Any ongoing work for the Forum UI?

[Mats Knutsson]

Still extremely hard to use the forum because the enormous amounts of white space and lack of structure... I thought the vast amount of comments and good suggestions that followed the UI change would result in something useful. I spend quite a lot of time on various forums and this one is by far the most confusing (in a bad way). Sorry. /Mats

[DGSketcher]

I find it a cheerful distraction 🙄 when I have had multiple 3D grey screen lockouts 😵.

At least @Claudius is listening to what we are saying... I think... 🤔 

[Rex Maximilian]

My opinion is that they are a major software company charging a thousand dollars per year. They should be able to multitask.

[mthd]

Yes and prioritize what is first (like 3D modeling basics). Add 40% more for our region. If I had to send out a set of plans with lots of errors in them, I wouldn’t get much work. The principle is the same when sending out a CAD software upgrade.

My point is that they have more than enough very important things to work on first before worrying too much about re-vamping the forum. If the forum stayed the same with just a few changes here and there, they would have had more time to fully developed a sorely need improvement.

[thesleepofreason]

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@mthd wrote:

My point is that they have more than enough very important things to work on first before worrying too much about re-vamping the forum. If the forum stayed the same with just a few changes here and there, they would have had more time to fully developed a sorely need improvement.

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Because it is our request for a user-centric forum which can support a community that is taking up resources? Something we had before and could have from the relaunch if they would have gone with a traditional forum provider and not one which is ambivalent between being a forum and a social media / marketing channel. Even when excluding all the hours spent on setting up and keeping this mess running, there still is all the hours spent on the graphical profile, challenges, webinars and teaching how to compensate for flawed software to question before our request for a decent forum experience.

GS are oblivious of the role the community has had keeping AC alive for the last decades when they think that they can rely on a silent majority of 75k community members.

[furtonb]

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@mthd wrote:

Hi all, do we really have enough time to OCD about the forum structure ? Would GS conclude that the software is working well enough that we have plenty of time to waste here ? I certainly don’t. I am here to learn how to use AC and to get help using it, like all of us do. And to ask for things to make the software better or easier to use. Apart from that the forum is ok and yes it could do with some tweaks. We need to get back to work to figure out other issues with the software working correctly first. All good fun but not worth OCDing about lol !

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That is the issue here: in order to learn, you should be able to easily look for your problems (or similar) and their solutions, which is not the case at the moment.

So this "OCD-ing" with the structure of this platform is warranted in my opinion - if you look at the thread, the solution is pretty clear to those, that are active on other forums as well: Rhino Discourse is the golden standard of "customer retention by staff engagement on an online communication platform", or I don't know how to phrase it to get it through to GS, not something like the Dataiku or whatever corporate site, which feels like an AI generated pile of corporate content without actual meaning. This has been voiced numerous times in other threads and I am way too lazy to find those for you.

The other examples brought up by Claudius are large corporate "knowledge bases" which are prone to always broken URLs, where you can circle back and forth without actually having found your solution.

Other examples:

buildingSMART also uses Discourse for its forums, Speckle is using it, LBT and Pollination are using it, Radiance is using it etc., how nice would've been if GS didn't try to reinvent the wheel and use something proven? I'm looking the McNeel forums again...

My not-so-representative sample for forums that I visit on a daily basis, guess what platform they are on mostly:

Not to mention that on these forums the reported bugs and issues are easier to track (the open source platforms link to their Github, McNeel shares YouTrack entries), as many of them are linked in the threads referencing them. This way you can look where the development is, when to expect a fix.

TL;DR: Discourse > Khoros for usable forums, countless examples can be brought up where you don't get frustrated with having to find information or help others in your nonexistent free time. Having a blog with storybook-like articles for "non-powerusers" is nice to have, but merging the traditional help and forum with it is apparently confusing even for people spending more than the healthy amount of time on this forum: the accounts commenting here have hundreds or thousands of posts... which makes you think what to expect from the company in the future, but this would worth its own separate thread.

...but I drank my morning coffee, enough OCD-ing about this!

[mthd]

Hi @thesleepofreason, I think this topic is of great concern to many users.

[mthd]

Hi @furtonb, point taken and I get the feeling that this forum needs more then just tweaks.

[DGSketcher]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't the "Most Recent" listing respond to the latest post / reply in a thread, not just the original post date? 

UPDATE: Fixed it. Found these settings...

[Barry Kelly]

The main link should take you to the first unread post/reply in that thread.

But if you have read them all, then it goes to the firs post.

At least it does for me.

If not for you then I will look for a setting.

Or there is a link to take to to the last reply.

Barry.

[Mats Knutsson]

OCD no... but the overall usability YES