It burns!

[dizzy]

I have the old-style links bookmarked:

http://www.modthesims2.com/forums.php

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

[Motoki]

LOL, I just browsed over there and there's a whole slew of people asking what happened to some of Pescado's stuff like the Novel Progress bar (the download links no longer work) and no one is answering.

[Brynne]

I loathe MTS2 now. Like so many here know, it used to be a good forum and you could find really excellent material. Now, the new interface is a piece of shite, and the forums are a complete joke. In my humble opinion... lol

J.M., please don't let the wassacks (not all are) in Retardo Land attempt a takeover...I implore you. It's scary in there sometimes, and crash helmets are the least protection you require. I'm considering investing in a full-on bio-hazard suit with matching body armour.

Retardo Land frightens me. It's bbs-obsessed. It's disturbing. Boring and disturbing.

[Ness]

I thought I was the only one thinking that...

[Baa]

The new MTS2 layout looks like a kindergardener drew it up on a chalkboard. It's ugly. It's pastel easter colors.

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.

[LK]

J.M., please don't let the wassacks (not all are) in Retardo Land attempt a takeover...I implore you. It's scary in there sometimes, and crash helmets are the least protection you require. I'm considering investing in a full-on bio-hazard suit with matching body armour.

Take over what?  The Podium?  I sure as heck wouldn't try to do that--after all, Brynne would then get bored with this section as well. 

[Brynne]

Take over what?  The Podium?  I sure as heck wouldn't try to do that--after all, Brynne would then get bored with this section as well. 

And apparently ness, as well. No offense, it's just not my thing.

[LK]

We have our little civil wars and episodes and things like that, but on a normal day, it's quite fun.  I'd hang around The Poduim more often, but I'm not very technical.

[Kristalrose]

I don't like MTS2's forums anymore, either.  I have looked at their new "Sims 2 Community", and eagerly followed the NL threads from those who were lucky enough to get their games early.  Since then, I haven't had much use for it.  I loathe feeling like the only adult in a room full of children.  I start to feel like I am babysitting and not getting paid.  LOL LOL

I do my Sims "Socializing" here and at World Sims.  World Sims is a smaller community, but we all get along really well and have some very interesting and intelligent conversations.  Even our younger members seem to be mature and well-written. 

I don't visit "Retardo Land" for the same reason I don't visit the Official BBS.  I can't stand all the jargon-speak (2cute4u!  Put a Bunny In Your Siggie!!!)  and reading those posts, and then making fun of them, just makes me sad.

[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.  It must be Delphy's mid-life crisis.

Oh, and Kristalrose, it's actually "Put a bunny in ur siggie!"  Just thought you'd want to know.

And trust me, we all HATE Netspeak over in RL.  Any use of it is tongue-in-cheek.

[pet_peeve]

Retardo Land frightens me. It's bbs-obsessed. It's disturbing. Boring and disturbing.

Indeed. Beating up the kids on the short bus gets *really* old after a while. PV

[bairy]

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.

[gali]

Bairy, perhaps you are right in all the things you said - but:

I am one of the "oldest" members of MTS2, and when a player is used to find something right away, without the "sophisticated logic arrangement" - he is puzzled, and feels uncomfortable. I don't need logic - I want to see all at once.... As a matter of fact, I was puzzled too.

When dizzy-two published the "old" URL - I immediately put it on my "favorites"; there I could "swim", without digging in the "logic system".... Now I enter MTS2 only on this URL, and I don't care if the administrators want to show their witty logic....

The "classic" built of the site was the best. I have enough troubles with the game (NL) - and don't need another "logic" game....

Give us the old frame - that's what we ask for....

[bairy]

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.

[dizzy]

Well, to be brutally honest about all this, I didn't like the way it was before. The lack of decent categorization made it difficult to notice updated material. The new categories have improved that aspect of the site quite a bit.

The layout of the site, however, is not as efficient as it used to be. I prefer the old site map because in one click from there you can be in any forum on the site right away. The subforums makes it a bit more work, but that's what tab-browsing is for. 

[Oddysey]

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.

Strickly speaking, entropy (using website terminology, but the general principle applies to everything) is not a measure of popularity, although it may be affected by it. It is definitely not inversely proportional (proportionate?) to the size and popularity of a website. If anything, entropy increases when a website gets more hits. Entropy is a measure of the "messiness" of a system, or in this case, the disorganization of a website. When people on this site speak of a forum deteriorating, they are referring to an increase in the average stupidity of posts and of an increase in the stupid posts to non-stupid posts ratio, and thus how much dross must be waded through to get to interesting stuff. By this measure, the entropy of MTS2 is definitely increasing, because even leaving aside the layout (which I personally dislike since I dislike excessive subcategorization, primarily because a system of categorization and subcategorization that makes perfect sense to one person's way of thinking may be obtuse and inane to another persons way of thinking, and this increases dramatically with the amount of subcategorization) there are more and more non-useful non-interesting posts for every useful and interesting post. Most requests fall under the "non-useful, non-interesting" category, since the people doing the requesting often ask for things that are technically nonfeasible or don't provide enough details to actually implement their ideas. Also, a person looking for hacks does not want to have to look through requests; that's something that for the most part only modders with some time on their hands are going to be looking through.

Generally speaking, the more users you have in a forum, the more entropy you have in that forum. The larger your system, the harder it is to organize said system.

[bairy]

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.

[Oddysey]

Hey, it's pretty impressive that MTS2 is still functioning at all, considering the probably traffic load.

[Niomi]

I do miss MTS2 the way it was a year ago, there hasn't been a place quite like it before or since. I don't have any criticisms for Delphy and if it were me I'd have given someone else the reins long ago. It's still sad that the place turned out the way it is, but I know everyone there has done the best they could and it's ultimately a positive contribution to my game.

I still visit MTS2 on IRC and say hi every now and then.. I made some friends there.

[Shivani]

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.

Well, I'm sorry, but it's not fixed.  For reference, I browse with Mozilla 1.7.11 (Gecko/20050728).  In a short test I just conducted, the first several pages loaded fine, but the next loaded with incorrect column widths again.  I doubt it makes a difference, but I was in global hacks/testing at the time.  Something is still being overlooked.

As for using IE, I'll be damned before I use that piece of trash unless I absolutely have to (SimCribbling, anyone?).  It has nothing to do with spyware, et. al., because I have other programs to handle those intrusions.

Additionally, I do not see the point in having to click back, then forward, when I can hit F5 and have it done in a single action (if I'm lucky, because not even that works every time).  Maybe I wouldn't care if I happened to be on my desktop and could use the mouse buttons to programmed to handle those actions, but I'm not.  Heck, I'd probably just hit F5 anyway out of habit.

Mind you, I'm not angry with the response, but I am annoyed with the some of the advice given.  I'll also continue to wander through MTS2.  After all, I've had years of practice with dealing with annoyances from Win98 in the past.

[bairy]

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.

[laeshanin]

All very interesting about MTS2, but I think I can speak for a number of us on this forum when our concern is about the migration of "fans" from the bbs/MTS2 to MATY, and the complete nonsense posted. It's drivel, without a doubt. 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. At least here, if you do dare to express some rationale it will be discussed in an intelligent and adult manner. Or, you'll be ridiculed, but you have a perfect right to take the pee back and no-one will think less of you.

As for the new format... It is certainly very attractive, but it is also a pain to get round. And yes, I do indeed still use the old style pages.

[bairy]

"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.

[laeshanin]

I did think about making a complaint but decided never to bother posting again. I'm not interested in getting people banned, and can't be arsed with childish/abusive remarks about the level of my intelligence, knowledge, impartiality or otherwise. Unfortunately, after checking through a number of threads on the site I've been really disappointed as most of them seem to be random rubbish. I don't doubt they are enormously fascinating to those joining in, but it just don't float my boat. Perhaps it's just a reflection of the average age of the people who use the forums as they all seem very young, not that I'm decrying youth in any way as there are those who display oodles of maturity, or, maybe, not terribly well educated?  My, that sounds horribly arrogant, doesn't it?

[bairy]

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.