Well, the day is about over here. I tried really hard to give this forum a chance today. I put a lot of effort into being a positive, active participant. It was an interesting day.
My impressions…
It feels a lot lonelier over here. I think that’s maybe just because only a small number of people are posting so far. Fewer conversations were hopping with life than I expected.
It is a lot easier to just walk away when snarky, mean comments start. The immediacy of Chat made it hard to ignore flame wars, but today I found one thread that headed in that direction, so I just didn’t go there again.
@Lentesta was very active here and in Chat, and I really appreciated that. Thank you.
Emoticons, profile pictures, likes and posted pictures are a lot of fun. They can’t take the place of meaningful conversation, but they sure are fun.
I didn’t feel very helpful. One if the best things about chat is the immediate “need help - post question - friendly answer” dynamic. Posting pictures is fun, but being helpful is much more satisfying.
Finally, I read a lot of thoughtful and interesting comments from a variety if Liners here and on chat. I’m so impressed that everyone is trying to make things work, making suggestions, speaking up about their feelings, and supporting each other. This really is a great community.
What are your impressions at the end of this second day?
Frustrating. Couldn’t post with my iPhone. Len was a peach, trying to troubleshoot the problem over on chat, b/c I could not report the bug here. Never did solve it.
Find forum a mess. Too compartmentalized. That’s the nature of a forum, but I don’t like it.
I’ll keep trying, but it’s a struggle.
No sense of a big, noisy conversation. I miss that.
I know exactly what you mean about the feel @BackIntoTheFray. It’s very different. I didn’t have technical issues which made it easier for me, but I’m still exhausted at the end of the day after trying so hard to participate. It’s certainly not effortless!
I really like the forum as an addition, not replacement to chat. I do think it was a mistake to tie the announcement to chat reduction or changes. Would have been much smoother and probably better accepted if rolled out a while first to get established. That said the activity in the forum is already amazing to me… Most forums start out very slow with few posts but this one is already useful and fairly active.
I’m finding it really difficult to navigate to find an answer to my question or to see if it’s been asked before. This is why I’ve never liked DisBoards.
I’m also noticing the action is slower and more isolated. Posts that would have received many comments on chat are sitting there, lonely and ignored. A lot of these categories appear to be cul-de-sacs.
Thanks for responding! I was trying to find dvc dining availability link. Ended up posting on Chat and someone almost immediately responded. All set now!
I am looking at it often to try and figure out the best way to read and keep up to date. I think once I get a routine it will get easier. But I feel like I am missing things as I click into different areas and find new threads.
Yeah, its still not for me. Too compartmentalized. Too difficult to find a place to be helpful. Which is all to be expected since its a forum now and not a chat. I’ll hang around for a few more days during this transition but I cant imagine spending much time on here like I did on Lines. Its a shame, but as Len explained the cost side and number of users really impacted by the change (1/5 of 1%) I get why they did it. Just a huge bummer for me as I loved chat.
Here are my thoughts and a few suggestions for those that are finding the forum difficult to navigate or feel like you might be missing something.
First of all here’s what I really like about it:
No character limit. We don’t have to talk in stunted ‘text speak’ to get our point across. Full sentences are awesome!
Formatting, emoticons, tagging, and private messages. How many times have we had to bump a thread all day to make sure that one particular user found it? And even little things like making this list!
By using the ‘latest’ option I can see all of the posts, regardless of their category, in order from the most recently made or commented and going back from there. This is nearly the equivalent of how we see it on the other chat. The main difference is that you do have to click on the thread to see what its about versus being able to see the topiic and the last few comments. I don’t find this an issue, but I can understand why some wouldn’t care for this.
I can follow a post whether or not I’ve commented on it, by either starring the conversation or marking it as tracked. It removes the need for all of the SFL posts.
The search feature is really handy. At least it will be once we do have the majority of users contributing all of their useful information over here. And it’s not so that we can just say, “did you search for that?”, to people asking a question, but rather we can search and help them out with the information.
We can link to an individual post or even comment on a post. I think this will be immensely helpful when we refer to a piece of information previously posted.
Probably my favorite feature is the unread link at the top. Sometimes I don’t have a lot of time to go through all of the latest posts and just want to check on the threads I’ve been active in. This link shows me any of the previous threads I’ve been tracking or have commented in that have been updated. It’s like ‘My Chats’ except it filters out all of the conversations that haven’t changed since the last time I checked them. How many times have you noticed hours or even days later that someone had commented on a previous thread and you missed it because it was buried pages into your ‘My Chats’ section?
At first I felt a little overwhelmed navigating the site. It was formatted in a way that seemed strange to me even compared to other forums. I quickly learned though that using the latest and new tab I can see all of the most recently created and updated threads. I can use the unread tab to see my own active threads and keep up to date with conversations i’m participating in. Using these tabs, the categories are nothing more than descriptors and I’m not having to go into each category one at a time to look at new threads, and I’m not missing anything.
Here’s the things I think need to be improved.
There needs to be a mobile version that is low bandwidth. While it isn’t a problem for me because i’d much rather look at a laptop than a phone, I understand now that a lot of people are the opposite. Until yesterday I had no idea just how attached some people are with their phones. And I want there to be a site that is reliable so that everyone can participate.
I hope we will get more participation. I was actually pretty pleased to see how many were using it yesterday considering it was the first real day of use. I think there were a couple of things keeping that from happening. One was several people simply couldn’t get it to load on their phones. Mostly iPhone users, although, some on iPhone’s reported no issues. I do, however, think that some people are simply resistant to change and have decided to dislike it before they really even give it a serious try. The mob mentality that started to develop yesterday certainly didn’t help things. People who ordinarily might have tried it with an open mind saw the people that they chat with every day railing against it and their opinion had been swayed before they even saw it. I’m hoping that as they continue to improve things that will change.
That’s really the two major improvements I think need to be made. I hope that everyone understands this is still very much a work in progress and I think we should try to be helpful in reporting issue’s to Len and his group and give them time to work through those issues before we decry how awful this is. Just my two cent’s of course which is worth about one cent most of the time.
And see… think of how many posts this would have taken on the old chat lol.
I love it (shocker) for a lot of reasons, but of course I will miss the fast paced chat when Im not in the parks. This week has been hard to keep up since I’ve been on vacation since Sun and didn’t bring my laptop. It was MUCH easier from a PC. Trying though… still swimming.
You’re welcome @atomic ! I think once we get past the feeling of ‘there are sooo many buttons, what do I do?’ we will learn a good way to use the site and get a good routine going.
When I logged out on my phone last night to see if I was changed to level 3 I wasn’t able to log back in either. I haven’t logged out on my laptop yet because I didn’t want to get locked out. I think I’ll wait until we get some confirmation that it’s been fixed.
I’m doing the same thing @atomic. I only started reading Lines/chat last fall, so I still remember how overwhelming it all was in the beginning. After a month or so of reading posts, I posted my first trip-planning question. It didn’t become comfortable habit until after our trip. I suspect getting used to this forum will be similar, but maybe a bit easier because I at least recognize some names!
@ThatDisneyGuy_outer1 - aka Outer - I think you and I were twins separated at birth or something. You articulated many of the things I’ve been thinking. You’re kind of awesome.
I sympathize, @999HappyHaunts. I really do. I’m glad you and all the Liners who are feeling very sad about the change still feel welcome to speak up about it. I worry about being too positive because I don’t want the people who are hurting to feel worse or left out. Then I worry about not being positive enough because I don’t want staff and the people who are adjusting and making it work feel bad. Then I worry about the Liners who are happily enjoying vacation right now and might come back to a huge change that’s already done. I’m a worrier.
