It really is great that you are asking for input as to how to make the site better. Your work is to be commended, and I am very impressed with your dedication to make this site better. We really should be the ones thanking you.

I'm hearing a few things about the main index that I think can be rectified to satisfy all parties (or at least most of you). Please know that I'd have made every change and fix (font sizes, etc) already, but our development team is a bit of a mess right now, so I'm trying to get it done in whatever hours I can eek out of them. I know that it doesn't matter to you guys, but I do want you to know that this is a huge frustration for me, as I have a hard time sitting around for days while problems that can and should be fixed right away sit. That said, here are some thoughts: 1 - Seems like lots of you used the recent posts tab of the forum and want to be able to navigate back a few days using the paginated view instead of the get more. I'll see if we can add the ability to show a few days worth of posts here in a paginated manner. 2 - It seems like the tabs aren't being retained when people refresh a page on the forums or hit the go back button. We'll see what we can do about that. 3 - We did eliminate the stats data from the side of the forums. This can be found at any time by going to the stats page. 4 - I've made note of several instances where the font size has become too small . . . we're going to get this fixed. 5 - It seems that the default search dropdown for the forum pages is now showing a people search instead of the forum search. We're going to be correcting that, and the blank page that you get from the index search box -- this should be corrected today. 6 - I've got a few other ideas that should please some of you who long for the ways of old . . . we'll see what we can get knocked out. Thanks again for the feedback . . . we're working to be responsive. Thanks for the patience.

One other thing that I noticed which I don't care for is that "My Discussions" used to include threads originated by me AND threads which I've participated in. Now it only has threads which I've originated. Is there anyway to get it back to showing both: the threads which we've originated, and the threads which we've contributed to?

Having been part of very large UI rollouts before -- including a couple at eBay that Jeffrey mentioned -- I've learned that the initial reaction by the most loyal users is often negative. This is simply because most people aren't fans of change (I'm included in this category, btw). So, for those that aren't thrilled with the changes, remember that as you get accustomed to the differences, you may very well realize that the changes are actually very good. Personally, I like the new look and feel. I've been accessing the site from my iPad most of the past week, and the changes are actually very conducive to that device. I love the fact that the discussions pages have more information (such as the category), and I agree that having more places to initiate a new thread makes things much easier than having to navigate to the forum first. Congrats on the updates, Josh!

To those that are unhappy, I think you'll be pleased with out next updates; as I've said before, we're taking many suggestions into consideration. As for the number of postings and traffic on the forums, both are up.

I agree with J.Scott - it's hard to be 100% objective the first few days, since there's this disruption to muscle memory that makes it initially harder to use. Just a couple of initial thoughts. I like that the recent discussions part that used to only be in the dashboard is prominent now. That's going to be useful, and I'm finding myself adapting to that already as my primary way of getting a quick idea of what's going on. The unanswered posts section is a fantastic idea! The only negative for me is how the forums are displayed. Previously, it felt very "open" - you could see all the forums on one page, and you could see the title of the most recently answered post. That was great for getting a quick overview of what was going on at a quick glance. The forums feel a little hidden now.

Josh, here's one thing that was better in the old version. In the recent discussions page, it would tell us how long ago the last post was written - e.g. 5 minutes back, 1 day ago, etc. Now it gives the date and time of the last post in the thread, which is hard to get a quick feel for. I suspect it should be a fairly simple code change for you to give us that relative time indicator instead of the absolute time indiactor.

I'm not trying to be negative, but I liked the previous version better. Will have to get used to this one. Sorry, just giving my personal opinion.

Gee, I didn't realize the old forum was "broke". It seems like the pages take longer to load with all the "improvements" and I still have my high speed internet connection, same as before.

That's exactly what I always did too. I can figure out military time, but I have to agree with this request for another reason: time zone differences. I recall that at one point the times were in Eastern time, but now they seem to be in Mountain or Pacific time. Regardless of time zone, the relative time did work the same for all users. Now think about Vikram working from India, and Uwe working from Germany, and Rich Weese being like Carmen Sandiego ("Where in the world is ...") - a real variety of time zones. Adjusting for time zones is the first thig to do with the time, and then doing the how far back calculation follows; relative time gets you there without much thinking at all. Maybe this can be implemented by user preferences. One person liked that there are twenty threads to a page, another prefers to see them appended to the end of the previous list. Both can get their way if user adjustable preferences can be allocated to do this.