topic Re: Slightly annoying design faults? in Community Site Feedback

Slightly annoying design faults?

PeeGee — Tue, 10 May 2016 10:51:22 GMT

Two that really irritate:

1. a pinned thread appears twice in the list if a new message is added to it

2. a message selected as a "fix" appears twice in a thread and the link to the message points to the (redundant) added/displayed copy

Missing preference options:

1. not option to turn off avatars

2. no option to suppress display of entries in the column containing "New fixes" etc

Phil

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

Anonymous — Tue, 10 May 2016 11:05:02 GMT

I've given up reporting all the problems I'm seeing with this forum.

I'm clearly wasting my time providing debug info, as nothing is getting fixed.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

jaread83 — Tue, 10 May 2016 14:37:27 GMT

I am always taking in feedback and making notes so don't think that your efforts are in vain!

Unfortunately the OP is describing things that cannot be changed as thats the standard way that this system works.

During testing we flagged up the pinned thread duplication but this is just how the system works. I might be able to come up with some Javascript and try to physically hide/remove the duplicated thread so I have added this to my enhancement list.

We asked why the 'fix' was displayed twice but it actually makes sense this way - users who have come to the thread to get the 'fix' will see the solution straight away instead of having to scroll through pages of replies. The reason its repeated is so you can still go through the normal flow of replies.

There is no option to turn off avatars but I can certainly put the idea forward to Lithium to implement something in a future release.

I am unsure what you mean with the supressing of entries on the 'new fixes' panel. There is currently no options to change the amount of items displayed on the homepage. We are looking at changing the homepage in the future to utilise the options in the settings so you can change the amount of subscription entries that are displayed but that will come at a later date when we have ironed out some of the more important issues raised. The settings I speak of only work for some panels and we have a few more than what is available in the settings.

Rest assured, I am always reading feedback and I for one welcome it so if there is something that is bugging you or if you think something could be improved around here please create a topic and we can discuss it and possibly get some ideas going and get things changed.

Just a heads up, I am just a Front End developer and can't change how the system works (that would be down to Lithium) but I can create some (limited) customisations and change things at a visual level so I am open to ideas.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

Anonymous — Tue, 10 May 2016 18:40:16 GMT

@jaread83 wrote:

I am always taking in feedback and making notes so don't think that your efforts are in vain!

In that case, when should we expect to start seeing problems reported more than a month ago being fixed ?

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

PeeGee — Tue, 10 May 2016 22:01:10 GMT

@jaread83 wrote:

I am always taking in feedback and making notes so don't think that your efforts are in vain!
We asked why the 'fix' was displayed twice but it actually makes sense this way - users who have come to the thread to get the 'fix' will see the solution straight away instead of having to scroll through pages of replies. The reason its repeated is so you can still go through the normal flow of replies..

We will have to agree to disagree A link to the copy of the fix is added to the post when a fix is selected. This should point to the actual post which means no manual scrolling would be needed to go directly to it and also puts it context of the thread.

Phil

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

jaread83 — Wed, 11 May 2016 07:49:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
In that case, when should we expect to start seeing problems reported more than a month ago being fixed ?

I have a bunch of updates ready to go live that have gone through code review and QA testing. I am just waiting for the go ahead to put them live as I need to have these things signed off by CM. @LouisaMartin, do you know when we can expect to push the changes from staging to live?

As for what is being updated, I am going to be posting those details before the fact here.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

Anotherone — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:13:27 GMT

Well that will be "interesting" as I haven't seen a complete list anywhere else.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

Anotherone — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:20:04 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

I've given up reporting all the problems I'm seeing with this forum.

I'm clearly wasting my time providing debug info, as nothing is getting fixed.

Please keep reporting the problems, unless we continue to do so, things will go from bad to worse.
However, I do think you are wasting your time providing debug info as I'm seriously beginning to doubt whether Lithium are competent enough to understand it or indeed whether they actually understand some of the basic problems we've uncovered

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

jaread83 — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:20:13 GMT

@Anotherone, the complete list is not public and is in our internal system.

A list of changes being rolled out are posted on the staging site (as you already know).

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

Anotherone — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:21:25 GMT

I will reply over there Jack, before I lose my cool.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

jaread83 — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:27:37 GMT

I hope I haven't upset you in some way @Anotherone...

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

Anotherone — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:28:56 GMT

Not you personally Jack.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:30:20 GMT

@Anotherone wrote:

Please keep reporting the problems, unless we continue to do so, things will go from bad to worse.

It is very difficult to remain enthusiastic about reporting errors when staff give no indication of doing anything about month old fault reports, when every damn page takes 9 to 20 seconds to load, posts vanish, the editor fails, and general navigation is such a struggle.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

Anotherone — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:35:11 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
when every damn page takes 9 to 20 seconds to load

With that sort of issue, I can fully understand why you are struggling with general navigation. As I am not experiencing that issue, I'm can't make any obvious suggestion at this time.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

Anotherone — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:53:32 GMT

@PeeGee wrote:

@jaread83 wrote:
We asked why the 'fix' was displayed twice but it actually makes sense this way - users who have come to the thread to get the 'fix' will see the solution straight away instead of having to scroll through pages of replies. The reason its repeated is so you can still go through the normal flow of replies..

We will have to agree to disagree A link to the copy of the fix is added to the post when a fix is selected. This should point to the actual post which means no manual scrolling would be needed to go directly to it and also puts it context of the thread.

Phil

Phil that is precisely what I said in testing. Even knowing that's the case, I find it difficult to scroll past the duplicate "fix" response at the top of the thread, and as most threads are not simple non-tech issues, it makes reading the thread more disjointed.
Further more, when you look at a thread that only has the OP and a single simple one answer fix, it not only looks stupid, it looks totally unprofessional - another comment that I made.
@jaread83 I disagree that it makes sense when there is a link, you know my opinion about this and I've just repeated it.

@jaread83 wrote:
During testing we flagged up the pinned thread duplication but this is just how the system works.

I thought that as a result of this Lithium were requested to provide an Option to turn it off, along with an option to turn off the duplicate fix, are you saying that is not the case? Perhaps @LouisaMartin can answer that?

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

jaread83 — Wed, 11 May 2016 09:05:12 GMT

@Anotherone wrote:

I thought that as a result of this Lithium were requested to provide an Option to turn it off, along with an option to turn off the duplicate fix, are you saying that is not the case? Perhaps @LouisaMartin can answer that?

I wasn't aware that there was any indication that this would be an option to turn off or on (unless I missed something? tag me on the staging site if you know where this was mentioned). But I remember that what we did do was go to the Lithium community forum and put a new thread in their ideas board and myself, bob and liam all gave it some kudos and commented further on the idea. There were other communities who felt the same with the pinned thread duplication so maybe this would happen in a future release. I have added the idea (to our internal enhancement list) of using javascript to remove the duplicate pinned threads from view so maybe that will help in the meantime but I would need to come up with a solid script to do this.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

Anotherone — Wed, 11 May 2016 09:17:02 GMT

I'm more concerned about duplicate fix posts, but thanks anyway.

There were other communities who felt the same with the pinned thread duplication so maybe this would happen in a future release

As I was given to understand that it has already taken them over 6 years to not consider this, I'm not holding out any hope.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

MauriceC — Wed, 11 May 2016 09:54:42 GMT

I agree with @PeeGee (Post 5) the duplication makes the thread cumbersome to read, particularly in this Forum where the 'Fix' is often inaccurately recorded against the wrong post. Yes, it can be corrected if the Mods are super vigilant but why make work.

Unfortunately I see this style appearing in a number of technical forums.

Maurice

Edit: Some weird things occurred whilst posting this reply. Initially when I read this thread PeeGee was the last post? Now after an edit and other weirdies I see many more posts? I'll raise a new Topic for the problem seen.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

jaread83 — Wed, 11 May 2016 09:51:47 GMT

AFAIK it works in a similar way to the site stackoverflow where users are coming to the site to get an answer to a question and the answer to bumped up to the top of the thread but is duplicated below anyway. I agree that sometimes a 'fix' is set but its not really a fix and mods have had to change the fix to be the useful reply that fixed the issue.

Re: Slightly annoying design faults?

MauriceC — Wed, 11 May 2016 10:07:40 GMT

@jaread83 wrote:

@Anotherone, the complete list is not public and is in our internal system.

A list of changes being rolled out are posted on the staging site (as you already know).

The problem here is that many of us bothering to report and document incidents are not on the 'In team' and do not have access to the staging site to view potential changes. I'll side with @Anonymous in becoming frustrated at the lack of any visible progress. @LouisaMartin did promise to compile a visible list of the issues being investigated, but after the first list of critical items it has not been maintained.