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Three small suggestions on improving the forums usability

Last posted Dec 31, 2015 at 01:41AM EST. Added Dec 30, 2015 at 05:54PM EST
5 posts from 4 users

I am surprised nobody has suggested this before. So I am going to post out my suggestions.

My first suggestion is the ability to post on any page. Basically, it eliminates the requirement that you have to be in the last page to post a comment in the thread. Like this picture currently depicts.

I don't understand why you are forced to go to the last page just to post a comment in a thread. All I see is it just poses a pointless impediment that shouldn't be there in the first place. Take a look at a Facepunch thread. You can make a post in any page of the thread. Much better right?

Which leads me to my second suggestion. A redirect link to the last post of a thread. Take a look at the current main forums page.

Seems normal right? It's states the last person who posted in a thread, but you can't even go immediately go to the last post. The only way you could get to that post is to click in the thread. And if the thread has multiple pages, you have to click on the last page and then scroll down just to get to that post. Let's take look at a Facepunch forum page.

Notice by clicking in the small gray circle on the right leads immediately go to the last post in that thread. Which I suggest that should be implemented in the forums, so that people can immediately get to the last post without having to go through multiple pages to just get to the post.

Which I will get to my final suggestion. The subforum page. God, it's look like a mess. The page number listing stretches up the subforum pages.

Instead of just listing every single page number, why not just do what Facepunch Forums is doing?

Just condense the page numbers to just listing only the first and last few page numbers. Looks a lot more cleaner that way and also saves space as well.

So that's my two cents about my forum improvements. The suggestions are small, but it will improve the KYM forums usability by a lot if these suggestions were to take effect.

Last edited Dec 30, 2015 at 05:56PM EST

The need to go to the last page of a thread to post on it is supposed to promote reading through the whole thread before posting on it, just to note.

Max wrote:

The need to go to the last page of a thread to post on it is supposed to promote reading through the whole thread before posting on it, just to note.

And yet, there's always going to be people who will just skim the thread and then post. But thanks for the note. However, that's still doesn't excuse the inconvenience of having to go to last page to post. Most forums have the ability to post in any page of a thread. Why not the same for KYM forums?

I agree with all of this though the last one is a minor design issue at worst. If they did either of the first two it'd drastically improve my experience.

Sidenote: Though I'm beginning to wonder if any admins actually pay attention to these suggestion threads.

Last edited Dec 31, 2015 at 01:22AM EST

I totally get what you're saying. The forums back before I started to post were far less developed than they are even now. Most threads didn't go dozens of pages deep. There were no General threads like they exist now. KYM Pony General wasn't even conceivable. No one thought we'd have to make new threads for an active thread, because the number of pages had gotten too high and was beginning to take up too much space.

Most threads of any note only went 5 pages deep at most, and they rarely had more than a couple of sentences. So it made sense to want to make people read through and be able to access each individual page, because there wasn't much said (but enough to make you read it before you duplicated something that had already been posted.) Other forums existed in a way that KYM's forum didn't and want expected to develop into ever. Even now, KYMs forum community is small. Back then, the forums were more like an organized chat.

Of course, now there are General threads, and people like me clog up threads that surpass the character limit for posts. That makes the previous system inconvenient now but it wasn't then.

…but still, a lot of more serious threads in site-related or serious discussion or others do need people to peruse or at least glance over all that has been said. And having easy access to each page via link is the most convenient way of doing that. And forcing you to post from the last page without providing the direct link to the most recent post makes it inconvenient for someone to post without filtering through at least the last page of posts.

Now yes. People do post without reading.

But just because they do doesn't mean the system should be changed to make it easier to post without considering everything that's been said prior to. That's not ideal.

This is far less important in other boards, but I don't think the issue is nearly as pressing. If you must post without context, it's very easy to go to the last "block" page number and just scroll down. I don't think there's enough reason or inconvenience to change it myself. Perhaps others do.

But ultimately, KYM is not Facepunch.

Skeletor-sm

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