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hedwards: I'm not really sure why they're insisting upon doing their own forum software, when there's several very good ones out there.
They say it is because it is tied to their CMS in regards to making topics when they post a new news item and stuff like that.

And just like the "If we support Linux, we have to support Raspberry Pi!" argument, it's a stupid one.

It should be almost trivial to install phpBB, change its authentication system to use the existing CMS (been done before), change the CMS to create topics for news posts and subforums for new releases (also, been done before) etc.

If they gave me access to their CMS, I'd do it myself!

Maybe that is what they are going to do with the Senior Web Developer position.. but I doubt it. Sunken Cost Fallacy and Not Invented Here is likely in effect.
What we really need is more threads on this particular topic (and GOG to fix the forum search function to actually be useful... :/)
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Ian: hedwards, DyNaer :D

I agree with you both about a newspaper being more structured. What I was trying to convey is that I have read in other threads that discuss this, that some peeps cannot be bothered going past page 1 of the forum. In respect to the newspaper, if that were the case you wouldn't buy it. Even if there were no giveaway posts / blue posts on page 1, it does not mean that a person might miss an interesting thread, because it is on page 4. I actually use the block giveaway script myself, when wanting to catch up on the forum, as i know everything highlighted, I can come back to.

DyNaer - to my shame lol, I didn't know GOG had an RSS feed - I thought i had come up with a brilliant suggestion lmao

tc both of you :)
It's not a matter of going beyond page one, it's a matter of it being extremely difficult to track 2 pages worth of rapidly changing threads that are all moving between reads. And for those with ADHD, it's out of sight out of existence.

As much as I like GOG, some of these things are just a lack of competence. There's no reason why we need to do all of our posting in just one subforum, they just chose to only give us one to work with. There's no reason for them to use this buggy POS forum software, but they choose to do so anyways. Even though it still has a substantial number of bugs that haven't ever been fixed. And I'd venture that they won't ever get around to it at this stage.
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hedwards: I'm not really sure why they're insisting upon doing their own forum software, when there's several very good ones out there.
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xyem: They say it is because it is tied to their CMS in regards to making topics when they post a new news item and stuff like that.

And just like the "If we support Linux, we have to support Raspberry Pi!" argument, it's a stupid one.

It should be almost trivial to install phpBB, change its authentication system to use the existing CMS (been done before), change the CMS to create topics for news posts and subforums for new releases (also, been done before) etc.

If they gave me access to their CMS, I'd do it myself!

Maybe that is what they are going to do with the Senior Web Developer position.. but I doubt it. Sunken Cost Fallacy and Not Invented Here is likely in effect.
I don't get this, they wrote this forum software, so I'm not sure how it would be more work to use phpBB or something else and then just write something to tie it into their CMS.

I do like GOG, but seeing well known bugs hang around for years doesn't really reflect well on them. The messed up quote post bug is probably never going to be fixed.
Post edited July 18, 2013 by hedwards
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hedwards: I don't get this, they wrote this forum software, so I'm not sure how it would be more work to use phpBB or something else and then just write something to tie it into their CMS.
It's not a question of work to be done, but a question of "wasting" the work already done.

GOG has spent thousands making this forum and to replace it means "wasting" all that money and effort. The only way to make it not be wasted, is continue to use the product of that money/effort..

For example, you buy a non-refundable movie ticket for $25. You later find out that the movie has been severely panned by everyone, critics and the public alike, so you don't want to go and see it anymore.

Chances are, you'll go and see the movie anyway because you already paid for the ticket. However, the movie does indeed suck and now instead of just wasting $25, you've wasted $25, a couple of hours of your time and travel/food expenses.

Replace "you" with "GOG" and "Movie ticket" with "forum software". The panning can stay as it is :)

I'm sorry if this comes across as patronising towards you hedwards (i.e. you're familiar with the Sunken Cost mind trap), as it's more there for those who are not. There's no obvious way of separating my reply to you and a general comment in one post!
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hedwards: I don't get this, they wrote this forum software, so I'm not sure how it would be more work to use phpBB or something else and then just write something to tie it into their CMS.
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xyem: It's not a question of work to be done, but a question of "wasting" the work already done.

GOG has spent thousands making this forum and to replace it means "wasting" all that money and effort. The only way to make it not be wasted, is continue to use the product of that money/effort..

For example, you buy a non-refundable movie ticket for $25. You later find out that the movie has been severely panned by everyone, critics and the public alike, so you don't want to go and see it anymore.

Chances are, you'll go and see the movie anyway because you already paid for the ticket. However, the movie does indeed suck and now instead of just wasting $25, you've wasted $25, a couple of hours of your time and travel/food expenses.

Replace "you" with "GOG" and "Movie ticket" with "forum software". The panning can stay as it is :)

I'm sorry if this comes across as patronising towards you hedwards (i.e. you're familiar with the Sunken Cost mind trap), as it's more there for those who are not. There's no obvious way of separating my reply to you and a general comment in one post!
No worries, and yes, I'm familiar with the "sunk costs fallacy." I think even the best of us fall for it from time to time.

It's unfortunate, because it takes resources that could be used in other ways. Also, were they writing it from scratch now, it would likely go better as they have a substantially improved cash flow which would better permit them to do it right.
I'd like to suggest a specific subforum for posts about creating subforums.
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hedwards: No worries, and yes, I'm familiar with the "sunk costs fallacy." I think even the best of us fall for it from time to time.
Glad to hear that and I think we all fall into all the traps on occasion.

For anyone not familiar with it, I find to be a good read, along with their other [url=http://litemind.com/thinking-traps/]thinking traps posts.

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hedwards: It's unfortunate, because it takes resources that could be used in other ways. Also, were they writing it from scratch now, it would likely go better as they have a substantially improved cash flow which would better permit them to do it right.
Yeah, it is particularly annoying that a better solution could be put in place which uses less resources. We've already seen that it is more important to GOG to have little animated sharks and periscopes than... I don't know... sanitising user input, stopping registrations for existing account names, having forum options actually work and enabling site functionality after "temporarily" disabling it.

I doubt it would go much better being written from scratch. A test suite.. they don't have one (or if they do, it sucks really hard).
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xyem: Yeah, it is particularly annoying that a better solution could be put in place which uses less resources. We've already seen that it is more important to GOG to have little animated sharks and periscopes than... I don't know... sanitising user input, stopping registrations for existing account names, having forum options actually work and enabling site functionality after "temporarily" disabling it.

I doubt it would go much better being written from scratch. A test suite.. they don't have one (or if they do, it sucks really hard).
Remember that time when the forum was broken because people were executing javascript from the titles? That was awesome, and something that wouldn't have happened if they had used a pre-made forum with a custom skin.
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ET3D: I'd like to suggest a specific subforum for posts about creating subforums.
You win infinity interwebz.
Post edited July 18, 2013 by hedwards
Yes and it's good people keep bringing it up, maybe GOG will make it happen then
Welcome to the forum - the majority are pretty good people on here.

Yeah, I've got to agree, even it's just to have a separate giveaways/gifts sub-forum and +1 to all who have said that relatively new threads get easily lost.

I've written directly to the support team asking to consider this particular suggestion. It would be nice to see a GOG representative reply.
Post edited July 18, 2013 by pigdog
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hedwards: Remember that time when the forum was broken because people were executing javascript from the titles? That was awesome, and something that wouldn't have happened if they had used a pre-made forum with a custom skin.
That's what I was referring to with "sanitising user input" :)

I had nothing to do with that though >.>

<.< Nothing at all.

EDIT: Despite what it says here.
Post edited July 18, 2013 by xyem
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Nirth: Yes and it's good people keep bringing it up, maybe GOG will make it happen then
Perhaps if we all go over to Steam and buy things...
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hedwards: Perhaps if we all go over to Steam and buy things...
And while we're at it, we could have someone looking over our shoulders while logged in. I know it happens anyway but at least I can act outraged when a whistleblower makes it public