Another good reason to be Canadian. The redesigned US boards.

[afantiques]

Head to ebay.com for a look.  Then come back to the welcoming style of 2 makeovers ago

[momcqueen · Accepted solution]

Yep. http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/We-Don-t-Need-No-Stinkin-Badges/m-p/355296#M70738

[00nevermind00]

I don't even know where to begin.

OK, I'll start here: why ask community contributors for their opinions if none of the input is going to be taken into consideration? Some of the stuff that people specifically and repeatedly said that they did NOT want has been integrated into the new design.

I'm starting to think that eBay/Lithium are using a bunch of immature school kids as coders. Those "rock star", etc. labels are just plain silly and mean diddley squat. I'm a trail blazer over there now, whatever that means. I've never blazed a trail before but I guess it's never too late to start! Never mind the 30 or so spam "information" messages that I found in my inbox on the day the new and "improved" boards rolled out. It won't be long before they start sending us an email every time we finish typing a message: "Congratulations 00nevermind00! You just added another insightful message to the community!" Unless they give us a way to opt out of those irritating emails, I'm going to have to replace the email address attached to this account with my junk/spam email address.

I'm all for making the interface mobile friendly. But please keep in mind that not everyone uses a phone to view the boards. The interface is simply horrible on my computer. I use a couple of message boards outside of eBay so I know that it is perfectly possible to make an interface user-friendly on all platforms.

And what's with the grey font in the Create Message box? Just horrible! Pssst eBay/Lithium: there are people with vision problems, you know. Maybe you should think about them, too.

The place is a confusing mess even for people used to navigate the eBay forums. I hate to think how a person going there for the first time in order to get help with a problem will manage to find their way around to ask their question and, better yet, come back for an answer.

Epic fail!

[marnotom!]

On a somewhat different note, now that the eBay Canada boards are now two updates behind the .com site, it increases my worries that there are long-term plans to dismantle eBay Canada as a separate entity and that sometime in the future Canadian buyers and sellers will be sent elsewhere in the eBay empire with the .com site specially tooled to handle Canadian dollar listings.

eBay Canada has, what now?  A dozen employees?

[00nevermind00]

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@marnotom! wrote:

On a somewhat different note, now that the eBay Canada boards are now two updates behind the .com site, it increases my worries that there are long-term plans to dismantle eBay Canada as a separate entity and that sometime in the future Canadian buyers and sellers will be sent elsewhere in the eBay empire with the .com site specially tooled to handle Canadian dollar listings.

eBay Canada has, what now?  A dozen employees?

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I had the same concern so I hopped over to the UK and Aussie boards. They both still look the way the .ca boards look. I don't know what's going on with this revamping of the US boards but since each new "improvement" seems to make things worse than they were, for the time being at least I'm happy that the "revamp madness" seems contained to just that site.

[pjcdn2005]

I really dislike the design.  Its still a work in progress...why wouldn't they first test it to make sure that it was user friendly.

Someone on the US board suggested that they are aiming these badges etc at millennials as they are more likely to want to be acknowledged.   I don't know if either of those things are true but it does seem to me that the many regular posters are either baby boomers or generation x's  so perhaps eBay is trying to attract more younger people to the boards.  Or...they just don't have a clue who posts there now and what those people would like to see.

It looks like they might have removed the message boards there too?  There were more posts than usual on the regular boards yesterday and most from new posters.  Actually, a lot of them were from people who thought they were writing to eBay.....some  with personal details.

[momcqueen]

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@pjcdn2005 wrote:

.... Someone on the US board suggested that they are aiming these badges etc at millennials as they are more likely to want to be acknowledged.   I don't know if either of those things are true but it does seem to me that the many regular posters are either baby boomers or generation x's  so perhaps eBay is trying to attract more younger people to the boards.  Or...they just don't have a clue who posts there now and what those people would like to see.

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While it's possible that someone on the US board did just that, I think you might be thinking of my earlier post about it on a different thread about this. Post 5 of 8 at http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/We-Don-t-Need-No-Stinkin-Badges/m-p/355328#M70757

[pjcdn2005]

You're right...it was your post I was thinking of.  I was confused.     

[momcqueen]

Oh, that's okay. I was excited there for a minute that someone on ebay.com had the same thoughts as me about it. Strength in numbers, great minds think alike etc. Oh well!