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

[thesleepofreason]

So the time function and coloured scroll bar wasn't enough? Joking aside - I've noticed that there are some work being done in the background but it seem quite ignorant of the major issues that drags down the user experience. There has been a lot of posts with feedback from community members on this and that nothing fundamental has changed since launch tells me that the GSs aim with the community platform is gear more towards marketing (graphical profile) than communication. Has anyone seen a forum powered by Khoros where this isn't the case?

[DGSketcher]

I still see the non-linear nature of the posts to be difficult to follow. If you display by time of post then posts are displayed out of context, with no cross reference they can appear as associated with a different post. Keeping them in context then new posts can be lost a few pages back - and no, the notifications don't always work if someone has added several posts in the same thread. This kind of chaos may be fine for social media, but for professional technical discussion it sucks.

[Claudius]

Hi Mats,

Sorry to hear that the community is still confusing to you. To answer your question from the title: Yes, we are constantly working on the community although recently it has been more "backend" stuff to improve the semantic markup of the pages so they are more accessible and can be indexed more reliably by search crawlers.

The whitespace around messages was a deliberate design choice to create visual separation. I think in the end it also comes down to a question of taste, doesn't it? I did join the team just this October so I might not be aware of all the suggestions shared earlier. Do you remember some of the good suggestions you were referring to and can you point me to them so I can review them together with the team?

Could you also please elaborate a bit on the "lack of structure" part? Is this in regard to individual pages or the community structure with categories and boards within them. I would really like to understand where the confusion comes from so we can work out solutions to reduce that.

And finally: Could you share a community/forum that you really like for it's structure and/or design? That would also help me understand a bit better where you see the differences. Thanks in advance

[Claudius]

---

@DGSketcher wrote:

I still see the non-linear nature of the posts to be difficult to follow. If you display by time of post then posts are displayed out of context, with no cross reference they can appear as associated with a different post. Keeping them in context then new posts can be lost a few pages back

Do you happen to be using the "threaded layout" option here in your display settings? https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/user/myprofilepage/tab/user-preferences:display

Because currently we've been focussing on the default linear view with the "oldest to newest" display variant. Is that what you are using? I'm having a hard time replicating how you see posts being presented in a "non-linear" fashion as all our threads should show posts in chronological order.

---

@DGSketcher wrote:

the notifications don't always work if someone has added several posts in the same thread. 

---

I need to clarify, but I think if there were multiple replies to the same thread and you haven't visited the thread after the first notification was sent out then you won't receive a follow up. Why would you prefer to be spammed by additional notifications if you were already told that new replies are waiting for you?

[Claudius]

---

@thesleepofreason wrote:

So the time function and coloured scroll bar wasn't enough?

---

So you do like them? That's good to hear. It's a work of love by me 😉

---

@thesleepofreason wrote:

it seem quite ignorant of the major issues that drags down the user experience. There has been a lot of posts with feedback from community members on this

My offer is also extended to you: Could you please point me to some feedback and suggestions I should review to improve this community for you?

---

@thesleepofreason wrote:

GSs aim with the community platform is gear more towards marketing (graphical profile) than communication. Has anyone seen a forum powered by Khoros where this isn't the case?

---

We are not aiming at the marketing profile, but rather we want to provide a modern community experience that is catering for a wide range of users and not only hard core BBS users from the 90s (i'm one of them). And I know of a bunch of Khoros based communities that I think are striking a good balance between text and information heavy display and still being easy to understand for new users. HP Community, Atlassian Community or Dataiku Community come to mind.

[Xandros]

Hi @Claudius 

---

Do you happen to be using the "threaded layout" option here in your display settings? https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/user/myprofilepage/tab/user-preferences:display

---

---

an issue I found: my settings do say Use default (Linear format) but it shows the Threaded format layout. So I'll have to switch to Linear format

[DGSketcher]

@Claudius The problem is you are providing threaded and linear options where things look very different. How someone replies is influenced by how they see it on their screen. I note you have made a point of quoting my post which is correct for Linear mode, but not everyone responds that way. So here's the problem and I will try to keep it simple...

A posts: "This doesn't work because..."

B posts: "It works for me if I..."

C replies to A: "I confirm I am seeing the same"

In threaded mode C's post makes sense, in linear mode without quoting A's post who is C agreeing with?

The forum should be one or the other and if the tendency is to linear like old school BBS then please remove the threaded option. Unfortunately you are then left with a forum full of posts that will slip out of context, but you really need to grab hold & fix this.

On the subject of multiple posts in threaded format, all I am saying is that without the individual notifications for each post it is possible to miss an important post if someone replies to different posts in the same thread over multiple pages.

Honestly, after looking at what I have written the Threaded format needs to go.  I would then get a notification a post has been made and it would always be at the end of the linear thread. Not much wrong with BBS in my book. 😉

[DGSketcher]

I agree completely with what you say. 🤔😉

[DGSketcher]

@Claudius You've made three posts, so which post is this one associated with? 

Hint: You need threaded mode.