Choice of Games has a new forum

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23

@eleazzaar The infernal scrolling remains rather annoying and, not that this is yet the case here, on image intensive sites like some tumblr accounts the scrolling always begins to lag horribly for me when attempting to load things from say a year ago. I could see the same thing happening with huge topics here.

I would very much prefer pagination and maybe something could be done about the color scheme and layout to bring it closer to the more organized and easier on the eyes thing that it used to be.
I agree that the new features including a proper system for quoting and replying to individual post are neat but IMHO the forums could still use a bit of work to make them as easy to use as the old ones were.

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24

For those worried about pagination, have you tried the keyboard shortcuts? Press ? to see the shortcuts, but in particular, j/k lets you navigate to the next post.

25

Text is very different from images. Hundreds of in-depth posts probably require less data to transmit than a few large-ish images.

26

I know people often reflexively recoil from big changes to things they use. With that in mind, I don’t like the layout of the new main page. There’s too much empty space between columns. It forces your eye you look at a bunch of different places across the screen to register the same information that you could previously get simply from looking at one spot. That doesn’t sound important but it is. The little logos about the people using a topic, or whatever those little box graphics things are, don’t seem to make any sense and just clutter the screen. Ditto the numbers for # of posts vs # of views. Televisionwithoutpity used to have that info but it was presented more coherently.

27

Yes but in removing pagination Discourse is trying desperately to fix something that isn’t broken for most applications.
For example, when it comes to the work in progress section of this site, unless they change the rules so that the most recent links to a WIP are now always in the first post, it will become very annoying very quickly to have to scroll up aimlessly until I find the link to the most recent version, whereas the concept of “new page new link” always allowed me very quickly get into the action if a just want to try out a new work. The annoying green thing at bottom that indicates post count and my position in the thread is of minimal use to me in actually helping me navigate a thread when trying to find something quickly.

28

not crazy about the white background. kinda hard on the eyes. scrolling is also less convenient than page format.

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29

Agree on the scrolling as well, what a pain in the…

30

i just "star"ed a topic and it told me:

“We have a daily limit on how many times that action can be taken. Please wait 23 hours before trying again.”

i get that i recently "star"ed a whole bunch of topics but should there really be a daily limit on this?

31

I like the new forum. Very slick. I haven’t taken the time to really get acquainted with it but the few things I have looked at are very nice upgrades.

I think there should be a limit on topics that can be made in a certain time period. It is a precaution to eliminate spammers. I am not sure what the limit is exactly, but there should be some kind of limit, in my opinion.

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32

I just wish COG had taken notice of things like this article http://www.nngroup.com/articles/infinite-scrolling/ before implementing these changes. While many of the new features are nice overall I can’t help but feel the new forums are a case of one step forwards and two steps back.

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33

That article says that infinite scrolling is good for forums.

Continuous scrolling is advantageous for content that streams constantly and has a relatively flat structure, where each unit of content belongs at the same level of hierarchy and has similar chances of being interesting to users.

Long, endless pages are good for time-killing activities because users are in the mindset for serendipitous exploration and discovery. The advantage of not having to acquire and click “next page” keeps audiences engaged with the content and less focused on the mechanics of navigating to the next page. (A benefit of lower interaction cost.)

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34

Yes and no but on this forum I’d strongly lean towards a no not all browsing on a forum is a casual time-killing activity where one wants to serendipitously discover new interesting things. Often times I want to find something an author has said some time ago or find the most recent link to a work in progress, infinite scroll is a big obstacle to doing that. In essence infinite scroll deprecates all thread content safe the first and last (few) posts. This may be fine for other threads like the one discussing upcoming games like Dragon Age Inquisition where most people would naturally only be interested in the last few posts containing the most recent information, rumours and speculation but even then infinite scroll is very annoying, at least when I’m working on my computer and I always use my computer for normal web browsing.

2 Likes
35

@idonotlikeusernames and @MutonElite, the XX/XX scroll in in the bottom right can jump you anywhere in a conversation. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it preferable to the pages. To check the OP, all I have to do is type # 1 enter and it sends me right to the first post. To get to the end, or anywhere else, just change the number.

This is the big point I agree with, but in a slightly different way. Discourse seems to have generally used large margins, which creates some, strange annoyances with appearances.

The first is an agreement that the Posts/Views/Activity could be narrowed a little bit to take up less room. As for your mention of the display of frequent posters, I really like it. It tells me who’s actually talking in a topic which can tell me a lot about a topic. For example, if @CJW is in a topic, I know that any technical aspects are well covered. If it’s a question that I have, that’s the first place to look, while if it’s a question I think I can answer, I know the answer is already covered.

The second is, because of Vanilla’s structure, we’ve had a lot of pinned topics, but this isn’t really a good idea with Discourse. This is, I think, mostly just Jason needing to change how he posts to beta requests.

A small point, and I think this is a cross between Discourse not being clear in what certain things are used for and new users naturally having used the system for very long. ‘Favorited’ topics are mostly meant to be for topics that you want to go back to after the fact. Watching topics (which you can change at the bottom of every thread) is probably more what you’re looking for. It’ll mean any new posts in any thread you’re watching will get sent to the ‘Unread’ grouping at the top of the main forums.

Discourse will also auto watch certain threads for you (the exact settings can be changed in your preferences).

AFAIK, already covered (it’s a default function of Discourse).

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36

That’s the theory in practice the annoying green thing is only useful for jumping to very begining or the end of a thread, unless you happen to know the exact post number of something you are looking for, hint I never do. Like I said before I hope the rules on editing will be changed so all WIP’s always contain the latest link in the first post as haplessly scrolling up until I find something is very annoying.Also in the annoying green thing I have to actually open it enter a post number and hope that takes me somewhere close to where I remember something being as opposed to simply clicking on a page number. So while the green thing can take me to any point in a conversation it’s more of chore then simple pagination and an example of trying to fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place.

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37

This is all so new. ;_; Goodbye my lovely old forum, I’ll miss you.

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38

“the XX/XX scroll in in the bottom right can jump you anywhere in a conversation. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it preferable to the pages.”

Agree completely.

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39

I agree. It’s just a lot of new changes. This is all going to get a lot of getting used to, but it’ll come.

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40

I much prefered pages, this scrolling thing is weird and on phones it’s a huge hassle.
I can probably get used to it, but I think everything is kinda messy. To be honest I liked the other one better, but as with all things new we get used to it over time.

Also I should add that collecting the badges will be my next big hobby… Curse you!

Update! : I love that I can filter the threads, now I can easily mute the topics which I have no interest in. And I can track the ones I do care about.

41

@noogai I know what you mean about the badges you mentioned over here. It makes me want to do strange things just to collect them. :slight_smile:

EDIT: At least it’s helping me learn the new system. :wink:

2 Likes
42

Should the Choicescript Tutorials have their own sub forum?