Forum Update Incoming

[MrConway]

Captains, 

 

We will be releasing an update for our beloved World of Warships forums on 14/12/2017 at 02:00 UTC, the forum will be unavailable for about 2.5 hours during this update.

 

Please leave any feedback on the changes in this thread!

 

So what has changed?

 

New Header

Spoiler

The header of the forum, which has not been changed for a long time, had a lot of technical limitations that created certain problems when adjusting it. In the new version, the header has been completely reworked. Now it can adjust to the width of any screen without conflicting with the logo image and will hide if the device from which you are accessing the forum cannot display the header correctly.

 

Besides this, on the right side of the updated header, there is now an option to hide it manually. After clicking it, the header will hide and will not be loaded repeatedly even after your browser cache expires. This means you will be able to free up a lot of useful space for the content you are interested in. The header will appear again when its image is changed, but you will be able to immediately hide it and it will be kept hidden until the next update.

 

New Skins

Spoiler

Throughout its life, the WoWS forum used the skin with “tank” colors that it had inherited from its “older brother”. In this update, the tank skin has only slight changes, which are necessary to use the new features. In terms of functionality, this skin is no worse than other skins.

 

All users that registered on the forum before the beginning of the update, will have the tank style set as the default one. It can be changed any time in the lower part of the forum. For new and unauthorized users, the WoWS – White skin will be set as the default one. There is also the WoWS – Dark skin available.

 

This is the first (but not the last) very important step in making the forum conform to the WoWS style.

 

Reputation and Reactions

Spoiler

The current forum reputation system has changed a lot. The changes are aimed at different aspects of socialization in the community. The recent update of the forum platform gave us the possibility to move forward and apply our accumulated experience to develop this system both in terms of socialization and in terms of some secondary aims such as collecting statistical information necessary for further forum and game development.

 

In the Russian version of the forum, the karma system, on the one hand, was not transparent for new users, and on the other hand, it was not convenient for active forum participants. On the American and Asian forums, the system that allowed only positive assessment of posts was perceived by users as being wrong. Our forum used only the like system (like old-school Facebook) for any content type, which was not entirely well received.

 

In the new version, the reputation system will be supplemented with a reaction system thanks to which each forum participant will be able to select any emotional state caused by the post of another forum participant. The number of reactions given per 24 hours is not limited because reactions do not change a user’s reputation. It is possible to influence reputation with the plus and minus reactions that act identically to the reputation system and have certain limits per 24 hours.

 

We want to allow all reactions, including the laughing and angry smiles, to change reputation without any limits and sanctions for users giving a negative reaction. That is why, in the new system, a negative reaction will not decrease the karma of the person who gave it. We will keep an eye on the statistics of using reactions and, if there are no negative tendencies (for example, increasing or decreasing user reputation artificially), we will consider eliminating the limits for giving reputation reactions (a plus and a minus) and also turning other emotional reactions into reputation reactions (thus, a laughing smile will increase reputation and an angry smile will decrease it). In the last case, the plus and minus reputation reactions will become superfluous and can be disabled. 

 

From the technical side, the system is realized as a tool that can be supplemented, changed, and updated without additional development. If you want to suggest new reactions, we will be able to consider them for implementation.

 

Multilingualism

Spoiler

On the European and Asian forums, there are sections available for users of different language groups.  They will now be able to select the language of their forum interface. At the moment, the list of localizations (apart from English and Russian languages) contains Czech, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Traditional Chinese. This is the first step towards working with a multilingual audience. In the future, the possibilities of using a preferred language will be improved (for example the widget of recent topics will not show posts in Italian if a player has chosen German).

 

Recommendations

Spoiler

In the new forum version, moderators can mark one or a few posts in a topic as recommended. Posts with this mark will be displayed in the upper part of each page of the topic. This feature will allow for highlighting developers’ replies and other useful or important posts (it will not be necessary to search for them manually among other posts). Besides this, moderators will not need to edit posts and make red notes in them; the feature will also allow any forum participant to stand out by posting an interesting reply.

 

Status Messages

Spoiler

Although this feature is similar to recommendations, it is different. Status messages can have different colors corresponding to different aims (informative, warning, important, and so on) and can contain any information. For example, it may be key peculiarities, different contact information, reply templates, or any other content.

Bug Fixes and Other Improvements

Spoiler

·         The relative dates, i.e. “2 weeks ago” or “last year” were removed. Now dates have three possible states: today at 12:34, yesterday at 12:34, and 01.01.2001 at 12.34. It is still possible to view the precise date for any state by hovering the cursor over it.

·         Most emails will now have the WoWS design that will be updated in the future.

·         The bugs connected with followed content, the access to which was recalled, were fixed.

·         The image of the clan tag was added in the user profile. The full clan name will be displayed when hovering over the tag with the cursor and the color of the current clan league will be used.

·         Some authorization bugs, because of which the anonymous setting became disabled when viewing the forum from another device, were fixed.

·         The productiveness of the “heaviest” forum pages was optimized.

·         The integration of forum links into posts and transforming them into widgets became smarter and more visually appealing.

·         The visual editor was updated. Some bugs were fixed and stability was increased.

• Now an attachment can be moved in the visual editor to the very place where it should be displayed. It is also possible to paste images directly from the clipboard of the operating system.

·         The “Online Now” widget now shows 40 forum visitors sorted by the time of their latest activity.

·         The order of blocks in the mobile version was changed. Now widgets are displayed first (important topics, developers’ replies), then forum categories are displayed, and the “Online Now” widget is displayed at the end.

·         The bug that caused the incorrect collapse of forum navigation elements when minimizing the screen was fixed.

·         The bug, because of which the link to the portal profile was displayed repeatedly in different widgets of the profile, was fixed.

·         The bug, because of which the forum kept users authorized for a long time period, was fixed. Now the forum will keep users authorized only for two weeks (time given by the authorization server) or will not remember users at all if they do not check the “Remember me” box.

·         The bug, because of which the number of topics was displayed incorrectly on the main page, was fixed (the topics nested in categories were not counted).

 

[zFireWyvern]

Please don't adopt the same upvote emojis that the NA forums is using now, they look absolutely terrible.

Example - 

[Miessa3]

1 hour ago, zFireWyvern said:

Please don't adopt the same upvote emojis that the NA forums is using now, they look absolutely terrible.

Example - 

This is reminding me of elementary school where everything was marked by easy to understand stamps/pictures like the smiley or thundercloud instead of an actual grade.

Do we really need this?

I hope the Forum doesn't turn into a several days lasting bugfest like last time for this....

[WolfGewehr]

6 hours ago, MrConway said:

the reputation system will be supplemented with a reaction system thanks to which each forum participant will be able to select any emotional state caused by the post of another forum participant

 

So reaction faces a la Facebook?  GG, we totally needed them.

 

 

 

Not.

 

So forum points/karma is still a thing? I thought it went extinct with removal of +/ - points years back. And to be honest, what you do with forum karma? I think it's as useless as karma ingame.

 

 

E: I hope no posts will go missing this time, like it happened last time. Especially as we have this christmas lottery going on.

[MrConway]

1 hour ago, WolfGewehr said:

 

So reaction faces a la Facebook?  GG, we totally needed them.

 

 

 

Not.

 

So forum points/karma is still a thing? I thought it went extinct with removal of +/ - points years back. And to be honest, what you do with forum karma? I think it's as useless as karma ingame.

 

 

E: I hope no posts will go missing this time, like it happened last time. Especially as we have this christmas lottery going on.

 

We hope the transition will not cause any issues, as we're not the first ones ;)

 

As for the reactions, you don't have to use them if you don't want to!

[WolfGewehr]

1 minute ago, MrConway said:

As for the reactions, you don't have to use them if you don't want to!

 

Naturally. But I don't even want to see those reactions. Some "funny" emojis. Just no thanks.

[Ferry_25]

tl:dr Conway. Any way of giving a summary?

[NothingButTheRain]

At first glance I like everything except the rep system. The ability to give neg reps is something I don't like to see. Either a positive one to encourage productive writings but a negative one may result in negrep (guerilla) wars.

But like I said, the rest seems either a good addition or is something that doesn't really affect me, like the other languages as I'm perfectly capable of understanding English.

[NothingButTheRain]

1 hour ago, Ferry_25 said:

tl:dr Conway. Any way of giving a summary?

Bug fixes and generally speaking there will be more flexibility and customization options on the forums. 

[anonym_hqO9wrVAEQYQ]

2 hours ago, NothingButTheRain said:

At first glance I like everything except the rep system. The ability to give neg reps is something I don't like to see. Either a positive one to encourage productive writings but a negative one may result in negrep (guerilla) wars.

 

Like anyone cares if they get neg reps. I don't

[NothingButTheRain]

57 minutes ago, gautrek said:

Like anyone cares if they get neg reps. I don't

Yes, some people will care about neg reps. Maybe it won't bother you but you don't speak for everybody.

[Nechrom]

It's alive! 

[El2aZeR]

OH GOD.

IT'S SO BRIGHT.

MY EYES!

THE GOGGLES TO NOTHING!

[Herrscher_Elysia]

Pros:

+ Modern UI (its quite pretty)

+ 3 themes (can we make our own? I would like to put my lolibotes as background, lul)

+ Clan tags!! Woo!

 

Cons:

- Reaction? We dont need them, this is not facebook 

- Why you moved the quote button to left? I like it on right.

- Still no clan tags below the IGN Moved to Pros

- Where's reputation counter like in Asia forum?

 

An update is an update nonetheless, oh well. ALSO NEW EMOTICON HYPE!

[lafeel]

@MrConway On the fence about the new layout, but I have to say  that I see the return of a old and very annoying glitch.

 

Namely the forum decides to randomly sign you out of it any time it feels like it. Can we perchance get rid of this, again, and leave us the users in control of when we're logged onto, and indeed off, the forums?

 

Thank you.

Lafie

[daniyyel]

the new theme looks really nice. good job

where are the clan tags?

[xXx_Blogis_xXx]

gj wg , not bad update :)

[SV_Kompresor]

Well, you now need 50 battles to post....I like it

[ollonborre]

I like the theme. 

 

I don't like that a new update in any form of UI for most platforms means moving around all the buttons. And I don't really like the whole emoji buisness. 

[Verdius]

Aside from the reaction thingies I kind of like it. Seriously I much prefer either the old like button or the upvote/downvote system. Making the clantags a bit more readable would be nice as well.

[WeGreedy]

@MrConway

I like it, but - when using the dark theme - font colour of codes has been changed, making it hard to be read.

 

 

Without syntax highlighting it's grey now. I think solid black would be better.

 

o7

[robihr]

too bright.

 

btw typhoon league clans arent really visible with that font color on white background.

[LilJumpa]

1 minute ago, robihr said:

too bright.

 

btw typhoon league clans arent really visible with that font color on white background.

 

Try reading the ones which haven't participated in Clanwars ;)

[Tuccy]

14 minutes ago, robihr said:

too bright.

 

btw typhoon league clans arent really visible with that font color on white background.

You can change tot he dark theme. Unless that is what you consider too bright 

 

In any case we'll be tracking the feedback - in this year we have changed forum to newer core and gradually add new functions.

 

As for random sign out seems this may not be related to Forum, as portal does it from time to time as well - we have passed this along for investigation.

[Exocet6951]

Overall no issues on my end, though the metric ton of pinned posts/announcements you have to scroll through on a phone to get to the categories is a minor inconvenience.

The only negative comment I have is on the background image. When you scroll up and down, it moves along to stick with the viewer, which would be a good thing if it didn't jerk up and down awkwardly.
I tried both scrolling with the scroll button, and a smoother, slower scroll by use of a scroll button click, and no matter what happens, it's just not fluid.
It's actually a problem because it blinks on and off on the corner of your eyes if you scroll too fast, which isn't particularily good for you.


Other than that, I'm pretty satisfied with the changes