Quote by WannabeWordsmith
Wheeeeeeeeee, this is pointless but I'll play along.
> Are you an author?
Yes!
> Do you primarily use the chat rooms, forums, neither or both.
Forums, trying to help people transition and remain informed about what's going on and why everything won't happen right now.
> What is the main device you access Lush with? phone/tablet, lappy or PC
Laptop/phone. It doesn't matter. It's the same codebase now on a single domain, unlike previously.
> On a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the happiest) how happy are you with the chatroom changes?
Never used the chat rooms. Not starting now.
> On a scale of 1 to 5, how happy are you with the forum changes?
Maybe 4? It evolves by the day. But it's actually usable on mobile, unlike before where it was pinch-zoom city and I'd have rated the forum experience a 2.
It's not perfect. What is? Linking to individual forum topics works fine on desktop but copying a post link to the clipboard doesn't seem to work reliably on mobile (might be my obscure browser). We never had that feature at all on Lush 1, so that's a major step up.
Quoting is hit and miss here right now. It's workable. Quoting multiple people or adding quote blocks via the toolbar would be a nice-to-have one day.
Glad to see the back of BBCode. Man, that was awful.
The only major regression I can see is uploading images direct from device. And that's coming soon (which should hopefully work in PMs and wall posts too).
> As an author, on a scale of 1 to 5, how happy are you with the story changes?
Right now, you mean? Might change tomorrow. Dunno. 4ish? Compared to the story pages and experience on Lush 1 which I'd rate a 3 in comparison. It was clunky and dated.
The story pages here look mint, barring the story cover image if it's not strict portrait dimensions. Hopefully that requirement can be relaxed one day.
On the publishing front I've not tried in anger. But with the formatting not pastable from Word and no apparent ability to import, that's a major stumbling block that I hope can be fixed quickly. It'll largely depend on the toolbar that's used. The one on Lush 1 was bodged and hacked over time to be what it became. It was very basic for a long time. And let's not forget what happened to everyone's stories when the editor was swapped out and all the spacing got screwed up if you went and edited an old story. That was a major pain - for authors and moderators.
> On a scale of 1 to 5, how happy are you with the general overall design changes?
So far... it's a huge step up. I'd rate it between 4 and 5. Unified codebase, usable forums, sleeker appearance. Sure there are (currently) some omissions that'd make things smoother still. IM is flaky. But so were BBs.
All in good time.
> Which forum features do you miss the most?
Not so much miss, because the new forum is fab. Catching up on threads was a pain in Lush 1 because only the latest post in each forum was highlighted on the main page so it was easy to miss topics. Two posts per forum here is better, and overall it's waaaaay easier on the eye.
With 'New Posts' in the Lush 2 forum, we never need miss anything. But there's such a post volume that it'd be great if there was an indicator of which forum each topic title was in (clickable to take you to the relevant forum landing page). At the moment I have to guess from the topic title whether it's in one of the forums I care about.
> As an author, which story features do you miss the most?
Formatting when pasting in from an external source.
Notification of activity is hit and miss right now.
Squishing my existing cover art into the portrait box instead of letting it fit naturally (constrained only by height would be fine).
> Which general features do you miss the most?
Some of the privacy controls. I'm sure they're on the list as things evolve. Lush 1 probably had about 5 settings when it launched and they grew over time (though comprehensive, they were an absolute mess - some for hiding stuff, some for showing it).
I think the team are doing an amazing job tackling everything and keeping the plates spinning. It's a shame about the impatient members who have given up because it's currently not exactly the same as before. Lush 1 was built over 15 years, feature by feature, hack upon hack. Not everything can survive a transition to a completely new system from day one.
Lush 2 has pretty much been rewritten from scratch in a very short space of time before the old site ran out of support. With the amount of downtime Lush 1 had due to ailing hardware (and said hacks) it was on borrowed time. When it next fell over, it might never have been revived without anyone to charge the defibrillator paddles.
With no other viable options (partners in a similar story sphere due to conflict of interests, or people unwilling to host adult content due to various payment or legal restrictions) Lush has terraformed a biome on an alien planet inhabited largely by swingers 
Very little about the way the indigenous folk used the platform is compatible with a story site, so that aspect is being built entirely from scratch to coexist with our new neighbours. There's a lot of overlap with other areas of Lush 1 that have now been expanded, merged and tweaked too. There were only two user levels in the existing system; we had more. That's a fundamental, system-wide change with far-reaching ramifications from an architecture viewpoint, which needed to be changed in "their" system to match "ours". And that's not an isolated case; it's not all one-way.
As many hacks and warts as possible from the story side of Lush 1 (and StoriesSpace!) were ported in the restrictive timeframe. I'm astounded the development team shoehorned in as much as they did before blastoff. Everything else will be considered feature by feature, just as in Lush 1. But in a more sustainable manner.
We survived in Lush 1 without series links for, what, 12? 13 years? And they were twitchy AF with that dual input box and selector contraption. Until then, we had just rudimentary next/previous links that were a pain to manage on a story-by-story basis.
After listening to feedback, less than a month after launch among all the other teething troubles and bug patches, we have series ordering here: better and more flexible and usable than before, showing up as navigable sets in each story to allow readers to enjoy more of an author's universe. That's dedication. That's hard work. That's taking a bolt-on feature from Lush 1 that took 13 years to materialise (through nobody's fault) and re-engineering it in a more sustainable and manageable form. In a month.
It's not us vs them or "we are being told by the new host company" as if they're some monolithic entity determined to bulldoze everything about the written word in lieu of making us all date each other. To imply so is plain rude. It's about taking each piece of what made Lush great and slotting it into an existing framework so both can be supported and not fall over or need to go down for 20 minutes (or longer) every day for maintenance.
The previous thread was locked because, with the best will in the world, nobody is going to read through 13 pages of bugs/rants before deciding whether to post their own findings, just in case it's a duplicate. The helpdesk is there to be used. File support requests as you find them. One per ticket to keep things specific and manageable. Someone will field them as best they can, while we all learn new ways of working and keep abreast of the changes.
Asking divisive questions in the forum about why the new planet on which we've just landed only has saplings instead of the gnarly oaks from the one we had to hurriedly leave behind isn't constructive.
Slow clap. Standing ovation.
