I hope you all will take the time to read the massive blog post I am working on right this moment that will address a crapton of stuff and hopefully give people a better idea of what's going on. I've just finished going through every single (300+) bug/feature submission - responding, categorizing and prioritizing - and will be keeping atop new ones as they come in so there will be a lot of ground I will be covering! Will try to structure it all as best as possible for people to find what they are looking for in terms of answers and explanations.

It will be up sometime early Tuesday morning unless I fall asleep at my keyboard. Mike pulled mad hours getting this site functional over launch and now it's my turn to help make sure it stays that way. I already passed 24hrs a while ago

The new design looks largely targeted to draw in younger, less experienced people that will contribute more questions than answers and (based on my experience with other social networking sites) more soliloquies, snark, and sass with a significant shortage of serious science and other interesting-to-me topics. If the community makeup switches so such demographics match that description, it will not have the same kinds of content that such people are interested in.

Its not about targeting a younger crowd, its about keeping our software current and with the times. I know new changes are hard to embrace but its all part of the maintenance.

I hope you all will take the time to read the massive blog post I am working on right this moment that will address a crapton of stuff and hopefully give people a better idea of what's going on. I've just finished going through every single (300+) bug/feature submission - responding, categorizing and prioritizing - and will be keeping atop new ones as they come in so there will be a lot of ground I will be covering! Will try to structure it all as best as possible for people to find what they are looking for in terms of answers and explanations.

It will be up sometime early Tuesday morning unless I fall asleep at my keyboard. Mike pulled mad hours getting this site functional over launch and now it's my turn to help make sure it stays that way. I already passed 24hrs a while ago

I put down a list of things I consider to be the deeper design problems of the site here, and a lot of people seem to agree with it (25 up votes already). I think what you have now has a lot of potential, and I look forward to seeing how you guys are going to address the issues we have that aren't simple bug fixes.

It's too bad we never got to see Superpig's ideas come to life though. Is there any word on some of the features he had planned? Some of his ideas such as making tagging a core part of the experience sounded like they would have been genius.

I think we should all vote on the colour scheme, from 12 candidates. Everybody who voted for the one which wins can stay. Everybody else has to go be emo about too much lightness somewhere else.

Bah, most people here are programmers. They should figure out how to modify the theme themselves using greasemonkey, and post their work for others to use.

I put down a list of things I consider to be the deeper design problems of the site here, and a lot of people seem to agree with it (25 up votes already). I think what you have now has a lot of potential, and I look forward to seeing how you guys are going to address the issues we have that aren't simple bug fixes.

It's too bad we never got to see Superpig's ideas come to life though. Is there any word on some of the features he had planned? Some of his ideas such as making tagging a core part of the experience sounded like they would have been genius.

Reading feedback over the last 24 hours I've come to recognize that we could have done better communicating the approach we've taken with the new version of the site. Definitely read Drew's update as he starts to better explain some of this. I do think your list brings up things that mostly could have been addressed through a better communications strategy. Most of the feedback along the lines you listed are due more to us not explaining what we're trying to do with the site than they are issues with what we did, so we'll have to rectify that. We're actually offering the games industry more ability to network, communicate, collaborate, and find content than we were ever able to provide, but somehow that aspect of the new site is being missed by most people.

If what you're referring to as "Superpig's ideas" are the "V5 features" that we've been discussing for most of the site's existence, then yes those features will be rolled out eventually, including things like tagging. Like any good product launch, the short-term plan is to address immediate needs and once the dust settles we'll re-evaluate our long-term plan based on everyone's feedback.

I put down a list of things I consider to be the deeper design problems of the site here, and a lot of people seem to agree with it (25 up votes already). I think what you have now has a lot of potential, and I look forward to seeing how you guys are going to address the issues we have that aren't simple bug fixes.

It's too bad we never got to see Superpig's ideas come to life though. Is there any word on some of the features he had planned? Some of his ideas such as making tagging a core part of the experience sounded like they would have been genius.

I think our biggest fear this time around was in publishing information about the new site and not being able to come through with it. Our software was aging and we couldn't maintain it. Because of the monumental effort it was taking to produce the new software we reconsidered whether producing our own custom software was really a good idea at all.. because what is our focus? Not writing forum software.. but on game development.

This site is a reflect of our intent to give us time on improving just the game development part of things while modernizing our aging infrustructure.. now we are 100% LAMP and can run on much cheaper servers.

Our site was running on classic ASP for god sakes..

The reason I'd guess people are leaving is exactly because they are here to enjoy technical discussions with competent developers. The new design looks largely targeted to draw in younger, less experienced people that will contribute more questions than answers and (based on my experience with other social networking sites) more soliloquies, snark, and sass with a significant shortage of serious science and other interesting-to-me topics. If the community makeup switches so such demographics match that description, it will not have the same kinds of content that such people are interested in.

If all the competent developers leave because they're afraid of the possibility that all the competent developers leave or be drowned out, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As for snark: I wonder how many of those leaving would nod to the wisdom that gameplay is more important than graphics.

Also, it makes my eyes hurt in a way that feels very similar to a migraine. I'm not sure how GDNet has always managed that, considering that most sites on the internet used black-on-white, but somehow onl this site has ever continually caused pain. I could easily see why this alone would cause people to leave at least until a less painful theme is available.




For me it's about the wrapping my brain around the layout so I don't have to think about the layout. For the moment, I can't just scan the page, I have to think about the layout before I can start thinking about the content. However, it's a well-organized layout, so it won't be too hard. Also related, my eyes still jump try to jump where the information used to be even though I know it's somewhere else which is causing a strain similar to trying to bring the foreground into focus in a 3D movie.

It'll just take a little time. (For me, at least.)

Most of the feedback along the lines you listed are due more to us not explaining what we're trying to do with the site than they are issues with what we did, so we'll have to rectify that. We're actually offering the games industry more ability to network, communicate, collaborate, and find content than we were ever able to provide, but somehow that aspect of the new site is being missed by most people.

I get that you're trying to expand/shift the target market for GDNet services, but I think the reason people aren't recognizing these changes is that they see the core service offered by GDNet as being the forums with everything else being supplementary to that role. Looking at it from that perspective, it's easy to see why regressions in the usability of the forums are the major problem points for people migrating to the new software.

The problem, I think, with trying to move away from the forums as the primary focus, and the reason why people are slow to accept the changes, is that there are plenty of other well-established sites that take care of the other aspects you're trying to get into. LinkedIn handles networking, Facebook and Twitter handle communication, and there are plenty of sites out there that handle collaboration between developers. GDNet is the king of technical forums and discussions, with a high concentration of intelligent individuals willing to help and excellent control of the signal-to-noise ratio, both through active moderators as well as community policing via the rating system.

In the same vein, the emphasis so much on content when GDNet hasn't been a significant source of technical content for many years seems a bit silly and premature. Most new articles these days are either product reviews, interviews, or blatant advertising. There's nothing wrong with putting the architecture into place to support a higher volume of quality content, but until you actually start getting that content, it seems pointless to structure your business around it.

Essentially, I want GDNet to focus on developing the services where it excels, orienting the site around them, and then working on the additional features on the side when you get time and they become necessary. Doing it otherwise risks alienating your user base without any guarantees that you'll be able to deliver on the content necessary to make the new site work.

Reading feedback over the last 24 hours I've come to recognize that we could have done better communicating the approach we've taken with the new version of the site. Definitely read Drew's update as he starts to better explain some of this. I do think your list brings up things that mostly could have been addressed through a better communications strategy. Most of the feedback along the lines you listed are due more to us not explaining what we're trying to do with the site than they are issues with what we did, so we'll have to rectify that. We're actually offering the games industry more ability to network, communicate, collaborate, and find content than we were ever able to provide, but somehow that aspect of the new site is being missed by most people.

I agree with this. Maybe a thread about what to expect or a 30 day beta feature upstream could have prevented *some* of the grouchiness. TBH I didn't even know there was going to be a switch until after log-ins were disabled and I noticed the stickied thread.