Some observations about the new forum

[nzo 16]

I find this hard to say clearly, having lived with the old forum for a longish time and the new forum for only a short time.
Although the old forum had some long-time bugs and as a beginner i found it hard to get a handle on it, it had a certain order to how the content was arranged. I knew fairly accurately where to go to find stuff. Now the flow of the forum feels broken and 'lumped' together.

 

My impression is that the new forum came about from a desire to fix those old bugs and to make the forum more user friendly.

But somewhere the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. Bugs aside, I liked the ordering of main and sub categories of the old forum. It now feels as if you are trying to reinvent the wheel and to make it new, new, new.

 

It reminds me of the Windows range of operating systems where each new OS version becomes more and more complex and difficult to navigate and instead of a wonder of user-friendly design it becomes a lame duck, with hard-won learning curves tossed aside and users left to sink, swim or drowned in information overload.

 

Perhaps the forum team can now have some time out to be with your friends and families and come back to the forum when you're refreshed and clear-headed.

 

Einstein, and later Bernaud Mandelbrot (the discoverer of fractals), were highly aware that underneath the enormous complexity of the universe there are very simple foundations and order.

 

Have a great Christmas and New Year.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 22, 2017 by nzo

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @nzo, 

 

Thank you for your message and sharing your feedback with us. Time will tell, but I can imagine some of the things you experience will just require some getting used to. 

Just like you say you had a hard time finding your way in the beginning on the previous forum, which you grew to like after some time, perhaps you will also grow to like the new forum after you are more familiar with its ways. 

 

5 hours ago, nzo said:

My impression is that the new forum came about from a desire to fix those old bugs and to make the forum more user friendly.

 

This sounds like a very accurate impression. 

 

If you have some specific problems in your user experience that you can share, I can think with you towards a potential solution.

 

The first thing that comes to mind, did you already take a look at the Fluid view? You can either see all new topics, or just those of the categories you select on the right.

 

 

Looking forward to hear what you think, and if there is more we can do to help

[nzo 16]

We are both right sandervG We will always see things and processes differently. Let's begin with some relativity.

This is your web page structure, seen on a vertically oriented (portrait) 1080x1920 his res monitor: Do you see any problems with this page? I'm using Win7 Ult 32bit and the bottom half of the trademark robot was so big it not fit on the screen without more scrolling.

 

Edited December 22, 2017 by nzo

[andywalter 7]

I've just logged in yesterday, after being away about 18 months. I've added a lot of pics & interesting stuff to a thread about direct-drive & eliminating belts. I found where that thread had gone by a search; it wasn't obvious. My additions are actually here; I cannot see how to find them, starting from the top!  community.ultimaker.com/topic/1114-throw-away-your-short-belts-direct-drive/

 

Having just added a lot more stuff yesterday & today, I'd expect on the main Forum page, to see a large selection of threads on offer, with maybe the most recently added-to ones at the top.

All I can see is 3 threads offered under the "Community" section, "What have you made", "Coffee corner" and "Events and meetings". Where are all the other threads uder "Community"?

Then I spot the 3 boxes just left of the "Start new topic" button. The left-most seems to be the default, which I'm looking at. Middle button gives me a garbage mixed-up display on Firefox Window7 64-bit, but I can see it's the same content, just re-arranged. Right button looks promising, the "Fluid" display. So I click that, and quite a lot of threads show up, under the title of "Topic" at the top.

 

What happened to the Community section? I can't see my recent appends on this Topic page, even though it's supposed to be showing newest changes at the top!

I go back to the previous, "Default" Left-button choice, where I can see "COMMUNITY". I click that word, get a new screen - surely this will show me all the threads under the "Community" section? No, only the same old I saw before, and now I don't have the "Fluid" option available - those 3 buttons & "Start a new topic" buttons have gone.

 

This is a disaster - please sort this mess asap.

 

How on Earth is anyone else supposed to be able to find & see what I posted? The main page is appallingly bad, and is wasting huge amounts of screen space. Unbelievable.

 

To see how it _should_ be done, please take a look at speakev.com; the main page shown the main areas of interest, equivalent to "Community" etc. Click one you like, and you are then given a page with about 30 or 40 threads in, sorted by newest-updated at the top. click on one of those, or if you like you can choose to "follow" a thread, and you're emailed info when someone posts. This is how it should be done! I simply cannot see how to navigate around the present setup.

 

Please also make the default view one which shows as many threads/choices as possible. We want information, not fancy pictures & wasted space please. Speakev is doing it right - please do have a look in there. It's obvious what to click to go somewhere - but not here!

 

AndyWalter

[nzo 16]

Well said Andy - better than I could (or wanted to) say.

I do appreciate the focused preparatory work sandervG and the transition team put in to get the new site up and running.

Your example forum site Speakev is an excellent model - compact, easy to navigate, easy to search. Most forums I've visited that follow this model work smoothly and well. That's what I meant in my OP, when I said broken flow and trying to reinvent the wheel.

 

But hey, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, especially around Christmas, the time of goodwill and cheer - even if that goodwill is very thin on the ground or entirely absent around the planet which is our home. And I suspect none of the UM team are web designers. I'm a 'retired' web designer with some 30 years experience and the UM flaws you mentioned stand out like searchlights. But, with my younger arrogance now held firmly in check, I'm not beyond telling someone what they don't want to hear.

 

Especially that space-sucking robot Godzilla monster...passable when tiny, butt-ugly when that big.

 

 

Edited December 22, 2017 by nzo

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @nzo and @andywalter, 

 

thank you for your feedback. That is the only way our forum can grow better

Re the giant robot, this was a short-lived theme error and was quickly corrected. Fear not, the robots will not take over just yet! 

 

Thank you for visiting us again after an 18 month period AndyWalter. A lot of content has been added in a period of 18 months, so it is no surprise you had to use the search bar to find your post. Happy to hear you did. 

Now that you added a new reply, or at least edited your reply on December 21st, it shows on the first page right where it belongs. 

The main forum page is an overview of different categories, it does not show any new posts, except the very very newest ones in the column on the right. 

There are a few different views you can use, depending what it is you are after. 

If you want to see all new content since your last visit, you can use the Activity stream. This can be found in the main navigation bar on the top. You can also set your own filter to tailor the results. 

As I also shared with NZO, you can also look into the FLUID view. (see few posts above). You can select which topics you see the latest activity off. 

Personally, I am happy we have a busy forum. The other side of this is that posts can easily hidden behind newer posts. 

 

On 22/12/2017 at 8:19 PM, andywalter said:

Click one you like, and you are then given a page with about 30 or 40 threads in, sorted by newest-updated at the top. click on one of those, or if you like you can choose to "follow" a thread, and you're emailed info when someone posts. This is how it should be done!

 

This is not very different from our forum though. If you allow me to explain;

Click, f.e., Help, Tips and tricks, see 25 topics and you can decide to follow 'Help, Tips and Tricks' or one of the topics inside, ranked on activity. 

 

If you have any further questions or remarks, please feel free to let me know. If there is any way we can make any improvements to your user experience I would be happy to look into it. 

Thank you for your time to share your two cents