New forum design - do you like it?

[seismic1]

[DarkStar]

The new icon images to indicate read/unread/sticky/etc.! I love them! I almost (*) don't care about the colors, these icons are so much cleaner and easier to deal with.

+1. It's now much easier to what what's what and what's changed/new.

[spirit]

+1
Thank the Gods that those awful blinking stupid animated bits of rubbish are gone! The new solid colors are infinitely superior. It's now at least possible to read the forums again.

[Numanoid]

So when is this "temporary" theme going? It's bloody awful. I would lay very good money on the KvR traffic having taken a real plunge in the past few weeks.

According to this info "Monthly visitor traffic is down 22.0% year over year"
http://www.trafficestimate.com/kvraudio.com

[noizetronic]

?Too Bright For Me Error!

[llze]

Any news on the dark forum style?

[Hink]

So when is this "temporary" theme going? It's bloody awful. I would lay very good money on the KvR traffic having taken a real plunge in the past few weeks.

According to this info "Monthly visitor traffic is down 22.0% year over year"
http://www.trafficestimate.com/kvraudio.com

there are other factors in that year plus span that come into play, for instance the stark contrast in how the forum has moderated since June of 2013. I'm not saying that the mods are better now or worse, (my only complaint is missing an old friend) but everyone has a different view on how the forum should be. Before June 2013 I heard a lot of complaints on both sides, some felt forum was over moderated for years and others felt it wasn't moderated enough...tbh in the last year plus I have not heard too many complaints about the former.

TBH I am part of the shrinking numbers, since a year ago there was 2 1/2 moths straight where I wasn't here and the time I have been has been cut down considerably. The reasons are simple, first KvR is becoming quite stale. A fresh coat of paint did make it look better imo but the same old threads over and over are not helping, non-stop parody threads are getting old and personally I am getting a lot less from my experience at KvR than I ever have. Another thing is how I find more and more you gotta make it clear many times in one post that your views are only your opinions and even still someone will tell you you are wrong about how you feel or tell you what you meant to say. Worse if you contradict yourself (which we all do) there are plenty of people to jump on that "AHA" moment to gain some shallow victory over a simple misspoken post. The personal attacks are up quite a bit, I see people defending obvious trolls and haters simply because they do not want to be the target of attacks.

So the numbers are down, no big surprise. This is our community, yes it's Ben's site but without the community there would be little need for the site and frankly I think KvR as a whole is letting Ben down. We shouldn't need mods to tell us to stop hating on each other, we she should be supportive of each other and that support should come naturally. I think more forums need more stickies to address the "suggest me some headphones", "suggest me a soundcard", "what does key mean?" and the list goes on. I guess this is another place I have failed the community because I have to admit I do not write reviews in the review section nor do I frequent it and I suspect I am not alone

So if you ask me, blaming the low numbers on the new forum design is out of line. I look around and see how many of the old regulars are not here anymore. Many of those people are friends on FB or I stay in touch with elsewhere, they haven't quit music, they haven't quit their friends, but they have quit KvR. I wont say I miss the old KvR because that's just a waste of time and does nothing. I will say if the numbers are down everyone who has benefited from KvR needs to ask themselves, "what can I do to make the site a better place?" Because IMHO that is more likely the cause of the low numbers and not the way the site looks today.

[Numanoid]

So if you ask me, blaming the low numbers on the new forum design is out of line

This is just one cited source for traffic, more sources is needed to confirm a pattern or not.

Nevertheless according to that info, the site gets close to 1 million visits a month which aint bad.

[Hink]

So if you ask me, blaming the low numbers on the new forum design is out of line

This is just one cited source for traffic, more sources is needed to confirm a pattern or not.

Nevertheless according to that info, the site gets close to 1 million visits a month which aint bad.

I observe the forum itself, of those million visitors how many are pings, bots and spam? I am going by my own observations and YMMV as it's just my viewpoint, but the thought of traffic being down here is not surprising to me at all or a new thought to me

[valerian_777]

Well spoken Hink!

[Hink]

ty

[aciddose]

Once you understand how statistics are collected you realize how inaccurate they are. It might seem like you can easily make a measurement and state a particular site has X number of viewers and then conclude based upon that how popular or active it might be.

The fact is though it is very difficult even for Ben to identify exactly how many visitors or how much activity goes on here. If he wanted, he could easily identify a particular user and track their activity via the logs, "user1 viewed the thread1 for 15 minutes, then posted a reply, then moved on to read thread2 ..." Yet you can only draw so many conclusions from this data as you aren't gathering information about how 5 seconds after opening thread1 this user answered the phone and was distracted for 14 minutes, then came back and read a post for a minute before replying.

Once you factor in all the bots and so on it becomes a lot more difficult to say anything in general. Unless you're making concrete observations about a particular set of information you can't really accurately say anything. Then you need to factor in the fact these third-party sites don't have direct access to the site logs and instead collect statistics in other far less accurate ways...

In any case I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we've been there and done that with a lot of topics. As far as music is concerned, if I can ever manage to focus and get something done it tends to be during a period of time that I'm not spending on forums. With the ease associated with use of modern hosts, plugins and devices, the massive availability and familiarity we have with this stuff these days there just isn't as much reason anymore to come on KVR and ask what the best TB-303 emulation is.

That sort of thing could easily make up the difference, assuming there is one.

[fgimian]

Sorry to revive this thread but just wanted to say I still dislike the bright colour scheme after all these years and it seems that the dark option never came? Really sad

[llze]

Sorry to revive this thread but just wanted to say I still dislike the bright colour scheme after all these years and it seems that the dark option never came? Really sad

there is a dark switch on top:

[fgimian]

Sorry to revive this thread but just wanted to say I still dislike the bright colour scheme after all these years and it seems that the dark option never came? Really sad

there is a dark switch on top:

OH!!! THANK YOU!!!! You just made my day