New New Forums Feedback Thread

Posted:
in Feedback edited December 2015

Hello,

So about those new forums.... they should be up and live for everyone. 

I locked the previous feedback thread so we can keep everything in one place for me to follow. Drop bugs as you guys find them here for rewards (bug hunter badges!) and I will continue to patch them as you experience issues. If you want to leave other general feedback on the forums you can do that here as well, in fact it's encouraged :)

We returned to a more classic forum layout. You will find your user profile, notifications, inbox, bookmarks and more options in the top-right of the screen. We've also removed the sidebars and set the color scheme to match our mobile site (which you guys seem to like). We'll continue pushing buttons and pulling levers until we get these forums into tip-top shape.

We hope you guys like the redesign!
tallest skil
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 47
    On the new site, since the original discussion for it was closed:

    NOW THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

    Heck yes, this looks nice. I don’t know why they didn’t just push this initially, but it’s very pretty now. Super clean! Boxes, delineating colors, all the information we like to see about users… and visible avatars now, so hey!

    Not jazzed about the 4 hour edits, but I understand why, in some cases, limited editing makes sense. And the new post and quoting formatting will take a while to get used to (is multiquote still somewhere?), but the image uploading UI/X is sure better than Huddler’s.

    Props, guys. I’m one of the few who thought Huddler was better than vBulletin (come on; it was certainly better than vBulletin 3), and I’m liking this better than Huddler.

    EDIT: Now just to figure out how to get my 132 inbox messages (read: every conversation I’ve ever been sent) marked as read so that I can tell when someone messages me in the future.  :p
    edited December 2015
  • Reply 2 of 47
    trumptmantrumptman Posts: 16,464member
    I appreciate the additional changes made so far. I really need something to basically show the "buzz" for the forums. Before I'd check the top 10 most recent posts or active posts and basically hope in the discussion or use them to catch my interest on what I want to read.
  • Reply 3 of 47
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    Definitely appreciate the return to a more "classic" layout.  SO much better than what appeared initially (when I wrote my "the forums are just awful") post.  I'm still not sold on the color scheme, but I'll get used to it.  
  • Reply 4 of 47
    jSnivelyjSnively Posts: 429administrator
    trumptman said:
    I appreciate the additional changes made so far. I really need something to basically show the "buzz" for the forums. Before I'd check the top 10 most recent posts or active posts and basically hope in the discussion or use them to catch my interest on what I want to read.
    http://forums.appleinsider.com/discussions


    EDIT:
    Now just to figure out how to get my 132 inbox messages (read: every conversation I’ve ever been sent) marked as read so that I can tell when someone messages me in the future.  :p
    Yeah I think that may actually be a bug, I will look into it today.


    Not jazzed about the 4 hour edits, but I understand why, in some cases, limited editing makes sense. And the new post and quoting formatting will take a while to get used to (is multiquote still somewhere?), but the image uploading UI/X is sure better than Huddler’s.

    There are a lot of good reasons for this. Revisionist history being one obvious, but the other, less obvious, is that it stops spammers from making 'placeholder' posts and then going back to edit them with their actual spam messages later. You guys have been doing a good job of flagging stuff as you see it, but our mod team is small and we have to do what we can, in an automated sense, to help out.
  • Reply 5 of 47
    definitely getting better. a few suggestions:

    1) replies *need* a "go back" link that links back to the post i replied to. this way i can get back to where i was in the discussion before replying.

    2) the black message-headers on each post are very heavy. they also compete w/ the black header-bar on the top. IMO the message-headers should be lighter.

    3) mousing-over the Like/Dislike count should popup a list of who voted that way.

    4) i dont seem able to see the Like/Dislike counts on my own posts.

    thanks!
    edited December 2015
  • Reply 6 of 47
    I use TapaTalk. I can't get logged in. On Twitter it said to change my password, so I did. Now I can't log in on TapaTalk. Do I just need to wait a while, or what? 
  • Reply 7 of 47
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    Need a cancel button when commenting. 
    SpamSandwichthepixeldoc
  • Reply 8 of 47
    2) the black message-headers on each post are very heavy. they also compete w/ the black header-bar on the top. IMO the message-headers should be lighter.
    I love the color they picked as the site flavor, so how about this? I just doubled its brightness. It’s not as heavy, but it maintains the blue-grey feel of the thing. The same would apply, I imagine, to the Quote & Reply button and the background of the image selection dropdown (though we can drag and drop images now, so few people may see it).


    edited December 2015 nolamacguyargonaut
  • Reply 9 of 47
    2) the black message-headers on each post are very heavy. they also compete w/ the black header-bar on the top. IMO the message-headers should be lighter.
    I love the color they picked as the site flavor, so how about this? I just doubled its brightness. It’s not as heavy, but it maintains the blue-grey feel of the thing. The same would apply, I imagine, to the Quote & Reply button and the background of the image selection dropdown (though we can drag and drop images now, so few people may see it).


    I like that slate grey color.
  • Reply 10 of 47
    jSnivelyjSnively Posts: 429administrator
    zoso4 said:
    I use TapaTalk. I can't get logged in. On Twitter it said to change my password, so I did. Now I can't log in on TapaTalk. Do I just need to wait a while, or what? 
    I have no idea what TapaTalk is. I will install it and check it out, It may just be that it has saved a cookie or password or something?

    nolamacguy said:

    3) mousing-over the Like/Dislike count should popup a list of who voted that way.
    4) i don't seem able to see the Like/Dislike counts on my own posts.
    I like this suggestion, even if it doesn't translate to mobile. We had a few threads where people felt it was unnecessary to see the likes... maybe just a text list with the first few and ' and x others'? I will see what I can do. Not being able to see your own counts may be a bug.

    Need a cancel button when commenting. 
    What would you expect the behavior of the cancel button to be? Just clear the input field?


    As for the color, right now we're "on brand", so I don't know if we will update that right away. @kasper and I have meetings this week about modernizing the site a bit more sometime in the new year. @kasper has mentioned multiple times that he finds the dark blue too close to black, so I would expect that to be addressed at some point, I just don't know when exactly that may be. 
  • Reply 11 of 47
    jSnively said:
    What would you expect the behavior of the cancel button to be? Just clear the input field? 
    Since drafts are now auto-saved (or did you change that to only manual saving?), clearing would allow people to change their minds about a reply and still be able to reply to another post without having to switch to the HTML view to wipe all the old formatting.
    nolamacguy
  • Reply 12 of 47
    Two things I can't find that were in the previous fourm:

    1) "Jump to first unread message" link.
    2) A link back to the news page (www.appleinsider.com) from the forum.

    Am I missing something?
    argonaut
  • Reply 13 of 47
    1) "Jump to first unread message" link.
    2) A link back to the news page (www.appleinsider.com) from the forum.
    1) I think it does that automatically now.
    2) You use the main site? I never go there.  :p
  • Reply 14 of 47
    1) "Jump to first unread message" link.
    2) A link back to the news page (www.appleinsider.com) from the forum.
    1) I think it does that automatically now.
    2) You use the main site? I never go there.  :p
    1) Hmm, I didn't notice that. I'll look again.
    2) Yeah, I like to see who actually wrote the article sometimes instead of just Kasper's Automated Slave.....which seems to be gone too.
    3) And another thing, I don't see the little red number on the header which use to tell you when you had a response to an article you posted in.
  • Reply 15 of 47
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    I see the forum is inundated with spam this morning. A couple years back another forum I work with migrated to Vanilla and IIRC one of the reasons were the strong spam mitigation tools. Where i would typically have removed a handful every morning Vanilla tools essentially blocked every one of them. Relatively rare to have any to deal with now. 
  • Reply 16 of 47
    jSnivelyjSnively Posts: 429administrator
    gatorguy said:
    I see the forum is inundated with spam this morning. A couple years back another forum I work with migrated to Vanilla and IIRC one of the reasons were the strong spam mitigation tools. Where i would typically have removed a handful every morning Vanilla tools essentially blocked every one of them. Relatively rare to have any to deal with now. 
    We're still tweaking the filters. I put in some new automated protections this morning and re-imported a bunch of old IPs from our huddler ban list. Since those posts (understandably) keep happening while everyone is asleep, we're looking first at automated solutions.
    gatorguy
  • Reply 17 of 47
    jSnivelyjSnively Posts: 429administrator
    1) "Jump to first unread message" link.
    2) A link back to the news page (www.appleinsider.com) from the forum.
    1) I think it does that automatically now.
    2) You use the main site? I never go there.  p
    1) Hmm, I didn't notice that. I'll look again.
    2) Yeah, I like to see who actually wrote the article sometimes instead of just Kasper's Automated Slave.....which seems to be gone too.
    3) And another thing, I don't see the little red number on the header which use to tell you when you had a response to an article you posted in.
    1) When you click on an article and it has unread stuff it will jump directly to the first unread comment.
    2) This is something that has been not working for literally years. It's possible we can fix this, but it's super low priority ; )
    3) Bookmarking an article (the little star) will alert you to any replies and also display new reply counts.

    jSnively said:
    What would you expect the behavior of the cancel button to be? Just clear the input field? 
    Since drafts are now auto-saved (or did you change that to only manual saving?), clearing would allow people to change their minds about a reply and still be able to reply to another post without having to switch to the HTML view to wipe all the old formatting.
    This behavior should be changed as of this morning. You will have to manually save your drafts going forward (once the server decides to sync, i forgot to actually turn on the plugin).

    edited December 2015 tallest skil
  • Reply 18 of 47
    jSnively said:
    This behavior should be changed as of this morning. You will have to manually save your drafts going forward (once the server decides to sync, i forgot to actually turn on the plugin). 

    Doesn’t seem like we’d need a cancel option, then, but wiping HTML (to get formatting back to normal) will still have to be done manually if someone decides not to quote a certain post. Not a big deal, I guess, but @jupiterone (does that still link?) might have a different opinion.

    I see that you’ve added personal locations back in, but I don’t see where to edit that in the user profile. Maybe it hasn’t been pushed to everyone yet. It’s a little thing, but everyone always seemed to take advantage of it.
    nolamacguy
  • Reply 19 of 47
    trumptmantrumptman Posts: 16,464member
    jSnively said:
    trumptman said:
    I appreciate the additional changes made so far. I really need something to basically show the "buzz" for the forums. Before I'd check the top 10 most recent posts or active posts and basically hope in the discussion or use them to catch my interest on what I want to read.
    http://forums.appleinsider.com/discussions
    I appreciate that link but while it does the previous threads with activity. It doesn't show the threads that are getting the most activity. As an example during the spam episode yesterday, the first 20-30 threads that had most recent activity were all spam. However if there were a way to select the threads that had the most activity, then I could have easily begun using the forums while skipping past the spammers due to the fact that those threads had no activity past the initial spammy post.
  • Reply 20 of 47
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    What's this new post approval thing?  Just got a message that a post would be displayed once it was approved.
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