The forum has to be redone, What needs to stay?

[unfocused]

Bring back Karma. (Just kidding) In fact, I'm not loving the thumbs up/thumbs down feature. Seems to take up a lot of space, but mostly my complaint is in how some people use it. Several sore losers who like to "thumbs down" any post that challenges their preconceived notions.

 

[unfocused]

I don't know how it could be done, but it would be nice to somehow make it more difficult for people to start threads that duplicate existing threads.

 

[unfocused]

Despite my plethora of comments, I would say that generally I would not be upset if there were no changes to anything except the look of the skin.

 

[Orangutan]

I'm confused, so this is only about the cosmetics? If so, dump the red theme. It makes people cranky and angry.

Of course! I wonder what color is used in psych hospitals to keep the inpatients sedate. ;D

 

[MrFotoFool]

I agree with unfocused that we do NOT need to increase the size of uploaded photos. Some are too big already and slow the download time.

Make the text annotations (bold, italic, etc) show up in real time instead of as code with brackets as you type it.

Add a section listing most recent posts. Not just the one most recent comment in each section, but all the threads with recent posts in order.

 

[Hillsilly]

I'd list a greater number of "Recent Forum Posts".

I predominantly only visit this site for short periods. I check out the headline rumours and see what has been discussed recently. If nothing catches my attention, I move on. Extending the list of recent forum posts would be the most likely way to have me stay on the site longer. And the longer I stay here, the more likely I'll click on an ad.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I see a lot of comments asking for things that are already possible. Perhaps a how to section for those who do not know how to do some things.

Personally, I'd like to have a next page button at the top and bottom of a page. I do not like scrolling down to the bottom and clicking on the tiny number.

You have lots of options in the look and layout section of your profile, there is a ignore boards check list in your profile, recent posts can be seen by clicking the link at the bottom of the forum home page.

 

[Maximilian]

Most the things have been mentioned before but I'd like to add some more emphasis:

• keep the forum snappy
• stay with a flat thread structure where you can read several posts at the same time
• think about those still using a classical PC or MAC and browser
  I really don't like posting without a keyboard
• posting editor easy to use, at least as easy as it is now
• chose a good compromise for file size for uploading pictures.
  Sometimes the loading time becomes annoying even with the relatively small pic size we have now
• unfollow/ignore discussion function without having to remove all my posts
• I was pro to leaving karma away, but I would prefer it instead of the dis-/like buttons.
  Leave both away. Or at least sum it up like you did with karma.
• Add a "how to?" and a "(photo-)abbreviations" section for newbies

Edit:
And thank you, Craig, for asking us.

 

[andrei1989]

+1 on the unsubscribing to a thread feature. i click on the 'Show new replies to your posts' button and get the same 2 threads...birds in flight and portraits of birds..

also, how about a new way to display attachments: a small clickable thumbnail which expands the photo to full screen. somthing like this <= not related to anything here, i just like how this forum handles attachments

 

[hne]

Thanks for asking!

I'd be happy if I wouldn't randomly get a "hi anonymous user. you're banned for life" message when trying to load enough of the forum to access the login page. It happens from time to time with various browsers. No correlation with network I connect from nor does it seem to be device dependent (tried

Oh, and skin-wise, please make the page width scale so it is possible to read on a phone.

 

[Eldar]

Thanks for asking,

I would like to see a change in the image galleries. My primary reason for going through these galleries is to view the images. However, some of theme get very lengthy comments, often on totally irrelevant topics, which makes it a bit tedious to go through both new and older posts. Today, yesterday's posts may be several pages back in history.

Suggestion: Introduce an expandable command line, stating the number of comments for the specific image, below each image. When pressed, all comments for that particular image should be visible. This way we would get a lot more images/page.

As Privatebydesign pointed out; Don't make all comments individually expandable. That takes forever to go through and it would (at least in my case) move people away from the forum.

 

[AcutancePhotography]

I don't know if there is anything that can be done with the search function, but it is not always easy to search for posts. Some other forums I haunt have both a simple and an advanced search function where you can designate more filters.

Perhaps, if it were easier to search, there might be a reduction in repeated threads (a fantasy I know)

I could also do with removing the emoticons. Especially the more insulting ones. We don't need more of that in these forums.

 

[LonelyBoy]

I'm confused, so this is only about the cosmetics? If so, dump the red theme. It makes people cranky and angry.

Of course! I wonder what color is used in psych hospitals to keep the inpatients sedate. ;D

I believe that would be either taupe or a pale blue-green-aqua sort of color. My assumption was that the red was to match the L ring, so.. match DO-green? 8)

 

[Old Sarge]

I am older and hard to train or retrain so I would like to see as little change to the navigation as practical. I would just as soon see the Like/Dislike buttons go (I know I have used them on this thread but most of the time they are just an "I hate x-photographer" button.....in this thread I used a "Thumbs Down" on one post and a "Thumbs Up" on another post by the same poster because of the ideas not the person). Definitely like the ability to just move through posts rather than a view which requires clicking on each post to see the contents.

Thanks for all you do to keep this forum going.

 

[NorbR]

Please discourage quoting a quote of a quote, and other means of using tons of space to say nothing.

I agree, 2 page of quotes of quotes of quotes just to add a +1 can be supremely annoying, but that's not something that should be limited by the forum, imho. It's just something users should learn not to do. But for those few cases where it's actually useful to have 3- or 4-level-deep quotes, I'd like that to still be possible.

Otherwise, I like the feature where, when you spend some time writing a post, you're warned before sending if new replies have been posted, and you can review them. Good to avoid repetition if someone just posted the same thing. I hope that can stay.

 

[Pancho]

I mainly use 2 buttons:
- Show unread posts since last visit
- Mark all messages as read

Thanks to keep them

 

[YuengLinger]

Please get rid of Like/Dislike. This is a nice refuge away from facebook!

Also, could you prohibit post stacking? That is, consecutive posts in a thread by the same person?

And, related, is there a way to make quoting snippets, rather than a whole post, easier? Tedious on my PC, but pretty hopeless on a tablet with no keyboard.

Finally, I'm not sure how you check member identity, but I've seen cases (much less lately) of posts from the same person using different names. Would IP checking be practical?

Thanks for such a helpful, open, and FUN forum!

 

[Canon Rumors Guy]

Please get rid of Like/Dislike. This is a nice refuge away from facebook!

This is a can't win thing. If it goes away I get complaints, if it stays I get complaints. I don't really like the current one, but I'll have to look into different systems.

Also, could you prohibit post stacking? That is, consecutive posts in a thread by the same person?

I don't know what the technical term for this is, but I do know what you mean. I'll research and see if there is an addon that prevents this

And, related, is there a way to make quoting snippets, rather than a whole post, easier? Tedious on my PC, but pretty hopeless on a tablet with no keyboard.

No idea, I'll look.

Finally, I'm not sure how you check member identity, but I've seen cases (much less lately) of posts from the same person using different names. Would IP checking be practical?

Admins and moderators can see IPs, and no one else for various reasons.

Thanks for the input!

 

[pwp]

I'd list a greater number of "Recent Forum Posts".

I predominantly only visit this site for short periods. I check out the headline rumours and see what has been discussed recently. If nothing catches my attention, I move on. Extending the list of recent forum posts would be the most likely way to have me stay on the site longer. And the longer I stay here, the more likely I'll click on an ad.

Agree. My CR visits are also very brief and over 90% of the forum visits are via "Recent Forum Posts".

-pw

 

[pwp]

Please get rid of Like/Dislike. This is a nice refuge away from Facebook!

Yes please. It's just so cheap & trashy, joining the rest of SM on a fast-track to the gutter. CR is better than this.

If you completely insist on staying with Like/Dislike, you've got to lose those appallingly designed, oversize thumbs in favor of tiny, bling-free items. Preferably, just dump it and consign it to a quickly forgotten history.

-pw