Feedback: Official Forums

[JackOfAllGames.2409]

Kudos on the new forum! I love the new look...and I was shocked when I encountered a message warning me that the feature required Javascript. I completely forgot it was disabled! So many web developers/designers overuse scripting - to the point that the site can't function without it. I tip my hat to you!

 

The only annoyance I've noticed so far is that "draft saved" pop-up, warning each minute that a draft has been saved - popping up in the middle of the screen. I imagine that's unintentional. It'd be nice if that could be done in simple text (no window). ...or at least put the window in unused space.

[bobsort.4097]

About time! Thank you for improvements, hope to see the REFERER browser header requirement removed from login page too

[bobsort.4097]

Is it possible to move the buttons to header of post as icons? and the shadow under gear (option for own post) makes it look weird.

[bobsort.4097]

It would be great if:

 

- I could sort posts by their 'helpful' or 'Thumbs up ' ranking and 'newest' too. it makes it possible to hide noise and see the best or read new ones and rank it up if it is interesting.

 

- On a quoted post I could click on a link to find the original post

 

- While editing a post, hide the area for making new post, it is confusing as there are 2 edit boxes with full toolbar appears. (on a small screen, you might even enter a new post by mistake instead of editing the current one)

 

- A Last and first button is missing from page navigation.

 

- GW2 member identifier (red background of the name) looks like a separator, it would be great you could change it to a box around the post with red border and member picture in a red background instead.

 

- I believe a system like stackoverflow works much better, allowing close votes (delete) up and down (which makes a post look grey). It is a tested platform and actually works. downvotes will reduce your reputation by one, which makes you think twice before down voting an article. without a thumb down, do you think people will even read all posts in 25 pages to find helpful posts? there should be a way to remove the noise.

 

- I believe we will need outdated under report button too, for posts that are not valid anymore (such as posts made about old mastery points or items that do not exists in game anymore). this will allow removal of the post or may be showing an indicator on post telling readers that it is not valid anymore.

 

- And finaly please remove avatars from topic list and make them single line, it really looks cluttered, specially the bolder `new`, `announcement` and `ArenaNet` icons, pushes topic title to background

[knyy.6427]

Can we get dev post more visible with maybe different colors? Don't k ow about the desktop version but you can't see differences in the mobile version!

 

And a dev tracker maybe.

[MiniMe.1960]

I would love a dark theme/night mode. I don't like bright forums, kind of hurts my eyes :(

Also avatars should be free selectable. If everyone has the same it doesn't help alot. And what happend to the Thumbs down? Geez give me a break, this aint hello kitty where criticism is a bad thing.

edit: A block/ignore option would be nice.

 

[Erasculio.2914]

> @"Gaile Gray.6029" said:

> During a one-week review, we noticed a consistent piece of advice -- backed by very sound reasoning -- that we have acted on today:

>

> * We have removed the "Thumbs Down" option in our Reaction System

>

> Please feel free to use the "Thumbs Up" and "Helpful" reactions, as you desire. And of course, you are welcome to share your feedback and opinions in constructive forum posts, as well.

 

Thanks Gaile. This is a great change, and I'm happy to see it implemented quickly. It'll make wonders in promoting positivity as opposed to negativity within the community.

 

 

 

[Menadena.7482]

> @bobsort.4097 said:

> It would be great if:

>

> - I could sort posts by their 'helpful' or 'Thumbs up ' ranking and 'newest' too. it makes it possible to hide noise and see the best or read new ones and rank it up if it is interesting.

>

> - On a quoted post I could click on a link to find the original post

>

> - While editing a post, hide the area for making new post, it is confusing as there are 2 edit boxes with full toolbar appears. (on a small screen, you might even enter a new post by mistake instead of editing the current one)

>

> - A Last and first button is missing from page navigation.

>

> - GW2 member identifier (red background of the name) looks like a separator, it would be great you could change it to a box around the post with red border and member picture in a red background instead.

>

> - I believe a system like stackoverflow works much better, allowing close votes (delete) up and down (which makes a post look grey). It is a tested platform and actually works. downvotes will reduce your reputation by one, which makes you think twice before down voting an article. without a thumb down, do you think people will even read all posts in 25 pages to find helpful posts? there should be a way to remove the noise.

>

> - I believe we will need outdated under report button too, for posts that are not valid anymore (such as posts made about old mastery points or items that do not exists in game anymore). this will allow removal of the post or may be showing an indicator on post telling readers that it is not valid anymore.

>

> - A favorite list would be great, for posts that you like to follow up, you know. May be just an star under the avatar?

>

> - And finaly please remove avatars from topic list and make them single line, it really looks cluttered, specially the bolder `new`, `announcement` and `ArenaNet` icons, pushes topic title to background

 

While I agree that we need linkbacks to quoted material I wholeheartedly give a thumbs down to sorting or hiding by reaction buttons. Part of the blowup in the first place that lost us thumbs down was people thinking that too many thumbs down would hide a post and a lot of thumbs up would promote it. Reaction buttons should do just that .... show the reactions. Think facebook but with the option to give negative feedback rather than sugar coat everything.

[Menadena.7482]

> @Erasculio.2914 said:

> > @"Gaile Gray.6029" said:

> > During a one-week review, we noticed a consistent piece of advice -- backed by very sound reasoning -- that we have acted on today:

> >

> > * We have removed the "Thumbs Down" option in our Reaction System

> >

> > Please feel free to use the "Thumbs Up" and "Helpful" reactions, as you desire. And of course, you are welcome to share your feedback and opinions in constructive forum posts, as well.

>

> Thanks Gaile. This is a great change, and I'm happy to see it implemented quickly. It'll make wonders in promoting positivity as opposed to negativity within the community.

>

>

>

 

Thumbs down!!!!!!!!

[Diruuo.6314]

Why is there no longer a button or UI element to advance to the next ArenaNet post in the thread? Or to go back to the previous one. This is literally one of the few ways these forums are readable for me. I visit the forums to familiarize myself with the Dev posts more so than anything else.

[Menadena.7482]

> @"Gaile Gray.6029" said:

> During a one-week review, we noticed a consistent piece of advice -- backed by very sound reasoning -- that we have acted on today:

>

> * We have removed the "Thumbs Down" option in our Reaction System

>

> Please feel free to use the "Thumbs Up" and "Helpful" reactions, as you desire. And of course, you are welcome to share your feedback and opinions in constructive forum posts, as well.

>

> Thanks for your feedback on this subject. I'm continuing to collect feedback on a multitude of subjects and will be sharing it with the larger team later this week and into the future, as other thoughts are shared on this subject.

>

 

Gaile, sorry, but an extreme thumbs down on that!

 

Not knowing the mod controls I assume the reaction buttons do nothing? In which case, why remove one and not all of them? Say someone posts 'profession xyz needs a nerf'. It gets 50 thumbs up reactions. Does that mean there is a lot of support that it needs a nerf or that there are 500 potential thumbs down votes?

 

Ok, now assume someone posts something even more inflammatory. Maybe it breaks the forum rules, maybe not, but in any case it gets some thumbs up votes before anyone can do about it. A hungry games reporter sees it and quickly writes an article that we are supporting whatever on these forums.

 

Do you see why it is a choice between both or neither?

[Menadena.7482]

> @Abakk.9176 said:

> The upvote is incapable of doing harm so it really is of no consequense if they leave it.

 

Thumbs down.

 

Read my above posts where I outlined specific ways where it can do harm to only have a thumbs up option. Not to the poster though, but in those examples to anet.

 

Of course if you insist on the poster you can do that too. Someone just needs to ask if they should do something that is not a good idea. Trolls will hit thumbs up faster than other people can start replying.

 

[ilmi.5369]

I must admit that I like the layout of the old forums better, although I'm not arguing about the potentially improved functionality: The new one has a lot of white space that makes it difficult to see the page at one glance and that makes the content look cluttered and unsorted.

 

Browsing in a topic from one post to the next requires much more scrolling and especially on a notebook and smaller screens I cannot see more than one post at the same time if they are a bit longer. Just the account name and the respective icon already take so much space. The line spacing is pretty big and one forum site just does not appear quickly comprehensible.

 

Also the topic overview page gives space to maybe 10 topics due to the massive space each topic takes on the selection screen.

 

As a professional UX designer working in online advertising since years, it appears to me as if the style sheets were broken - definitely not a good user experience. I would appreciate if the layout would be cleaned up a bit and the information clustered.

[skullmount.1758]

It sucks that now we can't click on a quoted comment and be taken to where it was (was useful to see what was happening in the conversation at the time).

 

And that there is no way to go between the dev comments. You can click the anet tag on the dev tracker/threads but that will take you to the first anet comment only if you haven't gone to that thread before. Any other time it takes to you to the last page/newest comment from anyone in the thread (or where you left off last).

 

Also you can't just go between the dev comments like in the old forums where we had the up/down buttons in the red posts to be able to jump between just the dev comments. Really miss that option...

 

Also sucks that we can't attach/upload images anymore. We can only link to ones on the web, and even then it doesn't embed/preview the image its just a link, while youtube links embed into the posts automatically...

 

Kitten filter actually changes the words now? I thought it was just a display. That sucks. I liked being able to hit reply and see what people had actually wrote.

edit: and now it didn't filter sucks...

[maddoctor.2738]

Is there a way to know which posts you used Thumb up on? Other than pressing the button to see if the number goes down

[Auralae.7482]

Very distracting and unpleasant to read in the new format. The broken lines all over the place distract while not really managing to do a good job of visually breaking up posts.

[Kreiri.9048]

Your css rule for poll post labels on category pages is still broken. Right now, it is:

 

.Tag-Poll {

background-color: #fba000;

}

 

and is being overridden by rules

 

.Section-DiscussionList .DiscussionsTable .DiscussionName .HasNew, .Section-DiscussionList .DiscussionsTable .DiscussionName .Meta .Tag, .Section-DiscussionList .DiscussionsTable .DiscussionName .MItem

 

which set background color as gray. Looking at css rules for other tags, it looks like it should be

 

.Section-DiscussionList .DiscussionsTable .DiscussionName .HasNew.Tag-Poll,

.Section-DiscussionList .DiscussionsTable .DiscussionName .Meta .Tag.Tag-Poll,

.Section-DiscussionList .DiscussionsTable .DiscussionName .MItem.Tag-Poll {

background-color: #fba000;

}

 

instead. Unless poll labels are **supposed** to be that "disabled gray" color, but then why would you have that rule for orange bg color?

[JustTrogdor.7892]

I still really dislike the layout of this forum. I tried to give it some time. Things are too spaced apart and there is way too much clutter and scrolling to browse through thread titles. Thread titles don't catch my eye as quickly with all the other clutter around them. I've found myself reading and participating less (most here will probably consider that a plus). I found I usually only scroll through the first 15-20 thread titles (after getting past all the sticky thread clutter in general discussion) before I move on because it's just too hard on the eyes.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

I dislike the overuse of ALL CAPS for

* Heading 1

* Heading 2

* Polls

* Thread titles (as seen at the top of the page).

 

I'd far, far prefer to see at least a combination of small caps, e.g. SMALL, but better would be using bold/italics/font-size/font-family-variation rather than ALLCAPS. (It really does look like 20th century BBS instead of a slick new forum.)

[Khisanth.2948]

https://imgur.com/a/CPs2X got it looking mostly how I want it. Haven't decided if I want to make the post header sticky like the report/quote/etc. buttons.

[FrouFrou.4958]

I didn't read the whole topic, but I can't seem to get the preview to work. Is it just me or is it yet another feature gated behind badges?

[Khisanth.2948]

Preview works fine for me but but maybe that is part of the two star thing. The Preview/Edit/Save Draft buttons are misleadingly greyed out despite the fact that they are available for use. On the other hand the paging buttons are the same color ...

[TexZero.7910]

I cannot believe it's taken me this long to figure out....

 

Threads no longer have a mark as read function or if they do it's pretty well hidden.

 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

> @TexZero.7910 said:

> I cannot believe it's taken me this long to figure out....

>

> Threads no longer have a mark as read function or if they do it's pretty well hidden.

>

 

They do, it's just different. If it says 'New', it has either never been read, or there is a new post since you last opened it. If it says 'x New', you've opened it and there are new posts. The greyed-out feature was just easier, in my opinion, on the old forums.

 

Good luck.

[mortrialus.3062]

When I'm typing message, the notification that the draft is saved often shows up exactly where I'm trying to type.