United StatesI am more impressed with the update than I expected to be. Glad to see a step in the right direction after (IMO) many poor decisions made in the past.
I noticed that formatting for the subset of Markdown used in game rules must have changed, as some games have had the formatting in the rules broken. I noticed it in the game and category rules for Cars and Cars Category Extensions, but it may have popped up elsewhere. If this was an unintentional change I'd like to see it fixed, and if intentional the changes should be documented so rules can be fixed to appear correct again.
You may be able to try the current test version of Special K: https://sk-data.special-k.info/SpecialK-test.7z
I'll be honest, I haven't looked at or been able to test that Special K guide in quite a while, so it may not work as written. If you can't get Special K to work, DxWnd is another windowing program that is known to work well with Cars.
Maybe my interpretation is off, but this feels like a violation of the SRC rules, specifically: “Leaderboards shall not be used for site protests, protests of game developer decisions, or general advocacy on social issues.” I understand and agree with the sentiment, but this isn’t the right way to do it in my opinion.
Adblock is not a solution to the ads when the site layout is still broken even with it on. And the fact that they snuck in the blurb about ads in an update all about mod tools is really gross. Also, while the new support form is nice in theory, it strikes me as suspicious that they're now completely locking down and removing the feedback threads from the forum, taking all public feedback of site changes away and removing any public record of feedback. Especially after many of the recent site updates being somewhat controversial (at least here on the forums). Damage control much? I noticed they also haven't directly addressed feedback regarding the site updates at all. The most they've said is that they read all the feedback, but that statement on its own is completely meaningless.
At this point even if they brought back donations I wouldn't be inclined to donate. I don't want to support some of the changes that have been occurring recently. It's really a shame this comes along with some actually very good, much needed tools for moderation. And this site is so ubiquitous that it's effectively a monopoly. Good luck having any discoverability without a sr.c page these days, especially if you're a smaller community.
Also getting the massive gaps at the top and right of the site on leaderboards and the forum. What a disaster.
Side note: I find it super scummy that they just slipped "oh by the way we're enabling ads for everything now haha" into an update about moderator tools. Really not happy about this.
The Knowledge Base still promotes Livestreamer, which while once useful has not seen any maintenance in over 5 years. Streamlink (https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink) is an actively maintained fork of Livestreamer which should be used instead, especially since streaming platforms have evolved quite a bit since 2016.
I really don't like how the news sidebar is being forced everywhere. At the very least give us an option to disable it globally. I currently have it blocked manually with my adblocker, which is a workaround, but the gap it leaves in the pages is a bit unsightly. I'd much prefer to reclaim that space to actually display the content I'm on the page for.
Not a fan of the changed font for just that one part of the user profile, either. And while the top to bottom view makes sense for mobile devices, on a desktop, where typically the browser is wider than it is tall, the removal of the old profile box leads to more unnecessary scrolling and wasted space.
Who is actually asking for these changes anyway? I rarely see any wholly positive threads whenever the site rolls out updates like this. May be just the vocal minority, but it makes me wonder whether these changes are being made fully in the interests of the users of the site, particularly those who have been here longer and are more invested as a result.
Edit: I'd also appreciate being able to revert to the old front page behavior of showing recent runs even from games I don't follow. It was always neat seeing a variety of games on my front page that I normally wouldn't've seen, and since one of the games I follow is much more active than the others it now absolutely dominates my front page. Getting kinda tired of seeing the same runs every time I log in.
Requesting to become moderator of Disney Planes. I've submitted a run, but the game has no moderators.
Aside from other points brought up by people before, the increased size of many site elements (most notably text) makes some things more cumbersome to browse, most notably the game search function. The site was readable before, so I don't see the need to make things bigger. Contrast is also an issue.
Edit: While I definitely understand the need for donations to keep the site running, the restricting of editing the site theme behind a $5 donation and then citing that as a solution to some of the complaints about the color scheme rubs me the wrong way.
