Viper911 wrote:

lesfalls wrote:

Dear Jeff

Is there any posibility to bring back the flags to show where each member comes from? Other then that I am very happy with the website and hope that you keep it this way!

Regards, Lesfalls

+1 on this, and back before the big redesign, we used to have a live list of all current logged in users and their flags, i think it would be lovely to have that back.

Like the others have said, the blue, is the trademark of this website, don't remove it, don't change it, don't touch it.

Viper911

The flag never appeared based on IP it was a choose your flag option when registering and you could change it to anything else after that, some people on here were posting under North Korean flag, doubt they were there.

You could never know where they were really from on the forum.

Would like to know - without having to click on my profile - in which threads I have previously posted.

Hi Jeff, firstly, welcome to airliners.net.

As to the suggestions so far, I'd like to add as follows:

1. Timestamps - I prefer the old format where the actual time and date of the post was shown, rather than just "2 weeks ago" etc. Does two weeks ago mean two weeks ago to the day, or two weeks and one day ago? I think actual time and date, adjusted for the user's time zone preferences, would be better.

2. Shortcuts - on the old forum, whether I was on the forum index page or in a thread itself, at the top there was a drop down menu with which I could switch to a different forum, without having to go back to the index of forums. I would like to see this feature return.

3. Flags - I'm in favour of having flags return. Aside from a few immature A v B posts, I think flags were great in that they showed just how many users worldwide use this site.

diverted wrote:

Made it super easy to scroll up and down and re-read posts without having to click through and think "hm was that on page 4, 5 or 6?" I can understand needing to go to a second page after 200 posts or so, but threads got locked at that point before anyways.

In another forum I'm on, the page tabs highlighted the page on which the user has posted, in addition to highlighting the current page that the user is viewing. Perhaps this is something that VerticalScope could look at implementing to better assist users to find their previous post on the subject.

izbtmnhd wrote:

I actually feel bad for Jeff. Some of the replies in this thread are along the lines of: It would be great if you could arrange the site as how it was back in 1998! Why not just ask him to tone down the graphics so he can make the site more accessible for those who use use dial-up service as well?

I don't get that vibe at all. There were some (admittedly minor) functions that were available on the old site that people would like to see return to the new site. I also agree that the forum colour ought to be blue as it has become synonymous with, or perhaps even a trade mark of, airliners.net. While I see the need for a new site that didn't crash as frequently as the old one did, it is not, in my view, necessary to change the look and feel of the old site.

BuildingMyBento wrote:

Would like to know - without having to click on my profile - in which threads I have previously posted.

Top left of page (next to "FORUM" & "FAQ") is a menu. Click it and select "Your posts"...

CanadaFair wrote:

Viper911 wrote:

lesfalls wrote:

Dear Jeff

Is there any posibility to bring back the flags to show where each member comes from? Other then that I am very happy with the website and hope that you keep it this way!

Regards, Lesfalls

+1 on this, and back before the big redesign, we used to have a live list of all current logged in users and their flags, i think it would be lovely to have that back.

Like the others have said, the blue, is the trademark of this website, don't remove it, don't change it, don't touch it.

Viper911

The flag never appeared based on IP it was a choose your flag option when registering and you could change it to anything else after that, some people on here were posting under North Korean flag, doubt they were there.

You could never know where they were really from on the forum.

With all due respect, but how could you possibly know that after a few months on the site?

What you say is factually incorrect. When I signed up in 2007, the site matched my current IP with my country flag, and kept that flag afterwards. I know this for a fact since I was staying abroad at the time. It is my understanding that this policy was in place for many years before and after that. There may have been a few fake flags from trips abroad or VPN tunnelling, but generally the a.net flag was a thruthful indication.

In fact the IP-based country flag was a core feature of the original a.net, along with paid membership, sophisticated selective nested quoting with built-in links for jumping to a post number of interest, meaningful Respected User Ratings that people were actually proud of, collapsible posts on a single page to support following a subthread of interest, and of course mouse hover tooltips for airports and airline codes.

All of these features, which really made the a.net forums special, are gone. And seeing the other sites operated by the next new owner, frankly it is easy to imagine things going from bad to worse.

A.net today is a shell of what it used to be, and at the rate things are getting worse, it makes me wonder how much longer it can last.

PlaneInsomniac wrote:

What you say is factually incorrect.

No, the flags (at least as long as I've been a member which is 6 years now) have always reflected the country that you selected as your location on your profile page. I changed mine a couple of times and there was one regular Aussie poster who changed his very frequently.

While there were obviously a few who decided not to reflect their home country for whatever reason the majority did and it was a useful feature. I liked the way it celebrated the diversity and breadth of the community here, there are not many forums that have as varied a membership base as a.net.

qf002 wrote:

PlaneInsomniac wrote:

What you say is factually incorrect.

No, the flags (at least as long as I've been a member which is 6 years now) have always reflected the country that you selected as your location on your profile page. I changed mine a couple of times and there was one regular Aussie poster who changed his very frequently.

While there were obviously a few who decided not to reflect their home country for whatever reason the majority did and it was a useful feature. I liked the way it celebrated the diversity and breadth of the community here, there are not many forums that have as varied a membership base as a.net.

Once again, I am quite certain this was different when I signed up 10 years ago (which falls within "always"). I any case, I see the respone one gets here remains that everything on a.net is just perfect, and that the mass exodus in particular of old timers we've seen must be because they "dont't get it".

CXB77L wrote:

Hi Jeff, firstly, welcome to airliners.net.

As to the suggestions so far, I'd like to add as follows:

1. Timestamps - I prefer the old format where the actual time and date of the post was shown, rather than just "2 weeks ago" etc. Does two weeks ago mean two weeks ago to the day, or two weeks and one day ago? I think actual time and date, adjusted for the user's time zone preferences, would be better.

2. Shortcuts - on the old forum, whether I was on the forum index page or in a thread itself, at the top there was a drop down menu with which I could switch to a different forum, without having to go back to the index of forums. I would like to see this feature return.

3. Flags - I'm in favour of having flags return. Aside from a few immature A v B posts, I think flags were great in that they showed just how many users worldwide use this site.

diverted wrote:

Made it super easy to scroll up and down and re-read posts without having to click through and think "hm was that on page 4, 5 or 6?" I can understand needing to go to a second page after 200 posts or so, but threads got locked at that point before anyways.

In another forum I'm on, the page tabs highlighted the page on which the user has posted, in addition to highlighting the current page that the user is viewing. Perhaps this is something that VerticalScope could look at implementing to better assist users to find their previous post on the subject.

izbtmnhd wrote:

I actually feel bad for Jeff. Some of the replies in this thread are along the lines of: It would be great if you could arrange the site as how it was back in 1998! Why not just ask him to tone down the graphics so he can make the site more accessible for those who use use dial-up service as well?

I don't get that vibe at all. There were some (admittedly minor) functions that were available on the old site that people would like to see return to the new site. I also agree that the forum colour ought to be blue as it has become synonymous with, or perhaps even a trade mark of, airliners.net. While I see the need for a new site that didn't crash as frequently as the old one did, it is not, in my view, necessary to change the look and feel of the old site.

Thanks for the warm welcome, glad to be here.

Think we have all those issues on the Sqwauk sheet of fixes already but will verify.

Jeff M

Heya all,

There are many pros and cons on the flags but will discuss with the Crew and figure out the best way to move forward with those.

Jeff M

PlaneInsomniac wrote:

qf002 wrote:

PlaneInsomniac wrote:

What you say is factually incorrect.

No, the flags (at least as long as I've been a member which is 6 years now) have always reflected the country that you selected as your location on your profile page. I changed mine a couple of times and there was one regular Aussie poster who changed his very frequently.

While there were obviously a few who decided not to reflect their home country for whatever reason the majority did and it was a useful feature. I liked the way it celebrated the diversity and breadth of the community here, there are not many forums that have as varied a membership base as a.net.

Once again, I am quite certain this was different when I signed up 10 years ago (which falls within "always"). I any case, I see the respone one gets here remains that everything on a.net is just perfect, and that the mass exodus in particular of old timers we've seen must be because they "dont't get it".

There were "2 Kind" of flags in the history of a.net.

1. Ones you could see in the forum, or on the "currently online list", those flags were indeed linked directly to the country you've selected on your profile.

2. Flag there were added in the picture comments section, those flags were linked to your ip, and the flag was shown based on the country's ip you were posing from.

Viper911.

Interesting how a petty feature has become such a big deal,

As mentioned many of us dont want a flag, if we did we would be using them in our avatar, big in your face flags as some already are doing, you can do that too.

Management do we have an option not to have a flag if you decide to re-introduce that un-cessary feature?.

Also i'm sure crew will inform you of how some people were attacked because of their flag, I have seen western members posted in Middle East displaying those flags attacked because bigoted and racist offenders thought they are natives of those countries.

Right now the fairly neutral i-dont-know-where-the- poster-is-from setup is working fine, I dont want to see an offensive comment posted by a person from any particular country, let the image of the poster remaiin nationality free.

Trust me a flags create hateful feelings for people of that country if someone posts a negative comment with its flag displayed.

Well first of all welcome and we hope positive things happen.
I read a couple of pages of this thread (didn’t read it all) and I noticed most comments are forum related. So, as an active photographer let me throw in a couple of comments/suggestions regarding the photo database and photographer tools.

Grid: when you are browsing thru the gallery, you can either select display=detail or display=card but “detail” will always come default. My suggestion is that people can actually select their predefined value.

Thumbnails: photos on a ratio different than 3:2 would look “cropped” on the thumbnail, please help fixing that.

Search: the search engine when viewing photos, sometimes uses more than half the screen showing all the different fields/options for searching. It is actually worst on mobile (iPad), you have to scroll down too much to finally get to the photos. As well as the suggestion I made for the Grid, may I recommend that the user can select its default “Basic” or “Advanced” search engine?

Photos size: when I click on a thumbnail to see an enlarged version of the photo, it always opens up in “medium”. I’m a particular fan of watching photos on the full size option (Large) and not this middle size. On the old site you could always choose “medium” or “large” from the thumbnail and I really miss this option. Maybe adding a user defined option on what size to open images would be a good idea too.

Stats: Please bring back the old “stats” feature for photographers, were you could see (among others) the photos you have uploaded by: year, county, airline, airport, etc. It showed the views and some other cool stuff. If I my suggest something, please look at JP’s (don’t trash me for that) “photographer profile” feature. I think it is way much more developed than the current A.net feature.

Photo Index: Another great one gone from the past version on A.net. please bring it back.

A feature such as planesspotters.net data center/ airlines fleet information would be useful too. Sometimes you take a picture of a plane and all you can see (registration wise) is that 3 letter code on the nose gear and finding what rego that corresponds too is such a pain, with a fleet database that could be fixed in a matter of seconds.

Link to photographer: when you click the name of a photographer, that “profile” section opens up. In my opinion that social profile kind of idea is not the reason you would click the name of a photographer, you click on his name to see the pictures he takes, not a cheap facebook kind of profile. Please help us bring back that feature, now the only way (I have found) to see one single photographers pictures is by doing a “cross search”. Leave the profile page as a secondary option.

Premium: please bring back the option for users that want to pay and not see an ad happy site. I use adblock, but I still hate all that blank space for ads.

Mobile: yes I agree, mobile is where growth is, mobile is the game changer. I think A.net needs to do (or update) a mobile app as one of its main goals. I see social media apps such as Instagram or flicker have lot’s more of “punch” than A.net does nowadays and I think many of the traffic A.net has lost is due to this particular two “new” giants.

Many people are not willing to turn on a computer and sit down to browse a.net when they get home after a long day out, times have changed. People browse everything on mobile now and although the A.net mobile page is way much better than in the past, it is still not 100% cool. I don’t like to see A.net on my phone, it simply doesn’t fit.

Build an app proper to compete with these social platforms, with simplified photo viewing options and a simple search engine (perhaps the usage of hashtags). Add some tools and trick’s for photographers out on the field like spotting guides with maps, METAR’s TAF’s, etc.

Final thoughts: as I stated before I think many photographers and photo enthusiast viewers have abandoned the site in favor of new mobile friendlier platforms. Just read this thread and see how we are all focusing on the forum, few people are talking about the photos that are what made this site great.

I think a.net forum is like no other and it is way ahead #1, but not any more when it comes to photos. Think about this: A photographer is out on the field and he gets a rare “hot” catch, he instantly turns on camera wi-fi and downloads the picture with his phone, one or two quick retouch clicks on the phone, instant add to a social media and the picture has thousands of views before the plane has even reached the gate. On the other hand, you need to come back home, download and edit the picture and wait for 7-10 days to get it on a.net. I know quality and all those things are worth it, but I think you guys have to re-think about how to being the #1 news center of airplane photos, social media has just beat a.net to the punch.

Just my 2 cents.

Juan

CXB77L wrote:

Hi Jeff, firstly, welcome to airliners.net.

As to the suggestions so far, I'd like to add as follows:

1. Timestamps - I prefer the old format where the actual time and date of the post was shown, rather than just "2 weeks ago" etc. Does two weeks ago mean two weeks ago to the day, or two weeks and one day ago? I think actual time and date, adjusted for the user's time zone preferences, would be better.

2. Shortcuts - on the old forum, whether I was on the forum index page or in a thread itself, at the top there was a drop down menu with which I could switch to a different forum, without having to go back to the index of forums. I would like to see this feature return.

3. Flags - I'm in favour of having flags return. Aside from a few immature A v B posts, I think flags were great in that they showed just how many users worldwide use this site.

diverted wrote:

Made it super easy to scroll up and down and re-read posts without having to click through and think "hm was that on page 4, 5 or 6?" I can understand needing to go to a second page after 200 posts or so, but threads got locked at that point before anyways.

In another forum I'm on, the page tabs highlighted the page on which the user has posted, in addition to highlighting the current page that the user is viewing. Perhaps this is something that VerticalScope could look at implementing to better assist users to find their previous post on the subject.

izbtmnhd wrote:

I actually feel bad for Jeff. Some of the replies in this thread are along the lines of: It would be great if you could arrange the site as how it was back in 1998! Why not just ask him to tone down the graphics so he can make the site more accessible for those who use use dial-up service as well?

I don't get that vibe at all. There were some (admittedly minor) functions that were available on the old site that people would like to see return to the new site. I also agree that the forum colour ought to be blue as it has become synonymous with, or perhaps even a trade mark of, airliners.net. While I see the need for a new site that didn't crash as frequently as the old one did, it is not, in my view, necessary to change the look and feel of the old site.

I disagree. The look and feel of the old site was great for desktop viewing. Outside of work most people have moved off that platform. It's happened at such a fast rate that many of the "seasoned vets" on here haven't kept up.

The vets don't want minor changes, they want the old site back. Look how many posts on those silly flags alone. On and on about respect ratings as well. It's just not the year 2000 anymore. The new site definitely needs improvements but the "classic site" days are over. It needs to be mobile friendly.

Going back to the old desktop format and then charging access, to me, would be suicide. The long time people would be happy but nobody new would ever bother coming here again. This is especially true with the increasingly easier ways to drop photos all over the cloud. It's just the nature of what is going on.

mx330 wrote:

Well first of all welcome and we hope positive things happen.
I read a couple of pages of this thread (didn’t read it all) and I noticed most comments are forum related. So, as an active photographer let me throw in a couple of comments/suggestions regarding the photo database and photographer tools.

Grid: when you are browsing thru the gallery, you can either select display=detail or display=card but “detail” will always come default. My suggestion is that people can actually select their predefined value.

Thumbnails: photos on a ratio different than 3:2 would look “cropped” on the thumbnail, please help fixing that.

Search: the search engine when viewing photos, sometimes uses more than half the screen showing all the different fields/options for searching. It is actually worst on mobile (iPad), you have to scroll down too much to finally get to the photos. As well as the suggestion I made for the Grid, may I recommend that the user can select its default “Basic” or “Advanced” search engine?

Photos size: when I click on a thumbnail to see an enlarged version of the photo, it always opens up in “medium”. I’m a particular fan of watching photos on the full size option (Large) and not this middle size. On the old site you could always choose “medium” or “large” from the thumbnail and I really miss this option. Maybe adding a user defined option on what size to open images would be a good idea too.

Stats: Please bring back the old “stats” feature for photographers, were you could see (among others) the photos you have uploaded by: year, county, airline, airport, etc. It showed the views and some other cool stuff. If I my suggest something, please look at JP’s (don’t trash me for that) “photographer profile” feature. I think it is way much more developed than the current A.net feature.

Photo Index: Another great one gone from the past version on A.net. please bring it back.

A feature such as planesspotters.net data center/ airlines fleet information would be useful too. Sometimes you take a picture of a plane and all you can see (registration wise) is that 3 letter code on the nose gear and finding what rego that corresponds too is such a pain, with a fleet database that could be fixed in a matter of seconds.

Link to photographer: when you click the name of a photographer, that “profile” section opens up. In my opinion that social profile kind of idea is not the reason you would click the name of a photographer, you click on his name to see the pictures he takes, not a cheap facebook kind of profile. Please help us bring back that feature, now the only way (I have found) to see one single photographers pictures is by doing a “cross search”. Leave the profile page as a secondary option.

Premium: please bring back the option for users that want to pay and not see an ad happy site. I use adblock, but I still hate all that blank space for ads.

Mobile: yes I agree, mobile is where growth is, mobile is the game changer. I think A.net needs to do (or update) a mobile app as one of its main goals. I see social media apps such as Instagram or flicker have lot’s more of “punch” than A.net does nowadays and I think many of the traffic A.net has lost is due to this particular two “new” giants.

Many people are not willing to turn on a computer and sit down to browse a.net when they get home after a long day out, times have changed. People browse everything on mobile now and although the A.net mobile page is way much better than in the past, it is still not 100% cool. I don’t like to see A.net on my phone, it simply doesn’t fit.

Build an app proper to compete with these social platforms, with simplified photo viewing options and a simple search engine (perhaps the usage of hashtags). Add some tools and trick’s for photographers out on the field like spotting guides with maps, METAR’s TAF’s, etc.

Final thoughts: as I stated before I think many photographers and photo enthusiast viewers have abandoned the site in favor of new mobile friendlier platforms. Just read this thread and see how we are all focusing on the forum, few people are talking about the photos that are what made this site great.

I think a.net forum is like no other and it is way ahead #1, but not any more when it comes to photos. Think about this: A photographer is out on the field and he gets a rare “hot” catch, he instantly turns on camera wi-fi and downloads the picture with his phone, one or two quick retouch clicks on the phone, instant add to a social media and the picture has thousands of views before the plane has even reached the gate. On the other hand, you need to come back home, download and edit the picture and wait for 7-10 days to get it on a.net. I know quality and all those things are worth it, but I think you guys have to re-think about how to being the #1 news center of airplane photos, social media has just beat a.net to the punch.

Just my 2 cents.

Juan

Great post. Agree 100%.

mx330 wrote:

Photos size: Maybe adding a user defined option on what size to open images would be a good idea too.

Already exists for logged in users: go to https://www.airliners.net/user/account/settings, scroll down to "photo settings", tick "yes" at "Always Display Large Photos".
Other than that, great post!

izbtmnhd wrote:

I disagree. The look and feel of the old site was great for desktop viewing. Outside of work most people have moved off that platform. It's happened at such a fast rate that many of the "seasoned vets" on here haven't kept up ... It needs to be mobile friendly.

I think the point of contention here is that optimisation for mobile is fine but optimisation solely for mobile damages the user experience for people who do still view the website from non-mobile devices.

The abrupt shift in optimisation as part of the refresh last year was very jarring in that regard. Heck, for a while, my laptop's screen resolution of 1280x800 was regarded by the site to be that of a tablet and I was served up the completely-useless-to-me touch-optimised UI.

If it were to be a case of people asking for the site to be made completely functional and aesthetically-pleasing to users of Netscape Navigator on IBM OS/2 with 640x480 screens it would be one thing, but the desktop is far from dead and to view it as being worthy of ignorance for being so is in my mind unfairly dismissive.

XAM2175 wrote:

izbtmnhd wrote:

I disagree. The look and feel of the old site was great for desktop viewing. Outside of work most people have moved off that platform. It's happened at such a fast rate that many of the "seasoned vets" on here haven't kept up ... It needs to be mobile friendly.

I think the point of contention here is that optimisation for mobile is fine but optimisation solely for mobile damages the user experience for people who do still view the website from non-mobile devices.

The abrupt shift in optimisation as part of the refresh last year was very jarring in that regard. Heck, for a while, my laptop's screen resolution of 1280x800 was regarded by the site to be that of a tablet and I was served up the completely-useless-to-me touch-optimised UI.

If it were to be a case of people asking for the site to be made completely functional and aesthetically-pleasing to users of Netscape Navigator on IBM OS/2 with 640x480 screens it would be one thing, but the desktop is far from dead and to view it as being worthy of ignorance for being so is in my mind unfairly dismissive.

I'm not being dismissive but i have to point out it's a market reality. Desktops aren't dead but they are dying. I understand a lot of aviation geeks have desktops to run Flight Sim but the future is in mobile and VR. Even at work they aren't really necessary: I only use the desktop for access to multiple screens but I could do everything off of a tablet. I agree that the mobile transition last year was unnecessarily difficult but hopefully VerticalScope can fix some of these problems. It is what it is.

izbtmnhd wrote:

I disagree. The look and feel of the old site was great for desktop viewing. Outside of work most people have moved off that platform. It's happened at such a fast rate that many of the "seasoned vets" on here haven't kept up.

Rather than making dismissive comments about those who've been here for a while you would better served by pushing for a far better experience for mobile users whilst not making things worse for desktop users. Some people use mobile primarily, some use the desktop primarily and some, who may well be the majority, use both mobile and desktop in mostly equal amounts.

Having a site that works well on mobile and desktop is not easy and is not achieved overnight but I would argue that is what A.net should be aiming for. Mobile apps are all good and fine but not everybody uses apple or android so the site still needs to be decent in a mobile browser.

SamYeager2016 wrote:

izbtmnhd wrote:

I disagree. The look and feel of the old site was great for desktop viewing. Outside of work most people have moved off that platform. It's happened at such a fast rate that many of the "seasoned vets" on here haven't kept up.

Rather than making dismissive comments about those who've been here for a while you would better served by pushing for a far better experience for mobile users whilst not making things worse for desktop users. Some people use mobile primarily, some use the desktop primarily and some, who may well be the majority, use both mobile and desktop in mostly equal amounts.

Having a site that works well on mobile and desktop is not easy and is not achieved overnight but I would argue that is what A.net should be aiming for. Mobile apps are all good and fine but not everybody uses apple or android so the site still needs to be decent in a mobile browser.

I certainly didn't mean to be dismissive and I've been here for a while too. It's just surprising how many on here are telling Jeff to go backward. I get it many liked the Airliners site of the early 2000s but it's just not going to happen.

94% of website visits are made from desktop/laptop computers, only 6.2% are from mobile devices according to w3schools.com, that actually surprised me a lot

JohnKrist wrote:

94% of website visits are made from desktop/laptop computers, only 6.2% are from mobile devices according to w3schools.com, that actually surprised me a lot

I don't think that's true.

https://www.google.com/amp/bgr.com/2016 ... obile/amp/

Global web usage on mobile passed desktops last year.

In the US it's roughly 60/40 desktop.

izbtmnhd wrote:

JohnKrist wrote:

94% of website visits are made from desktop/laptop computers, only 6.2% are from mobile devices according to w3schools.com, that actually surprised me a lot

I don't think that's true.

https://www.google.com/amp/bgr.com/2016 ... obile/amp/

Global web usage on mobile passed desktops last year.

In the US it's roughly 60/40 desktop.

That sounds correct, w3schools is a site for developers so I guess it's their stats. (I use it a lot). Most if not all devs code on desktops. My bad

JohnKrist wrote:

94% of website visits are made from desktop/laptop computers, only 6.2% are from mobile devices according to w3schools.com, that actually surprised me a lot

Whatever the stats are globally it seems clear that the proportion of visits from mobile users to A.net will increase and the proportion from non-mobile will decline. However the amount of non-mobile visits is still likely to account for a significant proportion of visits to A.net for quite a while yet. IMHO what I said earlier should still be the aim viz.

a better experience for mobile users whilst not making things worse for desktop users. Some people use mobile primarily, some use the desktop primarily and some, who may well be the majority, use both mobile and desktop in mostly equal amounts.

Essentially I'm looking for a way in which the content of the site, whether that be the forums or photos, is tailored (reformatting on the fly?) towards the visitor's access method. Now I suspect this probably involves re-architecting the underlying structure of the site and will also probably require increased computational power which is why it's not going to happen tomorrow. Or maybe it's not nearly as complex as I think but it's still going to require a fair amount of time, energy and expense.

moderators wrote:

Finn350 wrote:

moderators wrote:

Hello all, this is to let you know that airliners.net has been acquired by Verticalscope inc from Leaf Group.

...

If you have questions please let me know, I will do my best to answer you all as quickly and thoroughly as I can.

Onward and Upward!
Jeff M

Hello Jeff, welcome to the site!

Could you tell a little bit background of Leaf Group and its mission, as well as reasoning behind acquiring the site?

I don't know much about Leaf but VerticalScope is the company I work for who aquired the sites. We have been adding new verticals to our mainly automotive focus. The great thing is that we are still original owner owned who has a passion for online communities.

Our History: http://www.verticalscope.com/about-us/our-history.html

Management Team: http://www.verticalscope.com/about-us/m ... -team.html

Jeff M

Welcome to the community. It's nice to see that the site will receive some updates and tweaks.

Looking at the links, it appears that Verticalscope is an aggregator (active buyer) of online communities in certain interest segments that seeks to provide a growing member base to advertisers targeting that base, through one-stop shopping rather than having to work with multiple sites.

So, a.net fits into which verticle....Hobbies and Collectibles?

On the flag front: I'd rather have a "Location" field that's displayed in the info area underneath the avatar. Those who want to state their location can fill it, but it wouldn't be mandatory.

Are there plans to reinstate the paid first class membership? This is something I have asked about with previous ownership and have waited patiently for them to reinstate it as they said they eventually would.

Whats with all the advert banners all over the place?

jetjack74 wrote:

Whats with all the advert banners all over the place?

I'm using adblock plus and don't see any advertisement or banners. It's free and simple to install.

dabpit wrote:

VirginFlyer wrote:

If you have an image on your computer or phone, it needs to be uploaded to the internet before it can be included in this way. Photo hosting sites such as Flickr are a good option for this.

Hope this helps!

V/F

Thanks for the info. I still can't get an image from a public site like flickr or other photo sites to work.

Odd ... I linked an image just today (using the [ img ] tag), and it worked fine ...

Try it using the full preview editor, so you can see in the preview if it shows correctly.

Regarding advertisements .... when you block the ads, you're blocking revenue from the site.

Revenue which keeps the site OPEN.

Yes, it would be nice to have First Class return, and have it enable an ad-free experience (after all, you're helping pay for the site, just in a different way) ... but in the meantime, think carefully about blocking ads ... that revenue could be what helps the development efforts making the site better.

CanadaFair wrote:

Viper911 wrote:

lesfalls wrote:

Dear Jeff

Is there any posibility to bring back the flags to show where each member comes from? Other then that I am very happy with the website and hope that you keep it this way!

Regards, Lesfalls

+1 on this, and back before the big redesign, we used to have a live list of all current logged in users and their flags, i think it would be lovely to have that back.

The flag never appeared based on IP it was a choose your flag option when registering and you could change it to anything else after that, some people on here were posting under North Korean flag, doubt they were there.


You could never know where they were really from on the forum.

Maybe, but it sure was fun, unlike the unamusing website we have today.

litz wrote:

Regarding advertisements .... when you block the ads, you're blocking revenue from the site.

I just ran a quick test:

Adblocker on - CPU around 5%
Adblocker off - CPU averaging between 45-55% with peak of 70%

I could probably put up with the ads but I'm not prepared to put up with my PC's performance being slugged that much.

I too would like to call out again for an UI that looks more like the old one (less wasted whitespace, ability to see much more at a glance etc)

About too much whitespace.
- Even the buttons above this edtor have lots of space inside (above the icon/Bold/Italic letter etc).
- The large Thread title has too much space above/below.
- the dark bar with the three bar iconf, 'Forum'FAQ'menu points wastes a lot. so


In the new one some quotes etc look light grey on somewhat lighter grey - unreadable.

The feature to jump to the first unread post in a thread was very useful. One could come back to a thread later
and immediately go to the next new message.

I used to be a very regular lurker (had a few tabs open all the time, just to follow things)
, but since the last Forum update, I find it painful and don't look in so much anymore.

sejtam wrote:

The feature to jump to the first unread post in a thread was very useful. One could come back to a thread later
and immediately go to the next new message.

Click the icon to the left of the topic, it will take you to first unread, if there are no unread you can click the time stamp under the name of last poster and it takes you to the last post made.

Update,

We should be kicking off some larger fixes and updates by early next week. We have been logging issues with Paul and our developer has been setting up a testing environment for fixes which is almost ready.

Feedback has been noted and we will start with high priority fixes from the Squawk sheet that the crew has worked on.

We will update the community and crew on progress.

Thanks all,
Jeff M

litz wrote:

Regarding advertisements .... when you block the ads, you're blocking revenue from the site.

Revenue which keeps the site OPEN.

Yes, it would be nice to have First Class return, and have it enable an ad-free experience (after all, you're helping pay for the site, just in a different way) ... but in the meantime, think carefully about blocking ads ... that revenue could be what helps the development efforts making the site better.

I personally would have no problem paying for First Class specifically for an ad-free experience and such that the revenue goes towards the site's bottom line (lets face it, sites that generate more revenue are going to go get that extra attention).

For me, the part that drives me nuts is that there are a lot of mobile setups that the current user interface doesn't work with, whether that be the way the site renders, the site not letting you log in with certain browser/OS combos, or the fact that the mobile version just doesn't do it for me. I like less scrolling and more reading/viewing.

Photo screening has become very slow last few weeks. Anything specific causing this?

Cheers, Paul

CanadaFair wrote:

Also i'm sure crew will inform you of how some people were attacked because of their flag, I have seen western members posted in Middle East displaying those flags attacked because bigoted and racist offenders thought they are natives of those countries.

.

Have been here for 17 years and have never seen that happen.

rlwynn wrote:

CanadaFair wrote:

Also i'm sure crew will inform you of how some people were attacked because of their flag, I have seen western members posted in Middle East displaying those flags attacked because bigoted and racist offenders thought they are natives of those countries.

.

Have been here for 17 years and have never seen that happen.

Well I;m not lying, its happened I have withnessed it happen to an American based in Saudi Arabia more than once. the usual 'Yourr County' and 'You People' stuff only to discover he is a US expat.

" Can't believe people actually miss the terrible old A.net."

It was easier, simpler, had more search fields, took up less graphics and had FAR less adds. I'll take the old site any day over this cluttered new site.

I have one important bit of advice for the new owners: Avoid change for the sake of change. I know it is tempting to leave your scent on the forums, but understand and respect the the experience and desires of the long-time members.

mh330fc wrote:

" Can't believe people actually miss the terrible old A.net."

It was easier, simpler, had more search fields, took up less graphics and had FAR less adds. I'll take the old site any day over this cluttered new site.

Couldn't agree with you more. It was much easier to find pics of a certain aircraft also. Sometimes it's ok to admit that a lot of change isn't necessary.

mh330fc wrote:

" Can't believe people actually miss the terrible old A.net."

It was easier, simpler, had more search fields, took up less graphics and had FAR less adds. I'll take the old site any day over this cluttered new site.

Almost every aspect of the old forum was lightyears ahead of what we have now. The fact that it is practically impossible to properly quote somebody and/or jump to a quoted post now is just one of many examples.

Let's face it - we now understand what actually happened: DM shoehorned the content from the legendary old site into a vastly inferior basic forum software, which is presumably much easier to run and maintain. We now know that this was probably done to prepare the sale to the next owner.

I can totally understand that there may have been valid business reasons for doing this, but can we please stop pretending that the new site is "better" than the old one in any way, shape or form, because it is simply not.

Rdh3e wrote:

anshabhi wrote:

No thanks. The white was terrible.

Primary things that were good about the old site that suck about this one:

1. Ability to selectively quote posts without moving on to a new screen. This way you could grab snippets of many different posts without having to scroll the tiny little box and sifting through and deleting the irrelevant content.
2. Hover over airport codes to show text of what city it was in

COMPLETELY agree. Especiall with #2. Also hover over the airline codes for those not as familiar with the codes!

PlaneInsomniac wrote:

mh330fc wrote:

" Can't believe people actually miss the terrible old A.net."

It was easier, simpler, had more search fields, took up less graphics and had FAR less adds. I'll take the old site any day over this cluttered new site.

Almost every aspect of the old forum was lightyears ahead of what we have now. The fact that it is practically impossible to properly quote somebody and/or jump to a quoted post now is just one of many examples.

Let's face it - we now understand what actually happened: DM shoehorned the content from the legendary old site into a vastly inferior basic forum software, which is presumably much easier to run and maintain. We now know that this was probably done to prepare the sale to the next owner.

I can totally understand that there may have been valid business reasons for doing this, but can we please stop pretending that the new site is "better" than the old one in any way, shape or form, because it is simply not.

I agree, all the crashes, data losses, join date issues and other things we had before made the old site perfect.

Jump to quoted post will come when we change to the latest phpbb

UPDATE:

Paul and I have identified the top 10 most critical fixes and starting on them early this week.

Standby for updates, hope to have most wrapped before the end of the week.

Thanks all,
Jeff M

JohnKrist wrote:

I agree, all the crashes, data losses, join date issues and other things we had before made the old site perfect.

Not to mention the forum search never finding anything. Utter perfection

VertScopeJeff wrote:

Hahah, thanks. Love the little Go Kart.

Roller Skates for elephants.
( requires a matched set of 4

fortytwoeyes wrote:

JohnKrist wrote:

I agree, all the crashes, data losses, join date issues and other things we had before made the old site perfect.

Not to mention the forum search never finding anything. Utter perfection

Search was hilarious.

But being told that a post was "moments ago" when it was yesterday is also perfection. As is the desktop layout that can't seem to sort threads by most recent half the time.

izbtmnhd wrote:

...The look and feel of the old site was great for desktop viewing. Outside of work most people have moved off that platform. It's happened at such a fast rate that many of the "seasoned vets" on here haven't kept up.

... the "classic site" days are over. It needs to be mobile friendly.

I think there are two different issues here and it's important to not mix them up.

One issue is "back to the good ol' days", and while the original site did very many nice things, I'm not really pining for most of them to return. The few that I would agree with putting effort into, have by and large been mentioned here already, numerous times.

The other issue, and the reason I'm replying, is this notion that "most people" don't view the site on a desktop sized screen. I'd question that, strongly. Unless there are back-end statistics showing that most viewers are on a mobile platform (which I'm defining as tablet or smaller, NOT a laptop), I'm skeptical. I rather imagine that this is a case of "most" being "most people meaning me and some of my friends". If I'm wrong, fine, but I'd like to be proven wrong by statistics and not by opinion.

For myself, the notion of trying to read the forums on an iPad mini (my own mobile device) is a non-starter. So, I find myself convinced that most people view the site from a laptop or larger.