Do you like the Forum Style

[MightyHypnotic]

Hey there!!!

I've been wondering, what do you guys really think about the forum style? I don't want you to hold back, I really want to know. I can change it or I could leave it be. I could switch to something simpler, I've even been thinking about switching software altogether. PHPBB hasn't really stayed with the times and there is better software out there in my opinion. BUT, the only thing that matter is what you guys like.

Also, what features do you like or dislike or what could be improved??? I will use these suggestions to make some changes....

[tallyho]

Personally i like this set up (screen grab from my phone but you get the idea) Its simple to navigate , you can run your eye down the list and see whats new easily enough and stuff stands out that needs to.
With the blog style layout, 20 things are visible all at once but the order will change as more stuff gets posted so you may see something of interest and when you go back to look for it isnt there. I dont feel in control of my viewing with a blog format -it feels like 'others' are telling me what to look at rather than me deciding what I want to do.
Just my 0.2c

Screenshot_2018-07-27-15-05-39-1.png (288.68 KiB) Viewed 1457 times

[MightyHypnotic]

Personally i like this set up (screen grab from my phone but you get the idea) Its simple to navigate , you can run your eye down the list and see whats new easily enough and stuff stands out that needs to.
With the blog style layout, 20 things are visible all at once but the order will change as more stuff gets posted so you may see something of interest and when you go back to look for it isnt there. I dont feel in control of my viewing with a blog format -it feels like 'others' are telling me what to look at rather than me deciding what I want to do.
Just my 0.2cScreenshot_2018-07-27-15-05-39-1.png

Are you talking about the front page or are you talking about when we added the pictures to the forum?

[DrDominator9]

Since Disciple is planning some consolidations of various forum sections by creating new sub-forums (such as Bar with No Name and Crime Alley under the Stories), my suggestion would be that those sub-forums have brief descriptions in the primary screen. Right now you have to click on the forum section to learn what the sub-forums are all about.

[tallyho]

I was talking about the front page

[Imagineer]

When I participate in blog-style sites' community discussion, it is IN SPITE of their horrible horrible format. Blogs encourage write-only drive-by comments and are deliberately ephemeral. Online forums are marvels of sophistication in community by comparison.

That said, the forum format gets fussy with lots of sub-forums when half of them are active and half are not. In normal browsing view you can only see the very latest comment for each subforum, so if there are six subforums of interest, on each visit you're clicking into six subforums to see what else is new. There's a "New posts" function in the Quick links, but it includes all the subforums that don't interest you too, which is a problem for anyone who finds some of the content here distasteful -- is there a way to subscribe to certain subforums and then one-click to a single "new posts" view of those subforums?

I skip the home page here. If there's a connection to the forum content, I'm not seeing it. It seems a completely separate site that's days behind and bereft of comments. News-style blogs are hard. Expectations are super-high, because the mainstream has been honing the formula for a decade.

Here, a blog front-end on selected lead posts of the forum, with a link to the rest of the thread for comments, would be a useful solution to the "too-many subforums" and "forums are ugly and I only visit sites with pictures" problems, but if that tech exists I bet it's not free.

It is worth noting that the trend in big-time mainstream news has been to either tightly moderate comments sections or to eliminate them altogether. The prevailing wisdom on the Internet is that comments sections should be avoided because they're infested with nasty trolls; I think most people prefer their self-moderated social media feeds. The forum visitor and comment-section visitor are both minority species in the family of Internet creatures.

[viking]

Keep the present format. This plea comes from an "old dog" who can still learn new tricks, but who needs a lot of time and a lot of help to learn them. Please note that even you have labeled me an "Elder Member".