Crowdstack at it again? What happened to my "Activity"? (Possible Solution at hand? 10-16-2020)

Marty, I still have this link.

It apparently invokes a search on all your posts.

As noted above so do I but it was much more convenient all in one spot under "Activity" and the Topics were highlighted to differentiate between a reply and topic.  Now they all blend together.

You're right, you used to be able to find the first post in a thread, now it's all labeled RE: like it's a reply.

Forget I said anything Marty, I want the old way back too.

Wow... talk about change for change’s sake. I can’t see any purpose to this change. I agree, the old format was much more user friendly -  PLEASE bring it back.

The REPLY vs the TOPIC  posts all blend together.  I hate to complain but after dealing with a horrible Verizon Fios Guide upgrade, this seemed like another "because we can" upgrade and not a "because it's better".

Another technology downgrade masquerading as an "upgrade." Gets tiresome after a while.

Pat

@MartyE posted:

The REPLY vs the TOPIC  posts all blend together.  I hate to complain but after dealing with a horrible Verizon Fios Guide upgrade, this seemed like another "because we can" upgrade and not a "because it's better".

I have the same complaint about this and the Verizon FiOS guide!

Someone needs to find the folks at Crowdstack something useful to do, they're obviously bored and just "tinkering"!

Yeah, that's not an improvement.

I noted something different a few days ago, but didn't particularly miss what was there before:

That pull-down under our user names used to have a MUCH longer list, but I think a lot of it was redundant to things more intuitive to get to in other ways.

Maybe the two are inter-related.

It looks like an Advanced Search by username will eliminate the "re" problem John mentions for new topic posts.  But there is still no way to group new posts vs replies, so they are just all listed in date order (assuming you select sort by date and not relevance). {edit: after looking again, I don't see the "re" problem John described when I use the "Display All Posts" link (using Firefox on a PC)- there was no "Re" in front of the one new topic I had started recently.}

And yeah, +1 on not liking the way Verizon keeps messing with the FIOS guide/Search stuff too.

-Dave

So activity got turned into search? Is it at least recent and not something posted some time ago that should have been pushed down by the recent one?

I have "Display All Posts" - Using Google Chrome

Gary 🚂

I think we all have that, Gary, but the listings are all blue. I used to easily find my old posts, because their highlight was white. I use it to delete old for sale posts before posting a new one.  Definitely not as simple as before, and it wasn’t broken.

@John H posted:

I think we all have that, Gary, but the listings are all blue. I used to easily find my old posts, because their highlight was white. I use it to delete old for sale posts before posting a new one.  Definitely not as simple as before, and it wasn’t broken.

Hi John: Got it - "I will take my bat & ball and go home".  lol

Gary 🚂

I just posted this on the Crowdstack support site:

More changes...and not for the better.

Why must you make changes like this that make no sense! This is like taking all your carefully indexed and sorted files and dumping them all into one file drawer.

It seems that you guys are now making changes just because you can. Crowdstack has grown to the point where you are trying to make it all things to all people, but it’s rapidly becoming nothing for anyone. You guys are not Facebook, so why try to emulate that social cesspool? Making Crowdstack more “social” is diminishing our ability to share meaningful ideas at the expense of it becoming more socially useless drivel...like Facebook.

When we first started with you guys, the updates you did genuinely improved the functionality and usability of the platform. However, the last several “updates” were not updates at all. They were just “changes” and bad ones at that.

All this comes from one of your oldest customers.

Time to look elsewhere for another forum hosting sight?

@Rich Melvin posted:

I just posted this on the Crowdstack support site:

..........You guys are not Facebook, so why try to emulate that social cesspool? Making Crowdstack more “social” is diminishing our ability to share meaningful ideas at the expense of it becoming more socially useless drivel...like Facebook.............

Not that I disagree with any of that, but you do see the bit of irony that the referenced social cesspool's icon is at the top of all Forum pages right?

Sort of diminishes the argument a little.   I'm not suggesting it should go away (ship has sailed, helps pay for Forum, etc), but it certainly would occur to me.

"We are Crowdstack of Borg" (or Facebook......)  "You shall be assimilated".

Or in a little different vein, "All web pages are Facebook" is where we are headed.  (stolen from "All restaurants are Taco Bell" concept form the not so classic movie "Demolition Man" )

-Dave

Looks like this was a planned "upgrade" to get rid of the "Activity" button so I don't see it coming back.

Maybe we can convince them to alter the "display all posts" to have new threads a different color.  That should be trivial.

@superwarp1 posted:

Time to look elsewhere for another forum hosting sight?

No. That would mean losing everything here and starting over.

@Dave45681 posted:

Maybe like Facebook, it's a "more clicks" thing.  More clicks = more money, right ?

No, more clicks does not mean more money...for Crowdstack or us. That’s not how it works.

How’s retirement going, Rich? Sorry we’re keeping you up. I’m going to bed.

LOL!! I rarely go to bed before 1 am. I’m a night owl, you’re not keeping me up, and I am enjoying retirement.

@Dave45681 posted:

...do see the bit of irony that the referenced social cesspool's icon is at the top of all Forum pages right?

Sort of diminishes the argument a little...

Give me a break... 

I was making a point with the Crowdstack folks about this problem, trying to make things better here, and you want to beat me up for it?  Geez.

And you sure as **** won't find me anywhere on Faceplant. I deleted my account there years ago.

You can follow the on-going soap opera with Crowdstack about this here.

@Rich Melvin posted:

Give me a break... 

I was making a point with the Crowdstack folks about this problem, trying to make things better here, and you want to beat me up for it?  Geez.

And you sure as **** won't find me anywhere on Faceplant. I deleted my account there years ago.

Note that I opened with "Not that I disagree with any of that,.....".

My point was from an observational perspective of someone reading your complaint, not my own point of view.  I'm long over the FB link at the top of the page, and I am in full agreement with your post(s) to Crowdstack on this.

Their argument in the thread you posted the link to suggesting "that feature makes changing things hard, so we decided to can it" is a cop-out on their part.  They need to either hire better coders or as you and Julie from that other customer suggested, stop messing with stuff just to mess with it.

PS. I deleted my "more clicks" post you had replied to since that's not the case.

-Dave

@Rich Melvin posted:

No. That would mean losing everything here and starting over.

Well you guys have done it before.  Can’t go farther  back than 2011.  The first ten years of the forum gone.  Very good first ten years of the forum.  To be honest I never really like crowdshack when OGR switch way back when.  But it is what it is.

@Rich Melvin posted:

You can follow the on-going soap opera with Crowdstack about this here.

Well stated Rich, it's a shame that it appears nobody at Crowdstack is actually receptive to fixing the issue.

Maybe Crowdstack and Fios use the same programmers.  Both seem like they could care less what their customers want.

As a professional computer programmer for 35 years (who is pretty much fried at this point) I wish people would remember the following 2 basic philosophies:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

KISS - Keep it simple, stupid!

Frank, I agree 100%. Deprecating the Activity Stream because it “complicated the code” (Crowdstack’s reason) was not sufficient justification for this.

Remember, despite having a decent interface and concept to let companies roll  their own once in Crowdstack:

Crowdstack, which is a rebranded Hoop.la, is the dba of Social Strata, inc.   Social Strata was started in 1998 with an eye on being the place where companies could grow their market on line via SEO, etc....especially social media (FB, Twitter, and now Instagram, and so forth.

From what I understand, most of their programming decisions use a "what will be best for social media" paradigm.

That all said, I fully concur with Rich and others here, that change, for change sake, is not good.  Especially when it takes your platform a step back.

Also, their excuse of complicating the code is ridiculous.

The adage 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' doesn't apply when people (employees) feel pressured that they need to justify their jobs and decide that in order to justify their positions they HAVE TO make changes.  Doesn't even matter to them if the changes are good or not, as long as they are seen doing something 'productive' with their time.   (sorry I hate quotation marks, too.)  That syndrome may or not apply to the changes to this forum, but, anyway, I did witness that kind of process over and over and over in my 35 years on the job at the rr.

@Rich Melvin posted:

And you sure as **** won't find me anywhere on Faceplant. I deleted my account there years ago.

The changes Crowdy's are doing are right in line(and off the rails) just like Facepalm Rich. I know that sometimes I get double emails from topics I'm following. I'm not sure if it is because I'm following someone so they give that to me, and then someone else who I'm not following comments and I get both(when I'm following the topic). It doesn't happen everytime, so know idea what it is all about, just confusing too. Maybe the bugs are in the system.

I really like the Faceplant reference. You're lucky you still don't have an account. I think some years ago one of my good friends had said something about the updates make FB become FaceBroke because it never works for a month or so after they update something.

I see there is a new "Posts" option in my profile next to my avatar that shows just the topics I started.  The "Display All Posts" on the right shows topics I started and my replies together.

If I click on another members profile the "Posts" option shows all the threads they started and the "Display All Posts" shows the same topics they started and their replies together.

This is a pretty good solution.  I really didn't care if the "Likes" showed up or not.  Maybe "Topics Started" would be better than "Posts" but I'm just happy I can see the topics I started again easily.

Thanks @Rich Melvin for getting this done!

That's a great solution, thanks Rich for that fix!  I frequently want to find a thread I started, this makes it easy!

That's better than it used to be!

This is why I let Rich deal with problems like this otherwise I would likely have charges facing me for acts of violence!...LOL!! (of course this is not a threat just an expression of frustration)

I think this closes the book on this one, great solution.

@MartyE posted:

Thanks @Rich Melvin for getting this done!

@OGR CEO-PUBLISHER posted:

This is why I let Rich deal with problems like this...

I appreciate the kudos, but we were not alone in this quest. Crowdstack got a lot of blow back on this from a lot of their clients. Our voice of complaint was but one of many. They had to find a fix or they were going to have a revolt on their hands.

I'm just glad they got it done.

Well, I'm sure your voice was heard Rich.