Bangelnuts,

As I've said at least twice in this thread, if you edit your options you can opt for the "old style" of mts2.

It may interest you to know that the new design is about a third lighter on the queries, meaning slightly faster page loads. Also, a "bug" was recently squashed which reduced average page rendering time from 5 mins to a few secs.
It is still slow at peak times (weekend) yes, and yes the files server is flat out for the entire weekend meaning many many requests are rejected, but being a free site, MTS2 has to work with the servers it has. Work is being done often that actually speeds things up. Of course the problem is that it allows more users, which slows it back down again.
The servers currently cost $1500 a month. The income is, give or take, $1500 a month. Unless donations or ad clicks go up, nothing more can be bought so I'm afraid there's not a lot can be done about the delays.

Personally I can't comment on any of this because I don't deal with any kind of download moderation. I will however pass what you've said onto Delphy (site owner) and the people who do moderate it.


Again, not really my department, I generally do game help and don't usually stray outside that. I know from things I've read that there are a lot of people who skip straight past all the tutorials specifically to ask. Unfortunately people who already have may be getting tied into that wave. Again, I shall pass this on to the people who deal with the creation area.


You can probably guess what I'm gonna say here


If you go to edit Options, you can now choose to skip the core pages and new download browser, effectively giving you back the "old view". You can also set your home page for the old index page, the site map, or any of the sections in between.


I don't think that's entirely fair or true. I don't look extensively at the download section but I know there's quite a range of posters. I understand why you'd say that though.


Will pass that on.


I'm glad I came here too. It's been largely constructive and well thought out and there has been some good progress. I'm glad some people like yourself are able to make posts that are actually useful without resorting to insults as it helps us see what's wrong.
Unfortunately, being only a help mod, I can't comment on a lot of the download-area concerns but I will definitely pass the address of this post on to the various section moderators.

If you have the core pages enabled (or rather don't have them skipped) then the downloads core page (but none of the other core pages at present) does have "Last post" column in the forum part. There's no actual link to the last post but it will show you who made it.

That's what's meant by "Home page". If you click Home or the logo, it will take you to your preferred page. The only way to the new or old index page is by selecting those as your home page.

There's not a lot can be done about that, it's one method of browsing, or the other.

The last post indicator is in place on the "downloads section" page. It isn't linked to anything, would it be more useful if it was?

Also, would it be useful to have the Last Post on the Create and Game Mods pages?


Yes, it was decided to move requests out of Testing Ground, and rename it to lessen the confusion, and as I said in a previous post there are now options to go back to the "old" style too.

See, we do listen when people request

laeshanin,
Yes, South Birmingham.

Mendota,
I'm assuming you mean the CEP. I'm not fully aware of how everything on that subject works. So far as I know, full credit has been given but I might be wrong. I really don't want to get into it here because I don't have the full story, and this topic is about MTS2 as a whole

Just to update everyone, we have now implemented a set of options so you can effectively skip the "new" design and go back to how it was.

Please see the "In other news" part of post 1 of this thread

Of course you need to be registered to actually have a user control panel. But once you are you're free to adjust the settings to your liking

Aussieone,
I don't think dizzy-two was saying that, I think he(?) was just pointing out to Mendota that MTS2 hasn't created every great tool out there, which is true. So far as I'm aware, everyone who creates good stuff gets credit.

laeshanin,
I can't comment on VS or the BBS because I very rarely visit either. I can't even comment with any solid confidence on MTS2 outside the Help section because most of my MTS2 time is spent buried there.
I can comment on your last part though. This thread has been nice, there have been some good constructive posts we can actually work with and it's (largely) void of pure insults, which means some progress can be made.

dizzy-two,
I've passed your suggestions on to Delphy. I don't know when/if they'll get implemented (I know that hack requests are going to be moved back to the requests section)


nectere,
I agree Firefox did rather botch the site up. One of the problems was trying to figure out exactly why it did it, and it took some time until there was time to actually consistantly reproduce the bug and track down the reason for it.

"IE blows chunkies, don't ever ask me to use it, I will quit first"

IE gets a lot of bad press. Yes, it's awfully designed, slow, sloppy and generally crap. However it does do what it's supposed to (barely) and isn't unsafe to use so long as you have various protection in place, just in case. The only reason I suggested people use it is because we couldn't even figure out why the Firefox bug happened, and in a toss up between bad page rendering, and proper page rendering on an badly thought out browser, the browser won because after all it was just one site for a short period of time.

"I saw I hated, end of story. "

You and about 500 others...

"I don't particularly like the front page, but that is because I already know what I want and where I am going."

If you edit the options, you can choose which page you want as the home page. And with new code upcoming, you'll be able to skip the core pages completely and be taken straight to the "old" version (i.e. the forum itself)

"I don't see the point in poking fun of children in such a spiteful hateful way"

This is a catch 22 in a way. Some of the kids don't know the better and some of the adults get pissed off due to lack of tolerance/understanding.


sagana,
Firstly, thanks for such a well thought out post. It's nice to get a geniunly constructive post we can actually work with.

I don't think MTS2 is over-moderated. There are occasions when a lot of threads are deleted within a short space of time for various reasons, and it does look heavy handed however this isn't a regular occurance.
This is the thing. Comments aren't really there for "I'm first!!" posts, they aren't even there for "thank you!!!!!" posts (there's a button for that), they're there in case there's a problem with the download, or in case someone can offer something constructive. If the "I'm first" and generally useless posts were allowed to run rampant then there would be several pages of rubbish and the one comment saying something is wrong could be missed, which means someone misses out for the sake of someone else boasting about being first.
The idea of just making posts disappear is good in principal, but then there would be an in-flood into Site Issues about it and we know from experience that people will happily smack the new thread button to ask a question that already has 15 threads on the main forum display ergo a ton of "where did my post go???" threads pushing the real site issues out.

I can't really comment on the "chat" element or the build comment because I joined 3 months ago when the site was more or less developed (forum wise) and so I had no say in either.

With the new format, I do agree that the core pages can be rather overwhelming at first, however they are improving all the time, the help one, although still quite fully packed, has been reduced quite a lot from the original one. I think the others need simplifying too. Again, it all takes time to really sort out. I would also say though that I still think it's a lot better than the previous version in the sense that each section is now actually explained instead of you just getting thrown into a forum listing.
A problem is that when we ask people for feedback on the design, we get "it sucks ass majorly" or "yeah it rocks" (as my reply to sanmonroe below will testify). No one is actually specific on what they do or don't like, so it's difficult to judge what is and isn't wanted.


sanmonroe,
"After NL came out I went looking for updates and the new system was horrible, unorganized, difficult to use, and not logical in any way."

I don't know what to do with that info because it doesn't really say a lot. What did you find difficult to use, how do you think it could be organised better or more logical?

"So its not just the people who use it all the time and are used to a certain way."

Fair point.

"at least make a list of direct links to complete hacks and in testing hacks that is easy for anyone to find."

Good idea. I don't know how easy that will be to implement or maintain but it's certainly worth looking into.

A little, but you have a valid point. There are a number of, shall we say, under experienced in netiquette, users around. That's not really the fault of any one thing (except perhaps AOL), it's just how it is.

I think there are a couple of problems
1. People use l337 or shrthnd speak or excessive size/color tags (which are hacked so they won't work for anyone below moderator level btw), which is really irritating. They think it's the norm because they use it on their cellphones etc and they think this is perfectly acceptable because they've learnt on places like the bbs that it is.
2. People can't be bothered to find out what's needed of them. For example, in the help section we still get many posts that have been previously covered despite us giving instructions on how to find the previous posts. This is either laziness, or inability to look on their part. It is partly the forum's fault because searches can be quite complicated (there are plans to simplify)

It is true that a lot of kids are sims fans, and they usually provide lower quality posts. The more experienced posters then either don't understand, or don't want to understand, the posts, which leads to problems. And then this can escalate because the original poster gets all pissy, takes it personally and you have yourself a flamethread.
This is really down to the original posters' lack of understanding of netiquette. I am planning to write a guide at some point on how to use the forum, including a nice guide on netiquette.

There has been a recent run of "I'm first!" posts, which is ongoing. Although we try hard to keep up with them sometimes it's difficult. The problem is "the line". If we're too harsh then we get critisised for being so, and if we're not harsh enough then we get critisised for not doing anything. We're still learning the balance but I believe that we will master it.

"I've also noticed this has been the case on the forums in MTS2, and I have been nuked on a number of times merely for expressing an opinion that did not concur with the people on that particular thread."

We remove flaming/off topic posts as much as we can. If you make a constructive or helpful post then usually it won't be touched however we do try to keep things on-topic as much as possible.
If we didn't they would turn into TSR-style chatfests (or flamefests) and the thread would lose most of it's productivity. With a site as big and popular as MTS2, you have to nip bad posts as quickly as possibly, before they turn the thread into a bad one. People can unfortunately be very explosive and 200 posts later, you can't even remember what the thread started out as.

Unfortunately, no one has told us that Mozilla is still playing up. Firefox and Mozilla are supposed to use the exact same rendering engine and firefox is fixed (at least, no one has said otherwise)

I suggested back/fwd because I find it's usually faster than reloading the page. I suggesting using IE because the site works perfectly on it, and although I'm not exactly keen on it, it was my choice for ease when the site was playing up.
However it's obviously your choice what you do

Now that I know, I'll get hold of moz and work with Delphy to see where the problem is, assuming I can recreate it.


*update* Mozilla should now have been fixed. Basically the user agent string for firefox is slightly different than for Moz, and it was classing Moz as IE and thus not removing the problematic CSS attribute.
You might have to clear the *modthesims2* cookies and the cache then restart moz before it actually works.


If there are other problems that anyone has, please report them to the mts2 site issues forum (or here if you're not registered there and don't want to be, I guess) . Sometimes it can take a little while to sort the problem because it needs to be recreated and tracked down, but usually all problems get solved eventually.

ahhh I am corrected on that. I knew I should have looked up the definition but it was 2am.

It is true that there arae quite a few useless posts. We do encourage search as much as we can but you know some people. The fact the new core pages have the search in the top left is hopeful that people will start searching, plus the search page itself is planned to be made a lot more useful (as in select the actual areas you want (downloads, hacks, help etc) rather than reading through each forum in the list, selecting which you want, and then by the time you've done that forgetting why you're there)

We do enforce the rules as much as we can, bumps are removed, excess smiley usage is removed, stickies are put up asking demanding that people do their own work before bugging us. And then actual threads are moderated (at least in help, I can't speak for anywhere else) so that stuff that's answerable with a search is closed.

It is however, as you said: More users = more size, more size = harder to organise. But we are working hard on it.

You can change your options to view the old index by default, and there will be code going in to let you skip both the new core pages, and the new download browser, effectively presenting the site as it used to be (minus the forum movearound of course). I don't know when this will be implemented but it will.

I'm a mod over at mts2 for the help section. I don't have all that much to do with the site as an entire site, but I do stick my nose in some parts. I'm very rounded and I also have a very keen awareness of how newbies see the site, so I'd like to clear a few things up constructively.

One of the main "problems" is that a lot of things changed at once.
Firstly, some of the forums were reorganised to be more logical and to match the way the game itself categorises things.
Very shortly after that, the new design was implemented and you were presented with what we call 'core' pages which are the blue pages. As well as that, the hacks and downloads section was given a new browser.

Because so many changes happened at once, people who were used to the old layout probably felt overwhelmed and thus there were a lot of complaints, both via PM and publicly.
Now, one of the problems was that people saw the new layout, played for about 10 mins, decided they hated, detested and downright loathed it, and posted to complain. And I am the first to admit that even I found it quite a major shift in the way things were done (however I didn't post hate mail). Delphy did actually make a post introducing you to the change, in which he clearly said you could still use the site map to access the "old way of doing things". Unfortunately, most people didn't bother reading down that far.

It may interest people to know that you can happily skip the core pages simply by using site map, or just by using bookmarks. Personally I have no use for the core pages so I bookmark the forums I need to.

Okay so the reason the new layout went in to start with was because the old one was very poor for new and existing visitors/members. Basically it was an overcramped index page (which incidentally is still available to use) with too much information and not enough organisation. If joe guest managed to find the site map link, they were presented with 200 different forums which were extremely confusing, not least because hacks got tied in with downloads. It personally took me 5 visits to actually begin to see how things were laid out. So, it was totally reorganised for clarity and ease of use.

In my personal opinion it's one hell of a lot better now than it was before, as it removes 95% of the clutter for new peeps.
Most people got upset not because it is a bad change, but because it's a big change compared to what you had before.

Now to address some individual concerns/assumptions in this thread.. you'll have to excuse the unformatted quotes, smf uses a link and unixtime(?) time format and I can't be bothered to work them out (it also doesn't show all posts on the reply page so quickquote is out...)


Quote = Andygal
"I hate the new layout at modthesims2 as well. It's a pain in the butt."

We do adore posts like this, so helpful and constructive. Of course, you did take the time to read the part that tells you how to access the previous state, didn't you?


Quote = Gus Smedstad & syberspunk
"I'm waiting for this forum to start deteriorating.  You can't fight entropy, after all."
"Have you read some of the threads lately... in my not so humble opinion, it's already started... *shrugs*"

Curious, the number of visitors has actually rocketed over the last month. At least 25% more pageviews and the files download server is maxed out far more than it ever was. I wouldn't call that deteriation. You may also want to check out the MTS2 Alexa ranking, and compare it to months past.


Quote = Mokoti
"I remember looking through the hacks (which apparently now are forever in the "Testing Ground" no matter how old or well established they are) and seeing a long list of stuff I though sounded interesting, only to discover 95% of it was requests."

The hacks are split deliberately to show "stable" and in testing, this gets rid of all the annoying "TESTERS WANTED:" titles that never seemed to change.
They remain in the "Testing Ground" area to keep things together. I mean, how logical would it be to have testing hacks in one section of the site, stable hacks in another, and requests in a third? Wouldn't you be miffed if one day you saw it in one part then the next it had ''just moved''. Course we could use redirects but then someone would whine that the forum is cluttered with those.


Quote = LynnMar

"I am glad somebody started this thread because I was thinking the same thing.  I tried to download something today and couldn't,  so I went to the site problems forum and I read something about people stealing bandwitdth and that Delphy wanted people to turn off their firewalls when they wer downloading stuff or some crazy shit like that.

  I think they have totally lost their minds over there.  What is up with them??"

People were hotlinking. Simple as. We want to ensure the files server is serving people who have registered, and in most cases contributed, so the site, rather than anyone who hasn't even heard of MTS2 who has gotten the link of some thieving fansite. This is irony in action you see, people moan when the file server is too slow, then when Delphy helps improve the speed, people whine about it.
If you look through one of the 3 million people complaining about this, you'll see that the solution is a simple tickbox change.

"and yes I hate the new downloads and all the reorginizing,  I can't find a thing."

That's because you're use to the old method, allocate half hour to feeling your way around the new one and you'll get used to it.


Quote = Shivani

"I don't like sites where I have to hit F5 so often to make it load properly -- i.e. the columns don't load at the right width"

This was actually fixed two or three weeks ago. Basically it was a difference in the Gecko vs IE rendering engines, and a CSS attribute occasionally threw Firefox into a tizzy. However once the problem was tracked down, which was difficult because the bug was sometimes hard to recreate, it was fixed promptly.
Additionally, you didn't need to f5, you just needed to reflow the page by clicking back/forward. Or temporarily use IE for MTS2, no risk of spyware or other junk from there.


Quote = kasumiarmstrong

"Connections are breaking...  Downloads are taking forever to find and get..."

Due to the site's popularity and features, there are now 7 servers totalling $1500 a month. Please do bear in mind that this is a totally free site that relies on google ad clicks and donations to keep it running. There is only one files server due to the rest being allocated specific tasks, and the files server is very expensive as it has limitless bandwidth. At this time another one can't be afforded. Therefore, at peak times, you do have to wait. I guess you could say that in that respect the site is a victim of it's own success. But please do keep the 'totally free' aspect in mind - it's not an excuse or scapegoat, just a fact.


Quote = pet_peeve

"We have a winner! This is exactly why I posted. Not only 95% requests, but 95% subliterate requests."

Can't comment, no idea, don't go there. Judging by the file server being maxed out most weekends I'd say it can't be that high though.

"And the new layout smells like ass."

Oh look, another constructive and helpful comment.


Quote = dizzy-two

"The new style is obviously meant to discourage people from finding (and therefore downloading) anything."

Yeah that's absolutely right. It was designed to throw people off being able to find anything. .... Or perhaps it's just structured to logically fit the game now, which it does. Did you think of that?


Quote = Kngidomapaloce

"I thought it was hard to find things before, it's seriously harder to find anything than it was ever before. The original MTS2 layout was nice."

The search is still there.
The site map is still there.
The old pages are still there.
You did of course read the thread covering the new design, that tells you this, didn't you.


Quote = LK

"I don't like how MTS2 has something like 40 sub-categories.  You click on Hacks, and you have to decide if you want Object Hacks, Global Hacks, and nine other things, after which you have to figure out if you want Requests, In Testing, Finished, followed by which expansion pack."

This post I found most interesting.
People are complaining about the new core pages, and yet people are complaining there are too many sub-cats, and also people are complaining there are too many things mixed in (think requests). So how do we win this one?
Well, the core page forum view is everything in one. That is to say that if you click on Testing Ground, you'll get a core page with Object Hacks, Global Hacks, Requests, Testing and Finished all on one page. You can even say which expansions you have and only get showed compatible hacks. Sounds pretty logical to me. Alternatively, you can click site map and browse each section individually.
Yes, there are a lot of options, but that's cos there need to be.




I know MTS2 isn't perfect. Of course it's not, it's grown from a couple of forums and like 10 members and an alexa ranking of $null E+45, to 300+ forums, 110,000 members and a ranking of about 15,000 in under a year. It's obviously going to be scattery in some places.
However, work is being done every single day to improve everything. There is much much work to do, but there is also a lot of work successfully done. For example the help section has recently been hugely improved, putting in a new subforum with things that have been asked and answered and confirmed to work, so that it's even more helpful and usable and cuts down on duplicate posts cos no one could find anything. Perfect? No. But with 20k+ visitors a day, it's going to be difficult to achieve something that everyone is totally happy with.
We do value people's input (when it's actually useful input and not "this is the suxx0r" and usually act on it if it's beneficial to the majority.

Rather than saying "MTS2's layout sucks ass", why not perhaps think of the new guy who is no longer overwhelmed by seemingly random bits of text, but has several clearly defined sections to deal with. In fact it's not just new users, it's easier for seasoned ones if you just take some time to get used to it. And if you do truly hate it, use the site map and ta-da.. the "old version". There will be options going in that allow you to skip the core pages, and the new download browser too.
Instead of whining about how the download server is too slow, perhaps think of the fact you aren't paying for a single thing anyway and it's sometimes going to be slow. It's not that we don't give a crap, it's that demand is high and servers cost, and the accounts need to actually balance (input vs outgoings) before we can get more. We send upto 100 gigabytes of data per day in files alone. You know only 0.1% of pageviews result in an adclick, with the donations that doesn't leave much extra on the monthly costs. When there's enough, another file server may be added. Simple.

Oh and yes, there have been some posts by the unintelligent BBS migraters recently, however we are taking steps to combat their stupid traits.

If you hate it now for whatever reason, then that's fine you can hate it, but you've heard a little from the other side and while I expect some to disagree, I would hope that some would at least try and see things from another point of view, and I would hope that those who wish to critisise could do it in a constructive way so that we can look at how things could be done differently.