Speaking as someone who uses the forums relatively infrequently (compared to a lot of others), and also currently is not a MAL supporter (meaning that I can't test this for myself) I just wanted to chime in to say this:
If this beta test goes through as is, it's unfortunately going to push me away from the forums indefinitely. A lot of "beta tests" on prominent sites are just glorified warning signs for "we warned you this was coming, so please don't complain when it goes live", and I sincerely, sincerely hope that this isn't the case for this one. Please listen to the numerous people who are telling you- even outside of their own personal opinions on the beta test- how it objectively makes the forums more cumbersome and difficult to navigate and enjoy, how it takes away and breaks the functionality of BBCode (that I know a lot of people actually came to MAL for in the first place), and how pushing features and functions onto a site not specifically designed for them, can and will make past and future forum topics impossible to navigate at worst, and incredibly annoying, at best. I personally really appreciated the original quote feature of MAL, because it was such a great way to keep track of ongoing thoughts no matter how long the conversation between two (or more) people had been going, and replacing it with this, is just... upsetting.
I've also noticed over the past few days that "Watched Topics" are downright broken in what I guess we're calling "Classic Mode" now. I'm not getting my usual notifications for most of them, and even after viewing them, the site still tells me that I haven't viewed them, so... something's wrong there and I hope you take a look at it. I can also no longer copy and paste any text from outside of MAL, which totally killed my motivation to touch the forums today. I think other people have already talked about why that is, so I won't make my comment any longer to do so.
For my personal opinions, I just really want to bring attention to this idea of being able to ignore replies, sort by friends' replies, most replies, and honestly any other sorting idea you might have...
This one honestly frustrates me quite a lot. The MAL forums are actually what I participate the most in out of all the other social media sites that I use, and I appreciated it specifically because it didn't have any of the "sort by Best" or "sort by Most x or y" functions that like, pretty much every social media site has now. It was honestly genuinely refreshing to come to the MAL forums and be able to just simply read in chronological order, without having to press a different button to do so, and without all of the things that come with these sorting functions. Nothing in a discussion (or the discussion itself) was ever swayed by a particular popular poster, or ignored because of internet points... every discussion has always had a relatively equal chance to flourish, so to speak. I believe that if you give people the option to sort that way, the forums here will become like basically any other site, with topics and thoughts and opinions and discussions just getting downright buried because they didn't get "the most replies", or whatever upvote-style metric might get attached to them in the future- because it seems like things are heading in that direction.
I probably sound like I'm just echoing what a lot of other people have already said, but... even as someone who isn't a long-term, veteran user of MAL, it concerns me to see that this change in particular just feels like one that is being done simply to bring it more in line with other social media sites, and not to actually improve forum/site functionality. Genuinely, I have never written in such an overtly negative way about any of your updates, but I simply had to say something here, because this just feels like a downgrade in every possible way. As I said above, I really hope you take the time to truly listen to the people who are speaking out against this, and think on if this is really something the site needs, and on how it'll affect its future. |