Originally Posted by
IBJoel
Since that is a different department than mine, I don't know how their workload is divided. I do know we have at least one person in product who has worked on a lot of accessibility-oriented design before.
Since it looks like you've caught up on reading the feedback and are now responding "in real time" (or close to it), is it safe to assume that you, an administrator of the site, have no response to any of the feedback I have provided? Or are you (and the administrator team) unwilling to consider proper rollout procedures for website changes?
Originally Posted by
chermorg
vB has support for multiple skins but forcing a default. Why are there only two skins enabled, and why was the old skin completely removed for those who like it? I cannot stand the new one, it's way too bright, and honestly there's absolutely no reason not to give people a choice.
Originally Posted by
chermorg
Then it is even more appalling that they refuse to allow us to use the old skin if we want to.
Every single vB site I have been a part of has always added skins, and sometimes switched default, but left the old ones unless there is a compatibility issue. There is absolutely no reason to only have one selectable skin on a vB site (unless of course they don't care what the users think, in which case do whatever they want).
Originally Posted by
chermorg
Slightly OT question... why is the person handling feedback not the person making the changes here? It would be much better to have the people answering these "tech tickets" (who actually are these tickets even going to) come to answer our questions and alleviate our concerns. There is absolutely no reason many of these changes should take this long in vB.
Whoever made the decision to flip the switch on this really does need a talking to about testing and debugging workflows in a technical environment. You do not just say "here's my idea, let's force it on everyone all at once with no feedback". You run tests - opt-in beta being the best, an A-B being worse but still okay (but idk if forced A-B test is possible in vB). There is absolutely no reason this skin (which isn't ADA compliant and is extremely poorly made with regards to color selection) should have been forced on anyone with the problems it has that have come to light in this thread. This forced rollout, the response to community concerns, the time it is taking to fix glaring issues that would easily have been caught in testing had it been conducted. The only "preannouncement" was a thread in this forum that was never global-stickied or announced - at least in the two forums I actually read regularly on FT. The thread did not even allow users to try the style before release - it only showed very minimal photos of the style. This thread was not even up for 1 week before the forced rollout.
Extremely poor technical management by whoever is making these decisions, and to be quite honest makes me question whether I should trust the FT site to be secure, safe, and reliable. Advice from someone who's been a part of multiple large vB based (and other forum software based) communities - get some people on the administrative and technical teams who know what they're doing and who care more about the users than "site unity" with the clickbait ad-revenue driven FT homepage.
Your response to this feedback thread has been, to put it bluntly, crap. You have multiple times made clear that you are not even the one in control of this, and I can only assume those who are in control of this realize what a shitshow this rollout was, and how poorly managed it was, and they are thus refusing to show their faces.
If this site wants to maintain any credibility with me (and I suspect many other users who have liked messages of "crap" and "bring back old skin"), there needs to be some answers, some apologies, and some explanation as to
why in heck there is no option to use the old skin when it is trivial to implement that in vBulletin. The assumption will be that the owners/administrators here do not give a flying crap about the users and only care about how to make money off this site - which goes against what the "adblocker" message says of
we want to make it special for you too.
The funding from our sponsors helps us invest back into FlyerTalk to improve your experience.
On that note, maybe if your ads weren't so intrusive more people would actually whitelist your site on their adblockers. I shouldn't have half the page taken up by ads (on a decently sized monitor to boot).