Feedback about new Discourse Forums

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@tommor Check out this How To.

For some reason the lessons I’m doing are not being recorded any more. Is this part of the new layout?

I’m waiting for @honeill and @victoriajensen to give me my daily dose of analysis for EURUSD. I think it will take a while. They must find the thread first.

what is everyone’s thoughts of the new babypips Forums, I for one do not like it, and I am someone who likes change, This reminds me of a new pair of shoes that hurt your feet, I guess I will get use to it and the new shoe pain will go away, But for the moment I do not see this as an improvement

Love to here others way in

I don’t mind it, but it was a shock at first.

The mobile app is a little laborious scrolling through one big page unlike the original BP where every 10 posts were on a separate page.

I already bought up my biggest concern which was the member names / level of input which is now hidden unless you visit a members profile. At the end of the day when you’re in a thread reading many contradictory answers it helps to see which members have invested the most time here…perhaps not always 100% accurate of an assumption to make, but reliable most of the time.

In fact this is the only forum I know where it doesn’t show post counts or interesting rankings, as silly or childish as this sounds it is indeed what motivates some members to invest more time here!

Yes I know we now have trust levels, but it doesn’t seem to hit the mark, yet anyway

With that being said, I’m really trying to embrace change!!

Would you mind providing some details about what you don’t like? Thanks!

The obvious problems PipMeHappy describes above illustrate that this Discourse software wasn’t designed for this kind of forum use, where threads can reach hundreds of pages. Nobody’s going to be willing to scroll through that for ever. It’s basically being used here for a purpose it isn’t fit for and was never designed for.

People are used to interfaces like VBulletin which are designed with user friendliness, member attraction and long thread posting in mind, and will prefer forums facilitating such discussions.

To be honest, the spam and moderation have already just about put me off this place anyway, so I may be biased, but I think the switchover to this weird software could easily turn out to be the forum’s death-knell.

BabyPips new look

Its certainly unfamiliar. New posts seem to have dropped off, nothing much going on here.

As a new user to the system, the system will recognize that you’ve been in a thread, and the next time you come back, remember where you were. Even on long threads. I’m not sure what 100’s of pages has to do about anything. If you had a 100 pages on the old site, you would have to click 100 times to get through all pages. On the new site, you scroll/mouse down, which you were already doing on the old site.[quote=“Quickly, post:29, topic:104670”]
Nobody’s going to be willing to scroll through that for ever.
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I think if the content makes sense and is interesting, you’ll scroll, just like you clicked through pages on the old site.[quote=“Quickly, post:29, topic:104670”]
People are used to interfaces like VBulletin which are designed with user friendliness,
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Vbulletin, at least our version hit a point of no development by the developers. The only thing being developed were security patches and even those were infrequent. We thought about an upgrade several years ago, but even back then, their newest flagship product didn’t suit our needs.

As for the spam, that is a problem, and we’re hopeful that once users get to know the system better, it will solve itself. Now, rather than waiting for a moderator to clear the spam, members at Trust Level 3 (TL3) can flag a post made by a new user (TL0) and it automatically gets hidden (along with every other post by that user). Anything flags made by members that are below TL3 will require 3 flags and the post is hidden and flagged for moderation (this may be reduced to 2 to aid in moderation). That’s a big change from vBulletin.[quote=“Quickly, post:29, topic:104670”]
but I think the switchover to this weird software could easily turn out to be the forum’s death-knell.
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Change is difficult for some. We can understand that. We just ask you give the new system a chance, and we think you’ll find that it outshines vBulletin on many levels.

Is that a compliment? [quote=“tommor, post:31, topic:104670”]
New posts seem to have dropped off, nothing much going on here.
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We’re on day 3 and into a weekend where traffic is always lower. Maybe give it just a tad longer before calling in the doom and gloom?

Thanks for the feedback everybody.

Thanks for the feedback, PipMeHappy. I would say that because vBulletin is the most used forum/discussion platform out there (or at least was when we adopted it), you definitely see the page buttons (pagination). It’s what most people are used to, and scrolling is a departure away from that. But we think the more you use it, the more it will grow on you. We don’t think it’s too much different that what most users were already doing, scrolling down to the buttons or using the keyboard down arrow to do the same thing. You have less to do! [quote=“PipMeHappy, post:15, topic:104670”]
I understand the badge system, a bit like for TripAdvisor reviews…I suppose a qualitative system will be more time consuming to administer while a quantitative one (e.g. post count) would be more easily automated.
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We have some more badges in store to recognize hitting certain milestones and performing certain actions. We think the community will really like these. But again, it’s something new and different compared to vBulletin. As for the rest of your comment, I’ll respond and discuss that in another thread.

Thanks again for your feedback. We really appreciate it.

Probably I didn’t explain my point about thread-length clearly enough, as my point apparently wasn’t taken.

In the forum as it was when I arrived, a few weeks ago, I found several threads with multiple hundreds of pages. It was possible with one click to go the last page. It was possible with a few clicks to read the last 5-10 pages before replying to whatever one wanted to reply to. That’s apparently no longer possible for a new member who hasn’t read the thread before while logged in and had his position in it “remembered” by the software. One has to scroll through perhaps multiple thousands of posts just in order to be able to read the current discussion and respond to it. Nobody’s going to do that, so that’s a huge problem.

Discourse isn’t designed for a forum with threads of that sort of length.

It appears from the Discourse website that it isn’t really designed primarily for forums at all.

There’s also no point in asking for feedback if you’re going to respond to your members’ perfectly valid observations with lines like “Change is difficult for some”.

That’s just patronizing, and rude.

This is all very, very wrong and inappropriate. I’m telling you as a user of your site and component of your traffic that you should be trying to attract and keep me, not dismiss my comments and patronize me.

I’m already starting to see what PipMeHappy means by his comment above that the site doesn’t do anything to keep people around for the long term. I think he was probably putting it very tactfully, too.

Thanks for the feedback @Quickly.

You may find some benefit in the timeline feature to the left. Drag the green handle up or down to move between the posts. We think this is an even easier way of moving around than page buttons.

BP Timeline.png140×561 5.69 KB

I think you will find that the timeline feature will help with with exactly those lengthy threads. No need to use your scroll wheel or repeatedly press the down arrow. Just drag to the specific post you want to read. And when you’re on the mobile version of the Forums, you can click on the post count at the bottom of the screen to jump to a specific post as well.[quote=“Quickly, post:34, topic:104670”]
That’s just patronizing, and rude.
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That wasn’t my intention. I was just making that point that many have voiced the same concerns. My apologies if that didn’t come across. Thanks for the feedback!

web site design, content and functionality has transformed my business, this new site is good and it is modern.

But it is always the little things that determine the best.

The lack of pagination will likely be to the detriment of this new enterprise.

Consider why newspapers use columns.

“Infinite scroll” is the computer equivalent of full page print width in the old days.

one other tiny point - the editor, basic thing like capitalization on first word.

Good luck with the new site, it’s always a big decision to make change, key is to make the change for the better, not just for the sake of change - ask coca cola in 1985

Thanks for the feedback. That’s definitely a potential side effect of infinite scroll, one we’ll continue to monitor. Thanks!

Just to reinforce - I saw mike’s journal and that there was a new post from him.

I enjoy his forthright thinking, but I gave up trying to get to the bottom of the page - will try again later.

Functionality - I’m using an older win7 laptop, so will have to switch to a newer computer.

Did you happen to try the timeline feature to the left of thread and posts?

You know you can click and ‘drag’ the scroll all the way to the bottom for instant view of the most recent post?

Apologies if this doesn’t work on Win7 - don’t want to be the one to point out the obvious.

Discourse has apparently solved a lot of problems that I didn’t have in the first place. Thanks a bunch.