How can anyone who works with Internet technologies be so resistant to change?

[synergypoint]

It is human nature to resist change even though it is one of the constants in life.

Change on the Internet can be measured by the day.

I find it really amusing to hear complaints about change from people that work with Internet technologies daily.

:)

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Well with that same axiom...you should know...

Not all new technologies are for the better. In fact, many flop.

[chucklasker-BANNNED]

Change can be good. I imagine, though, that if they decided the forums will only be accessible via a Blackberry phone, you'd be upset. So, not ALL change is good. It's a balance, and one that a good company would ask the users about before forcing it on them.

[Wendy]

This is just WAY too confusing, if you asked me! (but then again, nobody did ask me! )

But hey -- at least I made it here!

[ILoveHostasaurus]

I have to admit, I think this format will make it a lot harder to catch up after a weekend. With email, I already know which posts are new, they're all sorted by subject so I can delete them in groups if I can't contribute to a thread and then I don't see them again.

Maybe there's a way in Vbulletin to make a thread as invisible so once you know you don't want to monitor it it's gone?


Oooh, and no spell check, this could be interesting. :)

[Wendy]

It seems that once you post to a certain thread, you are automatically "subscribed" so you get notification if something else is posted, but once you get the email notification, if you don't visit the thread, you are automatically "unsubscribed". That will be difficult to manage because sometimes you can't get back to it right away, then when you have time, you gotta go looking for the thread.

And the no spell check thing -- I'm too impatient to use it anyway! LOL

[virtualkiwi]

It's not different that's the problem

People who don't understand why a number of us are kicking up a fuss about moving everything to forums don't understand technology.

Technology is supposed to be a helper, not an end in itself.

The idea of building up an online knowledgebase of answers to frequently asked questions is good, and forum type software is not a bad choice for this.

It is a terribly bad choice for general discussion, at least from the end user's point of view.

With a mailing list I recieve a number of messages per day which I can analyse and either keep or discard them. The list only supports plain text, and once I have the messages within my mail client, I can refer to them whenever I like whether I'm online or not. The bandwidth used is minimal, and I always have useful stuff on hand to refer back to.

With forums, every time I want to refer to somthing, I have to wait for the forums to download, and with wonderful HTML formatting, people can make messages many times the size of a nice plain text message. Of course forums eliminate cross posting and sometimes ridiculous amounts of quoting, but for experienced users, they waste both time and bandwidth.

This is why people are grumbling, not because because we're a bunch of luddites.

Forums have been around for years, so they're not even new, and there's no RSS feed option so one can hardly argue that this change is necessary to keep pace with technology.

[apanda]

I personally prefer a forum over email. But that's just me. :) I have used a lot of vbulletin forums and run one myself, and am very familiar with all the features. Once you learn the features, you'll see how the forum can be better. I like to search for posts by a particular user, view my past posts, etc. The search will also work much better than the archives.

As for the subscriptions, you are not unsubscribed if you don't visit a thread, but it does stop sending you a message EVERY time someone replies until you visit again. This way you aren't bombarded with multiple notifications. After you view the thread again, the email notifications start up as before.

David, You can stop receiving notifications for particular threads. Just unsubscribe in your User CP... http://extranet.miva.com/forums/usercp.php

Maybe some will prefer to view only subscribed threads from that page. I prefer not to get email notifications for EVERYTHING, so I just click on New Posts on the menu to see what's been posted since my last visit.

In my own forum, I find some people don't want email notifications, so they can turn that off. Under Edit Options in your User CP, you can adjust it so you are never subscribed, or you only get daily or weekly notifications.

[chucklasker-BANNNED]

Ugh. just a day of using this and I am hating it. If I return to a thread to see what's the latest, I have to scroll through all the posts I've already read, scanning each one to be sure I've read it, until I get to the latest post. With a mail list, I have already deleted the posts I've read.

Sigh. After riding a motorcycle for years, it's hard to get into a giant RV and plug along at a third the speed and convenience...

[Wendy]

Chuckie!!! :)

I think I have to agree with you, so far. I feel so "disconnected" from the Miva community. It was so much easier to scan each email as it came in......sometimes I would learn stuff from threads that I wasn't even participating in. And sometimes, I would save emails that referred to things that I knew I was going to tackle in the future so I could refer back to them.

This leaves me with a feeling of being REALLY disonnected and disorganized! I don't like change, but I'm willing to give it a try. It just takes me time to get used to something new :)

Wendy

[chucklasker-BANNNED]

Yes - and withdrawal, too. I spend a lot of time on email, and to be able to hop over to my Miva 4 list folder, or my Miva 5 list folder, when I see 5 or 6 new emails in there, is so easy. To see those folders empty (except the one folder that has the forum topic emails, which are rare so far) is kind of like an empty beer glass while eating Mexican food... Sigh. Maybe it's a good thing for me - weaning me off the lists while I move away to other things, so I'm not still list addicted while doing siteXpansion, Inc. At that point, I can become addicted to my own lists...

And look, I can do smileys here! :D

[Wendy]

You bring up a good point Chuck. Sometimes, I was so busy reading the list, that it kept me from my work. Now, I can come and read AFTER I work -- no more excuses!

There is always a positive side to every thing I suppose!

[Julie Wilber]

Ugh. just a day of using this and I am hating it. If I return to a thread to see what's the latest, I have to scroll through all the posts I've already read, scanning each one to be sure I've read it, until I get to the latest post. With a mail list, I have already deleted the posts I've read.

Sigh. After riding a motorcycle for years, it's hard to get into a giant RV and plug along at a third the speed and convenience...

In the user cp you can opt to have threads show newest first, that way you won't have to scroll through everything.