We all agree that the current forum is rubbish and needs an update.
How about we ask Mark nicely to price up the improvements we would like and we crowd fund to get those changes implemented? There seems to be very little profit from the mag left over to help run the forum. This forum seeems to get a lot of hits and it is also apparent that lots of people on here are fairly well off, could easily afford to dish a couple of quid to improve the forum that they use so much. What sort of cost would we be looking at? 2k 4k 10k?

What changes would we like?
.I’d like to be able to upload pics. This would be ideal instead of having to use a secondary site, copy the url and paste it through. Puts loads of people off and is awkward. BUT then the site would need to have more memory and would the pics be up forever, or taken down after a time period to save money? I’m sure there’s people on here with more expertise in this area than me.
What other changes would people like and is this a totally stupid idea?

The only thing I’d change is the functionality to go to the last post on a mobile device, everything else works okay for me, uploading pics included.

We all agree that the current forum is rubbish and needs an update.

When did we agree that ?

I don’t want a BikeRadar/MTBR forum, i think the simplicity of this one. I don’t need to upload pics, i can use FlickR thanks.

Uploading pics is a doddle. I can’t think of anything that would really improve STW forum. It’s like a shitty pub, it’s the people what count 😀

The ability to go to the last post in a thread that you read.

That would be nice.

Given the ratio of premier members to non premier members, I reckon you’d struggle to get more than about £50

I’m not against it, after all I pay a measly £1.50 a month for a ‘P’ even though I rarely, if ever look at the online mag and I’ve got an Ad-Blocker.

I’ve got the whole floor to myself in work today, if I wasn’t for this place I’d be talking to plant pot.

We all agree that the current forum is rubbish and needs an update.

Sorry, I must have been out when you called round to canvass my opinion.

Do we all become MODS if we donate mwaaahhhaahhha

We all agree that the current forum is rubbish and needs an update.

Is that you and your cat ?

😛

Add a feature that stops people arguing endlessly about trivia.

And add the ability to go to the last post on a mobile device.

The only problem I have with the forum is occasionally you’ll get text that is very small – I think this is people not using the formatting tags correctly when quoting, someone might correct me on that.

I’m in two minds about being able to upload pics. On the one hand it’s useful in a lazy kind of way but against that it requires a lot of disk space especially if people don’t resize their images (but there there’s plugins to automatically resize images on upload). Also it’s a pain to view a picture heavy thread as the images might not get downloaded in order so the thread jumps around. See the GIFs thread for an example of just how bad this can be. There are techniques to get round this using lazy loading where you only download images as the user scrolls towards them.

Add a feature that stops people arguing endlessly about trifle.

Sponge fingers are best

I like the forum in it’s current form.

Add a feature that stops people arguing endlessly about trifle.

De minimis non curat forum

*retracts previous generalisation about the forum needing improvement being a consensual agreement after forgetting momentarily about users to propensity to shout down any unclarified aspect of an OP* 😛

I thought given the popularity of the joke about the forum improvements in 2007. Perhaps I was wrong. 🙂
That aside are there other improvements you would like?

STW forum. It’s like a shitty pub, it’s the people what count

Oh, can we put that on a t-shirt? 🙂

That aside are there other improvements you would like?

Get rid of the “http://” in the video and img box!
I’d crowd fund that: 1p.

Feel free Mark 😆

There seems to be very little profit from the mag forum left over to help run the forum mag

FTFY.

A more effective search function might be nice, as would the ability embed Instagram pics.

Not putting my hand in my pocket though.

🙂

Did something happen to the site on mobile?

It doesn’t fit on the screen any more on my S6. I have to scroll right to see the ‘last post’ column. Anyone else?

Being able to view a thread in “threaded format”, i.e. seeing what a post is replying to. See the forums on UKClimbing on a neat way to do this. Basically you can either reply to a post or to the thread. If you do the former then there’s a link along the lines of “In reply to …” next to the poster’s name.

A spell checker would be nice 😉

@chapaking, surely that’s to do with Instagram not this site (unless there’s a restriction on embedding images from there)?

OMG the SEARCH! It’s so crap a link to Google would be more worthwhile 🙂

Photo hosting would be nice, but I can live without it.

I thought given the popularity of the joke about the forum improvements in 2007. Perhaps I was wrong.

I think that joke harks back to when the server the forum was hosted on was powered by Hamsters and we all de-camped to Mlehworld every time it went down.

TBH if you tried to set up a splitter forum with more sub forums and less moderation, it would probably look like Mleh.

We’ve no plans to build in image hosting right now. It adds a level of responsibility that I just don;t want to deal with right now. We’d have to get you all to agree to new t&c’s to try and cover ourselves when someone uploads something wrong. Hotlinking images gives us a level of distance that makes things easier to deal with. Maybe we’ll bring in the ability as part of the premier features.. Dunno.. it’s just not on the radar at the moment.

The only thing I’d change is the functionality to go to the last post on a mobile device

That’s the only thing that bothers me. The rest is just fine as it is

well, maybe I’d like to be able to zoom in on images on a mobile device but it really doesn’t impinge on my life much.

Mark: http://postimages.org which many of us already use allows you to integrate it into an existing forum. They continue to host the images. The only difference, as I understand it, is that the result is much easier for your users.

See http://postimages.org/plugins

Crowd funding?

Do they need new Maseratis already!? 😀

I like this forum, it’s easier to use and more active than most. I used to be on bikeradar all of my ‘working’ day, but when they decided they needed a separate sub forum for every new question it got boring and I drifted over here, it’s loads better.

I think the pic linking is good enough too, it would have been even better if photobucket hadn’t been dicks.

I’d be happy with defaulting to chat forum when you create a new topic.

Infact just sack off the bike forum.

We all agree that the current forum is rubbish and needs an update.

No we don’t.

If it’s ever changed, it will ruin everything, trust me.

Apart from the search function everything is brilliant

oh and dezb+1p

Only thing I’d add is

UserName – Member – Quote

And make it autofill the reply box.

Other than that it’s fine(long as you’re on the ad free version), for images, imgur is easy, even creates the link for you to post, and even lets you see how many times an image has been viewed.

vimeo links dont work

other than that

meh

We all agree that the current forum is rubbish and needs an update.
No we don’t.

If it’s ever changed, it will ruin everything, trust me.

but either way it sounds like we need a referendum on this

Another vote for the status quo – occasionally a post request times out so I don’t know – more hamsters?

front page poll?

No we don’t.

If it’s ever changed, it will ruin everything, trust me.

Agree 100% – seen it too many times before. Change it if you want to send everyone to facebook groups.

The only thing I’d change is the functionality to go to the last post on a mobile device, everything else works okay for me, uploading pics included

This +1

TLDR, but, I think its Ok myself, simple is best. This is possibly the most active forum I know of, and I think tis because there is none of the breakdown of categories etc, you just drop your question, opinion, or whatever into the pool and see what comes out. Its more like real life.
It isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

I like it as it is. The last post thing doesn’t even bother me. Open thread click on last page 🙂

Infact just sack off the bike forum

Eh? Where would you go after you’ve read all the chat forum, whizzed through the Wanted and read the For Sales?