I am a happy owner of all 4 current Elektron boxes, but I am really struggling to make use of this forum. It seems a dramatic step backwards in functionality, ease of use, and speed. It also stymies conversation and exchange of useful information by users.
Can’t see the title field when creating a topic.
Replies just hang. No idea whether they went through or not. Happens on multiple browsers.
Information is poor organized. A user’s ability to sense the topology of available information is highly constrained.
Search function isn’t effective at consistently finding useful/relevant info.
Repeat visits are NOT rewarded. Returning to a topic often requires the user to dive through the entire chain of replies, to try to find where they last left of.
The forum is just not fun to use.
I don’t mean to be insulting, but IMO this forum doesn’t reflect the forward-facing nature of Elektron–instead, it feels like a reskinned BB system from a decade ago. I feel sorry for new Elektron buyers who come here, needing to quickly find information and make contacts.
I own a trinity…and i agree with you. Give Elektron now some time to fix this. Doftware development is nothing that can be done over night. They first have to track down the root cause, find a solution for that and then test it test it test it, before deploying into production. That could take at least from two to four or six weeks, depending on how difficult it is to fix it.
Regarding new features it goes the same route.
agree with both of you completely. a new forum merely well-intentioned does not a worthy successor to eu make.
that said, i’m reminding myself of the same thing i always do when it comes to hq: we’re not dealing with a huge company here. elektron has limited resources, which at the moment they’re choosing to focus on new product development.
they said from the beginning that they planned to implement a lot of other features on this forum that haven’t happened yet. though it’s taking longer than we’d like, i expect they’ll get around to doing it.
personally i’m hoping that one or both of two things happen: 1) they make enough money off the AK and the new mystery device that they can hire a couple more people dedicated to customer service and online presence, and 2) they allow a couple members of the user community to become co-administrators here.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I prefer the new forum layout.
I’ve changed the way I use the forum to match the new features; eg, I pick off the threads I want to read/post in from the Forum Activity page. Doing that, it always lands me on the first unread post. The post hang thing doens’t bother me much, I just write my post, select-all+copy (just in case), then submit, and close the hanging window…100% of the time it’s posted, so I don’t need to repost.
Having said that, I’m not against Elektron improving this forum even further, and I’m sure they will…
EDIT: b.t.w. I no longer get the new post hang; it’s working fine now…
i think it’s alright, must’ve been good before then - the search is not good though, i step out into google for that - the sluggishness seems periodic - it should be more evident you have a PM than having to dig down top right !
re-logging in when i jump machines is a drag, but overall i like fwiw
If I were at Elektron HQ right now, I would be shitting bricks that some smart kid recognizes just how crap this platform is and decides to build out a decent direct competitor to Elektronauts–a place where Elektron isn’t able to steer content and style. There are open-source BB warez options that run rings around this crippled platform, in features and functionality.
Elektron’s management needs to grasp that they are in danger of losing control of their forum audience if they don’t seriously upgrade this POS before someone else builds a better forum mousetrap and saps the userbase away. It wouldn’t be rocket-science, and the monetization opportunities for whomever does it smartly are not insignificant.
Again, I own all 4 Elektron boxes, and I love them, but I have built a bunch of web companies, over the past two decades, and this BB feels like Elektron’s management got sold a bill of goods by either a shitty webdev contractor or by an in-house web developer who doesn’t have real experience with BB platforms. In fact, this site feels like a poorly hacked up mix of blog and BB platforms.
I remember visiting Elektron-Users for the first time, 5+ years ago, and being amazed by how engaged the audience was and how much awesome content was available. The availability of excellent forum resources was one of the prime reasons why I now own the Octatrack and Analog Four.
Finally I hope others speak up, if they are also not feeling well served by the new forum, but I am happy to shut up now and enjoy whatever improvements are made.
+1 - it’s been said already but the mobile experience is a joke - it’s the 21st century FFS - whoever at Elektron signed off on a forum platform that wasn’t usable on mobile devices should be fired or at least sat in the corner naked wearing a dunces hat for a few days.
EU was very usable from tablets & phones so the status quo represents a big step backwards and is just plain stupid.
Also chiming in to mention how wonky the forum is on mobile. I can deal with most of it, but the quote button simply doesn’t work on iOS, which is really annoying.
Quad owner here
Anyone tried the forum on ipad…
Topics, subforums, quicklink in right pane
All need tapping twice… That’s a bit like Windows asking : are you sure?
Everytime you click a link
it’s clunky… seems too fancy or something… i’d prefer old school typical forum than this floating comment window and the way it’s organized… just kinda like a bad brainstorm.
I don’t know for you, but compared to the old forum and many other forums, the Elektronaut forum is very slow. It needs longer time to load pages, and this makes the browsing not smooth.
In the old version, the way the site handled the visited topics was by far more efficient. Here, it seems that the only mean to tag a thread as read is to click on “Scroll to first unread” (which is also triggering a slow reaction).
Yes, viewing this forum on iPad is a horrible experience. Ex: try to open a topic in a new tab…
I used to be looking forward to viewing the forum at the end of the day. Now I often cant be bothered: to much frustration.
Lets hope that it will get better over time.
The more efficient & focussed content of 5 years ago was simply because of the small and strongly connected user base driven by the creator, Ryan (RIP), an unprecedented enthousiast.
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For me, the magic of this little ‘cocon’ has disappeared - the downside of a fast growing company/user base ?? Not blaming Elektron - they have to move forward as a commercial company - but the ‘small village’ mentality seems to have evaporated.
My view on this above. Change the software for the forum to one of the standard forum motors. Focus the development time used for this forum on integrating whatever Elektron-features needed instead of creating a new forum software from scratch.
I’m really struggling to think of anything that i prefer about this forum to the old one. Big elektron fan, have three boxes and would have more if I could afford em. But I feel like I am almost giving up on the forum in its current state. As per the title, it is just not fun to use.
I agree with nearly every negative aspect mentioned in this thread so far. The new forum really is subpar. It also doesn’t help that it’s not a common forum software that many of us would be familiar (and ok) with.
On the positive side, it is nice that the elektron guys post here more often from what I can gather… that’s about the only positive side
