Forums – love ’em, hate ’em, or “meh”?

[WSB]

We know a lot of people in WSB-land won’t notice the new addition till things get serious after the holidays. But for everyone who’s here and participating, we’re awaiting feedback on this new addition – especially forum sections you’d like to see added, as we keep experimenting. Thanks!

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[AdamOnAlki]

I am so-far quite satisfied with the message boards. I have for some time been looking for a place to communally kvetch about the ridiculously long east/west traffic-light at California and Charleston. Now ‘the Blog’, as it is referred to be my close circle, has given me this opportunity.

Keep up the good work

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[Sue]

I like them. The format took a little getting used to since they’re very different than other forums I use, but they’re easy to use and it’s nice to be able to start a topic about something without hoping that you start it first, or hijacking another topic for something else. I’d love to see a “back” button though, or something to back to the main forum page – I didn’t find it instantly intuitive to click on the topic name to go back.

I really appreciate all the time and effort you put into the site!

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[Lucy]

Love it! Love it! Love it!

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[JanS]

Love ’em

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[Katherine]

What’s with these passwords? I’ll never remember that mishmash. Can we change them to our mother’s maiden name, or our dog’s birthday, or something?

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[beth]

so far so good

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[Sue]

Katherine, you can change the passwords. click on “member” below your name and it brings you to your profile. click on the “edit this information” link and you can change it there.

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[nyx]

I don’t like the current forums at all, although I am glad you’re adding this feature. The layout and typography isn’t particularly nice compared to other forums, and the user interface is sort of clumsy. You should improve that tiny little >> you have to click on to reply, for example! That’s just making it unnecessarily hard for us. Also, remove the line at the bottom of every page “Put code in between backticks“. We aren’t posting formatted code here and “backtick” isn’t a word any real person uses anyway.

You don’t need to use the regular WSB sidebar on this part of the site, either, it’s just wasting space. Ditch the links to the monthly archives (no one’s clicking on those anyway, folks…) and category links. Those things point to content that’s separate from the forums, so it’s irrelevant here. Once that’s gone, use the full width of the content area for the forums.

Given the homespun feel of this thing, I suspect you don’t have the admin tools necessary to handle these forums if they see any real growth. I expect it will get out of hand quickly if there are lots of people posting often on lots of threads. I would encourage you not to try to build your own here, just go with a free hosted site like Proboards (http://www.proboards.com/index.html).

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[WSB]

Hi, nyx, thanks for constructive criticism. The monthly archives and categories actually do get clicked, believe it or not. The look/feel will change when the site design evolves before too long, hopefully with an additional sidebar so more of the site content is reachable from any page, not less. However, datapoint, it’s actually not something we built ourselves – it’s bbPress; a free hosted site is not feasible for us since, as a business, the pages, views, and ads need to stay on our domain. Re: the small symbols for replying – what browser and OS are you using? We’re on Firefox/Mac OSX at the moment and both the heading “reply” and the button “send post” beneath the reply box are pretty big. Let us know and we’ll check.

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[GenHillOne]

Like ’em! Took me a few to figure out that I can separate RRR and Open Discussion topics but that makes it easier to navigate. The big combined list is overwhelming to me otherwise so I like that option.

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