Fancy new changes to the Forum

One new change is you cannot read threads if you’re not logged in. I guess it keeps all forum conversations private and limited to members.

DAL

Improvements are welcome of course, but for me the forums have taken a major step back for those who rely on email notifications on topics they are interested in.

While arguably the old forum had too many different sections, this forum has none when considering English language Logos/Verbum. If you want email notifications of new threads/posts, you get it all - every denomination, platform, etc.

Second and more importantly, the old forums sent emails with the message id of the original post, so they could be received and displayed "threaded" in most email clients. Then, I might see 10 threads that have 50 emails and 12 new ones - easy to ignore the threads on topics I am not interested in. Now, there is no threading, so I get a new post as a new email with no threading - clutters things up a lot on my end. And some topics, we all know examples of them, have LOTS of posts - and it's not only a topic of little interest, but it does an excellent job of camouflaging other posts when they are all dumped into an email client.

Plus, the titles are harder to read as now we get the username and some action before the true subject, like "<user> has commented on <topic>", or "<user> has started a new discussion <topic>".

I have researched this threading issue, because if it worked, it would be a whole lot easier to ignore topics not interested in, since I get all topics now per the first issue. And in my research, I found threading in all major email clients is based on a field containing the original post's message id - if that matches, email clients will drop the message into the same thread. I did some experimenting with changing message titles when they arrive, and 2 emails with identical titles will not be threaded if the original message ids don't match. In the new forum, erroneously I might add, every post has its own message is the "originating" message id. This is not only incorrect, but from what I have been told it won't change.

Also, having threads, in Gmail I could "star" topics I was especially interested in, or where I asked a question, etc., to be sure I didn't miss it. Starring anything now is meaningless.

I use the forums less now; they just don't fit into my work style as well anymore. Editing and navigation improvements are nice, but imho are not the most egregious lost features of the former system. Sad, but life goes on.

Basically, if you want your comment to be hidden, use the 'Reply' button. The threading will do the job.

And any reply to me (for me) won't be seen. It'll look like 'forget you!'. Sorry about that.

I've pretty much concluded the latest forum update will transition the forum to a 'repair shop' orientation. Issue/answer/done.

Jason seems to have fixed that

It seems like a lot of the fancy things don't really work out well in real life. I can see why it might help to mark an accepted answer. The it was done or is done now will help some who find the thread later. But both, putting those answer at the top or even worse only showing that one at first is confusing for all who would like to read the whole thing and don't realize they are only presented with a small part. And context is important, not just in Bible exegesis, but also in forum reading! Other things that don't seem necessary are badges and stars and whatever gamification there is. I think no one who spends time here, would be motivated by those. The only thing of those I would keep (but we lost it) is the overall post count for a person.

There are some very basic things that should be done before all the fancy stuff:

• Read/Unread (Bold/Normal): When someone makes a new comment in an older thread it often still shows as Read for me, even though I haven't see the latest post. And since today the status doesn't change at all anymore. Even if I have opened a thread several times since the last comments was made, it is still shown in bold. We also need "Mark all as read" and "Show only unread"
• There should be a way to limit search to the location you are at (for example Feedback)
• A click on the thread title should take me to the first post that I have not read (the old forum couldn't do that, only going to the last post was possible, but that was better than the mess we have now, seems like now it always takes me to the top of the thread.
• Feedback needs to be distinguished or moderated better (or MVPs need the ability to move threads in and out of Feedback). There are so many threads now where someone asks a question, but the thread gets a vote button. Many others are duplicates. Sometimes people post in the general forum with a great feedback item, which then gets lost.

Looks like Jason turned off threading? I can find replies!

I think it looks good - but I'm not sure I like the threaded responses for functionality - it is one of the things that Reddit is limited by IMHO

I missed that….