Yes that's right it is FREE and too 'busy' and lacking in clarity IMO.

lacking in clarity, how?

dont like change put it back

is the mobile version gone for ever?

It goes with the 'too busy' comment. I just find the screen more cluttered and not as crisp. Things don't stand out as well. It used to be easier to see where new posts were. More is not necessarily better.

I'm sure others love it and that's fine.

I'm with you. I'm sure i'll get used to it but it does feel too cluttered. Wonder if less is more here, all i want to do is post opinions, i'm not really bothered about knowing when people are online or friends and foes etc. I'm pretty sure i'm never going to use all those smilies or the font colour changes either.

It's taking a bit of getting used to but I quite like it. Was very used to the old style so will have to spend ages on here again to get back to my level of "skill".

Plus I've "lost" about 250 posts

Admin counted every posters informed comments, and deleted them.

I hear wolfie is down to zero

what you mean is you don't want your boss to know when you're online

Dont thought of that!!

It's a work in progress. Admin are still 'tweaking' things, and the look/feel/layout may yet change.

There are a bunch of nifty new features that will actually make navigation and posting easier once you find them all and get used to them. I particularly like the 'last read post' feature that lets you pick up reading a thread where you left off.

that was on the old one

It wasn't implemented properly though (in the software, not by the admin of this site), so it essentially took a snapshot of all threads at the end of your session and continued from that point the next time you read them, whether you actually had read that thread previously or not. Now it works as it should.

The look is hardly any different in general, but it's a shame we've still got smilies (such a waste of resources). And it'd be nice to be able to turn off/hide the quick reply editor.

All in your opinion of course, smilies are used widely, and help quite often in getting across the context/sentiment of your post, all too often posts (like text messages and emails) can be mis-construed, similarly, the quick reply feature is very handy when you use it correctly.

Anyone with any issues could always, as I have suggested before, go and join a subscription board and pay to have an opinion there.

What RLFans does, free for it's users via sponsorship and volunteering of time by moderators, is of great value to the user base, I doubt many complaining have ever even made a donation to the upkeep of the site.

I wonder how many people full stop have made a contribution to this site. I have a couple of years ago when they were short of money and asked for donations.

I wouldn't think anyone will do that but well done for pointing out the choice - I'm sure nobody would have thought of it otherwise.



Whether anyone has made a donation or not is completely irrelevant - any user has the right to cast his or her opinion on here about the new site. You don't need to make a donation to register as a user and neither do you need to do so to declare an opinion about the changes be it good or bad.

That's analagous to a fan who goes to a game telling another one who doesn't they have no right to an opinion on the team's performance. I'm sure you wouldn't support that view would you ?

I haven't seen any view on this thread adversely criticising RLFans admin/moderators who do a great job with the provision of this free forum. I'm sure that some of the comments will help in the 'WIP' process the site admin are undertaking. With any change implementation some will like the results and some less so - that's life.

I don't disagree Staffs FC, I was just reminding people of what a great facility we get, for no cost to us.

PaulM, you are right, I have asked and been told that, as things stand, RLFans has quite a healthy financial position, so I can only assume Admin didn't invest anything in Iceland!

(I wasn't having a pop at anyone, apologies if it came across that I was)

Smilies are all (or were, initially) based on textual representations of facial expressions to show how a comment should be taken. If someone needs to elucidate on how a post should be read, a simple [codeicon_smile.gif[/code or [codeicon_wink.gif[/code (or any of the many variations) could be used and would be far less resource-hungry. That then means you don't get into the situation where Roofs includes a minimum of 20 smilies in every post. Thinking about it, that is the problem: the occasional post where too many are included. Maybe just putting a limit of, say, two per post would be a better solution.



It can be, and I'm not saying it shouldn't exist at all, but it does make a mess of the display as far as I'm concerned. Having it as an optional/hideable feature would be an improvement.

What resources do smilies use? especially compared to the Flash adverts down the side of the screen?

One thing that needs sorting are massive signatures, and GML's moderation ability!

Good point



I have no problem with smilies and like you say, they can help add context to the post

Every little helps. And they obviously use a lot more than a couple of text characters. Each text character uses 1B, whereas [codea026.gif[/code, for example, requires 5.3kB. It's not much as a one-off, but when there are 20+ on one page, it's a fair bit more strain on the site. And for a site that has a lot of traffic and has struggled in the past to cope with it, minimising load where possible is a good idea. And yes, they are a lot less intensive than the flash adverts, but the flash adverts are self-sustaining, bringing in revenue that pays for their inclusion and much more besides.

I trust admin, they know what they are doing.

Frankly, I don't give a sh[size=100i[/sizet who you trust. I'm suggesting potential improvements (which there is no doubt that limiting smilies would be), not saying that the site admin don't know what they're doing.

TOSSER


jUST CHECKING THE SWEAR FILTER

What improvement would limiting smilies make, you haven't said as yet?