[Floop1977]

With their mistaken belief that tighter integration between MacWorld and MacCentral could only be a good thing for users, no doubt the powers that be are trying to get people to migrate to the new forums.
Some have said that the MacCentral forums will continue to survive, and that the fact that there is currently no link to the MacCentral forums is an oversight, but I cannot see the point of there being one website with two sets of similar forums so suspect this isn't completely true.
The Mac Forums are much nastier than MacCentral, too, with the right side of my screen completely given over to dead space for advertising. Yeuch.
Floop

[TxTom]

The users cannot start new topics? We can only reply to what admins start?????
Visited links remain black on the main page. Limited number of news links from the current day on the main page. Requires one more click to get to the reason everyone visits frequently: current headlines.
After getting to whatever current content there might be, an extra click to find the comments from readers.
The main page is quite confined to the center for those with wider screens. Checkout excite for their styles which fit to the screen and not vice versa.
LOTS of extra space for ads. Boo for us, yea for you. I'm selfish: BOO.
Loss of the registration information from the MacCentral forums. Previous usage disregarded. I've visited for over 6 years and that is most likely coming to a close.
Too many navigational choices to get to the meat of the average visitor's visit.
Sorry, this is a HUGE mistake.

[captainboom]

I hate it. Many others have already elucidated the many issues I have with the new look. What a piece of crap. I have found the new site to be a monumental pain in the butt to navigate, especially when I want to find where I was before... Have your site designers ever heard of Jakob Nielsen? Check out his site at www.useit.com
Maccentral used to be the second or third site I would visit when I get on line, and I used to visit multiple times in one day. No more. I checked out other Mac sites yesterday, and unfortunately, they aren't much better. I guess my long time (+/- 8 years?) relationship with MacCentral is over. I will no longer be able to investigate the products and software I found so easy to do with the old site, and see other users feedback in such a user friendly way. Tell your advertisers they lost another set of eyeballs.
I have never posted before. I registered just so I could give my opinion.
B@st@rds.

[Jason Snell]

It's just the News forum that's limited to threads based on specific stories. You can still post in regular forums on Macworld or MacCentral.
We'll fix the visited links problems, and the news links on the main MC page is a bug that should be fixed in a day at most. We don't want you to take extra clicks to see headlines.
Ads are what makes the site stay in business.
The MC forums reg database is still there... its for the MC forums. The MW forums reg database is still here, too, and it's for these forums. Your usage is still there on the old forums... but merging the two databases was going to be really difficult, and we decided to leave them separate.

[TxTom]

I fail to see the need for separate forums between the old MacCentral forums and what you're attempting to foster here. MacCentral has always been MW's version of what MacWeek seemed to be--a place to check more immediate headlines than what is/was available from a monthly periodical. Why maintain seperate forums and limit the creation of topics regarding given stories on one and not the other? If someone wants to bring up a salient point and have it as the beginning of a point of discussion, they'll have to find the other forum to do it? Sorry. I don't have that much time to be checking a story and then wandering to another forum to see if something beyond the admin's limited topical scope might be brought up.
I don't have that much time and really don't have that much interest to try and keep track of two separate forums if that is your goal.
I'm well aware of advertising income being necessary to pay the bills. I've been in printed media myself and also know how easily people begin to realize the ratio of ads vs. newsholes left after alloting for what's been paid for by ads. We called them budget meetings in the paper biz. You seem to have made the news hole smaller with the redesign.
I, for one, am not enthused by the 'tighter integration' into MacWorld. I know it's the property of MW and all that, but it's separate identity has been further muddled and its usefulness weakened by the lack of material upon first arrival at the 'front page' of the site.
I already pay yearly for my MW subscription. I've always appreciated the separate identity held by MC. That is now gone.

[Jason Snell]

We fail to see the need for separate forums, too -- that's why we have transferred news stories over to the Macworld.com forums, which have been up and running for several years now, since MacCentral IS a part of Macworld.com and has also been for quite a while now.
That said, we also don't want to just detonate the MC forums, because communities are grown, not installed. The existing MC forums are a community that deserves to survive, even if the distinction between separate MC and MW forums doesn't make sense anymore. So they are staying.
In terms of limiting topics, the topics are limited in this News forum only in the same way they're limited in the Editors' Notes forum or the Mac Gems forum -- they're limited because they're meant to just be the repository for posted stories. There are lots of other forums in the Macworld.com Forums that are open to everyone to post on whatever topics interest them -- check them out. And if you'd prefer to stay at the old MC forums, you can do that too.
We could have slammed the two forums together, but that would have been a colossal mess and I don't think it would've made anyone any happier.

[TxTom]

You've lost a user.

[TxTom]

AND you've lost a subscriber.

[Marissa]

Ihaven't been able to improve on these criticisms from the MC forums:
large masthead with a stupid logo at the top that isn't even a link
big blinky ads on the right are annoying and eye-wearying
ugly yellow bar on the left is annoying and eye-wearying
over-large fonts and lack of distinctive "live" or "visited" link colors for the headlines
date and time of the articles do not appear next to their names
stories are organized by category instead of date so you can't quickly check just today's news
comments aren't immediately accessible/visible from the stories
(the comments being the only items of interest for most stories)
need a new/virgin "Macworld" login to comment on stories
MacCentral forums are hidden at:
http://forums.maccentral.com/
...and only work with the OLD logins. They will surely die now, even if a link goes up somewhere.
On my 1280x1024 screen, I should be able to see almost all of the content of the site. Nevertheless, more than 1/3 of the latest content is cut off at the bottom of the screen
I'll check in a few times over the next few days and if I don't see a fix for each of those problems, I'm not coming back again.

[Floop1977]

>I'll check in a few times over the next few days and if I don't see a fix for each of those problems, I'm
>not coming back again.
Ditto. I'm only checking these forum threads, and I'll only bother doing that for a little while longer.
On a side topic, I do understand that ads provide revenue for the site... however that revenue depends on you having a userbase that visits regularly. I'd be willing to bet money that this new site design will decrease the number of visitors you get.
Floop

[Jason Snell]

TxTom: Sure sounds like you were looking for a reason to go. Goodbye and good luck.

[brossow]

In reply to:

---

Poster: Jason_Snell
Subject: Re: What really stinks
Sure sounds like you were looking for a reason to go. Goodbye and good luck.

---

And it's precisely this attitude that is apparent in the redesign, an abysmal lack of concern for the reader. If that's the attitude and opinion of administrators on this site then I, too, will have my reason to go after many, many years. You've helped accelerate my almost inevitable departure, Jason, and I hope your advertisers realize it. I was giving you folks a week to come to your senses with this horrendous redesign, but if that's the way you're going to act you'll be lucky -- or rather, your advertisers will be lucky -- to have my attention for more than another 24 hours as I continue to peruse this forum.
Obviously advertising is what pays the bills here, Jason, but without readers to see those ads ... well, you know the rest. It's easy to make the argument that readers should come before advertisers; if you drive your readership away, they're going to be damn near impossible to replace, but there are always businesses looking to advertise. If one goes, another will come along to take its place. Keep your readers happy and the advertisers will follow; piss off your readers, though, and the advertising dollars will dry up. Speaking for the majority here, we came for the simplicity, the easy access to news; I sincerely doubt you're going to attract new readers who come here looking for more advertising, more clutter, less user feedback on articles, and everything else you've added in detriment and removed to our dismay. Time will tell, of course, whether you've made the right decisions here and whether you'll listen to the overwhelming outcry from your readers. As I've said before, I've got other options for my Mac news and if I don't get it here I'll get it somewhere else; however, if you lose me as a reader, I'm gone -- and good luck replacing me with a new reader who will visit as frequently, and therefore generate as much advertising revenue, as I did.
Maybe this should be the point at which I throw your ill-chosen words back at you, Jason: goodbye and good luck. You're gonna need it more than we, your [formerly] loyal readers will.

[Wondercow]

This question has, so far, gone unanswered by the administration so I pose it again:
Jason and any others adimns or moderators reading:
What I really want to know is this: if a majority of the vocal users don't like this new format will you be big enough to change it back?

[Jason Snell]

Look, when I see people being abusive, rather than productive, and declaring that they've decided they want to go after 48 hours, after we've gone out of our way to explain that we're working to address user feedback.... I read that as being someone who has already decided they want to leave. To cancel their magazine subscription after one day with a new web site redesign? That seems pretty rash to me. But I wish him good luck in the future wherever his travels take him.
I am happy to take negative feedback in mounds and mounds. We are all watching these threads intently. Abuse, I'm not so willing to take.