Forum Redesign Feedback!

CarolOH

Hey, guys! 

We're talking about updating our forums for better usability and general all-around awesomitude. And yeah, that's a word  now. ;) 

We want to introduce a simpler, easier-to-use forum but want to make sure that we're taking all of your thoughts, feelings, emotions and preferences into account. 

So open the floodgates! What do you like? What don't you like? What would you like to see here that we don't currently have? What would you be super sad face to see go? 

Looking forward to hearing back from you guys!

<3<3<3 

Farlander

I'm not terribly web-savvy, so perhaps my tech-level is not high enough (-1 Jargon Comprehension!), but I can't figure out how to attach a picture to a forum post.  There's the little 'insert image' icon, but when I click it I get prompted to list a URL, and no other explanation.  Maybe I'm just missing something.  I have image files on my computer, but don't know how to port them over, or what format to use if that is an issue.  Plenty of others have posted pictures or videos in the forums, so I know it must be possible.  I guess I'd just like it to be easier.  

Do the show pages count as part of the forum redesign?  It might be nice to have a sort option for old episodes where you can arrange them in chronological order, starting with the oldest/first episode of each season.  

I generally think the awesomitude is operating at a high wavelength at Geek & Sundry, so my compliments to all the people who are applying their hard work and creativity to making the experience fun for all of us!  :-)

Daniel_Wallace

What Zuffy said.

Also: With Nika Harper's board drawing so much attention (which is great!) we need a better notification system. The "All Discussions" page a bunch of us use for keeping track of what is happening here gets hammered with topics and there are way to many of them to read them all. So, we need a proper subscription system or something.

melting_pot

I would like:
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a spoiler button!

also, I haven't checked but, is it now possible to change one's profile? I didn't put in an image at first and I wouldn't mind being able to do so

rbray18

i would like a mark all as read button myself. to help keep my ocd ish self in check. and make it easiesr to keep track of the forums i want to read.

alanalmeria

I have found the forums here to be very used friendly as a rule so just a few quick thoughts:

Keep the edit ability, as someone who inevitable seems to end up making a spelling error on every post. It is really useful to go back and make changes.

Love the flat thread system, it is so much better using quotes and hyperlinks to refer to previous messages than a threaded reply to system, that often ends up confusing to read.

Love the highlighting of threads with new comments and whilst I have nothing against green. It may not be the best idea to have the announcements and the new comment highlight both being green. There have been times I have missed new posts by not noticing the green highlight on the green background.

The only real major problem I can see, as you have no doubt heard of from the screams of anguish on the wordplay forums. Is the serious formatting issue that occurs when importing text blocks from programs like word. It would be nice to see that fixed.

And I little personal note, that I will likely regret in the future. Emoticons would be nice, especially G&S specific ones.

 

 

Trienco

I guess first I have to ask how much of a change we are talking about? Completely changing the forum, more of a cosmetic redesign or major modifications? Just to have a better idea of what's realistic.

Going over everything mentioned:

@Zuffy I almost forgot how much I miss the ability to have clearly marked quotes. 

In regards to embedded videos, I think all it would take is to properly scale them to fit. In fact, if you use Chrome, you can use Inspect Element to get to div block with the video object and change the width to 540 (instead of 640) and everything will be fine. Should be easy to fix the forum to not use 640 by default.

Right now, the most annoying part is that the YT button is cut off, so you can't conveniently jump to YT to watch the video with all options (especially comments).

I wouldn't put attachments too high on my list. Most people have their usual sites to upload stuff to and I don't know how big the server for G&S is. Once everybody can dump his files on here, you might quickly run out of space (or make arbitrary limitations that will confuse/irritate some users).

@Daniel_Wallace I feel like Nika will need the permission to add subcategories, so all the entries can be grouped together. Or at least have the forum admin on standby to add one for each vlog.

@Melting_Pot Changing your picture has been enabled quite a while ago after a longish thread about it. I don't know if that's only for those who already had one. Prior to that, this Vanilla forum used the Gravatar plugin (just create an account, use the same email as here, upload a picture and it automagically showed up). Gravatar seems to be meant as a convenient way to use the same avatar on multiple sites. Not sure how widespread it really is.

@rbray18 Seconded. And thirded. Maybe in combination with a "what's new" page, that shows all threads with unread posts.

Thinking about it, I have a habit of missing new announcement threads. Maybe in addition to highlighting new posts in a thread, there could be another way to highlight a new thread/discussion as a whole (something like a small "new"-icon to the left of the subject seems to be used a lot).

adam

Please add a "mark all as read" button to the "All Discussions" page! If that page were more like the "unread since last visit" pages other forums use, I would be happy. (Relatedly, it would be helpful if I could see which subforum each thread is in, on the same page. Right now there's no indication.)

ten47pm

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Molokov

I'd like to see:

1) A "new posts" or "unread posts" link which shows you all new posts since your last visit or all unread posts.
2) A "mark all posts read" button so that you can have no unread posts left when you sign out :D

I also seem to recall the page navigation for a multi-page thread only appears at the top of the page and not at the bottom, which seems a little silly. Could be wrong about that, mind you.

Farlander

If Geek & Sundry could add a convention calendar with a list of upcoming cons in different areas, that would be cool.

blairbeveridge

I would like to be able to log in with facebook or twitter without seeing a Bonk message (it still works, but seems like it doesn't). 

I would like to be able to delete posts

Daniel_Wallace

@blairbeveridge: "I would like to be able to delete posts".
Blair, your posts are not THAT bad. ;-)

melting_pot

I'm going to ask a silly question.. is a forum redesign actually being done, or is this something for the future?

to recap, spoiler button would be nice (so far I'm doing ok with using white font, but it's a pain)
please keep the edit button.. I have yet to write a single post that I haven't subsequently edited for one reason or another...

a quote button

smileys.. yes!! I'll confess I'm a bit of a smileys fan... or used to be in the days of messenger. much less so with skype.

yes, the editing transferability (should totally be a word).. I hadn' t noticed until I actually wrote something longish on word and tried to transfer it. very pleased it keeps the bold and italics and such, but it needs a bit of finetuning in that it will put random spacing in most sentences.

Rusty

Given the number of bumps the Wordplay Forum Guidelines have needed so far it would make sense for the vloggers to be Moderators within their own forums for ease-of-stickiness and suchlike. It's not necessarily a redesign issue though unless there isn't a moderator-type status coded into the software.

melting_pot

I had another thought

why not add a "stickify" button to the opening posts on new threads, one that would not automatically stickify it but would send a note to the ruling forum admin (which is who, btw? I lost track after Tabz stepped down from the role).. bringing it up for consideration of stickification (I'm reinventing english..).. 

so.. 
poster of newthread, clicks on stickify, 

admin gets note "look at newtread" and can confirm whether to stick it on top of the forum or not.

Hsinrog

There have been a number of great suggestions already, @Zuffy nailed a number of them, especially as we see the need crop up in Nika Harper's vlog forum.

Perhaps something to add to that list would being able to return direction to a forum from the dashboard, rather than having to return to the forum menu and reselect the forum again. Granted that is not a major hassle, but just a nice convenience if it could be worked in.

Theadra

Maybe it has been mentioned somewhere else, but I would really really really like an "archive" categorie. I always scroll down see "Metadating", am happy because I really liked it, and then I am sad again because it's gone. There a few categories for shows that aren't "online" anymore, so.. yeah.

Edit: I really like the edit-button!

MrGrokNRoll

Something that would be great for an international forum like this: Show the local "Geek&Sundry time" as well as the local time of the poster. That would make it clear why someone is not reacting - because it's sleepy time or worky time.

And give the forrista (forumer? Forumsters?) the ability to show their location next to their name. Also nice for an international board.

MitchHutts

Wow, I signed in to check some posts and was surprised with a redesign! Looks sharp so far. I like it!

TimVanSant

Here are a couple quick reactions to the new design.

Pro:

• The titles for sticky announcements are much easier to read - thanks!
• The total number of comments and number of new comments are shown for each discussion - excellent!

Con:

• When someone comments on a discussion the "Started by username" is replaced by "Most recent by username" in the forum list. In the WordPlay forum we have a lot of different people starting discussions (many with very similar titles). It would be cool if you could show both who started the discussion and who commented last, but given a choice it is more useful to me to know who started the discussion than who commented last. Can you keep the "Started by username" visible on all the posts? - please!!!

:-)