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I have to say, I am very very sad today.
I witnessed the closing of Spacequest.net, and the note posted on there now reminds me of how old I am getting.
I really am starting to feel like all those good Sierra memories will die with me, and there will be no one left to uphold those great old games. I feel like Ken Williams doesn’t care anymore about his site or the Sierra fans, and even the most diehard of fans are starting to give up, and get on with living their lives. I guess I can’t blame them. I still have my mega awesome Sierra game collection, and I have 2 friends left who remember those good ol days. It hurts. It really does.
Since this post will pretty much be my swan song, I have but a few things to say, and I say them with no malice intended, but something needs be done…… This site has GREAT potential, especially since it was created by Ken Williams. BUT this site is put together like crap. I hate to sound harsh, but it is.
Second, BRANDON KLASSEN, get the ‘Sierra Archives’ page up AND GET IT UP SOON…. I’m guessing you are in charge of that, if not, I apologize.
Something needs to be done or the flame will go out. Maybe the release of KQ9 or SQ7 will help. But as it stands, I feel hopeless.
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Alright, 3 things.
‘I witnessed the closing of Spacequest.net, and the note posted on there now reminds me of how old I am getting.’
1) I’m confused by Frans’ message. Does he mean the site will still be closing, or does he just mean that he’s decided to put it back up, but will no longer update it at all? After all, why bother to put the entire site back up if you’re going to close it? In that case, he would have just put up the message and nothing else. I guess his original intention was to close the site forever, but after speaking with Colin Davis he decided to at least allow it stay online.
‘get the ‘Sierra Archives’ page up AND GET IT UP SOON’
2) I am responsible, along with my fellow historian Brad Herbert and a number of others here who have made contributions, as well as many former workers in the community, for The Sierra Archives. TSA has had a long history, and we’ve finally come to the point where we decided that this continual process of archival sites coming and going and being in various states of disarray is quite bothersome. We mean to unite all Sierra archival material in the ultimate Sierra website. Everything that you could possibly conceive of wanting in such a site will be there, and probably more. The downside to this is that it takes much longer to plan, develop and implement than just doing a standard website design – not to mention that we are engaged in a number of very significant archival projects besides the TSA website. Every once in a while people announce that they are setting up an archival Sierra website and there are some out there, and we just let them go about their business. We realize that we don’t have much to show for ourselves but all we can ask is your continued trust that this is all in the works.
‘BUT this site is put together like crap.’
3) As for this website – and props to Ken for the site and his Talkspot system – but I do believe that this site would see many more visitors if it was a conventional website with content that I could design myself and regularly update outside of the Talkspot system and with a conventional bulletin board system (likely I would choose phpBB). Ken has a lot of innovation and the success of his Talkspot system is proven among the thousands (I don’t know the exact numbers but it’s a lot) of sites he hosts – but I’m just not sure that it’s the type of system best suited for SierraGamers, at least as it is, and I have no doubt that many Sierra fans turn away from it simply because it is unfamiliar and not structured like many other bulletin board systems that they are used to. Now that is a more helpful way of saying what you said, by identifying what about the site you may not like. Ken’s system is in continual development though, so if you have suggestions for how the system could be improved, you can certainly voice them. Ultimately this is Ken’s site.
I hope that addresses some of your comments and feel free to comment more.
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…Rygar, King, 2006-02-10 12:17:50… this site is put together like crap. …
Rygar:
Can you be a bit more specific?
As Brandon mentioned, this site is using a site-maker that I’m building. It’s a hobby, and doesn’t generate any revenue, but seems to be exploding rapidly. I’m at 8,000 websites and adding 200 per week. Bandwidth is going up something like 25% a month. That’s in spite of me doing NOTHING to attract new business.
No one is paying anything.
It would certainly be easier to use ‘off the shelf’ stuff, but that wouldn’t make for a fun hobby.
Talkspot.com (the site behind this site) is evolving slow, because we have no budget and aren’t in a hurry.
Ultimately, I’m confident this will be great, but most internet projects these days involve millions of dollars and hordes of programmers. I’m a retired software entrepreneuer who boats half the time and plays golf the other half. This project is just something fun to do. It can’t be compared to serious ‘for profit’ activities — at least, not for another year or two.
With that in mind — if you have particular features you’d like sooner than later — let me know. I’ll add them to the task list.
-Ken W
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I too must admit that I would prefer a more conventional BB layout for this site, with categorized threads listed in descending order of times posted (as with the messages themselves.) Having a link beside each thread header to take you to the first unread message makes it easy to pick up where you left off in a thread.
I fully realize that this site is just a hobby for Ken and have not criticized it before. I don’t want to step on his toes, but it seems as if intent of it is make a way to create a data base and to organize & display it. Would it be possible to have user preferences that could display the threads and messages this way or in the way that Ken has as the default?
It might also be nice to allow the user to alter the CSS in their profile to set font face and size, not just colors. The CSS specifies a font size that seems to be chosen for a small laptop with a low resolution, which is too tiny for any of the more usual resolutions on a 19′ or larger monitor. Yes, you can set the font size up in the browser, but you have to set it back down for any other sites.
If this is possible, could the underlying code and possible interfaces could be experimented with and worked on, but give the users more usability in the meantime?
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My comments in RED:
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…collector, 2006-02-12 17:28:43I too must admit that I would prefer a more conventional BB layout for this site…
I’m not sure what this board does that is unconventional. What are you referring to? In designing it, I studied several of the most popular bulletin boards, and tried to deliver the same functionality.One important point though: Most of the Sierra users are more ‘computer literate’ than the target market for my product. Some of the features I observed in other message board systems would be too complex to explain to non-techies. My target market, for the talkspot.com system is a ‘average person’ who wants to build a website. Techie features tend to alienate this group. I need to focus on the 10% of features that make 90% of the end users happy.
, with categorized threads listed in descending order of times posted (as with the messages themselves.)
We do this (I’ll look to see how I can make it more obvious):Having a link beside each thread header to take you to the first unread message makes it easy to pick up where you left off in a thread.
Good idea.
Would it be possible to have user preferences that could display the threads and messages this way or in the way that Ken has as the default?Sorry – I don’t understand this comment.
It might also be nice to allow the user to alter the CSS in their profile to set font face and size, not just colors. The CSS specifies a font size that seems to be chosen for a small laptop with a low resolution, which is too tiny for any of the more usual resolutions on a 19′ or larger monitor. Yes, you can set the font size up in the browser, but you have to set it back down for any other sites.I’ll look to see if there is a way to do this that doesn’t add too much complexity. THe problem is that only 1% of the people want to do this, but it complicates the user interface for everyone — plus, the browser already provides this functionality. The code is simple — keeping the user interface simple isn’t.
If this is possible, could the underlying code and possible interfaces could be experimented with and worked on, but give the users more usability in the meantime?I’m peddling as fast as I can!
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Dear Ken,
I apologize for the harsh use of the word ‘crap’ when commenting on this site. I worded that statemwnt a bit more roughly than I had intended! It’s not that the site is crap, it’s just that I can’t come to terms with how messages are ordered. I guess I’m more used to the ‘forum’ style of site, where each subject is organized simply by the ‘thread title’.
For instance, if I were to goto the messages portion of this webpage, I would see a list of topics, such as ‘Ken and Roberta return to gaming’ or ‘ King’s Quest V bug fixes’ etc, etc. It just seems to me the logical way of organizing topics. But I am not recommending a total mimic of the traditional forum style, just a different method of listing topics & posts. I do realize you are a one man team and I do highly respect your work on this site, and I deeply hope you continue to cultivate what you have begun here. I merely am giving a small bit of feedback, and my opinion will surely differ from others so….
Keep up the good work!
P.S. For example, my favorite forum style site would be http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ I don’t desire a copycat of this, but it’s a good model IMHO.
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Dear Brandon,
I know you have a huge load of work to do to get such an ambitious site up. I merely would like to give you a pep talk. Not that you need a pep talk, but I am just really excited about the archives site, and I know you will offer up some nice suprises when it goes online.
Instead of trying to rush you, I am going to go through my huge stack of Interaction mags tommorrow and see if I have any of the ones you still need for the project.
I just really feel like this site and the archive site have the potential to do great things for Ken, and also the potential to breathe some life into what I feel is a dwindling hobby. People just look at me nuts these days when i talk about the old Sierra games. Whenever someone starts talking about videogames, I always have to ask them, ‘Did you ever play King’s Quest or Space Quest?’ If the person answers yes, they are instantly my new best friend
I wish you and your fellows nothing but luck Brandon, and I’m sure your labors will not be in vain! I want good things for us diehards!
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I’m sorry, I should of said ascending order. The first message should be first and the latest last. Having the latest first is like trying to follow a conversation backwards. If you are reading a thread for the first time, you want to read it from the first to last. A link to the first unread message would let you pick up where you left off from before.
I forgot that there was a category view of the threads as I have the new messages page booked marked. If the category view had some means of flagging which threads had new messages I would go to that page right away.
Again, I don’t mean to criticize, just a few suggestions that I think would make the boards a little easier to use. Thanks for providing this forum.
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Hi, my name is Brian and I help with the development of the Talkspot system. Many of the issues addressed in this thread do already exist in this BBS. Maybe they aren’t clear enough, although they are standard based on the BBS systems I have used. For instance, there have been requests for ordering items in certain ways. You can order threads, messages, or whatever in any order you prefer. Just click on the heading – click it a second time and it’s in descending order. Multiple sorts are supposed to be supported, but noticed that doesn’t seem to be working.
In the thread view, you can quickly determine which threads contain messages that you have not read by looking at the New column. It displays the number of messages that have not been read (new to you).
Personal preferences may come at a later date, but like Ken mentioned, just let us know what you would like to see and we can review the requests to determine if they make sense for this site’s target. -
One thing I have notice in the design of this web site is that old threads are never ‘picked up on’. I don’t know exactly how to say it. Old threads vanish from activity / new post. Unless one is looking for some specific information, they tend to click on the new messages and respond to those messages. Some messages go forever without reply or comment. I can understand that when I ask questions about boating on this Sierrafan web page and not Trawlerweb.com. But, I think you get the picture. The solution may be found in other BBS.
I have always recommended the tree style of message board. Every reply is tabed in from its parent post and hidden until one clicks on a plus button.
I was also wondering if the actual message in this design could be put in an iframe with a fixed height of 3 to 4 lines. This may give a scroll bar to view the entire post without changing pages. Also, more of the other topics could be seen on one page with the restricted height.Update: With the lack of post recently, I can hear the crickets now. : (
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Dear Ken and Talkspot team,
Ok, I have figured out how to explain my thoughts on the website in a more helpful and constructive manner, so here goes 🙂 Just my 2 cents, of course!
I was trying to pinpoint what it is exactly that makes it hard for me to navigate this site. I do realize that you are using the website builder you have created and that it has been very well recieved by many many users. I think the problem is in the fact that this site specifically is a ‘text-heavy’ site. I can easily now see how your website builder would be great for someone to build a website dedicated to business, or say, a hobby like model-building etc, but as mxCoder has stated, it seems old posts get lost in the depths, and many of those posts were great! (I was here around the time you got this site going).
So, if I were to offer input, and I am by no means a webmaster, I would offer a few simply ideas.
On the homepage, you have the site broken up into:
1. Welcome message
2. New Messages
3. Live Chat
4. Help
5. System CommandsIf I were king, I would have all the major topics available on the homepage, in a simply list format, so I could click on, lets say ‘Ken Williams Q &A’ or, ‘Space Quest Technical Help’, right there on the homepage. Once I had clicked on one of those topics, it should go into a more ‘forum-like’ format. I think it should retain the look, but the organization of threads and posts should be close to those standards.
Like I mentioned before, these thing are only needed due to this site being very ‘text-heavy’. So, even though I know you are WAY to busy to pull this off, maybe you could create 2 versions of your talkspot software? One for a general website, and one aimed at competing with the common forum type of pages? If this were a page dedicated to your sea-faring adventures, loaded with pictures, that would be one thing. (And cool I might add) Or even a webstore. But as it stands I think it’s layout (not it’s quality) extends the middle finger in the face of designs that are already well-suited for the type of action that goes on here at Sierragamers.
All this of course PLEASE understand is not in any way an insult to the great work you and your mates have done here, I just think that this site (and TSA) could and WILL be the last word in Sierra Fan sites, and I dearly wish to see that come to fruition. The fact that Ken yourself built this site gives hope and peace to the hearts of Sierra fans like me, who have had any empty void since Sierra On-Line went into the afterlife.
Please, keep it going!
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