"TMP Board desperately needs software updating" Topic

I've been to many forums with features later than 1995. I mean good gawd. :(

Tell us more quick, before your posting is deleted and disappears forever.

What was wrong with 1995? I know that, depending on the noun, Latin plurals can be with or without an S, but that was a very very long time ago. Fora or Forums? Not too sure. Declensions I think it was down to…

Heck some of us remember 1975 with nostalgia and the fall of Saigon (sob) or 1965 and the year West Ham won that European trophy, the year before they won the World Cup single handed at Wembley for England.

Tell us more. Other than Tango, this robot Artificial Intelligence that we all treasure so much, what do you think we are missing?

Stress if you do not respond fast this thread might just disappear off the board as being critical.

If improvements are made, I hope the general "look" does not change.

Not really sure what a transition to a different forum format or software updating would do exactly. Granted it might not look sleek, but it is functional and easy.

Often there is nothing worse than a update, You have to learn how to do everything from scratch

Hey, it works for me.

I find the nightly shutdown annoying. Being on the other side of the world, the shutdown is right when I most want to use TMP.

14bore +1

What features do you want?

The features most people want are the features everyone else is using, ie. new, fresh, flash and pizzazz! Also known as nothing worth doing.

Also, 14bore +1

I don't keep track so if these are already implemented let me know.

Being able to sort the home page by last post instead of newest thread would be nice.

Being able to email updates on a topic, have an icon on the top that allows new update to be sent or not.

Complaints that lack specificity (i.e. what features are desired) are hard to take seriously.
An argument should at least be outlined if one expects changes to be made.

I like the look and layout.

Wish we could search both backwards and forwards by date, like we used to be able to, for various subjects.

Is it just me, or is the little box to check for "Case Sensitive" searches now gone?

I see the words, but the box to check for that next to it doesn't show on my display.

Wish posting pics was easier, and that we could do so direct from our PCs like for other sites.

Simple things, like the title matching the post, no phantom posts (i3, click on it and there's nothing there),

@EiC Bill

(1) New Content Notification:

I've been coming to forums religiously since 2005. One thing that this forum desperately needs is some sort of notification that there are new posts or at lease the ability to subscribe/unsubscribe to a particular thread. I have to hunt to find out if anything new has been posted on a topic that I'm interested in or even if someone has replied to something that I shared or commented on.

(2) Better Editing When Posting

I've seen forums become bogged down by photos and .gifs and I'm not suggesting that. However, the forum would benefit from the ability for posters to have the ability to BOLD, italicize, __underline__, and change the color of fonts.

(3) Response to Posters

I see some folks including quotes in their posts. I'm assuming that this is from the use of <quote> CONTENT </quote>. It would be nice if there was a button attached to an individual post so that someone using a post to and referencing another post reads like this:

"ninthdoc wrote"
or
"ninthdoc said"
or
"Quote ninthdoc"
ETC

withing the new post. Often I have to go back and see who wrote what and in what context.

These are just a few things to make the forum more legible and interesting to look at.

The main feature that I'm really interested in is the first one regarding the ease of finding new content.

I've missed forums. I started being more active here because my interests have changed and are more in line with the hobby side of things that are discussed here, rather than debating and considering theory of board games, etc.

I still go to those other sites for information, but I miss the community aspect of some of the other forums that have faded away. I'd love to see the community here grow rather than dwindle. I've read several active members complain that this forum is a lot more quiet than it used to be. I believe that can be changed.

2 cents.

Hmmmm, MvLockfile errors have returned, and are annoying.

Get that when posting, and once done, even when trying to go back and refresh, and not post.

Here's my starter for 10 :

Titles that match the actual post
Ability to follow – i.e. get notified of updates
Straightforward to post without a 5 minute wait to see if you hit da bug
Search that works
Like button
Ability to add pictures into a post (not having to host elsewhere)

Well…

That escalated quickly.

;)

Oh, and emoticons are always fun, too. :)

I like the layout and I'm fine with the minor idiosyncrasies.

But, I also would like the ability to post pictures straight from my pc, better yet, phone.

Yes, but you're a Silurian, you were born the the DARKNESS – *AHEM* – PREHISTORIC AGE. We have merely adopted it. ;)

True ninthdoc. The deep, primordial past suits me best. And I welcome its return (but with simple picture posting … :) )

The snag with picture posting must be the burden it would impose on the site's memory. A link allows the picture to be shown, without it being actually stored on TMP.

I use Imageshack as once, originally, recommended by TMP and then free. Even now it is a pittance to pay the annual subscription if you really do want to post images.

It would be a help indeed to have some record of one's own recent postings. I have moved from simply Napoleonic to WWII and ACW and finally (indeed recently nothing but) Vietnam but have to search around to see if anything added after I have posted

My deepest desires, absolute necessities:

#1 "Subscribing," "Following," whatever you want to call it. If I follow a thread I will get notified if there's a new post, even years later. If I want to see if anyone responds to one of my posts I have to keep a window open to that thread and reload it periodically every few hours for the first day, then every day. That's the only way to have a conversation. Otherwise you're just shouting into the wind. Do we just want to post our opinions or do we want to converse?

Ideally I should be able to subscribe/follow without posting to the thread, if I just want to watch for it.

BoardgameGeek has this, it works *great*, I love it.

#2 Subscribe/Follow members – if there's someone who makes interesting comments or a friend you want to listen to you get a notification when they post.

Leads to stalking? Maybe, but it doesn't seem to be a problem on BoardgameGeek. If it happens, you can doghaws, ban the account, or just removing person-following privileges for that account.

Currently you can do this with google, just search for that person's username with a restriction for last seven days or whatever. so it's already possible, but you have to use external tools.

#3 Peristent searches. I have some bookmarks set on my browser to recall google searches for games and other topics I care about. So if someone has mentioned a game I care about I can find it, even if it's not in the Subject. It would be great if the TMP software could let me know if Shieldbash or Elvorix are mentioned without my having to do anything after I set up the condition.

#4 Good searching.

Those are the essentials. It would be nice to have easier picture hosting. I would use a like button but it's not essential.

@Editor in Chief Bill "What features do you want? grin"

Well, when i do a message board search I would like the results limited to the forum I'm in. I don't care about moderns if I'm searching the Renaissance forum. And sorting by latest instead of slogging through posts from 15 years ago.

+1 for ninthdoc

Honestly, the only thing I feel needs improvement is the search, it should let you pick a board. Other than that, there's sort of a quaint old-school charm about the board, which seems appropriate for historical gaming. Although whatever it's written in is either something totally homebrew or ancient, which might cause issues down the road.

Leave it, I say. Although a better search would be great.

I don't worry, am happy….

I like the layout, too, but would love to be able to easily post photos from my phone or iPad.

Yes, easier way to post pics like on e.g. FB, etc., …

I'd like the ability to flip the postings so that I have the option of having the most recent posting at the top of the page and backwards in reverse chronological order. This is handy when there's been a some new postings in a topic that has many, many pages.

Ability to quote someone from their comment would be really useful.

Ability to follow topics

Better search engine. The ability to search on one board instead of universally. Photos posting from ones own file on ones own computer. Being able to edit the title of the post after it is posted. Just look at the Lead Adventures Forum for how it should be done. Heck just go to the LA forums instead. I spend most of my hobby browsing there anyway.

I don't know if it is intentional or not, but it would be nice for the title of the thread to match the thread. This one shows that it is about a VAUBAN FORTRESS.

@Editor in Chief Bill

Something else the board could use is the ability to pin reference info the the top of forums. Like a thread called "How to paint Feld Grau"? or "How to paint Dunkelgelb"? Back during the height of FOW there were like 80 billions of this same question over and over and over and… you get the idea.

There are plenty of these repetitive questions for each period. It'd be nice to combine all this into a FAQ or Tutorial grouping

I have never complained about anything infrastructure related here on TMP. I've always taken the attitude that it is what it is, and it generally works, albeit with an occasional glitch here or there, and the semi-functional onboard search system. A few times over the past decade plus I've lost long posts I wrote to "The Bug," but despite my anger in the moment, the overall casualty rate was acceptable.

Most of my posts include at least a few and sometimes many images, usually photos of terrain I've built or games I've played.

The past week or so I started several threads about painting a commercially-made Vauban fortress. Each post included a bunch of photos. Every single photo in every single post was scrambled by the system into a url link instead of an image.

In the old days -- say a year ago and the decade before that -- I would occasionally encounter this issue. Maybe one out of 5 or one out of 10 times I posted an image it would be turned into a link instead. At some point I figured out the solution, which is pretty simple. You just have to click "EDIT" and change all the "url"s at the start and finish of each photo's code into an "img".

So that's what I did for all the pics I posted on all those threads. In the old days doing that once in a while wasn't a big deal. But for the past week or two, having to do it dozens and dozens of times, over and over again, became annoying.

Then somewhere in the middle of putting up my series of Vauban fort painting posts here on TMP, I noticed LINKS to HOBBY NEWS articles -- which are advertisements promoting TMP commercial supporters -- started popping up inside every thread.

Personally I found this new feature a bit distracting, but I'm a dedicated capitalist and don't have a big problem with TMP deciding to allow advertisers deeper into the platform.

But it bothers me that what I see as an important problem for a forum that deals largely with the VISUAL ELEMENTS of a hobby, is allowed to drag on -- and in my recent personal experience get much worse -- while time and effort are spent improving things for the advertisers. The advertisers are very important, but I think the members (I'm a member) are equally important. I think it's more important to fix basic problems than add new features, like advertisements on every thread.

I know I'm not the only one having this problem because a while back Tango did a post centered on an image but the image in question appeared as a link instead. Being an overly helpful type I copied the image and successfully posted it below, along with a brief explanation of how to I did it by fixing the glitch. But most posts of his I see these days still seem to contain links to images where they're meant to have images themselves.

Some of the new features listed by people above might well improve TMP, or they might not. But I don't think anyone can argue against the importance of fixing it so when users try to post images they appear as images the first time around, without having to go into "edit" mode and do a rewrite for every single image they are trying to post.

End of rant.

I like TMP because visually it is classic, not like modern madness.
The New Policy in other hand.. is not classic.

I second all the requests to be able to post pictures directly on here, and not from a third-person site. That's it, really, the rest of this creaky, old-school looking, site really doesn't bother me.

John

Oh go on then…

Really appreciate the effort here, the content, that's it's a labor of love etc.

But

I'm disappointed by the forum UX. IMHO it is really poor.
The LAF is also poor and perhaps the lack of competition has something to do with it.

In the end I can totally understand why it is what it is, but the functionality/usability problems surely negatively affect traffic and ad income.

Really basic forum usability stuff is missing – read/unread posts auto updated, go to last unread post (massive!), header bar with nav, latest/last read, filtering, likes (and emojis), in-line ads, easy image posting… and more.

The mobile experience is horrible.

Then there's findability. Yes, it's a fragmented hobby but there are way too many sub fora with overlapping content, search is not easy (but with sensible forum software you don't need to search), notifications, watchlists, saved etc…. all this stuff is standard on mega hobby fora.

I just came into this at the start of the year and I see the same posts in 3-4 Facebook groups as well are here or LAF.

If you don't make this place more usable and make it work better for the bloggers, entrepreneurs, newbies, as well as old hands, Facebook will take the traffic IMHO.

The best comparison I can offer is VIcontrol (composer forum). Ignore the design, the functionality is pretty standard for special interest fora. There's supporting members and global advertisers, many of whom are small entrepreneurs. Similar issues with commercial announcements as here and a "hack" with tiered commercial announcements sub fora… same drama, some rucks between advertisers, occasional shilling… one owner, passion project…

…point is, I can go there and find stuff, find the last unread, I click on ads there, the review bloggers are open about affiliate links, I can choose to support them etc.

TBH I am a regular on three other special interest fora for different hobbies, but in the last 5 months I have spent most time here and it's made me sad because of the UX!

OK, I admit I'm a dinosaur but what's UX ?

Sorry…
UX: user experience – what it's like in reality, in use, for you, me and the others.
UI: user interface – the buttons, fonts, boxes, lines, links, colours etc. on the screen.

Thank you, I've learned something useful.

Sorry, but I'll just riff a little:

My experience today.

I go to the Ancients front page: the most recent post is from 3 days ago. It must be broken.
I go to the list of ancients boards, and presume that "Ancients Discussion" is the most active. But there are no new posts today and none from yesterday. There are no indicators about who started a thread or how many replies. So I have to guess which are probably just Arm sharing a link with no replies. The colours for post I've viewed don't make sense. Tgere are no notifications about threads I've been active in.
I open a thread I recognise. I do not see the last unread post, but I have to scroll down to the foot to click to the last page and/or guess where the last unread post is.

It's a nightmare. Strangely the Lead Adventure Forum is also awful. But TMP is worse.

I have had TMP open constantly on my phone and laptop for nearly 6 months and I really want it to be good but it's just not useable in its current form.

Unfortunately I am going to give up. I really don't want to spend my ancients time on Facebook but I have to now:(

Whoever is running TMP (and LAF) must get this together. It's far from minimum viable proposition IMHO now and you should look at some other special interest fora for benchmarks and fix it with simple modern forum software.

Cheers and sorry for the negative review!