2011 forum update

Posted by: Paul Stephenson on 30 December 2010

We will be making a major update to the forum to a new platform early January,yes there maybe some pain but in the long run it will enable us to improve the overall service,look and feel and also better integrate into our main site. We will also be able to plan communications better and have control zones to help with topical support issues of the day. There will also be app control.
We have been promised NO INFO WILL BE LOST and all of your personal details will be carried over.
We will have a lot of room to adjust the visuals and will allocate an area for your feedback so that we can nip and tuck areas that meet the most negative feedback, if any

Wishing you all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR

Posted on: 30 December 2010 by Chris Bell

Paul,

Any chance the new format will include private messaging? This is common to most forums and would be a great addition.

Posted on: 30 December 2010 by The Strat (Fender)

Urm - a software upgrade - good luck chaps!!!!!

Seriously all the best for 2011.

Regards,

Lindsay

Posted on: 30 December 2010 by Richard Dane

Chris,

private messaging is wide open to abuse. A brand specific and company sponsored forum needs to be very careful. There are plenty of competitors out there who would be quick to try to take advantage. It has happened before, hence private messaging was closed down.

Naim's view is that it's a forum open to the public and hence any conversation hosted on the forum should be open and fit for public consumption.

Posted on: 01 January 2011 by XJR1300 SP

Hi Richard
I agree with you regarding private messaging via the Naim forum. Naim is a well respected brand and a world leader of hi fi products. We all apreciate the help and advice the forum provides but I do feel a message service would spoil Naim's excellent reputation.
Regards
Paul

Posted on: 01 January 2011 by Chief Chirpa

quote:
Originally posted by Paul Stephenson:

We will have a lot of room to adjust the visuals...

Paul, I like the clean look there is now, so please no avatars, signatures, and all that kind of thing. Less is more.

Best wishes for 2011,
CC

Posted on: 02 January 2011 by avhed

quote:
Originally posted by Chris Bell:
Paul,

Any chance the new format will include private messaging? This is common to most forums and would be a great addition.

Those of us who do not mind being emailed have their email address in their "Public Profile".

Posted on: 03 January 2011 by avhed

A good feature would be "subscribe to thread"

Posted on: 05 January 2011 by Asenna04

quote:
Originally posted by avhed:
A good feature would be "subscribe to thread"

I second that. It is very difficult to find thread that interest you after you have been away for long. This will help. Also it will be useful to just see the posts you have not read (add a marker of 'read until this').

An option of e-mail updates for new posts for subscribed threads will also be good.

iPhone (or mobile) friendly view will also be nice.

ASenna04

Posted on: 05 January 2011 by Lewis

I too think a Pm system would be good. There is too much editing of peoples comments on here, so no one can ask where something has been bought and at what price as it's quickly erased by mods. Also any mention of eBay is edited. This is pretty frustrating. I appreciate this is a naim specific forum but perhaps a pm system that can be viewed by mods so it can be monitored but enables others memebrs to contact each other with any questions they may have. Theres a lot of paranoia with Naim, it's not the CIA! For example I can't have my email addy displayed in my profile, and I had the icident of trying to ask a member to email me on a thread, but the comment was constantly deleted which wound me right up. A pm system would prevent this. Anyways Ive made my feelings clear. PS: Happy new year all, I hope you had a good one!

Posted on: 06 January 2011 by Richard Dane

quote:
private messaging is wide open to abuse. A brand specific and company sponsored forum needs to be very careful. There are plenty of competitors out there who would be quick to try to take advantage. It has happened before, hence private messaging was closed down.

Naim's view is that it's a forum open to the public and hence any conversation hosted on the forum should be open and fit for public consumption.

Lewisimo, Naim's concern is mostly aimed at shills from other manufacturers/competitors. IMO they have ruined some other forums I frequent from time to time, so I'm adamant it won't happen here. And let's not forget it is the Naim forum. Links to auction sales are edited because it can easily be abused by those wishing to circumvent the "no selling" rules.

As for private e-mails, please see my comments above.

Anyway, I appreciate you making your comments. Happy New Year to you too.

Posted on: 07 January 2011 by Lewis

Hi Richard,

Yes I see your point, and understand where you're coming from. It would just be a handy addition but it's obviously not going to happen so that's fair enough!

Just a question, but is there any reason why there is no classified section on here? I understand it's a Naim forum, but as the users here are all pretty reliable, and we all know who's who, surely it would be a good place for fellow hifi lovers to sell 'unwanted' Naim goods to each other. It could amlost be approved by Naim then in a sense? Obviously you could impliment a full membership scheme whereby people pay to join, therefore deterring any passing scammers etc. It would save people the trouble of using ebay and shady second hand forums elsewhere. I am sure you'll provide a good reason why there isn't, but I am curious!

Posted on: 07 January 2011 by Richard Dane

Lewisimo, a Classified section would open a wide hole in the "no selling" policy here. It would be difficult, if not impossible to manage. It would also confuse the message from Naim that the best and safest place to buy second-hand Naim equipment is through a Naim dealer. Personally I'd like to see a "used/approved" scheme with listings held by Naim. This would give you a central listing of all second-hand items held by the Naim dealer network. It would also provide peace of mind and a guarantee. The good news for the dealer is that it effectively expands his second-hand stock to that of the entire UK dealer network - i.e. their customer won't have to buy from another dealer. However, this would require the full co-operation of the entire dealer network. Some see the value in this, others don't. Maybe one day...

Posted on: 07 January 2011 by Cymbiosis

quote:
Originally posted by Richard Dane:
However, this would require the full co-operation of the entire dealer network. Some see the value in this, others don't. Maybe one day...

Personally Richard I don't think it would require the agreement of the whole dealer network......... Those that are keen to participate could, and those that didn't want to needn't.

If you offered it around to the UK dealer network just like the current Powerline promotion was; as a business benefit. I'm sure everyone would very quickly come round to the fact that it is a good idea, and would participate, as not to do would leave them excluded.... Hardly a good idea!

As witnessed by the pretty much universal dealer take up for the promotion.... A little prod in the right direction doesn't hurt, and it allows people to see the value in this course of action. Plus there would be some additional member/customer benefits IMHO.

Just my 2p's worth.

KR

Peter

Posted on: 07 January 2011 by garyi

As said already please not silly avaters etc, keep it clean.

Posted on: 07 January 2011 by Develyn

I would like to be able to subscribe to certain topics/discussion and be notified via email when a reply has been added. Seems like these options are there, just not enabled.

Posted on: 07 January 2011 by Paul Stephenson

The new forum should go live in about 2 weeks, I am sure there are some things people will hate and some big positives. We have to move to the new platform and I am sure as it moves forward we can customise the features to make everyone happy. After using the new forum for a few weeks we will review all the feedback and take some decisions but overall I think you will be pleased. As I said before, this gives us the ability to be more pro-active to new topics where support is needed more intensly for a short period of time. Some Chat events can easily be organised so that we can arrange direct contact with various Naim staff and forum users.
Its A CHANGE !

Posted on: 08 January 2011 by Paul Stephenson

I think they may survive

Posted on: 08 January 2011 by Lewis

quote:
Originally posted by Richard Dane:
Personally I'd like to see a "used/approved" scheme with listings held by Naim. This would give you a central listing of all second-hand items held by the Naim dealer network. It would also provide peace of mind and a guarantee. The good news for the dealer is that it effectively expands his second-hand stock to that of the entire UK dealer network - i.e. their customer won't have to buy from another dealer. However, this would require the full co-operation of the entire dealer network. Some see the value in this, others don't. Maybe one day...

This would be a cool idea. Complete with detailed photo's of the stock in question. Finding where to actually buy used stuff is a nightmare, especially if your local dealer doesn't have what you want and you need to buy something sharpish.. see if you can pull some strings!

Posted on: 12 January 2011 by Paul Stephenson

Some points regarding the switch next week.
DOWN TIME

There will be downtime. When we close the old forums a Maintenance notice with appear so that the amount of time that you are completely in the dark is minimised. Most of the work will be during the night uk time,sorry US users.We will plan for the community being down all night and up the next morning. There will be at least some period then the site is totally dark while we move the IP address from the old server to the new.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN
All users,posts,attachments and photo albums are being imported completely.Users will not need to re-register,and any posts that exists on the current forums will be imported to the new forums.

FURTHER INFO TO FOLLOW!!

Posted on: 12 January 2011 by Engelbert

Thanks Paul,

I shall just sit in my dressing gown and strum on my guitar while this hi-technology event takes place.

Am happy to let Naim management do all the worrying.......

Engelbert

Posted on: 13 January 2011 by Voltaire

quote:
Originally posted by Richard Dane:
Some see the value in this, others don't. Maybe one day...

A very diplomatic way of saying that the dealers who don't sign up will moan about Naim products being sold to customers in 'their' territory..

Shame because a 'trade sales' section would have many benefits.

PS - As is my practice at the beginning of a new year...big thanks to Naim for providing this forum.

Gordon

Posted on: 19 July 2011 by Chief Chirpa

Bump...................................

Originally Posted by Paul Stephenson:

Wishing you all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR

Originally Posted by Chief Chirpa:

quote:
Originally posted by Paul Stephenson:

We will have a lot of room to adjust the visuals...

Paul, I like the clean look there is now, so please no avatars, signatures, and all that kind of thing. Less is more.

Best wishes for 2011,
CC

Originally Posted by AllenB:

Yes, I completely agree. Especially in respect of avatars and (massive) signatures.

It is so, so easy to take a backwards step when forums are 'updated'. The great thing with the current setup is that members contributions fill and maximise the space available, no side bars or adverts or other distractions. Worst thing that can happen (like on so many forums) is that a whole page can only contain 5 or 6 contributions and your your page numbers for each thread tot up at a dramatic rate. Keep the navigation to the top menu bars and reply dialogues separated (not tacked on at the bottom) and I will be happy.

Originally Posted by garyi:

As said already please not silly avaters etc, keep it clean.

Paul,

Your forum's getting worse with every update. Avatars have just grown, anyone that's got one now has their signature at the bottom of every post, and the empty space on the right is even bigger. As a result of all of the above, the bit with our posts is even smaller, even harder to read, there's even more scrolling required, and so on.

It's obvious that loads of folk have given up on the forum this year - look at the two most popular threads on the forum, 'System Pics' and 'What Are you Listening To Now', each with almost exactly half the number of posts they had in 2010.

Yeah, it's only a forum, but it just isn't working with hoop.la, and no amount of tweaking is going to put it right. So what's the plan?

Posted on: 19 July 2011 by Alamanka

Trying to be fair: the back-end platform seems to work fine. The user interface is where the problems are.

Posted on: 19 July 2011 by pcstockton

i will call myself a bitch for saying so but...... this is unusable.

Why dont you throw all of this away and just go with an IRC channel?

Wow........ websites are EASY, I taught myself HTML and "Frames" in 1994 making an EPIC Frank Zappa website in college. You cant handle this?

NAIM...... just adopt the standard fare forum software AT ANY COST!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do I need to buy a Qute to help out?

-p

Posted on: 19 July 2011 by pcstockton

like this...............

http://yabb.jriver.com/interac...ex.php?topic=65359.0

Novel idea to use the whole screen huh?