Upcoming Site Changes

[dag0620]

Throwing in my weight, I too did like the spotlights for the various reasons posted above. I think my knowledge of things FIRST would not be nearly as vast as it is had it not been for spotlight posts.

With that being said, a VB4 or VB5 upgrade would be greatly appreciated, and I'd hate to see one feature hold up the upgrade.

I'm always a huge fan of stripping down and streamlining things, and I'm glad to see CD go in that direction!

[synth3tk]

Originally Posted by Brandon Martus

Once these changes have been made, this will allow us to easily upgrade vBulletin which has some new features which may be useful and provide other valuable features (Facebook/Twitter integration, blogs, groups, etc.).

The only part I really care about.

Thanks for everything you do, Brandon!

[bduddy]

Is it just me, or are the spotlights that appear at the top of the page a small subset of the full list? Maybe keep only that subset on the spotlight page?

I agree with others that have said there are too many forums and too many stickied threads in the popular forums. And will there be any discussion of the reputation system? I certainly think it could, at least, use some changes...

[Navid Shafa]

Originally it sounded like the changes would be seen over the next few weeks, but it's been a month since the headline hit CD...

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is eagerly awaiting the new CD

Any news on where we are in the process? I realize this is a big undertaking, is there anything the community can do to help?

[tickspe15]

They have started making some minor changes. For example the unsung first heros feature has been removed.

[Foster]

It's the tried and true method.

Put a CDer in a pot of boiing changes and they will hop out.

But slowly make changes, and the CDer won't notice until it's all done (cooked)

[toastnbacon]

I am of the opinion that the spotlights are a good thing to have around. Maybe there are some inside jokes in there, and maybe it's not all useful. But it's fun to go and explore in there. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to have a committee go through and weed out the ones that don't belong there, but I have to say that I can't really see a downside from keeping them.

[pfreivald]

In a pique of irony, I found this thread because of Karthik's spotlighted post about getting rid of spotlights....

I like the spotlights, even the silly ones.

[yash101]

You should really add some AJAX chatrooms for people to discuss about a topic without having to wait for a forum reply. It may boost forum efficiency by a lot

[coalhot]

Originally Posted by team1165wins

You should really add some AJAX chatrooms for people to discuss about a topic without having to wait for a forum reply. It may boost forum efficiency by a lot

I disagree with this, for a few reasons.
For one, it would complicate things. Someone starts a topic about a specific issue, which has been already discussed in length in chat. Also, it would be harder for users to search the forum to find past threads, if things had been discussed in chat (this is a big concern actually, since most of my CD use has shifted from reading random posts to using it as a resource, somewhat like google search)

The second point is that chatrooms cause forum traffic to drop, and discourage regular posting. Why make a thread if you can just ask it in chat? And because of that, forum participation drops. This happened on another forum I am on, that one almost died.

As for efficiency, I need to point out that most users don't stay on CD for prolonged amounts of time. Mostly, we come on, check the frontpage, forums and sub-forums we're interested in, and that's it.

Oh, and there's a chatroom, #firstchat on Freenode if you really want. Warning: it's highly disused...

[PayneTrain]

Forums are designed to encourage people posting collected, coherent discussion to fuel the discourse of a community over a long period of time, also providing a place to be referenced in the future for ideas and a cornerstone of a community's history. Chief Delphi is a slice of FIRSTthropology, or something, like our own little town hall. A chatroom doesn't have any of these benefits and comes with drawbacks that create word vomit and provide nothing of use to the community long-term. There are "chatroom opportunities" through other outlets with FIRSTers, be it webstreams or Facebook messaging, but I don't think a chatroom here is in the best interests of the community. It's like putting a middle school cafeteria in a courthouse.

Of course I'm not an admin, so this opinion is worth about as much as a disco record or AOL Free Trail CD.

[kmcclary]

Originally Posted by Brandon Martus

In the next few weeks, we are going to be streamlining and simplifying the ChiefDelphi.com experience. This involves combining and removing some forums that aren't used that much, removing some custom features that aren't used much, making it easier to maintain the forums -- mainly keeping them up to date and secure.

CD-Swap has already been removed .. If someone needs something / wants to give away something, they can just start a thread about it.

Oh NO! I went looking for it today to post some things on it, and found it was gone! Aieeeeee!

Serously though... IMHO, CD-Swap was one of the greatest things here, especially during the build season!... FYI - It has helped out (and saved the bacon) for MANY teams. True, it is not used much OFF season, but over the years it has been a real lifesaver for several of my teams during the build.

OOC... Was there REALLY a lot of "overhead" in running CD-Swap?
If the "auto=delete-post-upon-ageout" tool is automatic and already running, it seems to me to be an extremely high value added sub-forum, with little need for admin time overhead. It also helps keep the other sub-forums much cleaner.

Now if you aren't interested in restarting CD-Swap, can you at least create a general "Swap & Sale" sub-forum instead (possibly off of the General forum)? That will at least help keep a lot of part exchange and "Help Me find {whatever}" postings from cluttering up all of the other forums.

Thanks!
- Keith
... Very sad, to see CD-Swap go...