Finally the Forums are back

Hello Allen!

Hello Allen!

I agree. I was one of the beta testers, and I was hoping this new format would be something I could be positive about; however, that's not the case.  The new format is more complicated, and I really dislike having to look in all of the different areas for new threads.  Before, I would just look in the General Swimming section and see which threads were in bold, so I would know which ones had new posts.  I would click on last and be able to easily find the new posts.  Next, I would do the same for the non-swimming section, if I saw there were new threads.  Now, I'm looking all over the place, and some of the threads have multiple branches of replies rather than them just being listed chronologically.

In my opinion, the forums have become needlessly compartmentalized, and, therefore, complicated.  I thought I would get used to it, but I haven't.

I also am not happy that I have lost all of my "friends" contacts!  It was nice to be able to easily find them and send PM's.  My photo albums are gone, too.

Most of all, I am irked that my beloved "Smilies" are gone!  Now, if I want to use one, I have to insert it as an image from my folder of "Smilies" I lifted from the old forums.  Nobody else has access to them, though. 

Fancy meeting you here

I think it is a mistake to not let non- members post. I agree that it can be a member perq, What about letting non-members have a certain number of posts or one month free or something. Newspapers do that for reading online articles, you get so many then you have to pay. I think that might increase interest in the forums and then people could decide it was worth it to join. 

Allen and Elaine — I concur with you sentiments. I liked the chrono style of the old forums. It was so much easier. And WRT USMS members...after a few years of being active on the forums I finally decided to join USMS in large part due to the forums.

Dan

I have tried posting to you and Tim several times only to see my post disappear the next time I return to this thread.  Let's see if this sticks...

Nope.  Messages with photos (even resized to specifications) are getting rejected with an error message.  

Here's the post without the photo:

Hi, Tim!  It's Elaine from the 2014 FINA World Championships and Atlanta convention hospitality suite (volunteer). I hope you and King Frog are both fully vaccinated and are doing well!

Hey, K.F., I like your new avatar and profile page!

Does this photo bring back great memories of your WORLD RECORD in Montreal?  (King Frog, it was a picture of us at Worlds; however, it keeps getting rejected. )

Allen Stark Thanks for the suggestion on letting non-members have limited access. Its something we're considering for the future. The time and resources to create that functionality aren't realistic in the near term but over the next year or so we should have that type of capability available and will be discussing further. 

Elaine Krugman - The former forums were rapidly becoming unmanageable and obsolete. To keep USMS discussion alive online, moving to a new software was necessary. The alternative would have ultimately been shutting down the old forums.  While it would have been nice to bring over 'everything' it simply wasn't possible in most cases. We understand learning a new platform takes some time and I hope you'll continue to explore all that the new community has to offer. We'll be continuing to make updates and fine tune functionality as we learn about user preferences and challenges, something that we also couldn't do in the old platform.