old forum

[sheri]

I have been inactive for a while and I must say I am very disappointed to find the new style forum. The old one was easier to navigate and find what I was interested in.

Also, what happened to those game boards -- you know, the ones where you could post products of a certain colour, or in consecutive letters of the alphabet, etc?  They were fun. And I imagine some of my referrers came from there.

[sheri]

I found the show-me threads. Why can I not delete my original post?

[WHS_Designs]

@sheri 

this appears to be a limitation of the new forum. we can modify posts (in a short window of time), but we can't delete.

[Barbara]

Yes, this new setup takes up a lot of room so that we can't see all at once as many threads as in the old forums so it ends up feeling as if we're wearing blinders. The worst of all is Ideas and Suggestions where the threads are categorized three different ways. And then there are the awful typos that we never notice until time has run out to correct them. What I miss most, however, is the "Everything Else" forum where we could take a coffee break and talk recipes, books, pets, or favorite whatevers. A place to be friendly with one another.

Colorwash's Home

[sm]

Wow, we can't delete our own posts here? That's crazy. Okay, I'm no longer participating lol. 

[Barbara]

On the old forum, there were very occasional problems with people deleting a post and leaving the thread with no discernible subject. At rare moments, a person would say something untoward to others, delete what they said, and then be able to claim innocence. However, the bad stuff was rare, but I think the ability to edit our jumbled grammar after an hour has passed or to delete a brain-free post may be because, other than the pro forums, the rest of this is public. This may be why it's so much stricter than the old forums. I'd rather go back to the non-public forums.

Colorwash's Home

[sm]

@Barbara the old one was public. I thought this one was private. If it's public and we can't delete posts, that's even more reason not to participate. I suppose I can rejoin anonymously or just post in the pro forums when absolutely necessary. With regards to trouble makers, maybe deleted posts can go into some trash bin for 30 days where Zazzle can see them, before being permanently deleted.

But anyway, I never read the forum for about four years so it's no big deal if I don't again. I'm finding that it's a big waste of my time so maybe it's for the best lol. 

[Barbara]

My impression was that the old forums couldn't be searched and found on the internet the way others can, but an impression isn't necessarily the same as fact.

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[ColsCreations]

I think the forums are a treasure trove of useful information. I lurk in a FB group where designers are often asking things where I am saying to myself, sigh, this has been discussed/answered ad nauseam in the forums .... Reading the forums is hardly a waste of time and it's one of the reasons my free time goes to Zazzle and not another POD. The other PODs I am registered with have almost or no help outside their generic FAQ pages. Zazzle on the the hand, you can ask any super-specific random question and get an answer/advice from other users or even an official Z person rather quickly.

As for public vs private - when this new forum was first announced the first thing I did was check out the khoros website. That made it pretty clear that a major selling point for the khoros software is that it reduces customer service  time/expense by building a community of users that can step up and answer questions 24/7, building a searchable knowledge base in the process. We as designers are one type of customer/client for Zazzle so to speak, but the general shopping public buying our products is the other. So I knew going into this that this forum would be public, to serve as a knowledge base for not just designers but general shoppers who might have questions as well. I don't see a whole lot of posts I can pinpoint as being from an end-customer rather than a designer, but I do know that posts here are rather quickly indexed on Google so I try to self-moderate my posts so that if a shopper lands on them via a Google query I won't, as a shop keeper they can link out to from the post, be embarrassed by what I wrote. The Pro forums are great for things you know don't belong in the public space, but for anything else, if you have to ask yourself whether you'd want the public to see it or not, it's probably not appropriate to post at all.

[sm]

It's a waste of time for me. What it is for you has no relevance to me. 

"... if you have to ask yourself whether you'd want the public to see it or not, it's probably not appropriate to post at all." Lol, that's like saying Zazzle's boardroom meeting minutes should be released to the public.  What we say in here should not be seen by customers. It's not good for us or for Zazzle. Unhappy, frustrated (insert any other emotion), should not be known to the public. Seeing all the whining would put me off buying from Zazzle as a customer because it appears as if they treat their designers like rubbish. Whether that is true or not, I don't want the customers knowing because it would reduce sales even more. Think about companies like Lush soap. When people found out how their staff were treated, many stopped buying their product. It doesn't matter if that soap is the best on the market, people many don't want to buy from companies that mistreat/take advantage of people. And this is another comment that I definitely wouldn't want a customer to see but here I am justifying myself. It's bad practice. I'm hoping Scott deletes it after you read it. In any case, the forum is a good source of information but the news and information section is better as I find I waste time trying to find information anywhere else and like now, comments just go in circles. It's wasting my time. If I'm going to spend time on the site, I'd rather be working on a collection cover or something more important. Anyhow, I have unsubscribed to all forum topics so I shouldn't get another email that will waste more of my time. Have a good day/night.

[GraphicAllusion]

The one thing I really miss about the old forum boards is the years of great information and advice it had on there. Sure, a lot of it may be dated by now, but there was still a great wealth of knowledge on there. 

[Barbara]

Not long after this new forum started up, I requested that a particular sticky on the old forum filled with a list of do's and don't's for newbies be revived and posted here. We often linked to that post when a newbie showed up with questions. It was a long one and extremely informative, but maybe Zazzle can't bring it back because they never archived the old forum or maybe it's that this new setup isn't capable of doing stickies.

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