We Are Listening!

Re:We Are Listening! (BuddyRoadhouse)

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:34:44 GMT

There are currently 6 pages with 150 replies on this thread so I'm not sure if this idea has already been covered. If so, I second the suggestion. If not here's the thought: Roadfood.com needs an "Events" forum where items like the upcoming Milwaukee meet up at Polonez, the New Jersey Hot Dog Tour, and other meet and greets, get togethers and communal food sharing can be discussed.

Most importantly, all threads in this new forum should show up on the home page in the "Latest Forum Conversations" section.

You liked my last suggestion to create a "Trip Reports" forum well enough to add it to the "Regional Forums" section, and by all appearances it has been a smashing success. Here's an opportunity further enhance the usefulness of Roadfood.com for the people who use it.

Thanks for your consideration,

Buddy

Re:We Are Listening! (The Travelin Man)

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:39:26 GMT

Chips - Are you sure that you are logged in when you are trying to edit one of your posts? That may be your problem, as the "edit" option would not appear if roadfood.com does not recognize you as you.

Re:We Are Listening! (Stephen Rushmore Jr.)

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:28:38 GMT

Are you looking at the message options at the top of the thread, or the one next the specific post?

Re:We Are Listening! (mr chips)

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 11:49:20 GMT

Mr CHips is having a very hard time editing his posts. How do we do that? When we click on Message Options there is no edit option. Which option do we use? Mrs. Chips

Re:We Are Listening! (Davydd)

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:27:34 GMT

Davydd

Stephen Rushmore Jr.

Many of you will be happy that the "Posts Since Last Visit" function is now grouped by forum. It is going to take some time to have it look like the last forum.

Stephen,

This is my opinion and I have given it some time and think this change is a change for the worse because it does not do what the old forum did. What it does is when you sign on the most recently posted messages arrange the forums for you and it stays that way until you leave and come back again. So the past half dozen times for me "Fast Food and Non-Roadfood Chains" were the first messages presented to me when I selected "New Posts Since Last Visit" followed by the many Miscellaneous threads. If I am away for 12 hours the serious Roadfood topics seem to get buried and shuffled to the second page of views. If I respond to a second page message and go back to posts since last visit my message is still on that second page for me and probably anyone else signed on at the time and thus not knowing I made a new post. So this arrangement is self perpetuating to headline seemingly more popular fast food and off-topic fare, and maybe hotdog cart vendors (but I have that filtered out). Is that what Roadfood.com wants to present?

The first way you had it with arrangement of threads by my recent posts was more logical and the way most online forums do it. If you are away for a lengthy period you can then know for certainty you are reading current discussions that are still active and that the last thread in the list is probably as old as when you were last on. There is at least logic to that and you can also see quickly what threads people online with you are responding to.

If people want to read the old way they could go to this page view...

http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/

...and then go to the forums they want to read. The same visual clues of new messages present themselves with colored page icons and bold thread titles and is probably the closest way you had to read the old forum.

Not to beat a dead horse again but this change has slowed me down in getting through messages especially when there is more than one page of them. I thought you had it right initially but now I feel frustrated because you listened to people and changed it before they had time to figure out the new forum. Remember, you changed to this new forum because the old forum was outdated. You've crippled the most powerful tool in this new forum - Posts since last visit - because you now have to scroll through the entire list to keep up with new posts during an active period in the evening instead of simply hitting "Posts since last visit" again and seeing them at the top of the page. There is no chronological order in this jumbled mess. If people wanted to read the old forum way the link I cited above would have satisfied that.

I initially said to myself not to complain about change, embrace it and be positive but I am afraid I have reached the end of my rope. I just don't enjoy this forum anymore. I lived with the old forum though I thought it one of the worst setups I visit but I now think this one is worse. Sorry I think you overreacted too soon with adjustments.

Re:We Are Listening! (Voyageur)

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:12:37 GMT

The homepage and other pages in the non forum part of the site now work perfectly for me in Safari v.3.2.1. (OS 10.4.11)

I must have accessed the server at a bad time earlier. Tony try it now.

Re:We Are Listening! (wheregreggeats.com)

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:58:17 GMT

tacchino

I experience great difficulty having all photos in certain posts download completely. For example, Billyboy's recent post for Christmas in upstate NYC (great post, BTW, Billyboy!) had a few entries with multiple photos. When I use the latest edition of Firefox as the browser, the photos always cut off halfway down the page, and never fully load. This happens with all other "photo rich" postings. But, it doesn't happen with Internet Explorer.

The operating system is Windows Vista.

I have had the same problem, twice. I haven't figured out exactly what the circumstances were, but now that you mention it, they were both photo intensive pages.

Re:We Are Listening! (1bbqboy)

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:48:52 GMT

Tony Bad

bill voss

Works fine in Safari for me. Just tried it.
V.3.2.1

Does the roadfood.com home page work for you with safari? I get all the info, but formatting is all messed up. Works fine in IE6, 7, firefox, and chrome.

looks fine to me. I'm on OSX 10.4.11

Re:We Are Listening! (Tony Bad)

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:59:47 GMT

bill voss

Works fine in Safari for me. Just tried it.
V.3.2.1

Does the roadfood.com home page work for you with safari? I get all the info, but formatting is all messed up. Works fine in IE6, 7, firefox, and chrome.

Re:We Are Listening! (Tony Bad)

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:49:03 GMT

Niagara

Light orange type on a white background - could you possibly make this harder to read?

I bet we could!

Re:We Are Listening! (Niagara)

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:14:50 GMT

Light orange type on a white background - could you possibly make this harder to read?

Re:We Are Listening! (1bbqboy)

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:10:42 GMT

Works fine in Safari for me. Just tried it.
V.3.2.1

Re:We Are Listening! (Voyageur)

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:57:39 GMT

Just saw the new homepage design. You've hit a home run with that. Exceptionally well done.

However, please note that the new design is not working in the Safari browser. With Apple grabbing as much as 20% (I believe) of the laptop market during some quarters in the last few years and an even larger share of the college market, that should be fixed.

The very light font on the newly designed landing pages for the forum topics (for example, http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/Roadfood-News-Forum-f12.aspx ) does not show up well. You may wish to change that to black.

I was disappointed that you gave no feedback on my post on 1/11/09 2:237 P.M. above in a topic whose title is "We Are Listening."

Re:We Are Listening! (Voyageur)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:07:19 GMT

Actually, the way that the topics were arranged--the priority of the topics--in the circa 2001 version better reflected, I am thinking, the mission of Roadfood.com as the Sterns conceived it than the current version or the one immediately preceding it.

Maybe we should go back to that one, where "Where should I eat" and "Trip reports" are emphasized over everything else. This would better position Roadfood.com to be THE place that travelers look for the great places that locals love.

The Sterns' interests are wide-ranging, but where to find great road food is at the heart of their lives.

Thanks for that screen shot, Tony.

Re:We Are Listening! (tacchino)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:23:20 GMT

I experience great difficulty having all photos in certain posts download completely. For example, Billyboy's recent post for Christmas in upstate NYC (great post, BTW, Billyboy!) had a few entries with multiple photos. When I use the latest edition of Firefox as the browser, the photos always cut off halfway down the page, and never fully load. This happens with all other "photo rich" postings. But, it doesn't happen with Internet Explorer.

The operating system is Windows Vista.

Re:We Are Listening! (The Travelin Man)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:21:33 GMT

Tony Bad

Stephen Rushmore Jr.

This is hilarious!! You can't please everyone. First, everyone was complaining because the most recent posts weren't like the old format. Now that I have made the change, it seems everyone got used to the current format.

Maybe you should go back to this version...

circa 2001

Holy Screen Shot, Batman!

Re:We Are Listening! (mayor al)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:00:07 GMT

I prefer the King James Version, but could learn to accept the King Stephen Version over time!

Re:We Are Listening! (Tony Bad)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:50:52 GMT

Stephen Rushmore Jr.

This is hilarious!! You can't please everyone. First, everyone was complaining because the most recent posts weren't like the old format. Now that I have made the change, it seems everyone got used to the current format.

Maybe you should go back to this version...

circa 2001

Re:We Are Listening! (CajunKing)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:32:50 GMT

Hang in there Stephen

Re:We Are Listening! (The Travelin Man)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:15:16 GMT

You expected what?

Re:We Are Listening! (Stephen Rushmore Jr.)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:50:38 GMT

This is hilarious!! You can't please everyone. First, everyone was complaining because the most recent posts weren't like the old format. Now that I have made the change, it seems everyone got used to the current format.

Re:We Are Listening! (Greymo)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:24:08 GMT

I fully agree with the last two posters!

Re:We Are Listening! (ScreamingChicken)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:06:58 GMT

I'm not big on "me too" posts but like Davydd I also prefer a true chronological order when using the "posts since last visit" feature. I like being able to quickly scan to a certain point instead of having to deal with posts I've already read in one forum to see the new ones in another.

Brad

Re:We Are Listening! (Davydd)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:14:52 GMT

Stephen Rushmore Jr.

Many of you will be happy that the "Posts Since Last Visit" function is now grouped by forum. It is going to take some time to have it look like the last forum.

Stephen,

This is my opinion and I have given it some time and think this change is a change for the worse because it does not do what the old forum did. What it does is when you sign on the most recently posted messages arrange the forums for you and it stays that way until you leave and come back again. So the past half dozen times for me "Fast Food and Non-Roadfood Chains" were the first messages presented to me when I selected "New Posts Since Last Visit" followed by the many Miscellaneous threads. If I am away for 12 hours the serious Roadfood topics seem to get buried and shuffled to the second page of views. If I respond to a second page message and go back to posts since last visit my message is still on that second page for me and probably anyone else signed on at the time and thus not knowing I made a new post. So this arrangement is self perpetuating to headline seemingly more popular fast food and off-topic fare, and maybe hotdog cart vendors (but I have that filtered out). Is that what Roadfood.com wants to present?

The first way you had it with arrangement of threads by my recent posts was more logical and the way most online forums do it. If you are away for a lengthy period you can then know for certainty you are reading current discussions that are still active and that the last thread in the list is probably as old as when you were last on. There is at least logic to that and you can also see quickly what threads people online with you are responding to.

If people want to read the old way they could go to this page view...

http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/

...and then go to the forums they want to read. The same visual clues of new messages present themselves with colored page icons and bold thread titles and is probably the closest way you had to read the old forum.

Re:We Are Listening! (wheregreggeats.com)

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:29:59 GMT

I would not be at all sad to see the scoring system removed.

Re:We Are Listening! (RubyRose)

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:20:33 GMT

Stephen Rushmore Jr.

Many of you will be happy that the "Posts Since Last Visit" function is now grouped by forum. It is going to take some time to have it look like the last forum.

Thank you for that improved feature. Once I blocked the Restaurant Professionals and Fast Food forums from the viewing list, it's much quicker to see what's going on after I log in. I don't mind the random order of the forums since the posts are grouped together.

My only other suggestion would be to make a Food Service heading like we do for Regional Forums and split it into two separate forums - Restaurant Professionals and Hot Dog Vendors. I think it would attract more restaurant owners if they weren't bogged down with all the hot dog cart posts and the hot dog folks would have everything in one place. It might attract some new posters to that area.

Re:We Are Listening! (ken8038)

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:37:31 GMT

As a "user" person who has endured countless software upgrades, new platforms, new report formats, etc etc at my job, I know there are always glitches and learning curves at the beginning.

So I'm doing with Roadfood what I do at work, sit back, relax and let the bugs get ironed out or resolved. Eventually most changes seem to work out for the better. I'm getting very used to the new format, and generally I like it.

One new feature I really like (and I just noticed this yesterday) is that when you point the cursor to a thread topic, the first few sentences of the post appear as a pop up. I'm often searching thru old posts looking for some specific post or information, and this saves the trouble of opening each one.

On the downside, Like others I'm still sometimes getting a mix of tiny and normal sized pictures when I open certain threads. But I'm not sweating it.

Re:We Are Listening! (Davydd)

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:48:42 GMT

I don't know if that is an improvement to group by forum unless you can go into one forum and list Posts since last visit from that forum only. My response here is just going to shuffle this message in a master list one place with the Bug thread in Roadfood News while the whole list remains headlined by Fast Food and won't change until I log out or leave and come back some elapsed time later because a Fast Food post was the last post made before I visited the forum. I think it will be confusing. I think I would rather see the most recent posts for all forums chronologically like before.

I already filtered out the Hot Dog Cart forum (aka Restaurant Professionals). I may have to filter out Fast Food too. How many times can one read about Waffle House and the same thing over and over?

Re:We Are Listening! (Stephen Rushmore Jr.)

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:35:19 GMT

Many of you will be happy that the "Posts Since Last Visit" function is now grouped by forum. It is going to take some time to have it look like the last forum.

Re:We Are Listening! (Tony Bad)

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:42:55 GMT

Greymo

Well, it is sort of hard to ignore if you have minus 100 scores and everyone can log on and see that.

But it could serve as a good warning to others!