Forums Usability

#1 I have to disagree, I kinda like the minimalism of the current interface. It's a nice change, and loads very quickly on slow connections imo.
And there's no reliance on third-party software that opens up oppertunities of fraud and password stealing, let alone the monthly upgrades required.

#2 Fair enough - then how can you effectively search these forums? i use the search box but get tons of old and useless posts (i.e. i dont own the 2d license so i cant see the post - not indicated in search header).

sorry but i'm not used to this kind of forum

#3 I too like the minimalism in the current implementation, but that's not to say it's perfect.
Indeed, it's really stupid that you see pages that you do not have access to view, in your search query.

But that doesn't prevent you from effectively searching the forums, you still get results and this is how most of us find information.

#4 A Search filter would be nice, but I think the system used to find posts assigns what I can assume is an arbitrary threadID (44709) with no link to it's forum (44708 could be in the TD2 forum, etc), it'd be kind of hard to do. Unless the search engine searched for "/mg/forums/result.area.php?qa=#" in the page on line 44 and catagorized the index using a similar system.

#5 I've posted this before and it didn't garner much interest but the search for forums is missing a large chunk of data that isn't indexed

Most posts between the end of January this year to about the end of April are missing from the index. The Indexer *IS* working however now, and if I post some examples, by tomorrow they will work (since the indexer will find this post, and find the links and index both)

Do the following search : "qt=38960" - it will return no results (limit to forum messages only)

Now go to the following link:
http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php? qt=38960

(Removing the spaces between the ? and the qt) the link will exist. It's a post from late January

www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=44184

Some more information in here

#6 Totally, totally, 100% off-topic:

kymaene, I've been trying to reply to your email about my character pack, but for some reason the email was bounced with a "couldn't deliver for 48 hours" message. Please try again. Not sure what the problem is, my email seems to be working fine otherwise. I couldn't find any other contact info for you besides your GG profile, and you only have these two posts. Hopefully you have this thread set to notify you, and hopefully it has better luck reaching you than me!

We now return to our regularly scheduled thread. Sorry about the OT.

-Spencer

#7 Yay!! thanks for the reply!! i'll re-try sending an email to you; otherwise you can reach me via kymaene@black-orchid.com or kymaene@hotmail.com

#8 I notice nobody's yet answered kymaene's question about how one effectively searches the forums - any tips would be appreciated as I too can't find an efficient way to track down answers here. As for the "minimalism" of the current setup, I'll happily trade fast page loading for a slower loading page that has more of the information I'm searching for! Sifting through irrelevant and inaccessible posts sucks. :(

#9 Yeah, but your not on a 56k connection for half of the month.