THEY ALMOST ALWAYS SUCK, AND THAT HAS LESS TO DO WITH THE USERS THAN THE FUCKING DEVS AND MODS.
SEARCH FUCKING SUCKS - I mean way worse than web-search in general. If you are looking for a specific topic, GOOD FUCKING LUCK. Your best bet is to use a suck-ass web-crawler/search like Google if you want to find anything on a god damned forum.
Searches NEVER USE CONTEXT... if I’m on the page for WINDOWS FUCKING 7, then why are results for versions XP, Vista, 8, and 10 appearing HIGHER in the list?
Searches rarely implement TAGS well, especially the ability to CROSS-REFERENCE TAGS. So, if I search the tags #Tomato #Soup #Recipe, I would actually get ALL AND ONLY recipe results for soups that use tomato, NOT EVERY FUCKING RECIPE ON YOU SITE PLUS EVERY PAGE THAT DISCUSSES SOUPS OR TOMATOES RETURNED IN RANDOM ORDER THAT PLACES THE FIRST RELEVANT MATCH SOMEWHERE ON PAGE FOURTEEN OF FIFTY-THOUSAND!
NAVIGATION FUCKING SUCKS - and this makes the shit-sucking search process all the more painful. Less than 1% of forums are designed with LOGICAL SUB-CATEGORY LEVEL AND RECURSIVE SUB-FORUMS that are applicable to the purpose/theme of the forum. If, for example, you are Microshit and you create a user forum (especially to build free crowd-based help as so many companies are doing rather than staffing call centers with trained and experienced individuals who are competent in the technologies they are assisting with as well as the language the customers are speaking...), then you are EXPECTED to create a Super-Forum and split it first by PRODUCT FAMILY, then split the products into Sub-Forums by PRODUCT MAJOR-VERSION (not fucking build number, jackasses! The same goes for fucking Patch Notes), and then, if you aren’t a total douche you will create an ALTERNATE DIMENSION OF SUBDIVISION, this time by ELEMENT or MAJOR FEATURES - which unless you are a fargin-idgit MUST INCLUDE: “INTERFACE/USER-EXPERIENCE”, “BUGS” (and this one subdivides by the NATURE OF THE BUG AS PERCEIVED BY USERS... these bugs are DISEASES, and like diseases they should be NAMED and CATEGORIZED by SYMPTOMS, but you can skip the Latin names like Mnemitis for an Inflammation of the Memory... which is a fair description of a MEMORY LEAK.), “PERFORMANCE”, “INSTALLATION/ACTIVATION/UPDATES”, “PRIMARY-FUNCTION”, and individually listed USEFUL FEATURES with the ability to add subtopics as necessary ad infinitum. (don’t take that to mean spam us with infinite numbers of adverts)
If you’re not already familiar, check out PHP.NET’s online function reference, its like a hybrid between an authoritarian-wiki and an open forum. Each entry is RELEVANT and EASY TO LOCATE, it has ESSENTIAL INFORMATION and CONCISE EXAMPLES, and allows anyone to give direct USER FEEDBACK//NOTES - I cannot stress the importance of this last part enough, LET PEOPLE TELL YOU WHAT THE FUCK THEY THINK ABOUT EACH FEATURE/ISSUE. You don’t have to automatically make them publicly visible, but you are dipshits if you ignore the extremely valuable resource/insight into your customer-base. Too damned many companies make it unbearably difficult for users to give them FEEDBACK, then they bitch when people switch to a smarter product from a company that actually gives a shit. (hey, that’s not a bad slogan... “we actually give a shit”... the word actually serves to chide the competition here... ;p Along the same vein as, “unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English Accent.”)
THE MODERATORS FUCKING SUCK - I’m sorry, but you guys do. I understand that you’re mainly trying to keep an amorphous blob of bile and twigs from deteriorating into complete crap... but you are FAILING, and its not your fault... the game was rigged from the start, because they were SHIT from the moment they first went online. You guys suck at your jobs because the JOB SUCKS and that’s because the fucking RULES SUCK. Whomever the fuck came up with this shit needs to have a cheese grater ran along their eyelids for an hour each morning.
THE RULES FUCKING SUCK - so of course they turn the mods into assholes and other posters into fuckwads. There are so many issues here, but I will try to focus on the biggest tossers of all the ideas that went into these digital colostomy sacks:
NO NECROS - first of all, if you can bring the dead back to life you deserve a fucking medal, not to be given shit by peers and admins alike, and it’s not like I’m advocating Necro-Larry for President.. though he really wouldn’t be any more scandalous then what we’ve already had. But, more to the point, DO YOU ASSHOLES UNDERSTAND WHAT THE INTERNET FUCKING IS??? (and I’m not being existential here, we’ll leave the philosophical impacts for the future to reflect on). THERE IS NO PAST, THE INTERNET EXISTS IN THE ETERNAL NOW WE CALL THE PRESENT. That means NO MATTER HOW OLD THE POST IS, PEOPLE WILL STUMBLE ACROSS IT IN THE FUTURE. And it will be JUST AS RELEVANT THEN AS IT WAS WHEN CREATED! Especially since BUGS DON’T STAY DEAD, so why should decriers of old problems be told to shut the fuck up? That’s like saying, “Homelessness? We talked about that once in 1932, stop bringing it up already! It’s a dead issue!” (this is the kind of shit you get from people who want to IGNORE PROBLEMS instead of addressing them - FUCK THOSE PEOPLE, THE GENE POOL IS BETTER OFF WITHOUT THEM!) [wow, if you just read the bold that’s really dark... lol. I’m starting to sound like an industrialist.]
LOCKING THREADS - fucking stupid to begin with, especially in response to necromancy, but lets not forget their monumentally fucktarded cousin, the Self-Locking Thread - what kind of cold war cloak and dagger fantasizing bullshit is this? This thread will self-destruct in 5 seconds! I don’t care if its been 10 years, if the problem ain’t been fixed, then SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET TO WORK, don’t cry about someone posting relevant information just because you’ve given up hope of ever fixing it... or assumed no one has noticed.
YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN TO POST - that’s kinda like saying you must suck my ass to breathe... it was a shitty idea when some fuckwad dreamed up that god awful movie, and it ain’t gettin any better. Now, I’m not suggesting anons should be treated the same, but ANYONE should be allowed to post FEEDBACK or SUGGESTIONS whether or not they have an account with your fucktarded forum. Google-Tourists have the right to be heard too! If I find your thread by accident (which lets face it, any result in a Google Search is pretty much an accident), and have something to contribute, I should be able to do so without jumping through 60 billion hoops. I don’t want to be a member, but when a Medical Doctor overhears someone giving Awful Medical Advice or finds someone that ISN’T GETTING THE HELP THEY NEED/ASKED FOR, it is their responsibility to become involved! The same goes for any other profession, I may not be “one of you”, but I know what the fuck I’m talking about so listen the fuck up and be grateful I give a shit (unlike many of you). [wow, that came across conceited... lmao]
REVERSE PAGE ORDER - you lazy, half-assed mother fucking programmers! Shame on you. It might seem like a good idea at the time, but this is one of the biggest blunders you can expound on the web. YOUR FUCKING PAGES MOVE, ¡CAVRONE! Do you understand this??? If a user BOOKMARKS A PAGE, they WON’T GET THE SAME PAGE when they reopen it a year later!!! What does it matter? Go back up and reread the bit about the web being TIMELESS... [take a Physics Lesson while you are at it, this is like asking what was before the Universe... there was no time (as we know it) before the universe, therefor there was nothing before it.] So, when I find your forum in a Floogol search and it links me to page 6 when the actual content it matched is now on page 147, I am understandably PISSED THE FUCK OFF... and the first thing I do is curse Larry and Serge, then I realize this one isn’t even their fault.
I’m sure there are a bunch more rules that are written by simpletons for assholes, but that’s enough for now.
TROLLS FUCKING SUCK - even when they not trying to be assholes, they fail miserably at common decency. I swear I am going to kill the next motherfucker who posts “why would you want to ____” as a reply, especially on a Tech Support Forum. It doesn’t even matter whether its my post, or something I stumbled across after 6 hours of screaming at Serge and Larry’s even less than unhelpful online information location apparatus.
MVPs are Worse than Trolls - how the fuck did these dickshits get the job of officially representing the company? They know less than shit about the product they are supporting, and most of the time they suggest installing questionable third party crapware to solve the problem. (Please don’t confuse “the Microsoft MVPs”, who are actually pretty cool and helpful, with the dumbasses that Microsoft calls MVPs on their fucking support forums... these guys barely speak English and haven’t written a line of code in their life!)
And despite an extra row of Microsoft bashing, this wasn’t targeted at their forums any more than Blizzards or any others... ALL FORUMS ARE SHIT!!!!Â
But, hey, you knew all this already... so who the fuck am I even talking to here?