Temporary Forum Icon Changes

ZOS_Icy

Greetings,

We have recently removed some unnecessary back and forth from this thread. This is a reminder to keep the discussion civil and constructive. Please keep our Community Rules in mind moving forward.

Thank you for your understanding.

renne

I don't really care about the icons but can we update the whole entire forum? The fact we can't unsubscribe to threads and that I'm stuck forever listening to 100s of pages of people complaining about [insert topic I made the mistake of commenting to early on] is some mid 1990s kind of forum design.

Also that said, I'm not sure I've ever seen a dev comment, it's all moderators and community managers and maybe leads. Not actual devs.

VaranisArano

renne wrote: »

I don't really care about the icons but can we update the whole entire forum? The fact we can't unsubscribe to threads and that I'm stuck forever listening to 100s of pages of people complaining about [insert topic I made the mistake of commenting to early on] is some mid 1990s kind of forum design.

Also that said, I'm not sure I've ever seen a dev comment, it's all moderators and community managers and maybe leads. Not actual devs.

If you are getting notifications because you favorite the thread, you should be able to unfavorite it. There's a star next to the thread title that you can unchecked.

If you want the notifications for some threads you participated in, but not all participated threads, I don't think there's a way to do that easily.

I have mine sent to notify me about posts to favorited threads, not participation. So if there's a thread I want updates on, I favorite it.

Epona222

When you are sorting this out and finalising which icons to use where, can you please bear in mind accessibility issues rather than just whether something looks pretty or not to you - the old Z was very easy for me to see, the ouroboros not so much.

renne

VaranisArano wrote: »

renne wrote: »

I don't really care about the icons but can we update the whole entire forum? The fact we can't unsubscribe to threads and that I'm stuck forever listening to 100s of pages of people complaining about [insert topic I made the mistake of commenting to early on] is some mid 1990s kind of forum design.

Also that said, I'm not sure I've ever seen a dev comment, it's all moderators and community managers and maybe leads. Not actual devs.

If you are getting notifications because you favorite the thread, you should be able to unfavorite it. There's a star next to the thread title that you can unchecked.

If you want the notifications for some threads you participated in, but not all participated threads, I don't think there's a way to do that easily.

I have mine sent to notify me about posts to favorited threads, not participation. So if there's a thread I want updates on, I favorite it.

Yeah, I said I am getting the notifications because I commented on the thread, not because I hit some star I have never clicked before in my life. I want my notifications to be for the threads I am subscribed to, not any thread whatsoever that I made a comment on in the past that someone comes along and replies to later, or turns out to have 500 comments on because people have all the time in the world to be on the forum and keep up to date constantly, while the actual threads I DO want to see the replies to are lost in those 500 comments. I don't want to have to click around a bunch of different places just to get what you can get on literally any other of the most basic forums.

So I remain with my initial complaint. ZOS for the love of god get decent forum software that allows us to unsubscribe to threads we've made comments on.

spartaxoxo

renne wrote: »

So I remain with my initial complaint. ZOS for the love of god get decent forum software that allows us to unsubscribe to threads we've made comments on.

@renne
You don't get notifications for every thread you comment on unless you sign up for that. Most likely you're just being @ by someone quoting an @ or you got signed up for it accidentally somehow.




https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/profile/preferences/

ZOS_Kevin

Epona222 wrote: »

When you are sorting this out and finalising which icons to use where, can you please bear in mind accessibility issues rather than just whether something looks pretty or not to you - the old Z was very easy for me to see, the ouroboros not so much.

Totally. The goal is to have something easily identifiable, like the Z was. Totally understand that the place holder ouroboros is not as friendly as the Z was. We will work to amend that once new Icons are set.

renne

spartaxoxo wrote: »

renne wrote: »

So I remain with my initial complaint. ZOS for the love of god get decent forum software that allows us to unsubscribe to threads we've made comments on.

@renne
You don't get notifications for every thread you comment on unless you sign up for that. Most likely you're just being @ by someone quoting an @ or you got signed up for it accidentally somehow.




https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/profile/preferences/

God, I wish I was using the forum software everyone else is using because this is literally NOT what I am talking about. I am not talking about emails or pop ups. I am talking about how every response in every thread I have previously commented on appears in my notifications. Which is neither email or pop up.

It is notifications.

VaranisArano

renne wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

renne wrote: »

So I remain with my initial complaint. ZOS for the love of god get decent forum software that allows us to unsubscribe to threads we've made comments on.

@renne
You don't get notifications for every thread you comment on unless you sign up for that. Most likely you're just being @ by someone quoting an @ or you got signed up for it accidentally somehow.




https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/profile/preferences/

God, I wish I was using the forum software everyone else is using because this is literally NOT what I am talking about. I am not talking about emails or pop ups. I am talking about how every response in every thread I have previously commented on appears in my notifications. Which is neither email or pop up.

It is notifications.

Then what forum software are you using?

Can you show a picture of your settings, so many we can help figure out which one is causing the issue?

renne

VaranisArano wrote: »

renne wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

renne wrote: »

So I remain with my initial complaint. ZOS for the love of god get decent forum software that allows us to unsubscribe to threads we've made comments on.

@renne
You don't get notifications for every thread you comment on unless you sign up for that. Most likely you're just being @ by someone quoting an @ or you got signed up for it accidentally somehow.




https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/profile/preferences/

God, I wish I was using the forum software everyone else is using because this is literally NOT what I am talking about. I am not talking about emails or pop ups. I am talking about how every response in every thread I have previously commented on appears in my notifications. Which is neither email or pop up.

It is notifications.

Then what forum software are you using?

Can you show a picture of your settings, so many we can help figure out which one is causing the issue?

Well. To be fair I was being sarcastic, because you can't actually use different software, because it's got to do with the terrible software ZoS has used to program the forums and not something third party. God, I wish it was. I am using exactly the same forums as you, and none of these settings stop every single comment on a post I have commented on from showing in my notifications.

You know, the bit when you come to the forum and you haven't been here for a while and there's the red badge with a number in it on the icon next to your name called NOTIFICATIONS? And you click on the drop down and it's all the notifications of updates to threads you're auto subscribed to because you commented on them that you can't now unsubscribe from? Those are the notifications I am talking about.

Which don't come by email or pop up. That can't be gotten rid of by clicking a non-active star next to the post title.

They are notifications, and every single comment on every single post that has had new comments since I have last been to the forum shows there. It isn't just showing a single post that a thread has updates. It's Every. Single. Comment. Which means when I made the mistake of commenting on two different titles threads very early on, I came back at one point to about five hundred notifications, which swamps out any updates to the posts I actually might be interested in.

I don't want to have to use some system of bookmarking posts that I might maybe want to see notifications to while still also getting all these other notifications at the same time, I just want the ability to unsubscribe from threads I have commented on. Like you can do on quite literally all of the other most basic of forums that automatically subscribe you to notifications on a thread when you have commented.

The forum's programming causes the problems. Not my settings. You can't "help me figure out" which one is causing the issue because it is literally the forum programming causing the issue. Because you cannot do the most basic of things: unsubscribing from threads.

Like seriously, I'd love to unsubscribe to this thread tbh, and I bet the people who keep seeing these comments would to. But we can't. Because ZOS.

Sylvermynx

Yah, renne - it's the vanilla forum software. But what browser are you using? Sometimes that can be a part of the issue as well.

In the profile notifications pane, I have NOTHING check-marked. And I get no notifications as long as I'm on my preferred browser (Pale Moon). I use either Pale Moon (Firefox fork) or Firefox to access this forum. Pale Moon never shows me notifications; Firefox does "sometimes" - and I actually cannot figure out what the parameters for "sometimes" are.

I know there were a few people sometime last year who had issues, couldn't find the posts with an offhand quick search, but if you have the time and interest, you might dig around - see what you can find?

I wish ZOS didn't use vanilla software for the forum. phpBB3 is SO much better. For my sort of small personal site usage, phpBB3 is free. It may not be free to corporate users; I don't know because I don't have corporate clients any more - and when I did, they weren't into deploying forums.

I don't know anything about current vanilla pricing structure for corporations. I haven't used vanilla in a live site in a decade or more.

SilverBride

renne wrote: »

You know, the bit when you come to the forum and you haven't been here for a while and there's the red badge with a number in it on the icon next to your name called NOTIFICATIONS? And you click on the drop down and it's all the notifications of updates to threads you're auto subscribed to because you commented on them that you can't now unsubscribe from? Those are the notifications I am talking about.

I have never seen a red badge with a number in it next to my name, and I have no notifications. Please post a screenshot because I just can't visualize this.

Also, I have every single notification unchecked under preferences.

Sylvermynx

The only time I do see the red square/white number is over Inbox if I have a pm.

LalMirchi

Please don't take this as a negative but I rather like the muted/subdued icons for the games officials. Something more striking for actual senior staff and developer feedback would be awesome.

renne

SilverBride wrote: »

renne wrote: »

You know, the bit when you come to the forum and you haven't been here for a while and there's the red badge with a number in it on the icon next to your name called NOTIFICATIONS? And you click on the drop down and it's all the notifications of updates to threads you're auto subscribed to because you commented on them that you can't now unsubscribe from? Those are the notifications I am talking about.

I have never seen a red badge with a number in it next to my name, and I have no notifications. Please post a screenshot because I just can't visualize this.

Also, I have every single notification unchecked under preferences.

It's literally what I described, if you've seen badges on anything else at all, like phone apps, it's not hard to visualise.

renne

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Yah, renne - it's the vanilla forum software. But what browser are you using? Sometimes that can be a part of the issue as well.

In the profile notifications pane, I have NOTHING check-marked. And I get no notifications as long as I'm on my preferred browser (Pale Moon). I use either Pale Moon (Firefox fork) or Firefox to access this forum. Pale Moon never shows me notifications; Firefox does "sometimes" - and I actually cannot figure out what the parameters for "sometimes" are.

I know there were a few people sometime last year who had issues, couldn't find the posts with an offhand quick search, but if you have the time and interest, you might dig around - see what you can find?

I wish ZOS didn't use vanilla software for the forum. phpBB3 is SO much better. For my sort of small personal site usage, phpBB3 is free. It may not be free to corporate users; I don't know because I don't have corporate clients any more - and when I did, they weren't into deploying forums.

I don't know anything about current vanilla pricing structure for corporations. I haven't used vanilla in a live site in a decade or more.

I'm using Chrome, which I am assuming a very large population of the forums use. I checked my settings and I'll turn it off on everything and see what happens, but even if that stops all notifications that's still not going to fix the actual issue because being notified isn't my issue.

It's not that I don't want any notifications at all, it's that I just want to be able to unsubscribe from the notifications for specific threads (and I do feel like ZoS makes enough they should be able to afford SOME kind of semi-functional software that's not the most basic thing on the market). I still want to see other thread notifications, I just don't want my notifications full up with literally every single comment people have made, because that's what appears there and it makes it really hard to go back through and find specific threads when every comment has a notification line that comes up in there.

If turning off every single option in settings there makes the notifications badge not appear at all I'll have to figure another way to check the threads, but also having that badge appear there does tell me if there are new updates, so if this turns it off it's a bit of a no win situation. 🤦

...I just want to be able to unsubscribe.

Anyway, thank you for understanding what I'm talking about!!

VaranisArano

renne wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

renne wrote: »

You know, the bit when you come to the forum and you haven't been here for a while and there's the red badge with a number in it on the icon next to your name called NOTIFICATIONS? And you click on the drop down and it's all the notifications of updates to threads you're auto subscribed to because you commented on them that you can't now unsubscribe from? Those are the notifications I am talking about.

I have never seen a red badge with a number in it next to my name, and I have no notifications. Please post a screenshot because I just can't visualize this.

Also, I have every single notification unchecked under preferences.

It's literally what I described, if you've seen badges on anything else at all, like phone apps, it's not hard to visualise.

I've gotten notifications. I just don't get them when people have commented on discussions where I participated, because I don't have that setting checked.

I confess I'm a little confused as to whether you are getting these notifications erroneously (as in, you don't have that setting enabled but are getting notifications anyway). Or whether you want that setting enabled to get notifications when people comment on most threads you participate in, but just want to eliminate a couple of those threads.

If it's the former, it might be worth asking the Forum staff to take a look at your account to make sure all the settings are correct on the back end of things.

If it's the latter, then you can approximate the same thing by turning off that setting, and instead setting it to give notifications for threads you've favorited. If you comment, simply favorite the thread. If you don't want to see notifications anymore, unfavorite the thread. Going forward, doing that will functionally work the same as a subscribe/unsubscribe button. No, it will not be exactly like you want, but you'll have to direct that complaint to Vanilla Forums.

I use the setting with the red arrow:

SilverBride

renne wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

renne wrote: »

You know, the bit when you come to the forum and you haven't been here for a while and there's the red badge with a number in it on the icon next to your name called NOTIFICATIONS? And you click on the drop down and it's all the notifications of updates to threads you're auto subscribed to because you commented on them that you can't now unsubscribe from? Those are the notifications I am talking about.

I have never seen a red badge with a number in it next to my name, and I have no notifications. Please post a screenshot because I just can't visualize this.

Also, I have every single notification unchecked under preferences.

It's literally what I described, if you've seen badges on anything else at all, like phone apps, it's not hard to visualise.

I've never seen this myself on these forums and I post a lot.

@VaranisArano post above points to what is most likely causing this. Make sure that box is unchecked in your notification preferences.

Wolf_Eye

renne wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

renne wrote: »

You know, the bit when you come to the forum and you haven't been here for a while and there's the red badge with a number in it on the icon next to your name called NOTIFICATIONS? And you click on the drop down and it's all the notifications of updates to threads you're auto subscribed to because you commented on them that you can't now unsubscribe from? Those are the notifications I am talking about.

I have never seen a red badge with a number in it next to my name, and I have no notifications. Please post a screenshot because I just can't visualize this.

Also, I have every single notification unchecked under preferences.

It's literally what I described, if you've seen badges on anything else at all, like phone apps, it's not hard to visualise.

Renne, I used to get that red box thingy whenever someone commented on a thread I commented on (doesn't have to be a thread I started either).

The way I fixed it is I went to notification settings that Varanis Arano posted a pic of.

VaranisArano wrote: »

I use the setting with the red arrow:

And I unchecked both notifications and email for "Notify me when people comment on bookmarked discussions" "Notify me when people comment on my discussions" and "Notify me when people comment on discussions I've participated in"
~

Sylvermynx

@renne - I have to say that the forum backend software (Vanilla - seriously.... vanilla is a great flavor for food.... but I have to say it's a totally CRAP option for serious forum usability) does NOT play nice with the current state of browser software.

Basically, this forum uses a.... um.... "not compliant with current standards" backend. Which means results such as you have experienced.

Sad. And not particularly easy to mitigate. Mostly I don't have issues as I use a.... um... not really standard fork of firefox. Yes, it's secure. No it's not "mainstream". But then.... I'm a renegade. And I use what works, and I do know how to keep things from going south as regards security.

No.... I don't use chrome, so can't help you there. Have you tried accessing chrome user groups for help?

renne

Look you're all being very helpful and all but you're being helpful for something that is not the issue and unticking a box isn't going to solve it because I have never said that I don't want to see any notifications at all.

I just want to unsubscribe from threads I am longer interested in, and there is NO setting on this terrible forum software that allows that and no suggestions from other users to untick boxes will change that.

Because it is something ZOS HAS to do.

Thank you I will no longer be commenting on this thread since no one from ZOS seems to care about basic functionality and if I could oh dear God believe me I would unsubscribe from this thread.

EozZoe1989

renne wrote: »

I don't really care about the icons but can we update the whole entire forum? The fact we can't unsubscribe to threads and that I'm stuck forever listening to 100s of pages of people complaining about [insert topic I made the mistake of commenting to early on] is some mid 1990s kind of forum design.

Also that said, I'm not sure I've ever seen a dev comment, it's all moderators and community managers and maybe leads. Not actual devs.

yep this is true .. updating everythign be cooler .. some fun stuff on her ebe cool. and maybe not all over the place kinda thing be better..

OutLaw_Nynx

I’m loving the new icon for Devs.

We just now need something to show us when a Dev replies to a thread. We really don’t need to know when a mod replies.

ZOS_Kevin

@OutLaw_Nynx Glad you like the new dev icons! We've been working on those for a little bit. The goal is to get to having Dev replies viewable. But that is going to take a little bit of dev work on our end since it isn't something Vanilla has included by default. But we've been investigating how to make this happen for a while, so it is top of mind.

TaSheen

Hey @ZOS_Kevin - that's a really awesomely nifty icon right there!

OutLaw_Nynx

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@OutLaw_Nynx Glad you like the new dev icons! We've been working on those for a little bit. The goal is to get to having Dev replies viewable. But that is going to take a little bit of dev work on our end since it isn't something Vanilla has included by default. But we've been investigating how to make this happen for a while, so it is top of mind.

Looks great! Thanks for responding

VaranisArano

Yeah, congrats on the new icons! It's really nice on mobile since there's no easy button to get to the Dev Tracker.

FluffyReachWitch

Love the new admin icons! They look good with the green text, too.

spartaxoxo

The new icons look great! They look like heroes who really know how to handle an arrow to the knee.

ApoAlaia

I find the High Isle art direction very palatable so yep, excellent use of it for the icons \o/