We’re testing a new Forums experience – feedback welcomed

[amanda.k]

Edit 1/13/2025 - Please see the latest news regarding the Community Redesign – Modernizing the Autodesk Forums in the linked post. 

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Hello Autodesk Community,  

We have launched an A/B test to explore a new and improved forums experience. This test will help us understand what works best for you and ensure that our forums remain an engaging place for everyone, and that you’re easily able to find relevant information for your needs.   

What This Means for You:  

Random Selection: Some users will continue to see the current layout (Group A), while other users will see the new forum layout (Group B).

No Action Needed: You don’t need to do anything differently. Just use the forums as you normally would.  

Valuable Feedback: Your interactions and feedback are incredibly important to us. They will guide us in making the best possible improvements. We welcome feedback in a reply to this post, or you can DM @amanda.k.   

Why Are We Doing This?  

Our goal is to enhance your experience by making the forums more user-friendly, intuitive, and enjoyable. By testing different layouts and features, we can identify what truly resonates with you. We’re also looking to make sure that you can find and see all the additional features and benefits we offer in the Community – such as Events and Blogs.    

  

How You Can Help:  

Engage and Explore: If you’re part of Group A, we encourage you to explore the new features and share your thoughts.  

Share Your Feedback: Whether you’re in Group A or Group B, your feedback is crucial. Let us know what you like, what you don’t, and any suggestions you have.  

  

Thank you for being a part of our community and helping us create the best forums experience possible. We’re excited to hear your thoughts and continue improving together!  

See you on the Community!  

@amanda.k 

Edited 12/12/24, 3:00PM PST to add:

Recordings of Office Hours

December 5, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

December 9, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

December 12, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

December 19, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

Blog Posts from the Product Team:

Week of 12/12/24 - Forum Redesign – New Releases & Office Hours Recap for this week.

Week of 12/6/24 - Forum Redesign – New Releases & Office Hours Recap for this week.

Week of 12/19/24 - Forum Redesign - New Releases & Office Hours Recap for this week

Week of  1/10/2025 - Community Redesign – Modernizing the Autodesk Forums

FAQ - living FAQ document. We are still gathering questions and will be updating it reguarly. 

[blank...]

To many posts to go through them all, maybe it's mentioned already, but the fact that forums no longer jump to the first unread post is extremely annoying. Is there something I can turn on/off somewhere in settings to get that behavior back?

[Rory_M]

Just caught up on this drama after being off over Christmas, what can I say that hasn't already been said?

I would have posted this in the more relevant archiving thread but it's read only so apologies to anyone who reads this rant and thinks that it a) repeats what's already been said and b) is in the wrong place.

Deleting (sorry, "archiving") a huge portion of a massive knowledgebase that was built by the community is one of the daftest moves that Autodesk have made.

Autodesk had one of the best technical resources on the internet, and it was populated for free by their customers! Somehow they still managed to mess it up and **** off the people that built it at the same time by deleting loads of old important and useful posts! What a way to build community spirit....

Instead of having and nurturing organic growth, the push is towards gamifying it (yuck) which just encourages volume over quality content.

I've always thought that these forums formed part of the bigger picture that helped Autodesk make money, they were a huge support network that was freely available and better than any help file - what a great selling point. Obviously it's impossible to quantify this, just my opinion.

Many years ago I used to be quite active in the forums and the newsgroups before them, but that tailed off over the last 10 years or so due to my day job so I'm hardly prominent in here these days. I make the occasional post when I can but I'm certain I won't be working for Autodesk for free anymore.

Relatively recently I've used the iLogic forum and it was full of useful posts that were really old but still relevant to my questions, not anymore I guess.

What a waste.

[MrJSmith]

I would add that Autodesk has archived files in the past. But these were truly archived with old posts put in some sort of stasis where you couldn't reply, the usernames were all guest/anonymous but the information was still there for you to retrieve. I've gotten countless solutions with such super old posts, but all them and newer information, have been permanently deleted (but still shows up in google caches) under this gaslighting pretext of "achieving".

[RDAOU]

@Rory_M but that’s not new to autodesk. Why do you sound surprised

[Rory_M]

@RDAOU I think I'm more disappointed than surprised. All that knowledge will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

[RDAOU]

@Rory_M 

To be fair, not ALL lost...

• some they added to the Knowledge base articles (I ran accross a couple which I could not have missed. Some werent even rephrased, spell checked or audited)
• I am sure that there is also a huge portion which will or is being fed into the AI database (I cannot confirm this though, but maybe @amanda.k or some other Autodesk representative can)
• then there is the rest (both solved and unsolved) which honestly do deserve to be purged

So technically speeking not all of it is LOST LOST...most or some of it will be there ...BUT it just wont be credited to the original contributor any more 🙂

[Curtis_Waguespack]

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@RDAOU wrote:

...most or some of it will be there .

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I wish this was true, but from my understanding they made no attempt to turn the 1000s and 1000s of code examples that were removed, into knowledge base articles. Instead they just deleted them all.

The only criteria I saw that was communicated was that the post had to have been accessed frequently over the prior six months. But who knows? @Tiana_Y would not / could not communicate about any further criteria, and I have seen no follow up communication about any posts that were archived, and I personally have not run across any.

What I have encountered since this "archiving" effort took place a few weeks ago are dozens and dozens of dead links to past solutions, with search results redirecting to confusing/poorly communicated dead end links to "no where".

But I do understand that those involved are  "making the forums more user-friendly, intuitive, and enjoyable"... because they have said so. 😑

[Curtis_Waguespack]

text crowding issue, as observed in desktop version (might be an issue in mobile version, I can not tell)

post where I was seeing this issue:

Solved: Place dimensions between named entities - Autodesk Community

Steps to see the issue:

attempting to use the new forum version, with the 66/33 split Win11 tiling layout as shown:

new version:

old version does not exhibit this issue

[Curtis_Waguespack]

@amanda.k wrote:

 I do fully realize you do not have access to see the full list and would not know (I am still very much working on that). 

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Was there ever any progress on this list of reported issues. I really don't want to invest time reporting issues that are already recorded, but I cannot find this list??? 

Happy to report issues and give feedback, but the communication around this is still very poor, to the point that I just ran around in circles looking at the FAQ, then hunting down this post 13 pages deep in this thread to try and see what this list was to be called or where to find it, and I still have no idea if the issue I just noticed had already been reported.

It's extremely frustrating to try to help people that have created these problems that don't seem to be able to get their ducks in a row to allow us to efficiently help them test and resolve the problems. This entire A/B test effort has been quite careless with customers' time, and it seems like it still is.  Do better please.

To the same point, is this thread even being monitored still? A quick look at the "likes", and it does not appear that feedback is still being collected here. 

[Curtis_Waguespack]

post time in new version is not correct

[Chad-Smith]

Can confirm. Even the date is different.

Circling back to the topic of the mass archive of '24, I too would like more details around where all the identified useful posts were relocated to as per the FAQ thread.

There may be forum redesign impacts around dead links, etc, that we can provide input into.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

The community management team seems to still not understand how to connect the dots, and direct users to announcements and information to help users stay informed about the disruptive and everchanging efforts to update the community... so let me try to help.

For those of you who have grown accustomed to checking this thread for updates and for providing feedback, see this link for the latest ( as far as I know at least) .

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/community-blog/community-redesign-modernizing-the-autodesk-forums/ba-...

the TLDR version is that they have created a new feedback form, that you can use to submit feedback, rather than this thread.

@CGBenner this is what I'm talking about when I say "do better". Can you all really not see that directing people from here to the new information is the logical, helpful thing to do to ensure that the change in course is well communicated, particularly to all the people who have invested their time and effort to come to this thread to provide feedback?

@amanda.k , would it not make sense to edit the original post of this thread and link to this new blog article, so that people looking for the link of the FAQ and other 'latest and greatest' information on this community modernization project will find it?

[CGBenner · Accepted solution]

Hey everyone,

Curtis is just a bit too quick on the draw for me, but he is right.  😉  The Autodesk Community Blog announcement regarding the new look and feel for these forums as well as my own announcement in this forum are both live.  This new look is going to become active very soon, possibly in the next few days.  

As we prepare for this launch, I will be moving into position to follow this and other forum threads that have been created where feedback is being given on the new design  A lot of your feedback was used to finalize the design that you will see very soon.  Strong thanks to @amanda.k for reading, acknowledging and capturing every bit of feedback, good and bad, that was given in this and other threads.  Thanks also to @o.briggs for the same.  All of this was channeled to our Product team, and much of it did influence the design.

We want to welcome your continued feedback, but I will be right up front in saying that, just like with Autodesk software, not every request will make it into the product.  That doesn't mean we didn't hear you, or that it was a terrible idea.  All feedback is good feedback.  To that end, as Curtis also mentioned, we have developed an easy to use form for capturing your ideas and feedback, as well as any problems that you encounter along the way.

Some of us here may be long enough in the tooth (old...) to remember when these forums migrated from the old newsgroups format, and emotions ran high then as well.  Keep the thoughts coming, use the form for easy capture, and I think we can get through this together.  I'm here for you, and I've been on both sides of the "wall".  I can't make any promises, except to say that I will always listen and try to respond as quickly as possible.

Thank you all for everything you do to help each other out in this Community.  

[Cadguru42]

The link for the OG post doesn't work.

[CGBenner]

@Cadguru42 

Hey Cadguru... can you share which link is not working for you?  I'll look into it right away.  Thank you!

[pendean]

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@CGBenner wrote:

...We want to welcome your continued feedback...

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Just rip that band-aid off already 🙂

[Curtis_Waguespack]

@CGBenner , the link in question is the update from Amanda in the opening post in this thread

[CGBenner]

@Curtis_Waguespack Thank you!... I'm on it.  Let's see what's going on, shall we?

EDIT:  Should be fixed now.

[andrewdroth]

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@CGBenner wrote:

 To that end, as Curtis also mentioned, we have developed an easy to use form for capturing your ideas and feedback, as well as any problems that you encounter along the way.

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Just submitted a form to the affect that a major chunk of the Inventor iLogic solutions are now dead ends. 🤣

I need someone to explain this to me like I'm 5. How does this improve my experience here?

I am far less worried about how the forums look all of a sudden.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

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@andrewdroth wrote:

---

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Just submitted a form to the affect that a major chunk of the Inventor iLogic solutions are now dead ends. 🤣

I need someone to explain this to me like I'm 5. How does this improve my experience here?
I am far less worried about how the forums look all of a sudden.

---

Try writing the sentence as shown 1000 times until you're convinced, and then report back 😂

In all seriousness, I was just trying to help a brand new forum member with a question and when I searched Google for the error message the person showed, it returned 4 or 5 dead links from content that had been removed in the "archiving" effort, so I just moved on. If AD is not concerned with that customer finding a solution, and is not concerned with me being able to efficiently assist that customer with finding a solution, why would I invest my time there?