How Can The Forums Be Made Even Better?

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artfizz
paul211 wrote: ...

2. Multiple answers for any questions could be considered with a grading system by having a  choice to rate from 1 to 5 with 5 questions, etc.

...

artfizz wrote: Thanks for the suggestions.

SurveyBob is fairly limited in the features it offers.

paul211 wrote: With your knowledge and potential why not create your own survey, I can elp as I am familiar with this type of poll.

Let's give it a try! At best we can succeed, at worst we can try again!


Conducting a survey without the benefit of a tool to process the responses is neither terribly appealing to potential respondents - nor to the researcher. Before designing a survey, it would be advisable to select a tool, and then work within the parameters it supports.

Cystem_Phailure
artfizz wrote:

Take the occasional tendency to mock some posters' poor English. If enough people respond they find this attitude unacceptable, some of us might stop to think: 'Hang on, English may be this person's 2nd or 3rd language; is it such a clever idea to heap scorn on their attempt to communicate?'

Or take the way that occasionally, we name a community member and say: 'Person X should be stopped from continually posting nonsense' - which usually quickly degenerates into a flame war.


Yes, comments about lack of prowess with grammar or spelling, even for someone writing in their primary language, are usually cheap shots (once in a while it is pertinent).  And carping out of the blue specifically at someone who has not previously been involved in the thread is hitting below the belt.

On the other hand, if two or more parties have been enjoying and consensually participating in an ongoing forum battle with one another, I see nothing wrong with one of them pointing out that the other is a twit, or the second person observing that the faulty logic of the first might best be explained as the result of questionable parentage and five or six generations of inbreeding.

trysts

A lot of "inbreeding" goes on in threadsLaughing

trysts
LisaV wrote:

The ones mother-sister knits.


Laughing

Loomis

I can't remember what I voted for. Lately what's making the forums lose value is people acting like children. Flame wars, righteousness, pointless arguing. It creates a low signal to noise ratio that makes it hard to easily navigate to good content.

kco
Loomis wrote:

I can't remember what I voted for. Lately what's making the forums lose value is people acting like children. Flame wars, righteousness, pointless arguing. It creates a low signal to noise ratio that makes it hard to easily navigate to good content.


 I second this.

artfizz
Loomis wrote: I can't remember what I voted for. Lately what's making the forums lose value is people acting like children. Flame wars, righteousness, pointless arguing. It creates a low signal to noise ratio that makes it hard to easily navigate to good content.
kco wrote: I second this.

Somewhat ironic that ever since the improvement survey, things have gotten worse. It was ever thus. Does anyone remember this dialogue ...

somebody wrote

From time to time I log on to this site. (Every time hopeful that the live site will be more playable......) But that aside, when I log on, I read the forum threads and sadly the quality of contributions have diminished...

Is the chess.com community going to shambles?

artfizz wrote:

Oh no, it hasn't! Or if it has: has the quality of your own contributions diminished as well? There are, I will grant you, quite a few light-weight threads about nothing in particular (I know this because I've started some of them!). If you have been on the site for a while, you will have seen all of the popular topics being discussed again and again (and again) - and this aspect itself being discussed.

If you want puzzles, there are puzzles, If you want game analysis, there's that as well. There's humour, acrimony and desperation - a bit of everything. Behind the scenes, there's blood and toil and goodness knows what to keep improving the facilities.

Let's hear some critcisms! Be specific! Be forthright (but diplomatic)! Be off with you!

erik wrote:

already beyond repair. this is a terrible place. it's so bad that everyone is leaving or has already left. save yourselves!!!

slowhand wrote:

TOP TEN REASONS WHY I'LL CHOOSE NOT TO SAVE MYSELF:  1) .........oh nevermind I'm going back to watch a grandmaster play at LIVE CHESS.com

phishcake5 wrote:

 Beautiful, just beautiful.

Come on people.  These forums are what you put into them.  It takes work to start and contribute quality here!  So hey, do that research, analyse that game, upload those photographs, do some creative writing and thinking.

I'll tell you something, we are blessed to have what you have here.  Nuff said.

artfizz
Loomis wrote: I can't remember what I voted for. Lately what's making the forums lose value is people acting like children. Flame wars, righteousness, pointless arguing. It creates a low signal to noise ratio that makes it hard to easily navigate to good content.

 Q2: What do you consider is the most urgent BEHAVIOURAL / ATTITUDE issue that should be addressed?

 

Frailty

Description

BA1

Intolerance

Views expressed so forcefully that any dissenting opinion is treated with suspicion and contempt

BA2

Rudeness

 

BA3

Snobbishness

 

BA4

Childishness

People who whine about people being ignorant and in doing that are ignorant themselves, going in some sort of perpetual motion with others

BA5

Drama-queening

Too many people posting just to create drama needlessly, and to hear themselves talk.

BA6

Disparagement

Referring to another chess.com member in a disparaging way.

BA7

Anarchy

People ignoring the forum guidelines and posting on banned themes e.g. cheating, religion.

BA8

None of the above.


dadam

Very funny postings, but not constructive..

What was the question for this thread?

artfizz
dadam wrote:

Very funny postings, but not constructive..

What was the question for this thread?


How Can The Forums Be Made Even Better?

ok - let's put this to a survey!

click here to take the Chess.com Forum survey >>

who knows - maybe this will give chess.com the info they need to change things...

 

The graphs illustrate the initial results of the survey.

artfizz
paul211 wrote:

I think that your idea of a survey was great, but the format is somewhat restricted.

Worthy of consideration is:

1. You could ask for input through a forum for a day or two to establish the poll survey questions.

2. Multiple answers for any questions could be considered with a grading system by having a  choice to rate from 1 to 5 with 5 questions, etc.

3. Results from the poll could show for all the questions being asked and in priority descending order,  the priority items to be addressed.

Just a thought!

Did enjoyed and participated.


Considering just new features: it would be theoretically possible to build a list of all the features ever asked for e.g.

  • Sortable current games list
  • Link to individual posts
  • Wildcard conditional moves
  • etc.

and for each one, specify a multiple choice response determining how strongly it is wished for. Something like this ...

 

How badly do you want it?

FEATURE

Fantastic - would use it every day!

Vaguely useful, I suppose

Not interested - I'd never use it

A very bad idea & a complete waste of time

Sortable current games list

 

 

 

 

Link to individual posts

 

 

 

 

Wildcard conditional moves

 

 

 

 

For ease of consideration, the features should be grouped.

However, I don't think this exercise is worthwhile.

pdela
pdela wrote:

UF14: huge photos

 

[edited to make image smaller - members with low bandwidth can't see this page waiting for the image to load]


This have changed the spirit of my comment

artfizz
pdela wrote:

UF14: huge photos

 

[edited to make image smaller - members with low bandwidth can't see this page waiting for the image to load]


pdela wrote: This have changed the spirit of my comment


Yes, but you wouldn't use a loaded gun to illustrate the danger of a loaded gun. You should have used a picture of a large picture. Preferably low resolution and not too wide. Wink

artfizz
paul211 wrote:

 You are on the right track but you expand on your own thoughts, mine are different.

Categories could include :

1. Most desirable upgrades for users.

2. Chat box and posts upgrades, such as an undo feature to posts what would prevent corrections before submission to the forum. And an expansion to the chat box to live chess messages to show more than a few characters.

As well the ability to copy links from the web without being shown in the post, some work and some do not work.Why? I have no clue, at times I post directly my comments and at times I save and preview and in both cases some links do not show upu, I can circumvent, naturally by truncating the http://www.  part and the link i can show the link on my post.


The advantage of having a comprehensive list of features to start with, is that the survey would not have to collect any textual answers, only preferences. These would be simpler to process.

The disadvantage, however, is the difficulty of creating a list that suits everyone.

It would be much easier to ask everyone for their top-5 wishes for new/updated features and bug fixes.

artfizz
paul211 wrote:

As well the ability to copy links from the web without being shown in the post, some work and some do not work.Why? I have no clue, at times I post directly my comments and at times I save and preview and in both cases some links do not show upu, I can circumvent, naturally by truncating the http://www.  part and the link i acn show the link on my post.


A very annoying bug when posting in the forums is that URLs sometimes disappear.  This seems particularly prone to happening when EDITing an existing post, and when the fontsize used for the link is smaller than the fontsize used for surrounding text.

There are a number of workrounds that I have found:

  1. Any post that is using links, create it in MS Word - so that you have a master copy - then paste it in. (You may need to reedit it after submission to remove HTML gunk).
  2. Make sure all of the text and the links are the same size, and the same font (e.g. Verdana, size 3 [about 12 point])
  3. Try separating the links from the text
  4. References to certain websites seem particularly sensitive. They may be being blocked explicitly by chess.com. Alternatively, the URL may contain dodgy characters. In these cases, remove the linkage and just leave the link in plain text e.g. http: //photo.net/philosophy-of-photography-forum/00DnuX  (sometimes, these get converted automaically back into links. In that case, leave a space after the ':')
  5. Attach the link to some neutral text. So, instead of using http://www.chess.com directly in the text of the article, just use chess.com. Then use the forum editor to associate a link with that text.
pdela

:o)

artfizz

Q3: What do you consider is the most urgent POOR FORUM PRACTICE issue that should be addressed?

response

Description 

PF1.

People posting in their own forums to "bump" them and keep them alive long after they would have died out naturally

PF2.

Re-using (thread bumping of) ancient threads instead of just making a new one

PF3.

Pedantic correction of spelling, grammar, etc. without regard to legitimate alternatives nor to the effort made by those whose first language is not English.

PF4.

When a commonly repeated topic comes up, it gets dismissed by someone immediately, referring them to the archives. (The ones who are sick of it can ignore it, or have fun with it.)

PF5.

Someone creating a forum in which all the first 20 posts are his.

PF6.

Hijacking topics

PF7.

Deliberately misquoting

PF8.

Excessive quoting of quotes (i.e to a depth of more than 4)

PF9.

Using the forum to play a game of chess: a feature already provided perfectly well by other parts of the site.

PF10.

None of the above.

JG27Pyth

PF11 -- creating tables with text too small to read comfortably.

artfizz
JG27Pyth wrote:

PF11 -- creating tables with text too small to read comfortably.


Oh pul-ease - get some specs!

(It's bigger now).

jesterville

The idea is good. The main problem with these surveys is that anyone can manipulate the survey by taking them multiple times...The result of the survey itself does not confirm the thinking of the majority of chess.com members, but rather the majority of survey takers.