Best Of

@Anthony I appreciate you answering this. I fully understand that there are legal requirements that require these changes to be made, a point i raised on the thread myself, and I am grateful for the transparency about this session. I look forward to being able to talk further in the session.

But in terms of the points you raised about the changes made, the earlier notice was done so without anybody around to answer questions about it after the announcement was made. The mix took 4 days in total to hand pick certain questions raised on the thread, and answer them, some of which were one sentence answers with no further explanation provided for them. There is still an abundance of questions that were asked in the thread that was not picked up or responded to at all. I've raised this point privately with the Mix in the past, when the Mix have informed me of something, and then refused to give any clear answers for weeks on end. I specifically suggested that it would be better to wait until the mix had gathered all information needed, or had people involved in the decision making ready to answer any questions raised, rather than announce it, leave the community in confusion, with the majority of experienced mods not present, and not answer half the questions the community has until weeks later. All that the change announcement has done, by doing it in advance for the community in the way it has been, is cause more anxiety and confusion around the change, whilst not answering the majority of questions it raised.

As for chances to ask questions, i refer to my previous point that only select questions were raised after several days of no answers, with the vast majority of questions on that thread still going unanswered to this day. The announcement was made on the 16th, and after several pages of points and questions and even arguments on the thread, the first replies only started coming in on the 20th to those select questions, and the session mentioned, takes place a whole 13 days after the initial announcement. So some members of the community have had to wait for nearly two weeks to get their questions answered or get follow up questions answered. This session could easily have run concurrently with the announcement, or in the following day or two, but instead, the community was left confused on certain points, with a chatwee session to ask questions only being available almost two weeks later, after boards threads had failed to see most questions answered. I don't think it's fair to call it a case of more chances to ask questions, if so many questions aren't even getting answered. Having the thread space to ask questions, doesn't matter if half those questions aren't being responded too.

As for "earlier notice" of changes, in the Q&A post on the 20th, the timescale was described as no more than a few weeks. Then, out of nowhere on the 22nd, 2 days later, an announcement was made that boards would be changing theme to allow for changes to be made in future, the crazy part being they implemented some changes the very same day as the announcement. How can that be reasoned to be advanced notice, to announce the boards theme change on the same day they implement the boards theme change? Surely it makes more sense to find exact dates, and exact information, and reveal it all together, with people on standby over the following hours to answer any questions raised, rather than announce it, and then leave people waiting weeks for answers.

On the next point i'd raise, is that the Mix already described this session in the first post of this thread along the lines of "We ran similar sessions last year", so this isn't a new thing based on community feedback from last time, but rather a continuation of something that already existed whenever major changes were made to the community, so i can't envision it as being a "community feedback" change based on last time, if it already existed before.

In short,

1. earlier notice, without being ready to answer questions that follow said notice, is not a positive thing, but rather causes weeks of uncertainty.
2. Being able to ask questions, and having spaces to do so, is not the same thing as actually having those questions answered. There's more questions unanswered than answered on the announcement thread I believe.
3. 2 weeks between the announcement and this session to answer questions live, means that for 2 weeks, people have been unsure, and worried, thinking changes could happen at any moment, in many cases, with people being unaware of what a lot of the changes are.
4. The fact that dates have not been given for anything is not good either. Surely giving a solid timeline from the start would help immensely.
5. Within 2 days of the Q&A reply, where any changes to boards were described as being in the "weeks", an announcement on the 22nd, 2 days later, was made about changes to boards, some of which went live same day as the announcement, like the text box changes. This is anything but advanced notice in some cases.
6. I don't think it's fair to call this session a result of community feedback from last time, when it already existed and was already being done last time and the time before. It's not exactly a change.

I would ask that these points be considered, because from my perspective, the only change I can see from feedback is the advanced notice, which was a poorly handled announcement with no answers for most in the community for several weeks following, and a failure to give any advanced notice about this thread, about the boards theme change - Boards theme update — The Mix Support Community

I just want to flag something…. I know I’m not around much anymore you do realise that some of the issues that have been brought to you aren’t just ”glitches and errors” they are accessibility issues - Correct me if I’m wrong @independent_and from what I’ve seen, there’s been no reassurance to say that they’ve been fixed ?? So surely if these are issues that couldn’t have been ironed out since the first test back last year, then whatever software is being used shouldn’t be used.

Quick question, will there perhaps be some kind of summary or something of that sort afterwards for those who aren't able to attend the session?