We've listened and made some important changes
And I'd like to tell you about them
I've made a lot of mistakes with the new Visordown, which is quite frustrating really, as I thought I'd be bolting-on more sections to the site that you'd find useful and grow to love. But, by not fully explaining the new site, mishandling some important issues, such as privacy and underestimating how much you liked certain things about the old site, we've made a tough transition even tougher. Many of the bugs have been resolved and this post aims to clarify changes and outstanding problems.
Privacy is the main thing I'd like to talk about and I'd like to make this clear:
- We will never, ever, pass on your email address and personal information to any 3rd party.
- We do not have rights to anything you contributed to Visordown before this launch onto the new site, other than to keep publishing it on Visordown.
We've had lots of heated debate about the Terms & Conditions and quite rightly so: I appreciate all the feedback you've given me and it's because of this, I hope that now we've addressed the issues.
There were also some tech issues with your personal profiles: I take the flak on that, sorry. We’ve now ironed out those problems and it's easy to opt-in or opt-out as you see fit. It should always have been this easy.
A bit more about privacy :-
I'd like to make it clear that neither Visordown nor Magicalia will ever pass your personal information to any 3rd party, and any emails with information from 3rd parties will be sent from us at Visordown.com. On the old Visordown, we had an “admin” mailing list, which I used to send out BugSplat, and with the new setup we have other settings so you can control what sort of emails you receive from us. In 7 years of Visordown, I've always kept true to my word, where other biker sites have made their data available to the highest bidder.
About competitions
The single exception to our not passing your data to another company is where you enter competitions that specifically say something like 'By entering this competition you agree that Yamaha* may retain and use your data submitted as part of this competition' *or whoever sponsors the competition.
This would be a clear statement on the competition-entry page and would not affect any of your settings elsewhere on the site.
A bit more about copyright :-
As I said, any contributions you made to Visordown pre-2008 do not fall under the new T&Cs. Any new forum content that we publish in TWO magazine will only come from Visordown’s TWO forum. If we ever wanted to print other content in TWO or elsewhere we would be sure to confirm that you were happy for us to do this.
Just like on the old site, content published on Visordown can be viewed outside of Visordown via web feeds such as RSS etc.
All this has impacted on Visordown's reputation as a trustworthy site. We've changed the Terms & Conditions by updating the wording on the 3rd party opt-in and we’re now working hard to move Visordown forward. Yes we need to make it pay - that's normal and has been the case for years - but we're keeping the same ethos; listening to what you have to say and adapting with you.
I want you to help me grow Visordown to be stronger than it ever was and judging by the 150+ user Bike Reviews you've already posted, you're up for it as much as I am!
Thanks for taking time to read this,
Ben
Discuss this story
Give us the -ing preview of post content when we run the cursor over thread titles!!!! I'm happy to accept every other change except the loss of this essential function! 
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 12:26
Quote still does not work. And +1 for the message preview
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 12:39
[quote=admin][b]We've listened and made some important changes[/b]
And I'd like to tell you about them[/quote]
go on the dude, what's changed?
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 12:41
What changes have you made? The outstanding issues I still have are: 1. Left column really needs to go - I've no doubt it will be dropped the idea in the end so it may as well be now or is there an ego thing going on behind the scenes somewhere?
2. Search needs to work 100% 3. Quote needs to work 100%
4. Preview post function needed
5. New threads button needed (should show new *unread threads*) Without which users have no means of keeping abreast of content.
6. Layout and colour scheme is somewhat better but still unpleasent and hard on the eyes. Lose the red, lose the HUGE fonts, thick block rows and massive folder icons in the index and of course that left column mentioned above. 7. Database needs migration needs looking at in fine detail as links to other forum content and many Images now have dead links rendering vast amounts of content useless. Do you have a timeline for addressing the above Admin?
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 12:48
Quote still does not work. And +1 for the message preview
Yes it does! 
I actually find it much easier than it used to be! oh, and being able to reply before the end of a 20 page thread? 
Yes - that's a pretty big one, too!
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 12:58
oh, and being able to reply before the end of a 20 page thread?
HUH!?! You can...there are reply buttons on each page...just not the big box thingy 
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 13:05
Quote from Ben: About competitionsThe single exception to our not passing your data to another company is where you enter competitions that specifically say something like 'By entering this competition you agree that Yamaha* may retain and use your data submitted as part of this competition' *or whoever sponsors the competition. This would be a clear statement on the competition-entry page and would not affect any of your settings elsewhere on the site. Can I just check - how does this affect the Photo Comp that I do (not quite the same scale as the prized comps obviously). I've had several express concern about submitting their entries even tho they are hosted away from here (ie on my site). Their concern is fuelled by the fact I refer to it as the "Visordown" Photo Comp (Can I continue to do so?) and whether they will find their stuff suddenly printed in a Magicalia mag somewhere. I really don't want to stop the comp continuing if at all possible. Ta
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 13:11
oh yea "reply to this thread"...cheers FA! 
<points and giggles at ena>
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 13:14
FA "Any new forum content that we publish in TWO magazine will only come from Visordown's TWO forum. If we ever wanted to print other content in TWO or elsewhere we would be sure to confirm that you were happy for us to do this. " That should keep any pics out of the magazine without consent.
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 13:37
Anne: J40ADF you need to read the related article ahh...d'oh again!
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 13:42
Any new forum content that we publish in TWO magazine will only come from Visordown's TWO forum. If we ever wanted to print other content in TWO or elsewhere we would be sure to confirm that you were happy for us to do this. Ben, while I appreciate you taking the time to openly address this issue, if the above is true then you really don't need to have the existing T&C statement: any Content provided by you by, for example, posting messages to bulletin boards or chat forums, uploading files, inputting data, or engaging in any other form of communication through this Website, although owned by you, is subject to a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted, world-wide licence allowing Magicalia to use, distribute, copy, sub-license, adapt, transmit, publicly perform or display any such content. You agree to irrevocably and unconditionally waive on your behalf in perpetuity in respect of such Content the benefit of any provision of law known as moral rights of authors or any similar law in any country. So presumably deleting that will be the change you refer to? As pointed out in another thread by another poster, these terms and conditions may last longer than you and the present management of Magicalia - there would be nothing to stop a future purchaser 'plundering the vaults'.
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 13:45
Anne: J40ADF you need to read the related article ahh...d'oh again!
Ah... you mean the title hidden off screen outside of the thread content.... I missed that also along with everyone else it seems. Who's clever idea was it to not put the article links in the thread itself? There's so much garbage outside of the threads itself that I'm training myself not to look at it.
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 14:04
Who's clever idea was it to not put the article links in the thread itself? There's so much garbage outside of the threads itself that I'm training myself not to look at them. Ditto. The whole board seems to be spread out to take twice as much space as it needs . . . And it's totally counter-intuitive. Shouldn't [reply] be next to "Quote ? Why when you've followed a link from 'Latest Posts' can't you re-use the 'Latest Posts' 'button' again - instead you have to go up and left to a different string of layers - even though you're not in the list any more, you've moved to a thread? Sorry, Ben, this isn't your fault I know, but you've been horribly stitched up if they forced this layout on you 
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 14:17
Thread title should also have been: - We've listened and made AN (singular) Important Change
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 14:31
\/\/\ everything he said is annoying me What, always?  And why oh why oh why has not only quote stopped working for me again, but that fuggin little box keeps popping up even when I click the 'don't bother me again' box?
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 14:54
nah, not all the time horse. something to do with cookies i was told. however, i've eaten a whole box of these choc chip ones and i still can't quote.
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 15:20
something to do with cookies i was told. however, i've eaten a whole box of these choc chip ones and i still can't quote. "Does this forum make my arse look big?"
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 16:03
My attempt at a list: Quote function work correctly Reply option on every page of a thread Page numbers on forum index Last read post/first new post per thread on index Thread preview in index Ignore list no longer limited Search function working properly Changes managed properly - Inform users BEFORE you take the forum offline for 4 hours Put the Message member, Ignore member etc alongside their username for the post to save space Ts and Cs need to be more palatable. Report function per post not per thread
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 16:24
Can you not make it look something like this?
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 16:38
Yet another 'article' with yet another apology. The one facility VD needs is a "Think before you act" button for the site managers... but it may be to late for that
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 17:05
Can you not make it look something like this? White, light grey and darker grey? Looks somehow strangely familiar.
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 17:08
Can you not make it look something like this? White, light grey and darker grey? Looks somehow strangely familiar.
Except that one had nothing down the left of the page, was user-friendly, and had the words "Powered by vBulletin" at the bottom.
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 17:25
Ok I so I'm guessing its here to stay but can the side bar be moved to the other side, over there ----> "Go to first unread post" link, big pain opening a long thread on either page one and then trying to work out where you left it, just as bad opening on last page and going back Think for a lot, the quote function sorted out properly That'll do for now I guess
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 18:56
Can you subscribe to threads without having to post? Haven't worked out a way to do that yet, and it's bloody annoying.....
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 20:40
Missed one Forum Jump - Any chance of splitting it up a bit like the first page of the forums, not so easy jumping from one section to the other
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 20:55
Fair play to ya fella. IMO it takes a big man to write this "I've made a lot of mistakes with the new Visordown". Chin up, I'm sure it'll all come right in the end. Well said Dicky! For rhe time being though it will just be us
Posted: 17/01/2008 at 21:48
See more comments...
|
|
