• Welcome to the Speedsolving.com, home of the web's largest puzzle community!
    You are currently viewing our forum as a guest which gives you limited access to join discussions and access our other features.

    Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community of 40,000+ people from around the world today!

    If you are already a member, simply login to hide this message and begin participating in the community!

Community Feedback: how can the site improve?

pjk

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Mar 13, 2006
Messages
6,686
WCA
2007KELL02
SS Competition Results
The goal of this thread is to get some more discussion going on how to improve the community, and make changes that seem necessary.

More often than not if we don't hear feedback from the community, we don't know there is an issue. We certainly need help from the community reporting issues, bugs, etc., but in addition, over time, it's important to make changes like layouts, culture, etc. The moderation team here normally discusses these issues, but we want to hear from you, the community.

As the site has grown, the culture has changed. There are more people, different discussions, and less conversations to be had (the wiki has over 1,000 articles and the forum has 1,100,000+ posts now). Some people lose interest in the hobby, and others simply lose interest in the discussion. New and old members don't find the same discussions interesting, so balancing that is one of the problems that needs to be solved.

So, what feedback do you have for the community to make it better? Better meaning more useful and interesting to you. How can we make discussions more constructive? How can we better keep beginner discussions separate from more mature discussions, so each group can still constructively discuss on here?

Any and all feedback is appreciated, either by sending me a PM directly, or by replying to this thread. Thanks for your time.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2014
Messages
2,987
Location
Webster Groves, MO
WCA
2013BARK01
I've been having an issue with the forum being slow. It works fine when I am logged out, and OK on the Tapatalk thing, but when I am logged in it can take several tries to get to any page or thread or to make a post. Sometimes I click on "new posts", nothing loads, and when I reload the page it redirects to the forum homepage (speedsolving.com/forum). It started a few weeks back and I've tried all the things- using a different browser, using a different computer, accessing it from school, etc. It kinda works on my phone browser but that's all.

On the issue of what to do for newer cubers, I don't care right now I should be sleeping kbye lol

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk
 

Loiloiloi

Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2016
Messages
573
Location
Easton, Pennsylvania
WCA
2016CLAR04
Is there was a section of the site where you could input your average times or PBs and it would show up on your profile or under your name on the forums that would be a pretty cool feature.
 

GenTheSnail

Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2016
Messages
2,249
Location
Illinois, USA
WCA
2016GEEN01
YouTube
Visit Channel
I've noticed that the signature preview isn't accurate. The preview for my signature is 4 lines long, but when I post it's only 3. Like the the screen isn't as long, so I have to check a previous post to make sure it's formatted correctly.
 

Robert-Y

Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2009
Messages
3,289
Location
England
WCA
2009YAUR01
YouTube
Visit Channel
I haven't really thought much about what improvements can be made but here's one:

In my opinion, we do not need a new thread for every new WR/CR/NR announcement. I would prefer it if we could somehow just group all of these announcements into some record feed. Users may submit their own announcements with proper format like: region, result, event, record format(single/average/mean), competitor name.

However if there's actually something to discuss e.g. the scrambles or a video of the record, then creating a thread is appropriate.
 

DGCubes

Member
Joined
Feb 14, 2014
Messages
1,823
Location
Over there
WCA
2013GOOD01
YouTube
Visit Channel
I haven't really thought much about what improvements can be made but here's one:

In my opinion, we do not need a new thread for every new WR/CR/NR announcement. I would prefer it if we could somehow just group all of these announcements into some record feed. Users may submit their own announcements with proper format like: region, result, event, record format(single/average/mean), competitor name.

However if there's actually something to discuss e.g. the scrambles or a video of the record, then creating a thread is appropriate.

I'm not sure if I agree. Speedsolving is where I get most of my cubing news (and I'm sure this is true for many others), and if any WR is broken, I want to see it as soon as I check the site. If I see that your proposed thread is bumped, it could just be someone congratulating the record holder, or it could be an entirely new world record. I like to know what I'm getting into by the title before clicking on the thread. CRs and NRs are understandable to have in a thread like that (unless they're particularly notable, like WR2), but I'd personally still prefer to see them have their own thread.
 

Robert-Y

Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2009
Messages
3,289
Location
England
WCA
2009YAUR01
YouTube
Visit Channel
In my mind, we could keep a window on the homepage displaying recent records, kept up to date by users. So hopefully you will indeed see the records as soon as you check the site. I'd also like to know about WR2 etc too. Users could also submit records like these.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Aug 16, 2014
Messages
2,987
Location
Webster Groves, MO
WCA
2013BARK01
I'm not sure if I agree. Speedsolving is where I get most of my cubing news (and I'm sure this is true for many others), and if any WR is broken, I want to see it as soon as I check the site. If I see that your proposed thread is bumped, it could just be someone congratulating the record holder, or it could be an entirely new world record. I like to know what I'm getting into by the title before clicking on the thread. CRs and NRs are understandable to have in a thread like that (unless they're particularly notable, like WR2), but I'd personally still prefer to see them have their own thread.
My view on this:
WRs should have their own thread.
CRs, NRs should have their own thread only if they are notable, i.e. OcR 3x3 single or NAR 4x4 average, and not Latvian NR 6x6 single or AfR FMC average.
If anyone gets a time that isn't exactly notable, they can post it, but don't post every official solve you ever got in its own thread.
 

cmhardw

Premium Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2006
Messages
4,115
Location
Orlando, Florida
WCA
2003HARD01
YouTube
Visit Channel
I think the forum in general is fine for the vast majority of its users. I think long time members are leaving or lurking because we don't feel we have much of anything to contribute to the community. My suggestion is to give older cubers a sub-forum or section to hang out in where we do feel that we can contribute interesting or relevant things.
 
Last edited:

SpeedcuberJH

Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2015
Messages
27
Location
Australia
WCA
2016HUNT01
YouTube
Visit Channel
1. Maybe a leaderboard of some sort? You could connect your wca profile and see your score among others.

2. A full makeover. The forum is a little bit old and could probably be improved.

3. A section where YouTube videos could be promoted to start up people's channels.

4. An instant messaging section; anyone online could speak to other cubers.

5. A photo gallery.

6. Forum ranks depending on how experienced you are.

That's pretty much all I could think of. I think adding these things would be awesome.
 

wir3sandfir3s

Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2016
Messages
537
Location
yuh yuh
I think the forum in general is fine for the vast majority of its users. I think long time members are leaving or lurking because we don't feel we have much of anything to contribute to the community. My suggestion is to give older cubers a sub-forum or section to hang out in where we do feel that we can contribute interesting or relevant things.
There's a thread for that
 
Top