Kingsnake.com's NEw and Improved Forums

ANYONE.....and I mean ANYONE check out what kingsnake.com has done to their forums lately?

Forum traffic on k/s used to be VERY heavy. Go look at it now...it is a trickle. My sad prediction is that they will lose a fully 35-40% of thier customer base just because of the sheer frustration that people have displayed in trying to post their.



Amazeing...............


Truly.................


Fred
Aztec Reptiles

I've checked in there a couple of times. Except for some apparent bells and whistles, for something supposed to be an upgrade, it sure isn't showing through much on this side of the screen.

Sean Belanger got banned from the site when he discovered a rather comical programming bug in the code and displayed it to everyone. Talk about shooting the messenger!

Marquees in forums??? Whoever thought up THAT one? I don't know anyone on the planet that would want to have the text on the screen scrolling across it while they are trying to read it.

I checked into the Feedback forum there a couple of times, but it seems to me that a lot of messages don't hang around too long. I think they are being bombarded by flak over it. What you can see on the forums before it gets deleted is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Heck, for that matter, I went looking for something I read on their TOS earlier and that has vanished when I went back to find it. But the date of last modification never changed. It was something about emailing other users that I wanted to read again but I guess I just wasn't quick enough.

Overall I don't much care for the new change over at KS's forums.

Sure, they added a few nice features, but most of what they changed was for the worse (my opinion).

The Good:

1. Being able to view the entire tree of a discussion instead of having to hit back to get to the root node and continue down another path.

2. The 'NEW' designations for posts which are newer, it helps them stand out.

3. Splitting off a second page when the current page of discussions gets too long.

The Bad:

1. The marquee stuff and anything else which is overly flashy.

2. Having to learn a whole new set of 'features'... I -LIKE- using HTML.

3. Not being able to refer to the forum by name... I used to be able to just type in the name of the forum as part of the URL. Now I either have to go to their forum links page, or remember the number of that forum. (Incidentally, that's one of the downsides to the forum setup here, as well...)

The Ugly:

1. The new font. The old one was far easier to read.

2. The marquee stuff again. Flashy text is not needed nor is it warranted in a forum. All it does is give people something more to add to their HELP!!!! ANSER QUIKLY PLEEZE!!!!111 posts.

3. With all the stuff they've added, the threaded view just winds up looking messy... I preferred the old forum look to FC's model, but prefer FC's look to the current KS forum appearance.

All in all I think it was a change for the worse, and not the better. There's some adage out there that says something along the lines of, "Unless the changes you're making will make it better enough to justify the inconvenience to the users, don't change it, even if it isn't perfect."

Bleah... Anyway... JMHO.

-Kat Hall