Well, since nobody else is gonna say it ...

[Korth]

I'm not particularly impressed with the recent forum software "upgrades".

Maybe it's been phenomenally improved for back-end users - CSAs/MODs, PM staff, Oracles, etc. I don't know.

But it doesn't seem very improved for us normal plebe visitors/users.

There's a few "under the hood" improvements, part of the Khoros/Lithium package update.

I saw a little collection of new avatar images in the user settings.

I saw a few new trivialities in the notification settings and subscription settings.

Everything's been organized a little differently - "streamlined" or "optimized" or "simplified", whatever euphemism you prefer - which is probably good overall, especially for new faces, though (to me) it makes the site seem very business-like, corporate, and impersonal.

And everything's slow, slow, slow. Much, much slower than ever before. Glacial, sluggish, unresponsive, it feels bloaty and lazy on a PC browser, I can't imagine how awful it must be on a mobile browser.

Does anybody else any opinions about the forum changes? Good, bad, ugly? Anything I'm misjudging or might've missed?

[ShawnC13]

@darlicious, yes on desktop it is on the right.  For Mobile, it is in Get Support and at the bottom of the page

[darlicious]

@ShawnC13 

Is that on the desktop version? I have the hybrid...half desktop/half mobile. I don't see what you are telling me?

[ShawnC13]

@darlicious, Get Help section and all the Labels are on the right.

[darlicious]

@ShawnC13 

Yes when I can remember where to find it....just finding it much less user friendly.

[ShawnC13]

@darlicious, you can still sort the board by categories by using the label filter

[darlicious]

@ShawnC13 

Funny how telus gets a much better forum despite much lower traffic. There's category boards which are desperately missed here now that everything is just lumped together one long scrolling log of posts. You can easily find articles or look specifically for threads on certain subjects and handy posts from employees who seem to know what they are talking about.

I'm sorry to say just having a "Get Support" board has made it much harder to look for answers on your own and to provide help to customers where your individual strengths or expertise can really help. Since it is harder to even find help articles...I haven't really looked but it certainly isn't obvious it does make it easier for the copy and pasters to just throw in whatever or everyone's favourite " Contact customer support they will solve your problem." Pretty soon the top contributors will be sign pointers only and the community will be as useful as Simple--Simon. But I suppose all good things must come to pass.

[Korth]

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@softech wrote:

Also, funny that Telus removed all the reference of Khoros but PM is keeping it everywhere.. 

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Telus has been investing a lot into datamining stuff, the stupid AI chat parsers, telemetry, bots, content provision, all sorts of stuff like that. It seems like they're trying to maximize the quantity and quality of user data they can harvest and sell as a packaged product to advertisers and brokers. That's why (in relative terms) they haven't invested very much into their "backbone" business - communications, lol, internet and telephony and wireless - only enough to keep up with Bell and their other "competitors".

So I sort of (wrongly) assumed that Khoros/Lithium/Spredfast must be a Telus subsidiary. But it turns out that it's a privately-owned LLC based in the UK. Which (to me) is interesting from a "privacy" standpoint since Telus is basically outsourcing a foreign company to "secure" all their online customer interfaces and online customer data.

[softech]

Would expect the same team of developers worked on both Telus forum and PM's but I think Telus' one is more fine tuned by the look of it. 

If Telus has this new version for some time already, I am surprise PM's Community seems to be going backward.. 

Also, funny that Telus removed all the reference of Khoros but PM is keeping it everywhere.. 

[Anonymous]

Might just as well dump this here

I happened to notice this when I logged out. The little bit of stats under the Register Now button. If anybody cares.

[NDesai]

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@esjliv @ wrote:

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@ShawnC13 wrote:

@softech, we made many suggestions prior to release as well.  A couple seem to be here but many aren't.  To answer your question, I am not sure but doesn't this look familiar to what we have here now?  Forums - TELUS Neighbourhood

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@ShawnC13  oh gosh! Yes, very similar styles there. I wonder if Telus did the upgrade at the same time. Perhaps a Family of Companies Upgrade, why not.

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Telus Forum already had this new layout a while ago. I bet they encouraged or inspired PM do the same. However, Telus Forum is used for actual discussions unlike PM community where support is provided with many new threads on a daily basis. So ease of use is important here. 

[ShawnC13]

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@HALIMACS wrote:

WHOA!!!

Good catch @ShawnC13  -  pretty well identical layout

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@HALIMACS,  I can't take credit for the find it was @NDesai who made me aware of it

[HALIMACS]

WHOA!!!

Good catch @ShawnC13  -  pretty well identical layout

[esjliv]

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@ShawnC13 wrote:

@softech, we made many suggestions prior to release as well.  A couple seem to be here but many aren't.  To answer your question, I am not sure but doesn't this look familiar to what we have here now?  Forums - TELUS Neighbourhood

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@ShawnC13  oh gosh! Yes, very similar styles there. I wonder if Telus did the upgrade at the same time. Perhaps a Family of Companies Upgrade, why not.

[ShawnC13]

@softech, we made many suggestions prior to release as well.  A couple seem to be here but many aren't.  To answer your question, I am not sure but doesn't this look familiar to what we have here now?  Forums - TELUS Neighbourhood

[softech]

Oracles, we made many comments and suggested various improvements, do you know if PM will  accept some of them and made further tweaks accordingly  Or they have sent home the developers and we are stuck with what we have now until the next upgrade,  which could be couple years later....

[Korth]

@darlicious 

I'm finding myself generally less interested as well. The forum software was clunky before, now it's frustrating and clunky. I'd rather spend my online time at other sites which aren't frustrating and clunky.

I suspect there's going to be a lot less community involvement in coming months, lol - aside from a few altruistically dedicated, stubbornly persistent, or financially desperate diehards. Fewer active community members means less active community. Not because we resist change ... but because the changes suck.

[darlicious]

While the edit notation is nice unless the poster explains the edit it doesn't really do much. Since I hate typos I end up editing at least half of my posts. While I will denote a major edit I don't bother with a typo or a spelling mistake or grammatical error.

The loss of the category boards makes it more difficult to scan threads to see which ones you can offer additional advice to and generally has made me less interested in contributing to the community.

[dabr]

Yep, not really liking the changes except for the edit notation.

[esjliv]

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@Meow wrote:

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@esjliv wrote:

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@Korth - I do see some good improvements. A couple of the things I really like is the showing of a post being Edited and the timestamp of that edit, and the continuous threads in private messaging rather than a broken one.

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Why would you consider timestamp of an edit important if you do not know what has been 'adjusted'?
How many times customer A replies, more knowledgeable customer B corrects it and customer A rushes and modifies its reply so it looks 'proper'?

So timestamp of edit has no use to me unless I know what has been corrected in order to learn from (other's and mine) mistakes.

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@Meow - agreed, but this at least is a better direction. And lends a bit more integrity to the poster (hopefully 🤞).

[Meow]

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@Anonymous wrote:

The downstream effect also becomes a possible bone of contention when our beloved Luddite marks a post as the solution. Was the now edited post edited to get this solution or puts it in line for it? hmmm

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You got That right!

Rush to post answer ASAP in order to be considered as 'solution' leads to unwarranted copy/paste and 'kitchen sink' answers (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

If you want to post nice post, it takes time and proper thinking.

[Anonymous]

 @Meow : I agree. But it's a start. Or it's the only available feature in Khoros (without investigating). So it at least lets us know and think "uh huh...what'd you edit eh?".

The downstream effect also becomes a possible bone of contention when our beloved Luddite marks a post as the solution. Was the now edited post edited to get this solution or puts it in line for it? hmmm

[Meow]

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@esjliv wrote:

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@Korth - I do see some good improvements. A couple of the things I really like is the showing of a post being Edited and the timestamp of that edit, and the continuous threads in private messaging rather than a broken one.

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Why would you consider timestamp of an edit important if you do not know what has been 'adjusted'?
How many times customer A replies, more knowledgeable customer B corrects it and customer A rushes and modifies its reply so it looks 'proper'?

So timestamp of edit has no use to me unless I know what has been corrected in order to learn from (other's and mine) mistakes.

[ShawnC13]

While I do like some of the improvements there are things that I don't like for sure.  I don't find it slower than before, but I do wish some of the additional things brought up were taken care of

[softech]

I am not sure I find it slower than before... I would say it is the same in terms of performance.. no improvement.. but not worse either.. 

[esjliv]

@CountyDownIeUk  - well said

[CountyDownIeUk]

I agree....not user friendly. While no one should expect a training manual on how to use or to explain the losses vs upgrade changes .... the logic to use, should be simple ...... but it isn’t. I had planned to wean my self away and become an occasional lurker but I decided to wait out to see my December community reward....which has now arrived with no notification. So the “change” expedites my decision. 

Oh wait! Did I just mention a flaw that could have been fixed but was not? Would it not make sense to apply community rewards to your account, provide the badge and notification all on same day? Like who wants to keep checking your My Account when there are notifications that can be used? Isn’t it all there, but being handled backwards? During my years of working I was exposed to and worked with efficiency consulting contractors....and ISO processes as well.....and there are some no brainers here that would be spotted as quick and efficient fixes without having to hire a consulting agency.

Thanks to the oracle that made the unofficial posting that the funds had been deposited. 

And why not fix those 30 day cycle renewal messages. Just drawing issues from the Community and prioritizing upgrades would be a prudent move, would it not? And be recording and summarizing,  system wise, the repetitive issues that CSA’s have dealt with. 

While I will use my hybrid payment method and continue to gain referrals I will remain to continue to be satisfied with the service. But I will continue to have to give my head a shake to see where resources are used vs not used. I can see resources used elsewhere that would improve customer retention and would allow many to not even have to use the community. 

I find it frustrating to be a customer here, that is able to see easy fixes etc. and see that money and time could be better spent to make improvements to improve retention, to attract more customers, reduce PM payroll  AND to be the best and largest  third tier service provider in Canada!!

[HALIMACS]

I'm unsure I'd go so far as to say "unusable" @computergeek541 

It is certainly not as user friendly when posting or commenting or following a thread (start with making the dialogue box a white background or at least a different color-background if white not available) so it's easier for us to see where we're commenting.   

Also, why make the box so small and when 'quoting' a reply the quoted material is above the view.   

So YES, it's more challenging to use, but perhaps easier for new users to navigate threads and posts to find out information.

Perhaps that was the driving factor in the changes - to allow infrequent users to find and implement answers to their questions vs. allowing the Community to be more user-friendly to the 'regulars'

[esjliv]

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@Korth wrote:

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@computergeek541 wrote:

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Nobody has said it?  The Community as a whole has been extremely critical of the changes.  Unless things are fixed, the site in it's current form is almost unusable.

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I haven't seen these complaints. Probably because the excessively slow wait times when navigating threads.

Which itself seems to prove your statement. Teething pains are expected. I'd thought the notifications must've been broken, but evidently there aren't many just because there's almost no traffic on the broken forums.

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@Korth - I do see some good improvements. A couple of the things I really like is the showing of a post being Edited and the timestamp of that edit, and the continuous threads in private messaging rather than a broken one.

And i appreciate the effort to have it look, hum, i guess more animated.

But overall, I too, find it difficult to follow a thread. Or, see when a new post was posted...for example, there are no timestamps in the landing page under the Recent Discussions:

Also, agreed of the increased lag.

[Korth]

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@computergeek541 wrote:

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Nobody has said it?  The Community as a whole has been extremely critical of the changes.  Unless things are fixed, the site in it's current form is almost unusable.

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I haven't seen these complaints. Probably because the excessively slow wait times when navigating threads.

Which itself seems to prove your statement. Teething pains are expected. I'd thought the notifications must've been broken, but evidently there aren't many just because there's almost no traffic on the broken forums.

[pkaraa]

No site is created error-free, it has to be made better.

today we look at the new born baby and want it to run in Olympics. not possible. Keep reporting the errors to admins and it will take some time but it will be corrected accordingly. By that time, keep patience and keep helping others too.