How Could You DO THIS?

[Thrak]

I don't understand. I spent my career in IT. I'm not an idiot or a n00b. How could you do this? It seems you let some stupid little pissant who thinks the freaking iPhone is the end all and be all of everything freaking RUIN the forums that are loved by many. Does anybody at Cruise Critic have any kind of an idea who it is who inhabits these forums? Your "new and improved" and "mobile friendly" forum format is freaking CRAP! I'm not some "old fart" who doesn't know what he's talking about. (OK... To your "web guru" idiot I probably am an "old fart". However, I definitely do know what I'm talking about.

 

There are new ways of doing things. Fine. The problem is there are NO new ways of doing what has been around for a long time. Many things that made the site easy to use and simple to navigate are either gone or buried so freaking deep people can't find them. WHY would someone want to make a site that was simple to navigate become difficult and arcane to navigate? The only people I have ever met who are like that are the "iPeople".

 

I'm not new to IT. I loved DOS 3.3 and then DOS 4 was crap. However, when the "deltree" command came along later I was once again enamored. Like I said, I'm not new to IT. I've seen Windows come and the various incarnations of that (did you get the freaking Vista folks to help with this abomination you have incarnated?) and have weathered them. I'm not adverse to change. I'm only adverse to change to suit some idiot who thinks they know what is "good for everybody" even if "everybody" doesn't agree.

 

Your last major change was not horrible -- the freaking text editor that insists on adding extra paragraph breaks is stupid -- STUPID -- and there is absolutely no reason not to have fixed that issue. That was bad enough. This latest abomination is inexcusable. Don't you realize you have a lot of older folks here - and even younger folks - who aren't tech people? Making it difficult - or freaking impossible for people to do things they have become used to doing easily is not smart. (Holy crap. Even your stupid "bold" button doesn't actually make anything bold!) Who did you get to implement this insanity? Was it someone who failed as a Walmart Greeter and then was hired by the pathetic Princess Cruises IT team and then was actually so pathetic they were let go by Princess?

 

I am appalled and extremely upset. Really and truly upset. You actually have settings that can be toggled by a simple mouse click but  CAN NOT BE UNDONE by a mouse click or by any other discernible means. *****??? Any action without a simple and obvious "undo" function is unconscionable. There are many (many!) obvious coding errors here. I am shocked. I am appalled. I am extremely unhappy.

[flossie009]

Come on ........... don’t mince your words .............. do you like the new site or not? 😉

 

PS The new site is not good on an iPhone either!

[Thrak]

15 minutes ago, flossie009 said:

Come on ........... don’t mince your words .............. do you like the new site or not? 😉

 

PS The new site is not good on an iPhone either!

 

Believe it or not I "did" mince my words. I was extremely polite compared to what my real feelings are in regard to the "improved" site.

[John&LaLa]

I'm enjoying the new features both computer and mobile

[JT1962]

I don’t use CC on my laptop, but am finding the forums much slower and more cumbersome to use on my iPhone than the App. It was so much better.

[Golfeline]

Thrak -  Totally agree with you.  I have been on CC since 2010 (8 years for the imbecile who redid this site - just in case you can't understand math!!!!)   I have been in IT for years as well.  It is so darn difficult to get the preferred settings done without wasting so much time trying to find them.  SERIOUSLY????  And there are lots of bugs.  Who is the supervisor and the people who have your back to find these errors?  OMG.....  I will try to find another website to post to as this is ridiculous and a time waster.  Recreating sliced bread is sometimes not a good thing...… Just saying

[ashton57]

Completely agree! It is also impossible to "search" boards for topics I had no problem before searching for! Now i just get a message that says "nothing found" 

[DeltaOne]

I'm in the group that likes this new software.  To me, the secret is Activity Streams.  They're a bit tricky to set up, but once set up it's a nice improvement over the old system.  

 

I use one Activity Stream to follow the four cruise lines I've cruised on.  I use another for finding content by one specific user that I like to follow.  I have one that finds my postings.  Note...the last two aren't working quite right yet...the web site indexing is still on going.  I'm hopeful they'll work fine when the indexing is done.

 

I'm going to start using Activity Streams for following the "Live From" threads.  I had been using Manage Followed Content, but it has a few shortcomings.  Activity Streams will work better.

 

Here's an example of my main Activity Stream.  If you read the line under "Paul's Activity Stream" you see that this one window lists posts in Celebrity, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Princess forums -- since my last visit.

 

The trick to getting an Activity Stream to work for you is setting the seven options correctly.  Show me, Content type, Read status, Ownership, Following, Time period and Sorting.  See below:

 

Edited October 21, 2018 by Paul from Maryland

[kerryincork]

The app was super easy to use. It is not as easy to navigate using your phone 😕

 

I will have to investigate these activity streams. But it is not a good idea to make your customers work so hard to set the configuration of the site so that it is usable.

 

Lots of people are either not that tech savy or don't have the patience to be messing around with settings.

 

[Turtles06]

31 minutes ago, Paul from Maryland said:

I'm in the group that likes this new software.  To me, the secret is Activity Streams.  They're a bit tricky to set up, but once set up it's a nice improvement over the old system.  . . .

 

The trick to getting an Activity Stream to work for you is setting the seven options correctly.  Show me, Content type, Read status, Ownership, Following, Time period and Sorting.  See below:

 

I am glad you are having a good experience.  Respectfully, though, one shouldn't need the equivalent of an Owner's Manual to be able to use a message board.  It should be intuitive, easy to navigate, visually sensible, etc.  I am willing to slog it out right now because I love CC and I think it's an incredibly valuable web site, but I am worried about all the people who are so frustrated right now they may just give up.  

[Shmoo here]

1 hour ago, ashton57 said:

Completely agree! It is also impossible to "search" boards for topics I had no problem before searching for! Now i just get a message that says "nothing found" 

That's because they still indexing all the old posts/threads.  Jenn said it's going to take some time.  Until then any searches are going to be incomplete.

 

I suppose they could have waited until they completed everything in the transition before opening it to us, but, I think they wanted to get us onto the new format as quickly as possible.

[bluemarble]

2 hours ago, Paul from Maryland said:

I'm in the group that likes this new software.  To me, the secret is Activity Streams.  They're a bit tricky to set up, but once set up it's a nice improvement over the old system.  

 

I use one Activity Stream to follow the four cruise lines I've cruised on.  I use another for finding content by one specific user that I like to follow.  I have one that finds my postings.  Note...the last two aren't working quite right yet...the web site indexing is still on going.  I'm hopeful they'll work fine when the indexing is done.

 

I'm going to start using Activity Streams for following the "Live From" threads.  I had been using Manage Followed Content, but it has a few shortcomings.  Activity Streams will work better.

 

Here's an example of my main Activity Stream.  If you read the line under "Paul's Activity Stream" you see that this one window lists posts in Celebrity, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Princess forums -- since my last visit.

 

The trick to getting an Activity Stream to work for you is setting the seven options correctly.  Show me, Content type, Read status, Ownership, Following, Time period and Sorting.  See below:

 

 

Paul, I'm liking this "Activity Stream" concept, but I'm having trouble figuring out how you managed to select the topics of "Celebrity Cruises, Royal Caribbean International, Norwegian Cruise Line, Princess Cruises and Need Help? Ask Here!" for your activity stream.

 

When I try to create a new activity stream, here is what I am seeing for the "Cruise Critic Community" selection within "Content Types", "Topics".

 

 

I'm seeing "Cruise Lines "A"- "O"" and "Cruise Lines "P" - "Z"", but those selections are grayed out with no way to drill down to select individual cruise line forums as the topics for my Activity Stream. What am I doing wrong?

Edited October 21, 2018 by bluemarble

[bluemarble]

Never mind my question above! It was so blindingly obvious that I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Clicking on the triangle to the left of each Cruise Critic Community Category expands the list to show the individual cruise line forums. Problem solved. Thanks, Paul for getting me started on activity streams.

 

 

[Got2Cruise]

Activity streams were already available on Tapatalk five years ago. If it’s a new concept to you I wouldn’t brag about it. Except on Tapatalk everything was easy peasy. This new format if you want mobile is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. 

[restasured]

Completely agree with Thark, this new "format" sucks.  What I used to be able to type in a couple of words and get very near what I wanted, now gives me basically every post for every ship in the cruise line.  I type in Vista Cozumel and I get every comment on the website for every ship that has Cozumel in it.  I DO NOT want to have to initiate a new App or change settings for something that should already be set up.  There are other choices to search cruise info and though I have been a CC member for a lot of years, will start looking at more friendly websites.

[gimletgal]

This NEW/IMPROVED site is untenable. When I go to my old forums, they all start with Page 1. I always had it set so that the latest posts would be on the first page and I could select the # of posts per page. Neither option is available any longer. Replying to posts is much more difficult.  And some forums that I participated in just totally disappeared......what a bunch of BS.

 

My time on CC since this change will be extremely limited. It just is NOT user friendly at all. (I'm afraid being owned by Trip Advisor has ruined this site.)

[DeltaOne]

1 hour ago, bluemarble said:

Never mind my question above! It was so blindingly obvious that I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Clicking on the triangle to the left of each Cruise Critic Community Category expands the list to show the individual cruise line forums. Problem solved. Thanks, Paul for getting me started on activity streams.

 

 

 

Good deal.  Activity Streams should be easier...they can be a bit tricky.

 

My first attempts were showing me too much, until I selected Content type: topics.  Topics means "threads" which is what I wanted.

[ShipWalker]

If nothing else comes from this thread at least I finally get to try out the "ignore user" button.

[bemis12]

Boy, that will sure show them. 

[poolmwv]

When will a new app be available for the iPhone? I didn't realize they were changing things and I was on a bus trip with sometimes spotty Internet. But when I was able to login, I didn't have any forums available, but I saw elsewhere that the "old app" couldn't access the forums.

 

Now it won't even let me log in.

 

Also, how do you change the signature now? When I tried to put a cruise countdown clock at the top of my signature, it said my signature didn't fit into the guidelines. The only thing I could presume was that it was longer than six lines. So can you no longer put in your previous cruises? What is considered a line?

[CRZAHOLIC]

6 hours ago, ashton57 said:

Completely agree! It is also impossible to "search" boards for topics I had no problem before searching for! Now i just get a message that says "nothing found" 

I totally agree.  I have been on over 25 cruises so I have spent a lot of time on CC.  I can't figure out how the search works.  I either get nothing found or I get things that are totally unrelated.  I am leaving CC and going to Tripadvisr.

[JT1962]

14 minutes ago, CRZAHOLIC said:

I am leaving CC and going to Tripadvisr.

The irony is TripAdvisor owns Cruise Critic. The TA site and App are so much better than the new CC supposedly Mobile Friendly site, at least on my iPhone. I am not sure why they did not use the same platform for CC. Hopefully they don’t upgrade TA to this format.

Edited October 21, 2018 by JT1962

[Shmoo here]

1 hour ago, poolmwv said:

When will a new app be available for the iPhone? I didn't realize they were changing things and I was on a bus trip with sometimes spotty Internet. But when I was able to login, I didn't have any forums available, but I saw elsewhere that the "old app" couldn't access the forums.

 

Now it won't even let me log in.

 

Also, how do you change the signature now? When I tried to put a cruise countdown clock at the top of my signature, it said my signature didn't fit into the guidelines. The only thing I could presume was that it was longer than six lines. So can you no longer put in your previous cruises? What is considered a line?

The app is no longer supported.  The new forum is mobile friendly.  You access it via the browser on your phone.

 

Signature requirements:

• Maximum of 1 image
•  Images up to 150 x 175 pixels
•  Maximum of 3 URLs
•  Maximum of 6 lines

:For those of us who have longer signatures, we are grandfathered.  If you want to change your signature you will now be restricted by the new requirements.

 

Countdown clocks are not supported by the new forum.

 

A line is a line is a line.  Whatever fits onto a line before it returns to start the next line.

[trophy_23]

This new site is garbage.  I used to really enjoy coming in for a quick browse at my subscribed threads, or certain topics I wanted to look at and now it is so disorganized and tough to navigate.  I doubt I’ll be back.

[broberts]

7 hours ago, Turtles06 said:

I am glad you are having a good experience.  Respectfully, though, one shouldn't need the equivalent of an Owner's Manual to be able to use a message board.  It should be intuitive, easy to navigate, visually sensible, etc.  I am willing to slog it out right now because I love CC and I think it's an incredibly valuable web site, but I am worried about all the people who are so frustrated right now they may just give up.  

 

There is no such thing as "intuition" in the general sense. Intuition is educated by an individual's life experience and education. Personally I find the new site quite intuitive. But that is because I have experience with other forums that have the same base design.

 

I'm glad there are many like you who are willing to invest the time and cope with the frustration of learning a new paradigm. I sure hope there will come a time when you start enjoying this new site.

 

2 hours ago, CRZAHOLIC said:

I totally agree.  I have been on over 25 cruises so I have spent a lot of time on CC.  I can't figure out how the search works.  I either get nothing found or I get things that are totally unrelated.  I am leaving CC and going to Tripadvisr.

 

Search is not working at the moment. Personally I don't understand how it can take more than a week to generate the indexes, but apparently it does.