Groups you belong to"? Maybe it's just me, but those are the forums I visit most (+ Mod forum). But I can't put them on the list.



QFT. Doesn't this happen every time? Some huge change gets made, 300 threads get started in the forums (maybe not this time, since noone can find anything) and we have to stop modding/subbing for a month to answer questions while relying on 2 people to coordinate everything that was fine before (or not) and fix it on the new one. Forgive me if that sounds harsh; I guess that's just the way the site is, but it doesn't seem to be the best way to do it.



What's this all about? I had to allow it for quoting.

neocactar wrote:

And my post box didn't clear after posting.

MR_E wrote:

kompressorkanonen wrote:

The "tags" business is a crock of shit. Is it actually useful for anyone in any way whatsoever?

One of the tags is "bones" btw. Someone needs to attach a clever comment here.

V-12 wrote:

I must agree, because "Groups" is really a bad name for this. when I belong to 1000 forums it doesn't mean, that I belong for all the groups of the people who are in those forums. I prefered previous style of forum.

md wrote:

Does management intend to reintroduce the facility to open new threads?

legumes-SALES wrote:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gnCGiGry1Jg

:P



my main critic is, that it takes more clicks to post in a forum or check it out. Also, the 'join this group?' should be moved back to the top. Other than that (and these nasty tags) we'll get used to it I s'pose

legumes-SALES wrote:

quote selection function doesn't work in the normal groups, only in these help forums

(I'd also like the help forums link back on the forums home / group home page - less clicks)

julesparis wrote:

quick summary for teo (as if he would check this thread or whatever they are called now): way to go buddy - yet another triumph!

rokkrx wrote:

Well, this was unnecessary and ugly. Alpha testing is hardly the way to run things. Teo sure seems to know how to code, but could we get some input from people that can design and understand functionality.

RJaxX wrote:

According to the Group Members list, I've become a moderator again.
Even though I resigned as an Ed/mod well over 2 years ago.
Funny that ;)

fistondub wrote:

!!!STICKIES!!!!
!!!!Quote selection!!!!!


.......!

fritzb wrote:

I used to be able to access ALL my forums (including this one) from the same page. Now they are on 2 different pages. This is not an improvement IMHO.

fistondub wrote:

!!!STICKIES!!!!
!!!!Quote selection!!!!!


.......!

md wrote:

but does it make you happy?

fistondub wrote:

!!!latest post not available !!!!!!!!!

recent (radio)activity unavails lastest post for ythis forum and the Discogs General one...
pfff laisse tomber....

V-12 wrote:

I agree, I hate multiple clicking to find something when previously everything was at 1 place.

fistondub wrote:

having to click Discussion to have the stickies back : please tell me what's the use of this except having to click more and less ergonomy. the threads already appear undur Group, what's th use of clicking Discussion to have the threads + the stickies please tell me?

fistondub wrote:

now for the positive:
first time i see a scroll down bar to switch from a discussion to another... dig up more in that way..it can be a very useful tool...could also be considered in the main yellow bar for Artists Labels. Home My Discogs etc

links My discogs ...at the down of the page : useful.ie.more direct link

wrote:

Wait, you're surprised about a lack of warning any time there's a massive change to Discogs?

...where the fuck have you been?

fistondub wrote:

An idea for the forums:
most of the time we have to refer to a discogs release in the forum discussion but....but thing is to find it back we have to search in our collection, pending or wantlist....and you have to open a new window copy and paste the release number, i suggest this idea if possibly it could be done without having to open a new window all the time and by having the release pasted more easily and quickly in the forum err.... group discussion reply..
not that easy i agree but possible probably.
Probably if on the same page we could browse our collection for example copy and paste the release number easily and post it straight in the forum discussion. That would be an improvement.

but could probably only be done with intelligent multy scroll down bars where the copy function would be availed.
example :
scroll down bar under Artists on the main yellow bar.choose artists from 0 to G, H to R etc whatever you like then sub scroll down bar artist all releases bar and finally the release searched found. Copy availed by a right mouse click straight to be pasted in the forumd discussion. my 2 cents...

la-voie-du-sabre wrote:

1/5

dmaxx wrote:

I want that shit at the bottom of each page to disappear. And I will no longer visit the forums... yes FORUMS and not GROUPS. Just like we have a QUEUE and not an UNMODERATED DATABASE. And PENDINGS instead of UNMODERATED ITEMS.

I have never seen a website so downgrading in so little time. Anything is being changed, except what actually NEEDS to be changed.

Worst managment EVER.

kreuztot wrote:

-threads deletion doesn't work
-the Reply textfield disappears if a thread has *99 posts