Feedback please

[Cairenn]

Is having a seperate forum for macros a good idea, or should we leave macro stuff in the other forums? I thought it might be a good idea, since we aren't primarily a "macro" site, so they kinda get lost in everything else, otherwise. That's the same reason I made the sticky thread in that forum giving links to places that are primarily "macro" related.

Also, what else do we want/need in the way of specific forums? Is there some way we should re-arrange them? Alter descriptions? What else can we do to make the forum part of the site better?

We are already working on the download area, trying to make it easier for both the users trying to find and download mods, and for the authors to upload.

[Cairenn]

*Hip check to the top*

Feedback after all the recent changes? What do folks think of how things are set up now? What still needs improving, and how would you suggest we improve whatever it is?

[Kalia]

OK ive been talking over things with my friend Turan and theres some improvement we would like to see if you could consider =)

Ok over all i love the layout of the page , but theres still some navigational issues.

1) Favorites list , can you make the version number a downloadble link? Instead of having to navigate to the addon each time , saves alot of time when alot of your mods have been updated in a patch =D

2) On the downloads page via the catagory you choose to look at , when listing the mods
add a download icon next to the view file info and show pictures.

3) On the actual mods page , make a place for patch notes.

Now also consider this but dont let it get outta hand!!!!
One of curses biggest problems was lettting mod authors have substantial amounts of back versions , that takes up major stock on the servers , but its good to have at least 3 back versions incase the mod authors newest version has a bug in it , we can easily revert to a older working version.

Ok thats all for now and Turan is about to post his thoughts to so

I really do want to see this site pick up and more and more mod authors and users coming here as i just feel its going to be the best move period

[Turan]

Hi, Cairenn. I've only just started browsing your site, but I do have some thoughts to share. This is probably more or less just a "wish-list" of things I'd like to see. I'm posting here because, one, Amyn has threatened me with bodily harm if I don't, and two, your site is already very sleek and fast and way ahead of virtually every other addon site in usability and presentation. So my thoughts are:

- I love the link categories on the left side--favorites, most downloaded, etc--but I'd like to see the extra line (in gray text) underneath the link removed. It makes the display look too cluttered, and it's really information that's not needed for browsing. Or, in the case of top downloads and top favorites, maybe put just the number in parenthesis or a column to the right of the addon list.

- It would be nice to have a link to an author's addons on the author's profile page.

- On the addon download page, I agree with Amyn on allowing additional uploads. There are authors who do get out of hand with this, but I'm not sure a file limit is the answer. Maybe you could have one slot for the primary addon download then slot for a beta version, then slots for additional files. The extra slots would be for things that support the mod. For example, a dev kit for addons that are extendable, such as Titan. Another example, Derkyle, on Curse, posted an items list to populate data with 13k+ items for use with ItemsMatrix. IMO, this is preferable to having such things on separate download pages.

- Also on the download page, I'd like to see the file statistics at the top with the addon information. It would also be nice to see this in a horizontal table format rather than spread vertically. When people know what they're looking for, it's just easier to be able to scan information in a header rather than browse up and down the page.

- For the addon forums, I'd like to see either a separate forum page or at least a link at the top so I can jump right to the forum. I like to periodically check my addon forums and those of others I've participated in, so it'd be nice to have some way to know immediately whether I have new posts and to go right to them without having to scroll down the entire page for each addon I want to check.

- A searchbox displayed on the homepage would be nice, possibly even with autofocus. The dropdown search menu is neat but when I'm looking for a mod, I want to hit the home page, type a word, and get the search results without having to do any clicking. Nothing major, just a "nice to have" for us impatient folks.

That was a lot more than I intended to write. Take my suggestions for whatever they're worth. You really have a good site going already.

[Cairenn]

Thank you both very much for the feedback! These are the types of things we desperately want and need, if we are going to continue to grow and improve. While we may not necessarily impliment every suggested change, have no doubt that they will be considered and debated. Part of the decision making factor, of course, also depends on the number of folks that say "yeah, that's a great idea" vs those that would rather things left the way they are, or those that propose something else entirely. And, we are always revisiting previous suggestions that hadn't necessarily been implimented at the time, to see whether they should be implimented "now".

Keep the feedback coming folks. We want to help and support the community (both authors and end-users) as best as we possibly can, but in order to do that, we need to hear from the community.

[Kaelten]

Cairenn,

Things I would like to see here as an author.

I want to take a moment to second the need for a few extra versions avialble for download. Also I would like to see the patch notes section.

As a vainety feature it would be nice to see the number of votes an addons recieved as well as how many user's favorites the files in.

Besides that They took care of most of my wants.

Thanks for the site.

[Kaelten]

I would also like to request that we be able to view comments in order from newest to oldest. right now I can't find an option to do that. I may be blind, but maybe not. So I figured I'd post it here.

[Cairenn]

Just as an update from our end, a number of these suggestions are in the works, and some have already been put in place, for example:

2) On the downloads page via the catagory you choose to look at , when listing the mods add a download icon next to the view file info and show pictures.

is now live.

Keep the feedback coming guys, know that we are reading your suggestions and implementing those we agree will help improve the site, just as quickly as we can.

[Kalia]

Very very cool Cairenn and i thank you

[Cairenn]

Previous versions now auto-archive and will list under the mod description

[Kaelten]

awesome! nice to see fast action, how many previous versions will be archived ?

[Kaelten]

On the section in the mod page where an author can select whether to allow addons or patches to a given addon. It would be nice if there were two other options besides just on and off.

1) allow only the original author to put addons/patchs there

2) allow the original author to designated a people that can put up files as well.

Just my two cents

[Remelio]

Originally Posted by Kaelten awesome! nice to see fast action, how many previous versions will be archived ?

Its still a work in progress, but from what I understand as of right now it would be "all of them". Still in the works is an option for authors to be able to remove a previous version for whatever reason (major bugs, patch day, rollback to previous version, etc)

[Gello]

That's pretty awesome.

To add some feedback on the comments/release threads:

There are comments at the bottom of a mod anyone can post to, and sometimes release threads are started for discussion. It would be cool if they were tied together. Off the top of my head and this is likely a ton of work or undoable:

Somehow have the comments and the release thread be the same. It's probably not a great idea to "force" a release thread for every mod. And I have like no experience in php. But maybe if the first comment is made, then a thread is created in the release forum, and the comments at the bottom would be a feed of that thread.

Then a mod author can subscribe to that thread and get notifications when comments are made.

Or if the above is undoable, maybe on the Comments button near the top of the screen, add a Comments (0) or Comments (11) for however many comments there are. And perhaps give mod authors an option to show which mods have new comments since their last visit. And allow users to make feature/help requests in the comments section.

--OR--

Since clicking on Comments has an enormous red "Comments are comments! This is not the place to ask for help, request updates or add features. If you need help please use the help forum. If you want the author to add a feature please find the authors thread in the released forum. Thank you.", maybe add an optional "Release Thread" link when uploading/editing a mod.

Then when users go to your mod they see a new button: "Feedback/Feature Request/Help" ("Release Thread" probably wouldn't have meaning to many). Clicking this would go to the release thread created by the author.

If you want comments to be only for other users' consumption and not the mod authors', it makes sense to keep it limited to comments.

But if I found a bug in a mod, I'd be inclined to click Comment and then back away from the big red warning. Since most mods don't have a release thread then there's really no place to mention the bug. And searching for release threads for older mods can take more hunting and by now I've just lost the will to care about it. If the mod author doesn't know about the bug someone will tell him without forcing me to search for a thread.

So I think comments should be for help, feature requests and bug notifications also. And it'd be great if we could go to the mod then the discussion of the mod

For mods I'm not currently working on, I read the comments on curse but I don't act on them right away unless it's a bug. It's nice tho that a feature request list is there handy for when my current project is at a point where I can change focus to other mods. I have a lot of plans for BestBuff, TrinketMenu and AutoInnerFire but Recap is taking 110% of my time right now so that stuff sits on the back burner. So it's nice they are there associated with the mod and I can go straight to the comments of the mod I'm working on.

It's great to be able to go directly to a current discussion without hunting for it. On curse there's a ton of discussion about localization in the Recap comments. Before a new release, I go back to that thread and go down through and grab the new localization. New German and French users pick up the mod, see there's some discussion about it, and post their comments and fixes. It works very well when there's a persistent thread attached to the mod.

I can't see that happening here because the thread is disassociated with the mod. Newcomers won't see what others have written about the mod. Comments I make not really worth adding to the mod's description (ie, what's planned for 3.0 of Recap) well get read only by a couple people before the thread sinks if I add it to a release thread. There's very little feedback or discussion about the mods themselves on this site due to the disassociation.

Totally unrelated:

It would be wonderful if this forum allowed adding whitespace to the start of lines. I can't read the (code) (/code) snippets well. My browser is never maximized and often I have to scroll across to read an entire line. If I could post in a forum:

function this()
-- that
end

and have it indent by typing spaces at the start, it'd be wonderful. Like no forums do this so it's probably not easy to do.

In summary:
- imho comments should also be for help, feature requests, bug notifications, etc
- or at the least create an easy way to do so without hunting for a thread that may not exist, may be very old or have a poor subject line
- it's important that discussions/feedback/feature requests about a mod stay confined to that mod for organizing
- old discussions about a mod should be viewable by new users of the mod without making them hunt for it
- it'd be great to get notification when new comments are made on a mod. This is doable with release threads in the forums, but they're infrequently used due to the reasons above.
- despite what the official WoW forums feel like, most people aren't going to go out of their way to make comments or feedback without a visible existing discussion already happening.
- none of this is a demand in any way. This site is great and if there were no changes all would be fine. Just thought I'd add feedback.

[Kaelten]

As an alternitvie, you could have it so when a Mod was approved it auto created a thread or two, one for Feedback/requests and one for bug reports. and have a link to each on the mod page.

[Cairenn]

Okay, good food for thought there guys. Will have to see what the programming guru has to say ...

Originally Posted by Gello Just thought I'd add feedback.

Which is exactly what we want, and need, if we're going to be able to continue improving the site for everyone that uses it, authors as well as end-users.

[Kaelten]

Ya I'm not the only one who needs their healthy dose of feedback, KCET wouldn't be but a clone of Pinky's with some minor tweaks without feedback and info got from the users. Whats scary to me is that I have at least as much features planned now as are already in KCET.

[Kaelten]

How about being able to see how many of each version somethings been downloaded?

[Kaelten]

On with the request line here.

Would it be possible to be able to view a list of like the last 25 or 50 addons updated in general( or even 100?)

Or is that already possible and I'm just a goober?