WOTC boards back on-line

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 12:57 am

RobbyPants wrote:I also love all the forced white space, and how much less control I have of the formatting of my posts.

Don't you? I thought that was a *great* addition.

Plus, half of the old tags are now broken, so some of my old stuff I posted three years ago looks like crap.

Some stuff is gone entirely, which sucks because all the good material on the WotC boards is from years back.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 2:23 am

Sadly those "tags" or BBCode, that is standard on 98% of forums today, is not something ONESITE.com adheres to, so it will take a lot of work for posts on the new forums to be fixed. You can often see quoted messages that have the proper text to quote, but the new code doesn't understand the things done to enhance the forums for Gleemax, and didn't fully convert vBulletin database over to what ever is being used now, and those billion posts will need to be checked by hand. This is what they get for spending a few million dollars on Gleemax to compete with MySpace int he first place. I hope their faulty software loses them that which ONESITE.com is good for...gaining traffic.

I see the WotC forums, soon to be joining the Games Workshop forums.

technophile · Post by **technophile** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 2:39 am

shadzar wrote:Sadly those "tags" or BBCode, that is standard on 98% of forums today, is not something ONESITE.com adheres to, so it will take a lot of work for posts on the new forums to be fixed.

Speaking as someone who actually writes software (including social software)... no, it's really not "a lot of work".

It's just work the onesite devs don't seem to be capable of. Sort of like honoring the old permalinks.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 2:54 am

technophile wrote:
shadzar wrote:Sadly those "tags" or BBCode, that is standard on 98% of forums today, is not something ONESITE.com adheres to, so it will take a lot of work for posts on the new forums to be fixed.
Speaking as someone who actually writes software (including social software)... no, it's really not "a lot of work".

It's just work the onesite devs don't seem to be capable of. Sort of like honoring the old permalinks.

Oh goody, lets try to play insult someone else and show your own credentials, because you are the ONLY person on the internet that knows anything about computers and the interwebs. I guess you learned from Cort Oderkirk of the WotC forums how to belittle other people by thinking they know nothing about computers, when I have been using them probably longer than you have been alive....but lets not play that game and have a penis waving contests about who knows more, and accept that your credentials and mine on web development or programming in general mean squat, and stick with the subject how bout?

[/rant]

I agree that ONESITE, will likely care less, since their purpose is for traffic, and not function, but it isn't a easy as your would think to ereg_replace over a billion rows of data, when you don't know the exact nature of the data causing the error form the old tags, where people actually did make mistakes in quoting versus the conversion screwing up with converting such a large database form one platform to another.

The ideas behind getting it done ARE easy, but the checking to make sure you are doing it correctly and haven't missed a tag in the horrid things done when boards1.wizards was converted to forums.gleemax; is where the biggest problem lies in the alteration of vBulletin table structures to begin with.

Now, had they never let someone incompotent start poking around in vBulletin, then would have less likely had so many problems, or if they had let ONESITE take the full 6-8 weeks to get the site up, they could have dealt with it all, and just made changes to vBulletin to fix those things that would screw up over the extended time, rather than the rush job they pulled off.

I think we can both agree, that data manipulation is rather easy, but having to clean up the mess the Gleemax team made, is where the complications come in.

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 3:45 am

shadzar wrote:Oh goody, lets try to play insult someone else and show your own credentials, because you are the ONLY person on the internet that knows anything about computers and the interwebs. I guess you learned from Cort Oderkirk of the WotC forums how to belittle other people by thinking they know nothing about computers, when I have been using them probably longer than you have been alive....but lets not play that game and have a penis waving contests about who knows more, and accept that your credentials and mine on web development or programming in general mean squat, and stick with the subject how bout?

Um, no. That's stupid. It's one thing to flaunt credentials that aren't pertinent - like say, a career biochemist talking about the structure of bridges - but when your experience is *directly related* to the topic it's a legitimate argument, bringing up that you have worked in exactly that area and your personal experience is that X is bringing up supporting evidence. And if you can't bring up supporting evidence in an argument, nothing goes anywhere.

You can totally question those credentials, or ask how they're pertinent to the subject, but those are completely not what you just did there.

when I have been using them probably longer than you have been alive

Are you seriously arguing that "using" a computer for any amount of time means anything related to forum software administration? Because that's actually an instance of the argument I just mentioned is NOT legitimate.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 4:50 am

Both of you need to calm down. (Good Lord.)

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 11:24 am

Why? What Quantum Boost said made complete sense.

The appeal to authority fallacy is only a fallacy when the expertise is irrelevant or oversteps its scope. You can't just call it whenever you feel like.

It's a common error made and I'm glad QA was there to fight our ignorance.

Maybe the person who needs to calm down is you.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 6:24 pm

Actually no. You don't need to piss your credentials everywhere to discuss a topic on the internet. One reason there is no proof but your word that what you say is true. Anonymity has a funny way of making people on the internet out to be more than what they are, so check any of that at the door.

The point is the discussion of the topic. anybodies credentials do not further the topic like this one. but if you want to think they do, the cliaming to be a web whatever as was done means nothing. empty words, wherein I gave code that could handle the operation in my own post. So you want to think credentials mean anything, what weighs more? Empty words and titles, or actual expressed knowledge.

The point still remains, WotC screwed up, and now the people on the forum are left with:

1: a web community company that won't care to fix it
2: WotC having little to no control over the code or back-end
3: a bloated set of tools that many cannot or will not use that are not helpful to them in the course of their visit. (We still talking about WotC forums or DDI now?)
4: a probable loss of valuable discussion with the loss of valuable contributors that a) won't want to fight around with the new system, b) cannot cces the new system at all for some strange need of zip-codes or other personal nature not required to make forum posts, and c) browser incompatibility.

EVERY thing WotC does in the digital age is working form an early 90's concept and design philosophy from before the dot com bubble, and they don't understand how to do things, or make them work, and it is showing in everything WotC or HASBRO does because they are incompetent in the digital environment. See www.monopolycitystreets.com by HASBRO yet? launch date and already they had to quadruple the number of servers because users exceeded expected limits.

Why does this forum work?
1: stable code
2: uncluttered design
3: very little bells and whistles to screw up the stable code

One computer design tenet they are forgetting is K.I.S.S.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 4:27 am

It has been too long to not post back2back so here is this new post....

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dn ... 9September

Wizards of the Coast: Is there a timeline for the end of beta and the formal launch of the new Wizards Online Community? When can we expect the fully armed and operational site?

Jeremiah: Hopefully the rebels won't manage to blow it up before it's finished! Although, a Death Star analogy may not be the best one to use here. We're a benevolent community.

I think they just invited people to try to take down the new forums and challenged them to do so.

benevolent wrote:intending or showing kindness

Since when? Maybe while Solace was still employed, but that is about as far as any kindness goes in regards to THAT community's team.

Jonathan Drain · Post by **Jonathan Drain** » Sun Sep 20, 2009 11:06 am

Opera lets you watch the file size of a website as it loads.

Wizards.com/dnd: 1.4MB
Wizards Community: 1.1MB
Wizards Community Blogs: 1.1MB

For a website, this file size is gargantuan. The website design team seem to have no idea that this is the case. Their layouts are cluttered and their font sizes tiny.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sun Sep 20, 2009 9:06 pm

Jonathan Drain wrote:Opera lets you watch the file size of a website as it loads.

Wizards.com/dnd: 1.4MB
Wizards Community: 1.1MB
Wizards Community Blogs: 1.1MB

For a website, this file size is gargantuan. The website design team seem to have no idea that this is the case. Their layouts are cluttered and their font sizes tiny.

Not to mention they think that they need images for everything including all users MUST have an avatar. They neglect that there is this looming internet caps and such so that companies that REALLY want traffic should be looking at ways to reduce the size of the downloads they forced.

Just lurking @10 threads there a day for a month is .3 gigs download of bandwidth used.

Not to mention any shockwave they throw in that vastly increases the bandwidth used with no chance to NOT download it unless you don't have any flash players installed, but they are coming more standard with browsers to auto play, or at least auto download the files and wait to play, which means still you are beign forced to download stuff you do NOT need.

It really is pathetic. You don't need 1 meg for a webpage unless you are hosting an image gallery.

ibanez · Post by **ibanez** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:12 pm

Is there a way to view threads from the Gleemax archives now that that Wizards has fucked everything up? I can find the threads in Google but when I click them it just drops me off at the WOTC community center.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:17 pm

You pretty much have to use the new system. They set the new forum community site garbage to have you go in by the front page from anything except a link in your browser.

Also all vBulletin functions were scraped. The read-only archive and plain text views that vBulletin used are gone and not a part of the new system.

Helps them get away from any edition before 4th and act like it never existed in order to further fuel the edition wars.

http://web.archive.org might be able to get you there if you have a link to the thread you want to view.

ibanez · Post by **ibanez** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:31 pm

Yeah web.archive.org only goes back to 2007 for Gleemax.

Lame.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 8:57 am

Search it up on Google and then rather than opening it, open it up from the "cached" option. Looks weird, but at least it's legible. example

-Username17

Wyzzard · Post by **Wyzzard** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 11:17 am

Just in case you didn't notice, a lot of stuff got reposted elsewhere. Example.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:47 pm

Wyzzard wrote:Just in case you didn't notice, a lot of stuff got reposted elsewhere. Example.

IS that the new location of the CO boards from 3.x, and if so does it have Pun-pun so I can see what someone here was saying didn't work about it?

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 1:15 pm

shadzar wrote:
Wyzzard wrote:Just in case you didn't notice, a lot of stuff got reposted elsewhere. Example.
IS that the new location of the CO boards from 3.x, and if so does it have Pun-pun so I can see what someone here was saying didn't work about it?

Kind of. A lot of the CO group went there in May of 2008 when Autumn (Meg) left the WotC boards. Not everyone went over, and a lot of people have left since.

A lot of the handbooks have been ported over (and are in that link). Pun Pun was brought over.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 1:27 pm

RobbyPants wrote:Pun Pun was brought over.

THANK YOU!