Is FL tone deaf?

Looks like it....

This thread posted in the same section http://www.warriorforum.com/suggesti...rovements.html About letting us know in advance if changes are going to be made. Seems the problem has gone from bad to worst. Yet no notice of the change.

Marks 5000 post thread he pointed out some good facts about discussion and one line post, multiples reasons why this forum lost a lot a members. Only thing they are more worried about is google rank and the feed. Then listen to a few of the people that gave the most to this forum. Sad

Seems Tim and maybe others care but their hands are tied. Maybe consider the classic view to they make it non usable. People age going to have to figure if it is still worth coming here anymore ?

I just blocked it on my Adblocker works so far no more drop down

Hi all,

This month and next month we'll be making a lot of small changes fairly quickly in order to clear up complaints that you guys have had with both views. We made the most recent changes to the nav so that we could eliminate a UI issue, where the straight line route for the cursor to get from the hover hitbox to some menu items would result in the menu closing (this still exists for the search icon btw, which is something we'll also fix sometime soon). There's likely to be one or two more iterations on the menu so that we can fix up some remaining issues.

To address some of the other issues:

• We decided not to include all forums in the main nav, as there's a few too many, and we can cover 90% of views with the forums we did include.
• I assume that by over-reactive menus you mean that the hover hitbox is larger than the words? We're considering putting a brief (< 500ms) pause on the menu appearing so that it's less likely that you'd open them by accident. Having a hitbox larger than the word is fairly standard and helps some users who essentially have poor aim. Ebay and Amazon are both good examples where you have a larger hitbox and a slight timeout on the menu items.
• The tools menu item has the same sized hitbox as the other menu items, it just highlights slightly differently.
• I don't think we've made much secret of favouring the modern view, although to be clear I really do not want to degrade classic in any way.
• Tools is essentially a place for us to add the daily deals that we already run. I personally found it a bit crazy that we would promote stuff through email and other means, but then not have a way to get to it on the main site.
• I totally accept that we have not been as good at pre-announcing stuff as I'd said and hoped.

I think by overactive she means (and if she doesn't I do) that if you get anywhere close to the menu in your everyday use of the forum, that menu pops up.

I use the forum almost entirely through New Posts. Before you moved the dropdowns to the left, I was going crazy just trying to see what was on the forum. Thanks for moving it - it makes it better for me.

It also looks like you may have added space to the bottom of the black bar so the overreaction isn't so extreme. Maybe not but it seems a little bit better.

I appreciate what you and the others are trying to do. Communication is one of the big keys to success in marriage, life, and the community. If there was more of it, there would be less complaining and leaving. I know, for example, that some users left mainly because they didn't feel heard which made the changes even harder to deal with.

Mark

Tim -

If someone working for WF would try navigating the classic view - they would understand what the complaint is.

Try it - see how many times a black box covers your whole screen....see how difficult it is to navigate.

I think mods and admins all use the modern view.

That is the only explanation for the lack of moderation in posts/threads and the repeated excuses for the tool bar. If you tried to navigate the classic view you would SEE quickly what the problem is.

Of course the "tools" link doesn't do the same - there is no dropdown box for it! There is no 'return to forum' link, either - nor does that ad box open in a new window. Wonder how WSOs and Classified ads can compete with "recommended by the forum" affiliate ads.

I expect this forum will be a feed by the end of the year. As it is, the majority of posts answering questions now are new members and about half are copy/paste info run through a spinner or a translator. Fact is - the number of active users has dropped by 2/3 since 2014.

There are many new members and the changing demographic has affected the WF significantly. For that demographic, the 'modern view' may work better.

Ok - you splorfed me....

The engineers have put in the timeout on the menus, so hopefully they're not popping up unintentionally as often. We're discussing a few more changes internally, but they'll take a little longer to land.

On this account I'm almost always on classic view, as more of our mod tools exist on it (incidentally, the mods mostly use classic for the same reason). I haven't personally experienced the problem with the menu bars being over-reactive.

Much better - I've found when I'm using the large monitor - I'm not as precise with my cursor. Now I have to deliberately aim at those links to see the drop down 'blackout'. Thanks!

You gotta love it - just noticed there is a new section titled "explore"...

ONly reason I know it's there is I went to the "forum" link and then to the "all forums" link...wanted to see how many members were active (below 500 - not good)....and noticed A NEW SECTION.

Is it a secret? From the comments, looks like only a few have found it but some good stuff there.

Actually I looked a little further into that and it seems like it's a bug - the permissions on that forum seem to have gotten messed up somehow.

I wondered if anyone stopped to think "is it a good idea to send our visitors somewhere else".

It seems the focus is 'innovation' - but there is a dead article section that shows "36 viewing" day after day - and you know that's wrong. There are almost always 8-10 'sections' that have less than 20 people viewing at any given time. The War Room is losing the battle.

I understand fixing what is broken isn't as interesting as implementing exciting new ideas. My question is whether trying new ideas and sections one after another can pull the rest of the WF carcass with it.

I think at some point you need to shut down the WF - reinvent it in the style you seem to want. That would be a feed that is mostly an ad platform with links to various marketing information ....with a "member comment area" in each section.

Tim,

FL has tried a number of different ways to get the quality of content back up. Explore seems to be the latest.

Before that, they hired a lot of their freelancers to write articles. Tons of them all by people who have zero clue about anything related to anything besides freelancing. The members, old and new, overwhelmingly rejected that drivel and admin thankfully finally gave up on it.

Maybe around the same time and because of complaints about the front page littered with junk, they opened the article forum back up after being closed for years for being a pile of junk that was in many cases stolen. It was easy to see why the previous admin closed it down.

Around that time, the admin/mods tried something like Explore on a daily basis. I forget what it was called but it was the cool articles of the day on a number of popular marketing blogs such as Moz.com.

And then there was the community manager that copied and pasted articles here (many without attribution) to get the quality up.

All of these attempts are good - at least you are trying. But they have all failed.

And for good reason(s).

1. Encouraging people to leave isn't going to solve your traffic/community building goals.

2. Having people with no experience write fake it till they make it articles was a slap in the face of people that live and breathe this all day and can smell a fake 100 miles away. The opinion of FL went down for a lot of us because they tried this crap (literal) at least twice. Even after many complaints, they did it again.

3. This isn't an article directory unless you want to change the domain name to Warrior Articles.

Meanwhile, legit suggestions about how to increase the quality were and are ignored. And the eternal quest to make everything pretty thinking that everything will be great if it's pretty. Your recent annual report said that the users were up because of the feed. It's sad that you guys really believe this. Nobody came and signed up because of the way something looked. They signed up because a post caught their eye or they had a question and would sign up no matter if the design was black and pink.

Almost daily, on your own forum, we give the advice to people to ask their visitors what they want and then give it to them. Why not try that?

Last year, Moss shot down the idea of a $1 fee to join to cut down on spam. He said that user registrations fell drastically when there was a registration fee before. Excuse me but DUH. That's the point!

Another example of not understanding your base: No one will pay for forum access, right? Many of us use to pay $60 a month for a private forum here. Some of the people that have left here in disgust are paying almost $40 a month to be involved in some quality discussions. Ask what people want and give it to them. Marketing 101.

Side note: I didn't sign up for the Vault mainly because of trust issues with FL - they weren't handling the main paid offering (the WR) the right way so how could I trust them to handle the vault right and they got all these wanna be Warriors to be the contributors. None of them were recent contributors and many have left a long time ago for greener pastures.

For example, a lot of people love Neil Patel - I subscribe and read his stuff too. He was a Vault contributor. When pray tell, besides that little project has he ever showed any interest in the WF? Yet, he's a regular contributor on Quora including a post today. Same goes for the WAMA folks such as Rand Fishkin.

Similar question goes for the WF event you recently promoted. You do realize that most of those people don't come here anymore, right? Maybe once a Warrior always a Warrior but they are posting their content/help/discussion and putting their ads elsewhere. Not here. No way, no how!

Figure out why they left. Ask the people that hang around what they want. Listen. Communicate. Then you may get somewhere as far as the quality and start to rebuild the forum.

Mark

Chuckle time - went to the 'all forums' page and noticed the "visitor numbers"....looks like someone has been adjusting them....