Community Feedback: how can the site improve?

[TimCube]

I have two suggestions that I think would be cool to see, and both have to do with the "Accomplishments" tab on our SS profile.

Personally, I like being on a leaderboard and using it to track my progress, and to motivate me to improve. We all have a table on our profile where we can input our all-time personal bests and averages, and after each time it tells you what your rank is. But unless you are very fast, your rank comes out as "ranked 0 out of 798". This is my rank for 3x3 single, which is 17.07. I would like to see this updated so that your time, no matter how fast or slow, will be ranked among all other SS profiles. To clarify, I'm not talking about the weekly competitions, I'm talking about the "Accomplishments" under our profile.

Another useful feature that could be added to this time table would be a way to import all your csTimer singles and averages instantly, simply for convenience.

Those are my two suggestions. Big thanks to this site's moderators, I greatly appreciate your work to maintain this website and community!

 

[Athefre]

Has something changed to prevent the use of Google to search? I often use Google (site:speedsolving.com) instead of the site search feature for research for the Method Library. It's better for words and acronyms that contain fewer than four characters and is also better for longer search terms. But recently Google isn't providing any results or just gives a few generic looking results that aren't about what was searched. This is no matter the length of a searched word.

That brings up another issue which is that the four character limit makes finding things difficult. This is a community of acronyms and we have a lot of 2-3 character acronyms, such as FB, LSE, CLL, ZZ, and so on. Just personally, the limit has made research for the Method Library, and many other situations, difficult. I'm sure I can't be the only one who has entered something with two or three characters but couldn't search because of the limit.

 

[sDLfj]

Would it be possible to put a character limit on the comments of the weekly competition? For example, the format of 3x3 this week is all messed up because someone was trying to be funny. I would put this in the weekly competition thread but I can't find it, which brings me to my next point.

The search on here is basically useless, it brings up barely related things and even when I know exactly what I'm looking for, I can't find it. For example, I was looking for a thread on here about pin orders for clock, which I know I made a post in, and no matter what I search, the only result is a blindfolded discussion. As mentioned above, I can't find things using google like I used to. I doubt there's any way to fix that, but now there's no way to reliably search for information on here.

 

[An Animating Cuber]

The search on here is basically useless, it brings up barely related things and even when I know exactly what I'm looking for, I can't find it. For example, I was looking for a thread on here about pin orders for clock, which I know I made a post in, and no matter what I search, the only result is a blindfolded discussion. As mentioned above, I can't find things using google like I used to. I doubt there's any way to fix that, but now there's no way to reliably search for information on here.

XF Search works better for me, but yeah its still not the best.

 

[Mike Hughey]

Would it be possible to put a character limit on the comments of the weekly competition? For example, the format of 3x3 this week is all messed up because someone was trying to be funny. I would put this in the weekly competition thread but I can't find it, which brings me to my next point.

When I see these, I try to clean them up by hand. If you would like, PM me and I'll clean them up.
I could think about putting a character limit but it's complicated to pick a good limit, and sometimes long comments are truly justified.

 

[Running for cube]

The search on here is basically useless, it brings up barely related things and even when I know exactly what I'm looking for, I can't find it. For example, I was looking for a thread on here about pin orders for clock, which I know I made a post in, and no matter what I search, the only result is a blindfolded discussion. As mentioned above, I can't find things using google like I used to. I doubt there's any way to fix that, but now there's no way to reliably search for information on here.

Yeah, I was gonna bring this up not long ago. It’s like if I wanna look up a member or a thread I can’t ever directly find the member, and the thread will only come up in xf. Idk how hard it is to put a good search engine in, so I can’t talk, but it can get sorta annoying.

 

[VincentCuber]

I think it would be good if you were notified if you were tagged in a PM, not given access to the PM, but just being told who did it so you could ask them why they were talking about you privately.

 

[Cuber.Hello.com(:]

I think it would be good if you were notified if you were tagged in a PM, not given access to the PM, but just being told who did it so you could ask them why they were talking about you privately.

dont worry. no one is simping for u secretely

 

[VincentCuber]

dont worry. no one is simping for u secretely

thats not what i was thinking of.......

 

[Cubinginatree]

I think it would be good if you were notified if you were tagged in a PM, not given access to the PM, but just being told who did it so you could ask them why they were talking about you privately.

But the whole point of a PM is that it’s a Private Message.

 

[Running for cube]

But the whole point of a PM is that it’s a Private Message.

Yeah I want to privately slander speedsolving members in peace.

 

[quanloh]

I think it would be good if you were notified if you were tagged in a PM, not given access to the PM, but just being told who did it so you could ask them why they were talking about you privately.

Once this is implemented (which I dont think it will be), we will just PM without spelling the full user name if gossiping or talking bad behind ppl.

 

[Running for cube]

Once this is implemented (which I dont think it will be), we will just PM without spelling the full user name if gossiping or talking bad behind ppl.

That’s what I was thinking as well.

 

[Cuber.Hello.com(:]

thats not what i was thinking of.......

ik i was kidding lol

 

[ProStar]

I think it would be valuable to engage in a site-wide redo/update of all the major stickied threads with new, updated information. There’s a ton of super helpful resources, but also a ton of outdated and sometimes inaccurate information. For example, I just saw a stickied thread recommended Cube4You and other outdated puzzle shops, with no mention of TC or SCS. I imagine the general structure would remain the same, just with updated info, probably some new threads, and elaborating further on existing threads.

 

[Thom S.]

I think it would be valuable to engage in a site-wide redo/update of all the major stickied threads with new, updated information. There’s a ton of super helpful resources, but also a ton of outdated and sometimes inaccurate information. For example, I just saw a stickied thread recommended Cube4You and other outdated puzzle shops, with no mention of TC or SCS. I imagine the general structure would remain the same, just with updated info, probably some new threads, and elaborating further on existing threads.

The threads in question(and Wiki sites) by default get outdated periodically.
The best course of action is to compile the resources in topics which you are sure are correct and send them to pjk or a mod directly to update an existing thread.

 

[CoderGuru]

I think it would be valuable to engage in a site-wide redo/update of all the major stickied threads with new, updated information. There’s a ton of super helpful resources, but also a ton of outdated and sometimes inaccurate information. For example, I just saw a stickied thread recommended Cube4You and other outdated puzzle shops, with no mention of TC or SCS. I imagine the general structure would remain the same, just with updated info, probably some new threads, and elaborating further on existing threads.

Unfortunately I can’t take you seriously about anything anymore at all after what happened

 

[SnowyDay]

The search is a disaster. Basically no results on a Windows 10 machine for months. Then by luck, I stumbled on the "XF Search".

This is a great historical resource. It is fun to just search around different topics and opinions. Where else can one do that?

I think the traffic would rise significantly if the search defaulted to "XF Search" (or a better search were implemented). People would spend more time per session and come back more often IMHO.

 

[pjk]

The search is a disaster. Basically no results on a Windows 10 machine for months. Then by luck, I stumbled on the "XF Search".

This is a great historical resource. It is fun to just search around different topics and opinions. Where else can one do that?

I think the traffic would rise significantly if the search defaulted to "XF Search" (or a better search were implemented). People would spend more time per session and come back more often IMHO.

Thanks for the feedback. Over the years we've tested a bunch of different search engines, and found that some engines work better than others. Can you provide specific queries you're typing where you are not getting the results you want? You can use the default or the XF Search anytime you wish.

 

[TheSpeedSkewber]

One very annoying thint i have noticed is that, while the XF search is useful and the default search basically doesn't work, certain keywords, for example, '2x2' get filtered out for being too short or common. So if i wanted to search '2x2 discussion thread' i would get results for 'discussion thread'