A huge step backward--what are you guys thinking?

Guess community answers are going to go the way of feature announcements for new releases... non-existent. They wanted a single experience... guess they're REALLY moving toward it!

I think I am close to coming to a place where I will come here only to troubleshoot my system whenever it develops a glitch, till I find that the response from Sonos Support is faster than what I get here. That hasn't been the case so far, but there is no knowing this will remain the case in future.

Now the asteroid has wiped out the dinosaurs, time for a new species to take over.

Or maybe time for a new breed of dinosaur? :-)

I have to say that I find this all very disappointing... Not surprising, but disappointing nevertheless...

It's early days yet, so maybe it will improve. However, if this site doesn't improve dramatically, then there's no reason why we couldn't set up another user-driven site if we want to. This sort of thing is fairly cheap these days, and the old style forums type interface is available off the shelf - I had a play with one a couple of years back, and it didn't look too difficult to implement.

We'd lose the history, of course, but as long as enough of the 'old guard' were on board, it could work well.

Indeed that could be an option if this doesn't pan out as we might hope. A 'donation' option could be added to support the running costs. Id be happy to contribute if it came to it.

On a separate note - I seem to remember reading that in the past there was a beta only board which was private to all but beta testers (therefore endorsed by sonos as did not violate NDA) - did this really exist or did I imagine it ?

Hey guys,

Lots of feedback the last day, great to hear from you all! Especially Barry and Kumar, some great comments here. We're working hard getting everything put together. There were unfortunately a lot of posts that weren't going to be categorized properly into the new organizational sections and we've been sorting through thousands of those threads to get them in the right place. If you find a link from ask or the forums isn't working to a specific thread, it's likely one of the threads not yet categorized. If only there was a way to get more hours in a day.

As mentioned here, we're still very early on in the new space, tomorrow will mark our first week.

We're still gathering all the feedback and suggestions we can, and working to determine what can and can't be changed. There have been some highly valuable concerns raised here and we're on it.

To address some specific questions: The private messages unfortunately couldn't be carried over due to privacy concerns. We're taking a look into the other language boards from the forums to see about potentially bringing them back, but there are of course some complications there. We've also talked about adding a new board or two to here depending on interest.

Some features weren't available on the platform currently but can be added in the future, so even if it isn't possible now, we'll be pushing to add what we can later.

We're trying to build a community here that everyone can use happily, so stick with us and mind the dust, it's still a work in progress.

I think most of the changes you are now contemplating could have been worked through BEFORE the migration onto a single platform. Administrator and user input usually drives platform decisions before migration (not after). Clearly, SONOS is paying the tab and has every right make business decisions in its best interest. User input after the fact makes future changes difficult to accommodate. Unfortunately, I believe in this instance, SONOS' business interests were not in sync with it's user's forum community.

It is indeed rare to get a second chance at a first impression and I am doubtful that SONOS can achieve what the legacy users want within the confines of the new forum platform. I really hope I'm wrong but for anyone who has been involved in the digital world for any length of time, these type of major platform shifts without significant user input, rarely work out well for the users. In the long run, it will probably not work out so well for SONOS either.


Hey guys,

Lots of feedback the last day, great to hear from you all! Especially Barry and Kumar, some great comments here.
We're still gathering all the feedback and suggestions we can, and working to determine what can and can't be changed. There have been some highly valuable concerns raised here and we're on it.

Some features weren't available on the platform currently but can be added in the future, so even if it isn't possible now, we'll be pushing to add what we can later.

We're trying to build a community here that everyone can use happily, so stick with us and mind the dust, it's still a work in progress.

I think most of the changes you are now contemplating should have been worked through BEFORE you made the change. Rarely do you get a second chance to make a first impression.

With as eclectic a community as we have here we knew we'd be getting a lot of feedback on many features from all sorts of categories, be it design related, or functionality. A single community for everyone is a challenging thing to build, and we're working to make that a reality. There are lots of features that we would love to incorporate, and online communities evolve over time, so we're excited to see what we can do here with this one.

We're thrilled to have so many active and enthusiastic members here. Again, we appreciate the feedback and the suggestions so please keep them coming. If there's specific features you want to suggest, a new thread or posting over on the wish list thread would be helpful to everyone.

Thanks!

sorry, bad edit attempt before I saw your response. Unfortunately I cannot delete this post (ironic isn't it?)

That's not a problem, it was still a good post. I can delete the comment entirely if you'd like.

I'm with a lot of the other users on this. I used to come and browse the old forums - it was easy to see what people were talking about and what the issues of the day were. This format doesn't lend itself to that.

You can always check out here: https://en.community.sonos.com/search/activity/recent which shows the most recent threads that have had posts made in them (though not the number of posts that are new).

Also, for threads you've favorited already, you can see here the ones with new comments: https://en.community.sonos.com/search/activity/recent

Glad it isn't just me. Hit refresh on your browser. You'll see the URL change and it will get there properly.

Here's one. 😃

I've been a Sonos user and on the forum since 2006..I don't post much anymore since it's seemed to have become, well less interesting and really a Sonos fanboy site.. We had some fun at least back in the day when Sonos was new and folks heard differences ..had some spirited discussions.. hell I even miss Jgatie .. Any way this place, new layout and the vibe seems to have a "forced" vibe.. too corporate cool.. I'll stop in once in awhile but as far as I can tell not much to offer anymore.. kinda of a shame..

I see that the forum emails now contain the message text, so that's some progress. 🙂

I have to echo a lot of the negative comments about the new format. It stinks, and confirms pretty much every fear I had prior to the 'upgrade'. Every attempt I've seen from a site to move from a traditional but well laid out, easy to navigate and use message board forum to a new, more modern style has made it horrible to use, alienated most of the regular users (ie the community that keeps it alive) and succeeded in killing off the community in one go.

Why on earth did you choose this format? It looks it's been purchased by someone who's never actually used the site or old forum and were convinced by a good salesman with an impressive powerpoint presentation.

Or maybe the intention is to just kill off the community so this just ends up back as the basic FAQ it started off as.

Not a great idea to alienate Sonos owners though IMO. Although our money has already been spent, we all find space to put more speakers and we all have family and friends to recommend Sonos to.