I would find it useful to have the left hand column ("thread") of the groups & forums tab to list the thread title, name of the originator, and name of the most recent poster. Having a snippet from the first reply and the name of the first person replying is not very helpful, and takes up an excess of screen space.
It would also be useful if, when clicking on a thread for the first time, it took you to the original post, not the first reply.
Laurie Autio
Hi Laurie,
These sound like good suggestions.
I am guessing that when you say the "groups & forums tab," you mean the "Groups and Forums: Recent Activity" table, as shown at http://weavolution.com/groups-forums. Please let me know if I've misunderstood. The rest of my reply is based on the belief that I've identified the page and content of concern.
In the Recent Activity table, the inclusion of the first comment title and poster name definitely takes up a lot of vertical space, and it is inconsistent with other tables such as forums listings (like http://weavolution.com/forum/improving-weavolution). I think all of the tables throughout the site are something we might consider revamping some time... there are some other inconsistencies we'd like to fix as well... but after we've taken care of higher priority needs and desires.
Regarding your experience being taken to the first reply instead of the original post... in the Recent Activity table, there are actually two links in each box in the left column. The top part - the part that tells you the thread title and original poster - will take you to the original post. But if you click on the lower half with the first reply and the name of the responder, that will take you directly to the reply as I believe you've discovered.
Again, thank you for your feedback! It is valued, and I have added the above identified concerns to our issues list.
Yes, we are talking about the same thing. I called it "groups & forums" because that is what is written on the button in the row under the banner.
Why not just count the first post as #1, rather than the first reply as #1? Then there would not be a need for separate actions.
Laurie Autio
Got it. Thanks for the clarification!
I am not certain why the first post in a discussion thread isn't #1. But that seems to be a "Drupalism" - something that is consistent on other websites using the same Drupal forums that we use. Comments (the replies to a post) are numbered; the original post is effectively #0.
Still, I agree with you that the separate actions are confusing. I don't see a big need for the link to the first reply in the table. It's something that's now on our list of issues to review.
Tip: The red "<#> New" link, in the "Replies" column, is a lot more useful (and compact!). If you've reviewed a discussion thread previously, that link will take you to the beginning of the new comments that have been posted since the last time you looked at the topic.
Well, they would be more useful if they were correct. All too often they are wrong, resetting randomly to some earlier session. Others have mentioned this problem as well.
Laurie Autio
Yes, unfortunately that is true. Tina mentioned it here previously. http://weavolution.com/forum/improving-w... . (See? We're keeping track. :) )
That particular item is on our (thankfully short) list of things that are definitely not working as intended.
The "wrong number of new posts" bug just bit me - at the top level of the forums, the "Improving Weavolution" area claimed "9 new" but when I entered that forum area, there was just 1 new reply, in one thread, consisting of 3 messages (technically, 1 message and 2 comments).
After reviewing the new message, the "new" notification on the forums page went away completely.
No clue where "9" came from. I guess 9 is the new 1?
On the issues list. :)
I've complained about this a few times, gotten suggestions and tried all. Still shows up inconsistently noting as "new" --
Tommye
Ditto what Tommye says, search on red alerts, if you can get that to work, to see the many comments. Bottom line for me is that the refresh function is excrutiately slow. Hopefully the next system migration will fix that.
Isn't the number of new posts relative to the last one read by the Weavolution member/guest? Is that a function of the Weavolution server?
Why not just leave a post as new until it is 7 or 10 days old and automatically archive it, regardless of who has/has not viewed it? If someone is absent for say, 30 days or more, how high does the count of unread posts go? Is there a limit. Would that make it simpler for you or more difficult?
Passapman, I'll do my best to answer your questions, then I'd like to summarize the issues that have come up in this thread before it drifts further.
You're right, the number of new posts is indeed relative to each person.
The Weavolution site tracks which threads you've visited, and it knows which posts were present in the thread during that visit. From this information, the site can determine what has been added since the last time you looked at a thread, and which threads have never been visited.
If you log in but don't look at a 'new' or 'updated' thread, it will continue to be marked as 'new' or 'updated'. (Also, in some places, for brevity, 'new' is used interchangably with 'updated'.)
As far as I am aware, there is no limit to the count of unread posts.
Automatically marking posts as if they'd been read after a specified time is an interesting idea - but I doubt it would simplify things for either Weavolution or its users. That would add a "surprise" behavior that we'd need to educate users to expect. And we might have to accomodate users who found that behavior undesirable. Still, I've put the idea on the issues list.
I'd like to summarize Laurie's concerns:
- * The "Recent Activity" table includes, in the "Thread" column, the title and author of the original post AND the title and author of the first reply (when a reply is present). This issue applies to the "Hot Threads" table on the front page of the site as well. This eats up a lot of "real estate" on the website. I agree, and this is on the issues list.
- * The different elements of information in the "Thread" column are all independently clickable. There are links to take you to the original post, the first reply, and the profiles of the authors of each. It would be better if multiple elements were not stuck in the same box - users want to click in the boundary of the box and be taken to the "right place." I agree, and this is on the issues list.
- * The original post is not counted as #1; the first reply is. This isn't something I expect us to change because as far as I know, all Drupal forums work this way by design - but it's been added to the issues list.
- * New post indicators are showing more new posts within a forum area than are actually present. I believe this is a Drupal defect - I've seen the problem on another Drupal-based site and there is a long discussion at the Drupal project website about "Forum count incorrect when using access control modules" which appears to be the same issue. I could go into more detail, but the short summary is: This is on our issues list, we'll let everyone know if we can get it fixed.
Thanks everyone for understanding. We are planning to review the issues list soon and prioritize, and the input we've received recently will be very helpful in that activity.
What if only the member's specifically joined groups alerted her/him to unread posts tracked for that member? Dropping out of a group and re-joining, or joining for the first time would reset the tracking from that moment. I would guess that most people have their favorites and seldom read or review all of the groups and forums.
As Weavolution grows, so does the number of posts. A more agile searching system will change everything, because the weaver will be able to research and mine the posts for information as needed/desired. If one can easily and successfully search for specific information at will, the need/desire for tracking unread posts is less urgent, at least I would think so. Instead of new posts, would new tracking only new threads and updated threads be more manageable? Let's say I log in, and my groups and forums indicate that there are new threads and updated threads. That's it. How many or what they are is irrelevant. I'm either interested enough to look or I'm not, just like checking my e-mail. I can always search for specific info in the posts, which under the new system will be immediately available, and more easily searched. Rather than show new threads updated threads next to the groups themselves, my groups and forums would show at my login screen along with which ones have unread new threads/updated threads. I can check them out at my leisure. I can drop out or join groups at will, or mark new/updated threads as read. I'm not a computer whiz. I am just wondering if instead of tracking posts, it might not be simpler to have a yea/nay categorization with regard to new/updated threads only for the groups/forums I belong to, so each forum/group would do a yea/nay for each member on weavolution, and then only for the yeas on that day for those members in those forums/groups would it do a yea/nay for unread new/updated threads. Whether it's one or a hundred, or who it's from, one still has to glance at it to choose whether to read them ot not.
Passapman
to me at least and I'm not in the least literate about the programming needed. My goal when checking into Weavolution is to see what's new... and that only... and that quickly. I am grumpy when I get the same things I've read several times showing up with red "new" indicators. Don't have time to fiddle with that.
Grousing aside, everyone who's working to make this site a good one should be thanked heartily! THANK YOU! I do appreciate it when I visit... even if annoyed sometimes.
Tommye
