Reggie

double bump

four

i'm seeing a lot of responses from people that have either never used vB or are not familiar with it's capabilities.

the most glaring benefits to me:
* single-click access to see all threads in a forum
* single-click access to see all replies to any given thread
* PM ability (great if you're trying to resolve a personal issue or sale or business item with an individual poster that isn't everyone's business)
* watched-topics feature to only view stuff you want to

bottom line - vBulletin is versatile and can do everything kawf can, but you guys need to learn how to use it. how can you knock something you don't know much about?

the common complaint i seem to see is the "i don't want to read all the posts". frankly that sounds either lazy or inconsiderate to other posters.

of course, if THAT is your chief complaint, you DO realize you can scroll past their replies as quickly as you did on kawf, right?

AxeYrCat

So, can someone explain to me what makes this new AudiWorld better than the better-designed forums at Fourtitude and Audizine?

Seems to me that this is excessively ugly and inconvenient.

It's not as though this was a rushed roll-out, and I sincerely cannot comprehend why some of the bugs were not addressed prior to going live.

It seems as though the IB team was unable to do what they'd set out to do, but decided to keep the timeline in place anyway (after it had been stretched multiple times).



Yes, what built AW was the community, but if a bar that everyone frequents suddenly changes their beer list or their menu, and the patrons don't like it, you can definitely expect that community to find a new bar.

TwentyValveB5+S4

so that 15-year-olds who don't even own Audis yet can make garages with their fake cars and post poll(e)s about whether or not their imaginary big turbo A4 will beat their friend's imaginary big turbo civic.

like, duh.

antiSUV

My answers:
1. You didn't need to click to see all threads OR replies since all of them were already threaded at a forum level. As multiple people have pointed out, it helps when you're skimming thru the forum. The multi-clickability is great for generating page views, but not for getting info at a glance.
2. PM-ability means little to me. Resolving issues privately is what e-mail and phone calls are for, off line.
3. The tracked threads feature in kawf is analogous to your watched topics.

I have come to prefer the simplicity of Kawf over vB or Zeroforum. It just works, sans frills. By the same token, Comet + elbow grease is better at cleaning your shower than the fancy battery-operated shower self-cleaner.

I participate in other forums that run vB, but kept on coming back here. The simplicity of the software was one thing, but more importantly, there was a good sense of community here. Compared to other forums, there was a great deal more civility, a lot more thoughtfulness, and a much more technical information that accumulated over the last 10 years.

Most of us old hands probably would not have minded the vB switch if it kept a lot of the threaded features that allowed the community to grow the way it did. However, IB apparently misled even the mods into thinking that it would be a threaded architecture from the get-go. So when you roll this out in the disastrous fashion IB did the other day, you get this result.

I hope that the knowledge base continues to grow with the new members that IB seems ready to attract, but as many people have said: If I wanted Audizine, that's where I would be posting.

02ALMSTT

lol, that is the single most revealing post to data as to how little the KAWF fans understand how to properly format and deceminate information in the internet.

If you think putting a FAQ in ANY forms based software is a good idea, you've missed the last 10 years of WIKI and CMS software development.

Adrain, Jason, Kris....I would like to suggest AW spin up a backend MediaWIKI engine to complement the Forums. Lets do the FAQ the right way!

Brett G

I have used some vB forums before. I learned to use vB because AW did not fill my need to discuss topics of interest to me. Although I could follow along when there were not many replies to a thread, it was difficult to figure out who was replying to who in some longer threads. That isn't an issue with KAWF.

KAWF allowed for single-click access to see all threads in a forum (up to whatever number of threads you set in your preferences) AND their replies. as with what you mean by seeing all threads in a forum, only the titles are shown for the posts and replies. Edge to KAWF

These first two issues address what you claim is the biggest complaint against vB. On 1 page we can see the subjects of all of the threads in a forum (up to your limit set in preferences) and their replies. If we see that the question has already be sufficiently answered, we don't need to click on it. In vB, we have to click on the thread to see the replies. If you're going to call us lazy and inconsiderate for not wanting to have to click on the thread to read the replies, then you shouldn't be listing single-click access to anything as a benefit - you can't have it both ways. Edge to KAWF

Using the "Show all of thread instead of single messages?" setting, KAWF allowed for viewing all of the replies to a thread. Because many of our replies can be done in the subject line, it was unnecessary for many of us to want to see the body of every reply while viewing page. If there was a reply whose subject line is of interest, we would click it and read. The pages opened quickly because we didn't have to wait for every reply to be displayed. Although many of us that prefer KAWF do not like this setting, it was available for those who preferred this view. Edge to KAWF as it gives the users preference on which display format they get.

PM ability isn't something that we wanted. If enough people wanted PM to be available, I guess it could have been added. Emails worked fine for us as most of us either have our email addresses in our profile and visible to others. Edge to neither as the use of PM's is debatable.

Watched topics is similar to the Tracked Threads feature on KAWF. All you have to do is click on the "TT" at the far right of the thread to track it. Edge to neither as they both have this feature. Although I will say that I like the way KAWF did this. With KAWF, the tracked thread appears at the top of the page when you go to that forum. With vB, you get an email.

I see you didn't refute my claims in the original post about the advantages of threaded view or KAWF over vB. So I must assume that you agree with them. Got any other things to bring up that you think are better with vB?

Brett G

I find it interesting that the functionality of the forum was not one of the reasons. Some of those things you listed are "nice to have" features and others are security issues. Some of the "nice to have" items are debatable as to whether they are nice to have. The security issues might have been better addressed with a development team that could focus on improving KAWF. As you stated, the improvements came from having a full development team associated with vB and KAWF did not. Was IB not aware of the differences in software when they bought AW? Was IB not aware that one of the reasons AW grew to be an attractive purchase for IB is the software? If so, why the change that alienates the users? Was ease of implementing changes THAT important that you were willing to risk losing most of the active posters on the forum? How difficult would it have been for IB to support 2 different forum software packages?

Tekk

Reality check - No one cares how many posts you have. Just because you have more posts doesn't mean your opinion is "more correct" than someone elses.

Joey T

Enjoy sitting around looking at all the pretty ads.