New Forum Layout [Feedback and Questions]

[Admin (Sebastian)]

@The_Man_With_a_Name

I was quite proud of how quickly I went from being an unarmed gringo to a bribed sheriff.

The default setting here are the trust levels. New users rise from 0 to 1 usually withing 15 minutes. Rising to 2 requires a lot of activity during the course of at least a week. And so on.

My suggestion would be to rename those, so instead of “trust level X” it would be “Unarmed Gringo” or “Experienced Gunslinger”. The downside is that it’ll get harder to explain what this means.

Trust level 2 btw gets access to a private lounge

[Admin (Sebastian)]

@John_Welles I appreciate that

[ENNIOO]

A private lounge …sounds interesting

[titoli]

@Admin Thanks for detailed answer! With “white on white” I was reffering to scherps comment.

Remembering where you left off is a cool feature, but I still wish there is ability to sort the topic from the last post on top (to set that in preferences or something). There is a reason why all those forums with old “pages” design give you opportunity to click on the first AND the last page immidiately.

I just keep posting to get to that private lounge…

[Admin (Sebastian)]

@titoli there is more to achieving trust level 2 than number of posts

Did the old forum allow reverse sorting? I still don’t quite get the issue as here u can alo jump to the 1st post and the last post. I think we need to slowly just say adios to the notion of “pages” as a visual guide which exists neither in normal conversations nor in chats yet folks want them in forums, for the sole reason that this how they have been doing it

[Lone_Gringo]

A few things. 1. How can I tell when others are logged in to the forum.
2. Can something be done about the back ground skin? IMO it needs color, its just too plain. If you want, I can post a pic to give an example of a colored one.
3. The avatars are way too small.
Heh, that’s it for now, other than that… great work Seb and your team too.

[Admin (Sebastian)]

1. I’m afraid you can’t. In a lot of ways as explained earlier, even the old forum could only give an approximation based on session novelty. The closest you can currently get is by going to users and filter by today (link) or click on users to see when they were last active. There is considerable discussion in the community of Discourse itself (meta.discourse.org) as to ways of bringing this out in form of a plugin, and at the same time as to the value it would actually add. I agree that on a psychological level it might act as a stimulating parameter, but other than that it’s pretty much that. The forum shows you instantly and in real-time where latest activity is happening, so knowing who’s online won’t give you that much practical added value - at least not as long as there is no “live chat” built in. What could be done over time, is statistics as to how many per day, most active hours of the day etc… if you’re interested in that, I can check if that’s easy to find out.
2. Well suggestions are always welcome, but it comes down to a few things like a) taste b) legibility c) you won’t see the background image on a small screen and/or d) it’ll mess with so many other color aspects of the forum that it’s more than just a matter of switching out one color. But again, I’m open to suggestions. Please bear in mind that 1) the SWDb also has a white background now and 2) there is a reason people buy books that have black letters on white paper
3. Also a tricky topic. I have spent considerable time also reading up on this at meta, and it’s not super easy to implement (yet) as it breaks a lot of things changing avatar size. The other aspect is that it will go at the expense of screen real estate and mostly focus: when reading a debate do you really want other people’s avatars in your face all the time, or really just the discussion. I think they found a nice balance, but it could be that future versions of the forum software allow for a granular adjustment. In the mean time if you feel like you’re mixing up folks because they have similar avatars, click on them, it opens the neat hovercard, see the example:
   

[Sundance]

@Admin

I think we need to slowly just say adios to the notion of “pages”

[morgan]

@The_Man_With_a_Name

I was quite proud of how quickly I went from being an unarmed gringo to a bribed sheriff.

Yes, I remember it was a relief. Finally, within the law!

[AvatarDK]

The new forum just told me that since I had posted more than 30% of what had been posted in the soundtrack news topic I should perhaps let someone else participate as well

[ENNIOO]

Ha, ha you have been told

[Admin (Sebastian)]

I’ve had a similar message in this very thread where it said “I’m replying a lot, maybe I should give others some space or use one post with mentions to react to a lot of others”. While on the one hand it’s a bit funny, on a more serious note this software is built for “better” community discourse (it is called Discourse) and so there’s a few things happening around that will time and again nudge the community towards more quality. Not allowing single word replies is one such example. If you agree with someone or like what someone posted, just click the little heart

[AvatarDK]

Ah I do understand just thought it a little funny

That said, I am going to meet the forum software at dawn for a quick duel.

[Admin (Sebastian)]

@Richard_W also of course, we’re here to help. I think once the learning curve is overcome, nothing will stand in your way I am also doing my best to compile a few tutorials and screenshot-assisted “how to” pages

[Bible_Joe]

Haven’t been on the forum for a long time, and wanted to check out what is new and has changed.
As this is the topic to talk about the new layout, I can only honestly say that I find it to be horrible.
There’s no sense of structure, of borders, or anything to cling to. Like many said, everything seems to be floating in mid-air.
I don’t like it at all that there are no pages (I hate “endless scrolling”), and I dislike that everything seems to be designed for “easy” mobile use. Honestly, this doesn’t look to me like a Forum, but more like a facebook page or twitter account: it has little “personality”. I guess I just prefer forums to look like forums. This one looks to me more like a playing field for people with ADHD. Sorry to sound so harsh, but that’s my honest opinion.

Can’t imagine I’ll be using this forum much with the current design.

[Admin (Sebastian)]

@Bible_Joe

Sorry to sound so harsh, but that’s my honest opinion

Fair enough! Yes it behaves less like a “classic” forum and more like actual conversations. The makers of this software did a lot of “rethinking” and “questioning” of established Forums. As mentioned earlier, I am exploring some options to add more color and give content more of a “box” or background to reduce the feeling of “floating” (which however seems less so the smaller your screen is).

As for the pagination, again I stick with my thought that pages serve little actual purpose other than it being what people are used to for some reason. It’s the internet, there’s no reason to physically/artificially cut things off at certain points.

@Bible_Joe

Can’t imagine I’ll be using this forum much with the current design

That is of course unfortunate, but your rightful choice. I do hope that you’ll stick around or peek in from time to time, and maybe some future improvements we make will warm your heart to this community. If you have very concrete suggestions we welcome those. I have little to no ressources for running this place, so I am grateful for any added expertise that can help make it better

Your feedback at any rate is very much appreciated, even though it is negative

[stanton]

Can I alter the forum look, so that it uses my whole screen, instead only the middle?

And why can’t I still see the posts of Richard W? Or wasn’t Seb responing to anohter post of him?

And are there eventually more members which are posting invisible?

[Admin (Sebastian)]

@stanton

Can I alter the forum look, so that it uses my whole screen, instead only the middle?

I don’t think so, but I will explore what options there are to make it more flexible. There’s an empty column to the right of posts that is possibly used by some stuff, see for example:

@stanton

And why can’t I still see the posts of Richard W?

Not sure how this works yet, I thought you couldn’t even hide people’s posts, just “mute” them (i.e. not receive notifications, personal messages, etc.)

@stanton

And are there eventually more members which are posting invisible?

Not to my knowledge We call them the “ghost riders of Almeria”

[stanton]

@Admin

Not sure how this works yet, I thought you couldn’t even hide people’s posts, just “mute” them (i.e. not receive notifications, personal messages, etc.)

Which I neither did, not now, not in the past.

[Sundance]

Can you see the post if you go through the link Stanton?

New Forum Layout [Feedback and Questions]

The new format is unnecessarily complicated. A steep hill to climb. I don’t use Facebook nor smart phone mail so all the extra features are wasted on me.