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]

I acknowledge that you are new to the team and appreciate your apparent effort to get/keep us involved. The time format was a real improvement and it would be good if we have a constant stream of such small improvements (still waiting on the language cross contamination fix). Unfortunately for you - the community in general and especially its platform doesn't exist in a vacuum but in the context of everything else that GS does or (doesn't) which at the moment isn't to your advantage.

It seems impossible for GS to take feedback at face-value and act on it. Instead everything has to go through an internalisation process with surveys, case reviews, webinars, programs and initiatives where the end result almost always is along the lines of "we hear you BUT it is really hard to do right now because of reason X,Y, and Z". The first thing we were promised was a wish feature to replace the old wish sub forum - more than two years past we are still stuck with nothing more than that but without the polls and with thread locks. 

Here is my feedback on the latest "restructure" and here is the original feedback thread from the launch. Regarding your refences - they sure seem rather marketing focused compared to e.g. McNeel or Speckle.

[Mats Knutsson]

Which post do you agree to DG? I can't really follow the tread. I happened to click on a weird Accept button and now it looks that I've accepted Claudius solution while the green header "Solution" points to your post DGS...weird.

[Mats Knutsson]

@Claudius...before answering to you request about posts with the community suggestions I need to ask if you didn't get this background when starting working with the Community? A regular handover... Tried searching the forum?

And please don't use the "hardcore BBS users only" derogatory phrase. Apart from being very foul it's so totally wrong. 

Matsimus the gr8 70er

[DGSketcher]

@Mats Knutsson Sorry, it was a wind up for @Claudius to make my point. In the process you seem to have exposed a "solution" bug.

[scottjm]

I was just thinking this exact thing this morning.  I find it very different to identify when a post is a reply to another post, vs a reply to the overall thread.  The very slight intending is far too subtle.  I was thinking some hierarchy lines similar to a folder tree display could be helpful.

Additionally I think the reply button under every single post is very confusing as people unintentionally reply to a post instead of the overall thread and their response gets lots.  The reply to a post to create a subthread button should be much smaller, so you intentionally need to go looking for it if that is what you want to do.

The way that reddit does sub threads is a lot clearer as to where a post sits within the structure of the communication.

Also, should sub threads be restricted to only 1 level deep so you we can't create this infinite depth of subposts?

[Barry Kelly]

I often open new tabs if I want to keep a particular message open, so I can respond later without having to try and find it again.

You can right click on any of the links, menus, icons, and open in a new tab or complete new window.

Barry.

[Barry Kelly]

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@Mats Knutsson wrote:

I happened to click on a weird Accept button and now it looks that I've accepted Claudius solution while the green header "Solution" points to your post DGS...weird.

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I believe only the original poster (author) can accept a solution (as well as moderators).

If you do it in error you can go into the options and un-accept it.

Barry

[Barry Kelly]

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@scottjm wrote:

Additionally I think the reply button under every single post is very confusing as people unintentionally reply to a post instead of the overall thread and their response gets lots.  The reply to a post to create a subthread button should be much smaller, so you intentionally need to go looking for it if that is what you want to do.

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There needs to be a reply button to every post so people can reply to that particular post.

Maybe it could be moved to the top of the post next to that poster's name?

I am not sure it could get much smaller compared to the 'reply to topic (thread)' which only appears at the end of the thread.

Too small and it will be missed completely.

I am not sure there will ever be a perfect solution that will satisfy everyone.

Barry.

[Lingwisyer]

I feel like the per post Reply option only really benefits the Threaded layout as having to thread jump for context really breaks the flow of things...

I am still waiting for the Quote function to be reworked. Something that I brought up when this forum was first converted to Khoros, and was talked about with some of the backend staff. At the moment I manually copy sections that I wish to quote then edit to source to convert it to a quote... Miss the quote button of the old forum where you could highlight a section, press quote, it would be added into the reply box, highlight another section, press quote again and it would just ammend it onto the end.

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 agree that it would probably help if they just committed to one layout, and given they have been updating the Linear layout recently, integrating better quote functionality into the reply button and having the quotes be the jumps could work.

Ling.

[DGSketcher]

I'm guessing the best part of 75k users don't know that link is there! (Some people are probably looking at my post and thinking which link). I also think using it can be disruptive to the whole reading process. Did I ever mention GS need to simplify things in my posts...