Recent features

I assume the first two are recent, in that I don't remember seeing them before.

1) "Start a conversation" in the left-pane author's-panel is a space waster surely? Just clicking on the User's Avatar provided (and still does provide) a link to "Start a conversation"

Similarly the link on each message to "Quote in conversation" - in a Forum surely it is counter productive to encourage private conversation on topics? If someone wants to ask the OP something specific there is means enough, without so may mechanisms - which will, in the main, be rarely used and intrude into the message space?

2) I rather resent "This thread is being watched by 999 users" then listing my name. It adds credence to the thread and provides a means of people reverse engineering what I might be interested in. In fact I am "watching" a thread by having replied to it ... not quite the same thing as necessarily being interested in it, although at times I might have specifically clicked on "Watch" when I haven't replied. Either way, I'm not sure I like the fact being made public knowledge. (The count may be useful, although I doubt it, but the list is an intrusion)

Edit: This thread is immediately "being watched by 1 users" ... me, coz I created it ... can't see any benefit at all, just wibble which reduces the ease of viewing the content.

3) Perchance I missed it, but an "announcement" of changes would be helpful - so that folk who don't spot them are made aware, and folk that are scratching their head thinking that maybe something has changed won't be thinking they must be going balmy.

Points above were written before today's changes

4) With regard to today's changes I am hating them:

I find them highly intrusive into the message space, and with my dyslexia it dramatically effects my ability to read the messages themselves (I have Signatures turned off for same reason).

And there is a Bad Spelling icon ... people who moan about that in messages are bad enough, and should get a life, but providing them with an icon to be able to highlight someone else's disability is grim.

I'm here to help folk with their gardening questions, and as a side effect some social interaction takes place. Not the other way around.

 

I'm getting checker-board artefacts (looks like the background shown in image editing software to indicate a transparent background, if that helps describe it) top and/or bottom of screen when scrolling a message - particularly if I scroll quickly [with mouse-wheel]. May be related to something when the page loads, as I think it only occurs for a while after page loading (I have business broadband here, so it should be at least as good as most home-users)

 

Howdy

As for a List of changes, Some have yet to be enabled, Nathan will be compiling an announcement once he has decided/configured them.

I am not sure which of the 3 main things you mentioned will be staying or in which capacity, Nathan will be deciding on their fate.

They came along with the Upgrade.

 

I like the new shoutbox (Chat) idea as real time talk can sometimes be better at explaining or discussing things that a forum posting, so therefore it's useful.

What I do not like is that everytime a new post or topic is start it is announced in the chat box...so disrupting chat. It was pointed out to me that one could click the chat area to "pop it out" so making it less confusing, I disagree and even if it was it still requires the user to pop it out.

Topic and new posts are already available in the "Whats new" and "Spy" areas of the forum...so no real benefit to having them in a chat area.

Steve...

 

those can be disabled from showing if the majority wishes it

or it can be reduced to only show new threads (not new replies to threads)

 

I can see one advantage Steve - if you are having a chat with members and someone replies to a thread you are interested in (or, like me, this one cropped up and I wasn't aware of it) then it's a good opportunity to click the link - otherwise, I would have to actively scroll/click for spy/whats new. Or miss it completely, because if I left the site it wouldn't then show up in the "What's New".

In that regard it can be a time saver (and we all only have a limited amount of that).

 

I can see merit in that. particularly if the "rating" for a post showed in Searches etc. as it might highlight to the person searching that a thread was considered helpful (or was just some advertising junk, at the other extreme!)

As with all these things though it takes some critical mass for it to become useful. Amazon Reviews have plenty of Up/Down Votes, but we have clients who spend £n0,000 on building "social interaction" and get just a handful of Likes on Facebook, which makes it a farce. Everywhere I travel on the internet I am confronted with "Be the first to review this" which suggest to me that there is general ambivalence to such things ...

The Xenoforo folk are pushing the boundaries, and I think it is an excellent choice of forum software. I've stopped using a couple of forums because their software is so Dickensian in use - not able to mark threads that are of interest to me to be able to quickly have them highlighted (i.e. the Watched Threads list) and so on means that the time I have available is too diluted on those forums.

P.S. On that point ... what would be really nice, IMHO, was a "If you read a thread it is marked as "Watched", so I have to actively click "Not interested". I read a thread several times in What's New before realising that I haven't pushed "Watch"

 

Is that the case? I think that threads show up in What's New for "a while"? Maybe its only 24 hours (certainly when I go away for a while I wish it was longer ... although if the thread is active it will pop-up again in What's New when there is another post to it).

If you WATCH a thread that a new post will remain in your Watched Threads list indefinitely I think? (I have been busy recently, and the oldest in mine is 5th January - I've only looked at Titles that I knew I was active in, plus skimmed What's New in order not to miss anything)

Just typing out loud, so to speak ...

 

Makes a bit of a mockery of the "Hide my online status" too ... as even when "hidden" your activity shows up in there ...

 

Chat is at the top of the page on the Forum front page


Interestingly, I began a conversation with a forum member last week in response to a thread post; so the Quote in Conversation would have been time saving in that instance. Obviously it wasn't here then, so I did it the longer winded way: copy the post; click on member, click "start a conversation", paste the copied post in quote marks.

 

But it would have shown up in spy and whats new also, surely?

 

Yeah, those are the ones. The "Signal to Noise Ratio" has changed significantly, from my perspective:

 

Indeed, I did raise it when it was first introduced (I was a Beta tester at that time). I think there was an issue then that some additional information, which several people were not happy about, was visible, and that was changed.

It doesn't bother me per se, but people who are using this from work (rightly or wrongly!!!) and thus tick the "Hide my online status" may not realise that they aren't anything like as hidden as they perhaps thought ...

 

I think there is potential for this forum to become a less friendly place if the Dislike, Bad Spelling and Dumb ratings are not removed.