Small gripes with the new forum

[manofchalk]

1.
My major gripe is that we can no longer tell if another user is online or not looking at their posts. Also which forum they were browsing through at any time.

Which is a feature I subconsciously used to prioritize which threads to reply too and monitor a bit more attentively afterward. Just knowing if the thread was probably going to get a reply soon helped. Also the ability to determine where users are at any time was useful, if the thread creator was in some other section thats a hint to me as to what may be confusing them or if they were trying to pull together a rig by asking each forum what parts to get (obviously not very efficient and great potential for mixed messages).

2.
Although its great that as a registered Toms Hardware member, I can enjoy the forums ad-free, the fact that it is told to me by a banner ad is quite annoying :lol:
Then to almost add irony to it, the banner ad that says there are no ads invariably is advertising some portion of the Tom's website.

Would be great if that was removed or if there is an option to remove it, it be more apparent.

3.
Can no longer navigate to the sub-forum from within a thread.
Easiest example of this would be that I hang around the Water-Cooling sub-forum, which is inside the Overclocking forum. I don't interact much with the Overclocking forum at large, just sticking with the Water-cooling mainly. Its somewhat annoying that to go to a view of just the water-cooling topics I have to navigate back out to the main forum page, then back into water-cooling. The option to go to sub-forums from the directory at the top of the thread has disappeared, which I used a lot in the old forum.

Its missing a step.

Bonus gripe number 4.
This became apparent while writing this.
This freakin pop-up...

Every time I click out and then back into the text field, that pops up and if the positioning is just right, obscures what I'm writing. Maybe put that off to the right of the text field in the not insubstantial amount of white space that's there.

 

[lourson]

Hi manofchalk

Regarding #3 it's a little different now because sub-categories are tags which have simply been promoted on the homepage. As a thread can have many tags, those are displayed just below the thread title.

 

[jpishgar]

My major gripe is that we can no longer tell if another user is online or not looking at their posts. Also which forum they were browsing through at any time.

Would not have thought that this would be used by too many users - though currently you can see if a user is online through their profile. You'd prefer to see this in thread view as well?

Although its great that as a registered Toms Hardware member, I can enjoy the forums ad-free, the fact that it is told to me by a banner ad is quite annoying. Then to almost add irony to it, the banner ad that says there are no ads invariably is advertising some portion of the Tom's website.

We thought of using smoke signals or carrier pigeon to announce the ad-free change, but it got shouted down in production committee process.

Can no longer navigate to the sub-forum from within a thread.

As lourson mentioned, subforums are heavily based on tags now, though this is a part of the navigation issues we're looking into addressing.

 

[randomizer]

I did notice #4 as well, and while I don't make threads very often it did bug me when I did make one. It happens with the thread title textbox as well. The popups need only appear once, and should be positioned better. As you said there is plenty of space to the side.

 

[manofchalk]

If the users online status can be displayed in the thread view that would be great.

 

[mactronix]

I find being able to tell if a user is online a very useful feature. Its a big miss to me. I tried on several profiles and I cant tell who is online and who is not.

Mac

 

[manofchalk]

Agree with Mac, I can see on the Profile page the icon that would indicate if someone is online but it doesn't seem to work except on my profile. I'v camped an active thread and when people posted I would check, apparently they log out within a minute of posting something.

Only just noticed now, but is it no longer possible to search through another users post history?
A couple times that feature has been useful to me. Mainly when looking for specific threads and don't remember the title but the people in it, or checking if the OP has any other threads so I know why some random topic might be raised out of nowhere.

Just realized that I must look like such a creep, asking for features about where people are and where they'v been :lol:.
On a non creep-related issue. Look below this post to the "related ressources:" box.
Just a small typo, unless its written in French.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Just my 2 cents, I agree with the guys above about missing being able to tell who is online in a thread. I also used that feature to watch threads a bit longer to see if someone was waiting on a realtime reply. That's about my only complaint though.

It has also been useful at times to stalk...err search another users posts

I have to say during the beta I was unsure of if I would like this version of the forums as much as the old but after going live I actually like it better. The badge system especially seems much more useful.

 

[Ijack]

We thought of using smoke signals or carrier pigeon to announce the ad-free change, but it got shouted down in production committee process.

So how long are you going to keep telling us about it? Once I know that I am Ad-free I don't need to be reminded on every page, particularly with a rather distracting box with a yellow background.

I do find, in general, that the new layout seems to be rather more cluttered, and I have to scroll down further to get to the actual meat. I am also still finding it much more difficult now to identify those threads and posts that have changed since I last read them; these two definitely make the forums less useful to me, and I am less inclined to browse them.

 

[jpishgar]

I'll put in the user status online/offline addition to thread view as a feature request, since many of you would use it.

So how long are you going to keep telling us about it? Once I know that I am Ad-free I don't need to be reminded on every page, particularly with a rather distracting box with a yellow background.

It's a pretty big change, and we've had forum ads for a long, long long time now and are quite proud about being able to remove them for registered users. I don't expect the string about the changeover will persist overly long, since it's purely informative about the switch.

 

[lourson]

So how long are you going to keep telling us about it? Once I know that I am Ad-free I don't need to be reminded on every page, particularly with a rather distracting box with a yellow background.

You will have the ability to close this layer soon.

I do find, in general, that the new layout seems to be rather more cluttered, and I have to scroll down further to get to the actual meat. I am also still finding it much more difficult now to identify those threads and posts that have changed since I last read them; these two definitely make the forums less useful to me, and I am less inclined to browse them.

Would you be able to pin down some examples that could help us to improve the forum usability?
Have you tried using the "all threads" page for instance, which has some nice filters on read/tracked threads: www.tomshardware.com/forum/all.html I personally uses it a lot.

Thanks, all your comments are greatly appreciated and will help us to improve the community.

 

[mactronix]

Personally I don't like the tag's they are a very messy way of doing something that was very easy before with the different sections. you asked a question in displays and monitors that was where you looked for it.

I mean the Best answers reduced thread in Forums/Forum feed back has 7 different tags and none of them are feedback ?

I feel that the "Tags" are just an attempt at being cool and funky for no real usable benefit.

Mac

 

[Brett928S2]

Personally I don't like the tag's they are a very messy way of doing something that was very easy before with the different sections. you asked a question in displays and monitors that was where you looked for it.

I mean the Best answers reduced thread in Forums/Forum feed back has 7 different tags and none of them are feedback ?

I feel that the "Tags" are just an attempt at being cool and funky for no real usable benefit.

Mac

Hi

Tags have a bigger problem I foresee....

As an example, if I cut and pasted the list of my tags into that tag box.... that thread would grow drastically.... I would probably get a WHOLE PAGE for each of my posts, and so would all other veterans....


All the best Brett

 

[mactronix]

I had not thought of it like that but yes I agree its not very clever.
I assume they failed to take people being people into account when they put all these things which I grant would have seemed perfectly sound and workable when sat around a table discussing it.

Its something I come across a lot at work. People will be people and there is no such thing as fool proof, Oh you can try, and I have.

Mac

 

[randomizer]

There could be a hard limit on the number of tags per thread. I've never tried to find it though.

 

[Brett928S2]

There could be a hard limit on the number of tags per thread. I've never tried to find it though.

Hi

I would bet my Porsche on the fact that someone will try sooner or later.....

Probably someone, who has been banned in the past.... you know the ones....lol

All the best Brett

 

[manofchalk]

If there's a hard limit on the number of possible tags, its far too high.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1629582/build-good.html

 

[Ijack]

Would you be able to pin down some examples that could help us to improve the forum usability?

OK. It's a bit difficult to be precise as I don't have the old site to hand as a comparison, but let me first explain the way that I like to work. I'm mainly interested in Software questions, so I collapse all the other categories on the main page. On the old site it was very clearly indicated which sections had new posts since I last looked, and within the section the same was true of threads. As the threads are arranged in order of posting I could quickly scan through the threads until I reached the first one that hadn't changed since I last looked at it; in most cases that information fitted on a single page with no scrolling needed.

Now:

1. For starters the site is unusable with IE10 (I've reported that bug elsewhere). So I can only read it when I am in OS X, Linux, or on my iPad.

2. Although the categories can still be collapsed, that information is no longer retained, so there's no real point in doing so.

3. The "is now Ad free banner". A waste of space. I've read it once; the information could have been conveyed in a PM; now it's just an annoyance. I have ad-blockers in place so I didn't see adverts anyway; now I see this banner.

4. When you go into a category almost half of the page is taken up with header material - tags, content type, etc. This section can be collapsed but, again, that change isn't remembered so little point in doing so.

5. Flags and numbers tell me how many new posts there are in old threads (all old threads or just ones I have looked at?), but what about new threads. Is that information included? I just don't know. All I really need to know is are there new posts in existing or new threads. Yes - I can have a look at what's changed; No - I can ignore that forum.

6. OK, so now I'm in the "Linux/Free BSD" forum, for example, and I've collapsed the header. The whole first page still consists of stickies that I've seen a thousand times before. My impression is that each thread must be taking up more screen real estate. I can't remember it being like this before. So I have to scroll down to get to the posts I am actually interested in. I can't remember the stickies being quite that intrusive. Do we really need so many?

7. What's all that stuff in the left-hand column? Double-quotes, question marks. Orange flags, faded orange flags, blue flags, faded blue flags. What do they all mean? Something to do with read posts, I guess, but I can't figure out the details. And how can I see which was the last thread I read that has had no new updates?

8. One good innovation is the "New updates" in the right-hand column. But most of the rest of that column is wasted on me, particularly the animated "Latest experts" - I'm not a fan of animation on informational web pages; it's distracting.

8. Tags, etc. are of no use to me. I like to browse and, with a little serendipity, find posts that may not fit any particular set of tags that I filter by.

I appreciate that the site is designed now to have a little more eye candy, and that may well draw in new users. Unfortunately it doesn't fit the KISS philosophy that I like to work by. The previous site fitted that pretty well (although it had some very obvious flaws), but I find the new layout just gets in my way. Too many distractions, too much scrolling needed. The ideal would be a far more configurable layout, where I could hide aspects that didn't appeal to me and perhaps even have different themes for the display of threads (old-style, new style?).

You'll probably come back and tell me there's a document somewhere that explains the new layout. If so it's not obvious to me, but I'd love an explanation of what it all means. But, in the end, you should just be able to go on to a nice uncluttered site and it be self-evident how it works.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

If there's a hard limit on the number of possible tags, its far too high.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1629582/build-good.html

Lol. Damn that's a lot of tags.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

1. For starters the site is unusable with IE10 (I've reported that bug elsewhere). So I can only read it when I am in OS X, Linux, or on my iPad.

I use IE 10 and have not had any problems.

Edit: In fact I have used IE 10 on at least 5 different computers to access the site and not had any problems. All are Windows 7 either Home Premium or Ultimate.

 

[manofchalk]

7. What's all that stuff in the left-hand column? Double-quotes, question marks. Orange flags, faded orange flags, blue flags, faded blue flags. What do they all mean? Something to do with read posts, I guess, but I can't figure out the details. And how can I see which was the last thread I read that has had no new updates?

How long have you been using the forum for? All that was a part of the old forum as well.

Quotation Marks = Discussion topic, the OP isn't looking for a direct answer but a general discussion on something. Like asking for system advice, where multiple answers can all be correct and which one is best for the OP is hashed out in the thread.
Question Mark = The OP wants an exact answer, like the stock speed of a 3570k or something.
There's also a poll option which is represented by a bar chart. Fairly obvious what that's for.

A full colour orange flag means you'v looked in the thread before and their have been new posts since then. Faded means there hasn't been any new posts.
Blue is if you'v posted in the thread. If its full colour, there's a new reply, if its faded, then its there hasn't been a reply since you last looked at it.

The New Updates field on the right was in the last forum as well, except now it lists all the threads your involved in, bolding them if they have a reply you haven't seen yet.

Look for the uppermost faded orange flag?

 

[Ijack]

I'll take your word for it that those flags were in the old forums. I can't say I ever noticed them, just a simple envelope with a cross if there were no new posts. Absolutely self-explanatory.

I guess it's just me but I don't think I'll be coming back here so often. I accept that others like it, but it just doesn't work for me. Sorry for wasting your time.

 

[jpishgar]

This is great feedback, though as manofchalk mentioned, a lot of this was part of the previous forum. The yellow banner at the top mentioning the removal of ads is more for our newer members, so they know about the new feature.

 

[Ijack]

I appreciate that some of the points that I mention were present in the old forums, so the question is why do I notice them now when I didn't before? Part of the reason may be becaause I use the UK site, but -

Stickies; I was aware that the number hasn't changed (or has now changed minimally) but now they dominate the first page I see of a forum. Why? Because (it seems) the same material now takes up more real estate.

Flags; I'll accept that they were there before, but I never even noticed them or wondered what they meant. Why? Because there was a perfectly good way of determining new/changed posts in the form of envelopes(?) with and without crosses.

Without having the new and old sites side-by-side it's difficult to be sure but my firm impression is that the same amount of material takes up considerably more space in the new forum, which is a major downgrade. I use what I consider to be a fairly average resolution of 1280x1024 (1024x780) on my iPad and on every (or nearly every) forum that I look at I have to scroll down before I can see new material. That is poor design IMO.

 

[randomizer]

There is definitely more real estate taken by each thread. After all, tags are now shown below the titles which were never there before.

The flags used to be in a different location if I recall correctly, but indicated the same thing as they do now.