WANTED : FOR SALE section split from WANTED....

[SLR No.77]

Sport mode in my 5-Series is one button push ....

[Dave J]

stu,

Thats the cheap 5 series version. The expensive ones are probably multi step as they are over engineered.

 

[TomB]

One button to turn the sport mode on in my 7 - the big red start button!  

[SLR No.77]

Damn I knew the exuberance over my purchase would be short lived, I guess simple must mean cheap. I might need to pop it in the for sale section and look out for something more complicated  

[Tazio]

If we can have a separate sections called 'Speed' with, as of todays date only one entry, and another called 'Track' with 7, where then is the logic of combining what I suggest is a much more used and traffic generating Section into an awful mess? Yourogic GJT , escapes me.

[SLR No.77]

That's a very good point!

[Shaun_E]

Speed and Track are sub-communities of the L7C and during the season are much more active and generally of little interest to members not involved in those activities. We also introduced a "Tour" section as that is another sub-community.

The logic behind combining For Sale and Wanted is that if you are posting a For Sale you may see a Wanted for the thing you are selling. Likewise when posting a Wanted you may see the thing you want For Sale. There is a radio button to choose between For Sale/Wanted and when selected, the relevant text is added at the beginning of the post title making it very clear which is which. This was discussed among a group of people on the team and agreed to be a good solution. The unfortunate issue is that the quickest and least cost way to implement the radio button was to have it on the "advanced" tab because that was the option offered by standard Drupal. 

If we could move the radio button to the main tab, would that be more acceptable?

We can do anything at a price but someone has to decide whether the price is good value for the members and whether there are better value things to spend the money on.

We all work in different ways and we will never get everyone to agree on a single answer - just look at the huge variety of Seven specifications and the disagreements about the "ultimate seven"! Despite human nature, change is actually good and we have to keep moving even if sometimes we move in a way some people don't like. We have listened but we disagree and that is OK.

[SLR No.77]

"If we could move the radio button to the main tab, would that be more acceptable?"

Yes.

[Tazio]

It didn't seem to matter what costs were incurred when they were combined, so why should it now?

The daft thing is, this sort of silliness simply pushes more traffic to the various FB groups, this is a club for the members, so why can't we have what we require?

Anyway, no more from me, I've made my points, just trust common sense will prevail.

[Dave J]

"If we could move the radio button to the main tab, would that be more acceptable?"

It would be an improvement on a poor position but not as good a split section as we used to have.

The Westfield forsale section is what good looks like in my opinion. 

 

[rj]

My suggestion would still be scrap Drupal for the forum, accept that you have to log on both for the forum and for the club site which is by far easier than navigating in the current forum.

This time I went via "new and updated", saw this topic had new replies, clicked that, got a server (or maybe gateway) error, pushed back, now this thread was no longer listed so I had to go up in the menu to find "marketplace" and then the topic.

That is not user friendliness. That's Drupalcrazyness.

 

[garybee]

I much prefer them combined, seems to have solved the problem of 'wanteds' and 'for sales' for the same items perfectly.

The ideal would be if posters were somehow forced into selecting one or the other.  I'm sure that would have been implemented already if it were that simple though.

I doubt that the percentage of people that want them separated is anything like what has been suggested in this thread.  There is a lot of repetition from the same people doing the complaining that makes it appear that way though.  

[rj]

Why not close down the forum and all move to Facebook? How disgusting it is, the user friendliness is better and the topics disappear at the same rate.

You will loose me then, though.

[Wrightpayne]

The more arguments put forward to defend the status quo the worse it gets.

So it seems we have forum sections built and designed for a few, paid for by everyone very few of whom actually use them! Yet the club are reluctant to fix something that wasnt broken before it was changed!

When is the next change / fault fix / update scheduled? Providing < 3 months away just bundle it up with that to minimise cost and advise everyone so they know.

Whilst I get that it is impossible to please everyone I do wonder if there is a better approach to avoid infuriating the paying members and maximise cost/benefit. Push out changes to a random selection of members each time for feedback / sense check? 

Ian

[Shaun_E]

We're all entitled to our own views - it doesn't make them "correct". In fact neither of the opposing views can claim to be "correct" - they are just our opinions. I prefer the 2 sections combined as do the rest of the IT working group and the MT. I am a regular user of Blatchat - I couldn't perform this role if I wasn't.

There are over 2500 members of this club and half a dozen have said they don't like the new "Marketplace" forum. Well there are more than half a dozen on the MT who all agreed this was a good move - so who's right? Again neither are - they are just opinions. The MT don't just sit here thinking up ways to pi$$ off the membership, we do stuff we genuinely believe are improvements.

The creation of a single Marketplace section was part of a larger overhaul and consolidation of what had become a very fragmented forum with too many sections which was confusing to members.

You think you are allowed to disagree with something but I am not allowed to disagree with you - that's what I find most frustrating about doing this role - the MT can never be right but "man on the internet" is always right!  I'm happy to accept criticism and argument but I have as much right to my opinion as you do to yours and we won't always agree. We have made alterations to functionality in the past when changes we made didn't work well but in this case we happen to think this change is good.

I will investigate the cost of moving the for sale/wanted radio button to the main tab as I agree that would be better but sometimes we are constrained by cost - bespoke changes cost much more than using the Drupal standard.

[Wrightpayne]

Shaun,

The simple fact that people are not clicking the buttons in the advanced tab means the change has been ineffective regardless of whether the MT or anyone else likes it or not. 

what could be simpler / system vanilla than two categories with no buttons to click on? 

Another option - would it be possible to make the button clicking in the advanced tab mandatory so the advert cannot be published unless the option selected, with an appropriate error message if unchecked?

I think everyones frustration is finding something for sale or wanted has become a whole lot harder since the merger took place (yes down to us users not clicking the extra box on the extra tab) not easier as anticipated, and despite this being raised several times the MT seem steadfast.

I just want the for sale / wanted sections to work better and be clearer for everyone.

Ian

[Blue C7]

I Am generally one of the silent majority. If we have 2500 members surely when a change is to be made why are we not asked to vote yes or no before a change is made after all ultimately we pay for it. I thought this was how democracy is supposed to work

[Golf Juliet Tango]

Which club management decisions do you wish to have referendums about? What sort of majority or turnout is required for their validity? What happens if these conditions are not met? Which decisions do you feel are not worth the effort? For how long should we have debate on BC before the vote is held? For how long is that decision valid?

[Ian B]

 

Which club management decisions do you wish to have referendums about? What sort of majority or turnout is required for their validity? What happens if these conditions are not met? Which decisions do you feel are not worth the effort? For how long should we have debate on BC before the vote is held? For how long is that decision valid?

Stephen Hubbard

and I suspect that is why many of the silent majority don't bother to make a comment or suggestion 

I'm another one of the silent majority who don't like the combined Sale/Wanted forum.

It MIGHT have been a good idea had its implementation been thought through - ie firstly tag all the existing posts in the separate forums as For Sale or Wanted before combining them  and secondly making it a simple compulsory selection button when making new posts (and not hidden away somewhere).

Having said that I, like many I know, rarely visit BC now since the new forum is less user friendly than the old one (and many suggestions I made were also ignored, so I can't see the point in making any now  )

[Blue C7]

It was only a question?

[finmac]

As someone who lives miles away from the bulk of seven owners if I am looking for a new car it works best for me to simply put a wanted ad up. In 20 odd years of ownership I have done this a few times and indeed did so again a couple of days ago.

This time round, with the combined sections I have had a much better response - my simple conclusion is - it works much better this way!

[Jonathan Kay]

I've already expressed my preference.

I was about to suggest that it might help to understand others' opinions if we worked though the most common use cases and tabulated the usability of the two main alternatives: number of clicks, signal to noise in what's returned, how much you have to think and remember to get what you need...

But then Finmac posted:

This time round, with the combined sections I have had a much better response - my simple conclusion is - it works much better this way!

And that reminded me that we know that different users use different views, home pages, navigation methods and search tools to try and find and refind what interests them. (In my opinions this is largely because of problems with the site other than this specific issue. I've already posted details of these.)

Are those differences in user behaviour affecting responses to this specific issue? Or why Finmac has reported a better response?

Jonathan

PS: Thanks to Shaun and others for all their work in supporting the Club.

[SLR No.77]

I think I’ll crawl back under my rock.

[Golf Juliet Tango]

Don't do that Stu - there is no need to do so. 

[rj]

Stephen,

It seems that we are not allowed to suggest changes in the name of "we have spent a fortune" Sometimes you have to accept that you've spent money on something that did not work as expected. I don't blame anyone, not at all. s**t happens.

I think it's interesting that it's only a very few people using the forum. When I asked where the knowledge had gone the lack of postings was explained with that the average owner no longer tinkers. Why did this happen in April 2014?

I would very much like to claim back the old Blatchat where it was not only very few posting technical stuff, often just with a search that does not give anything new, where the links worked and where it was possible to do a proper search. I am not able to dig out Peter Carmichaels old posts about the K-engine for one.

When this happens I will stop nagging at Drupal even though I still think it completely lacks user friendliness. 

But I am a paying member of the club, hence I have the rights to open my mouth if I think things are moving in the wrong direction, which I think the forum is. The traceability is even worse than it is on Facebook which is bad.

I want the forum to be a pile of knowledge second to none. Not a bottomless hole where you throw something in just to see it disappear. This has very much limited my contribution to the forum and I don't want to be like that because I want to be helpful rather than selfish, but can I be bothered writing about building a 275+ BHP K-series with paddleshift via can bus if it's of no interest to anyone?