Hello!
Howdy gang,
As some of you may remember, I was part of the old Philosophy Forum that for whatever reason has become a ghost town for the last year. What the hell happened there? Nothing is accessible anymore.
Anyway, I've been missing the thrill of philosophical discussions, and have been feeling the need to resharpen by knowledge and debating skill. And while I really dislike this forums layout, I figured I'll give it a shot. Who else is from the old forum?
As some of you may remember, I was part of the old Philosophy Forum that for whatever reason has become a ghost town for the last year. What the hell happened there? Nothing is accessible anymore.
Anyway, I've been missing the thrill of philosophical discussions, and have been feeling the need to resharpen by knowledge and debating skill. And while I really dislike this forums layout, I figured I'll give it a shot. Who else is from the old forum?
Comments (52)
Quoting Maw
Same here, but it may be just bias against any change -- eventually you will get used to it.
Wooot Woot!
Glad you are here!
Tiffers
Quoting Maw
The short version is that it was sold and then abandoned.
Quoting Maw
I am, as are many others.
Quoting Emptyheady
What don't you like about it?
The old forums layout was more of a standard internet forum layout, so it was simply easier to navigate. This layout is pretty unusual to me.
You'll get used to it, Maw, and it's far better on mobile if you roll that way.
So it's about ease of navigation? Anything in particular? I much prefer this one in almost every way, once it's zoomed to 125% at least.
Quoting Emptyheady
Such as?
Ignore.
:)
In any case, a lack of features has nothing to do with the layout.
The categories page is structured just as well - if not better - than the previous forum's main page. It's just that it's not the home page here. But it's only ever a click or two away. If, for example, your interest is limited to logic and philosophy of mathematics, we have a category for that. And if you untick all of the categories outside of your interest, they won't show up on your home page.
Coloured texts and personalised themes I see as trivial. And personally, I prefer it without the option to use coloured text. If you can't use it, you can't abuse it. It just looks neater and more professional when it's all in black.
It's bad enough that you can do this:
Just imagine how much worse that could be if coloured text was added to the palette! [i]No[/I] to coloured text, [i]no[/I] to signatures, [i]no[/I] to gifs. That's what I say.
I also miss the approval or disapproval ratings.
Also where is 180 Proof?
Quoting Maw
I think 180 Proof showed up briefly but didn't return. Not sure why though.
Why so? Philosophy isn't about what folks like, it's about what is true. Approval and disapproval ratings were misused and became popularity contests, hence why we voted against them here.
In my opinion, to say the design is bland is largely a misguided criticism with regard to a web design that exists to optimize the reading of text. And there is no such thing as unused space in a web design, but certain people may, for whatever reason, prefer all or most of the screen space to be filled. This is quite an unusual preference in my experience, aside from clients who want to stuff everything "above the fold". One major problem with the old design was that you had to scan a long way across the screen to read; the importance of limiting line length/characters per line has been recognized for a long time by typographers.
I'm not being defensive: it's not my design and there are several things I would change about it. But when people say they dislike a design it's now second-nature for me as a web developer to find out if there is anything of substance in the complaint so that I can see if I can do something about it, or if it's just people moaning about something unfamiliar or expressing their odd tastes.
But design is a kind of engineering and is certainly not simply a matter of taste. Although we don't have much scope to change things on this software platform, I do want to know what works and doesn't work. PlushForums has been professionally designed to optimize the user-experience, but it's not perfect.
Anyway I'll get off my high horse now.
Quoting Maw
If you ever want to see a bigger version of anyone's profile image you can click on it to view the profile. And like I say, you can make everything bigger as I do by zooming in.
As I work largely in programming nowadays (database creation and management mostly, but also things like web-design) I know that the user ALWAYS moans about the unfamiliar and requests changes, even if those changes actually make whatever the application happens to be worse >:O (I think they think that by requesting such changes they are keeping the designer "under control" or some weird thing). It's crazy how many substandard applications I've had to make because users just want it that way, and they don't care about the rules of programming or design. I've broken almost all the rules in database creation for some folks >:O but it's their database. If they want it that way, when they want to expand it and increase its functionality it's just going to cost more :D
Although I will grant you that just the look of this forum is incredibly easy to make. It's functionality though (the back-end) is a different story, that's quite hard.
I'm not complaining, I'm laughing at them ;) :P fools are useful, definitely not enemies.
Are you a developer by profession (as in are you educated in computer science with a degree) or self-taught?
I want to agree with you, but what you're talking about is maybe just a different kind of professionalization anyway. To "demonstrate the capacity to do it" for the surgeon cannot just be a portfolio of past successful operations, because the next operation is the one that could expose the gaping hole in his knowledge.
Landru was very active here for a while. I think he got tired of saying "conservative meme," so he left.
But that's like half of what we talk about in the office. It'd be quiet without it. Also, this is hilarious.
Quoting Agustino
Professionals are just those who get paid for it.
Quoting jamalrob
I hope not. I don't even have an IT GCSE.
Quoting Michael
Yes, it'll be back to school for most of us.
Yes, but then this would hold for the one having a degree as well. The thing is the degree doesn't actually help you that much. I have a degree in engineering but I learned very little about it in university and more by actually doing it. I guess I could've been an independent engineer from the very beginning, I would just have started out taking small works that I was certain I could manage and go from there, just like I started in programming. But the problem is, if I actually tried to be an independent engineer after university, I couldn't legally practice even if I took on, say, building someone's garage >:O
I did a search for "conservative meme", Landru. We're first (insert celebratory emoticon here) and some place called "freerepublic.com" is second. Maybe he's over there.
@jamalrob, freerepublic.com is an example of great forum design. ;)
Less of your in-jokes! Have you found Landru yet? We'll take him dead or alive.
Yikes.
Too bad 180 Proof and BusyCuttingCrap didn't stick around. Maybe they will come out of retirement some day.
I personally wouldn't mind, but as you haven't made any clear or detailed criticisms except for the profile pics, preferring just to express your dislike, I guess that's that.
:D