Every forum user needs to read and understand this

[dazzerfong]

As I understand it, whether or not flat view will work for you depends on what you use a forum for. It's OK if you want info on a question like ' What's the best way to set up the controls on a Sony A7XX." or Compare a Sony A7XX with a CanonEOSSS." Search allows you to find the relevant posts and group them together.

Flat view is far less satisfactory if you want to share discussion on something like an image. Here there is no single answer but a range of opinions, each of which may add something to our knowledge. We want to consider them all and the backwards and forwards of discussion. In flat view, it's hopeless.

There's one approach that kind of works. It's used at The Photo

https://www.the-photo.org/

which is also flat view but where the primary aim of the site is to discuss images. It is also used by some regulars on DPR such as Roger Josem's "This Week with your..." thread. The idea is to group all the discussion in a single thread that runs for a relatively brief set time and then refreshes again. On The Photo for example, there is a weekly C&C thread. Participants post and discuss images in some depth for that week. Even though it is in flat view, the discussions can be followed, sort of, because they take place over just one week. The Photo has a relatively small number of members who are more interested in photographs than they are in gear. This, plus the weekly thread strategy, allows multifaceted discussion to take place in flat view. Similar weekly threads are available there for subjects like Street and B&W. It works for The Photo but it would breakdown if The Photo became too large.

Even so, it still works better with threaded view. Have a look ar Roger's "This week with your.." thread

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/68445401

Note how the responses to a particular image are all grouped together with the image.

I think you actually hit the nail on the head - I don't use this forum to browsing photos in threads, so the advantages of a thread (namely the quick navigation of individual threads) was lost on me.

I do think a more bespoke design would be more suitable for viewing and discussing images - threads are just a bandaid for hamfisting image discussions in a forum manner. As much as I hate to use it, Instagram's a good example of easily facilitating discussions. You have the image itself, then each comment can have its corresponding thread in a flat and collapsible manner.

Normally a forum upgrade would be a good time to explore these things, but ultimately this is not a very strong commercial product for incentive to improve like that. However, I'll happily eat my words if I'm wrong.

 

[deednets]

I only understand that titles like this sound like click bait.

I think you are right on the money. I checked your profile and you have been a member here since 2001 so you would know.

Clickbait and no substance, right? But, hey, wait a minute?? You responded?? So it worked??

;-)

I personally thought there was some substance to the post, how you you then have phrased it

1. Putting it in the right forum, for one
2. Actually saying the grievance (e.g. 'Threads are disappearing in a future update')

JRP??? Is that you??

I guess you were reading this in flat view, otherwise you would have noticed that my response wasn't for you, but for somebody calling himself jrp ...

You are aware others are allowed to reply to you, right? If you wanted to have a response purely from jrp, you'd have sent him a DM.

Welcome to a forum.

Sorry, I am new here. It seems that like everywhere else in today's world, a strong polarization takes over where some heard behaviour starts to kick in, like your lecturing about the correct forum. I only found out about this by reading MODs post on the Leica and the Medium Format fora. I guess both MODs didn't know about the "correct" forum, aye? Similar things happened on the Nikon forum by the way. Also a MOD. Never read it there, only heard about from another poster, so could be wrong.

Will leave this thread, don't like tone and direction and guess any kind of third or fourth layer humour is making what I write any more acceptable. Everything going South.

 

[Matt2134]

I think I am with Deeds on this. I'll happily wait and see what the new format is like overall, but having always used threaded view, I gave flat view a try when I started reading this thread. Coming back to it today it has become 4 pages, I don't think I can see what I have read and what I haven't, and I just had to scroll through post after post across multiple pages to see where I had got to. Got bored at the end of page to and skipped here for a moan :-D

Vastly less efficient system, unless I am missing something?

 

[Mike Fewster]

I think I am with Deeds on this. I'll happily wait and see what the new format is like overall, but having always used threaded view, I gave flat view a try when I started reading this thread. Coming back to it today it has become 4 pages, I don't think I can see what I have read and what I haven't, and I just had to scroll through post after post across multiple pages to see where I had got to. Got bored at the end of page to and skipped here for a moan :-D

Vastly less efficient system, unless I am missing something?

I think you are seeing it correctly. That's why I started this thread. It becomes pretty much impossible to keep track of the inputs from a number of people in the one discussion.

 

[surfoxy]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

--
Chris

 

[surfoxy]

Those are critiques of the flat view on this forum.

The flat view on XenForo work very well. Users will be incentivized to quote posts, because that's just the way it works, and when someone quotes your post, you get a notification. This means I understand when someone responds to me, the instant I hit the home page of the forum, instead of having to poke into threads. All of the likes and replies to MY posts give me a notification.

Following discussions is no problem at all. It flows naturally. Users will adapt the the new UI, rather than behaving as they do now with a threaded UI being the default.

Give it a shot.

 

[deednets]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

 

[surfoxy]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

--
Chris

 

[uniball]

I like flat view. Yes there are long threads where it can get confusing. But those marathon threads tend to be tedious, off-topic discussions by the same few. I simply don’t bother reading them.

 

[deednets]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

Sorry if this came across like I was putting words into your mouth, but your unlimited enthusiasm, you understand that it's not compulsory as such to simply agree with you, right?

My take is that I will spend far less time on dpreview as, just by reading your lengthly response I must say that I have little appetite in exploring what you consider progress, I have highlightes the parts that simply make me shudder. macrumors.com is built on XenFoto, right? The 911 posts regarding a Pixel 10 over a multitude of pages, 38 pages the last time I looked:

Google Pixel 10 series

Figure I'd start this thread since I'm interested in the upcoming Pixel 10 and 10 Pro and the rumored launch date is in august, not that far away. Anyone eyeing this phone also? My main concern is, again, the new Tensor chip. Yeah, they say the new 3nm TSMC processor will be more efficient and...

forums.macrumors.com

So what you are saying is that you really like this? Your post may be sitting on page 14 - or 25?? So, if nobody reacts directly to your post, it's soon to be forgotten? And how would this work if you start a comparison, like a couple of Pixel 10 photos you compared to some iPhone 14 Pro pix, if somebody replies to YOUR post, you get a notification, right? And if a second person then replies to this person, you are not getting anything? And that's a good thing as the only thing you are interested in is the first response? But no follow ups?

But what somehow bugs me is the ease at which fans of the new system are dismissing the fact that there simply isn't a choice. Only Coke, but no Fanta, which suits those who like Coke just fine.

Ah, well, I disagree and certainly don't share your enthusiasm!

Deed

 

[surfoxy]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

Sorry if this came across like I was putting words into your mouth, but your unlimited enthusiasm, you understand that it's not compulsory as such to simply agree with you, right?

My take is that I will spend far less time on dpreview as, just by reading your lengthly response I must say that I have little appetite in exploring what you consider progress, I have highlightes the parts that simply make me shudder. macrumors.com is built on XenFoto, right? The 911 posts regarding a Pixel 10 over a multitude of pages, 38 pages the last time I looked:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/google-pixel-10-series.2458330/

So what you are saying is that you really like this? Your post may be sitting on page 14 - or 25?? So, if nobody reacts directly to your post, it's soon to be forgotten? And how would this work if you start a comparison, like a couple of Pixel 10 photos you compared to some iPhone 14 Pro pix, if somebody replies to YOUR post, you get a notification, right? And if a second person then replies to this person, you are not getting anything? And that's a good thing as the only thing you are interested in is the first response? But no follow ups?

But what somehow bugs me is the ease at which fans of the new system are dismissing the fact that there simply isn't a choice. Only Coke, but no Fanta, which suits those who like Coke just fine.

Ah, well, I disagree and certainly don't share your enthusiasm!

Deed

"It's just an opinion", should have probably indicated I don't think it's compulsory to share my view, no? What a strange thing to say. No, of course I don't mind at all if you disagree.

Things change. Sometimes we get a say in it, sometimes not. It's just an online forum.

Cheers.

 

[deednets]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

Sorry if this came across like I was putting words into your mouth, but your unlimited enthusiasm, you understand that it's not compulsory as such to simply agree with you, right?

My take is that I will spend far less time on dpreview as, just by reading your lengthly response I must say that I have little appetite in exploring what you consider progress, I have highlightes the parts that simply make me shudder. macrumors.com is built on XenFoto, right? The 911 posts regarding a Pixel 10 over a multitude of pages, 38 pages the last time I looked:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/google-pixel-10-series.2458330/

So what you are saying is that you really like this? Your post may be sitting on page 14 - or 25?? So, if nobody reacts directly to your post, it's soon to be forgotten? And how would this work if you start a comparison, like a couple of Pixel 10 photos you compared to some iPhone 14 Pro pix, if somebody replies to YOUR post, you get a notification, right? And if a second person then replies to this person, you are not getting anything? And that's a good thing as the only thing you are interested in is the first response? But no follow ups?

But what somehow bugs me is the ease at which fans of the new system are dismissing the fact that there simply isn't a choice. Only Coke, but no Fanta, which suits those who like Coke just fine.

Ah, well, I disagree and certainly don't share your enthusiasm!

Deed

"It's just an opinion", should have probably indicated I don't think it's compulsory to share my view, no? What a strange thing to say. No, of course I don't mind at all if you disagree.

Things change. Sometimes we get a say in it, sometimes not. It's just an online forum.

Cheers.

Sorry I guess I took your talking with some authority as a nudge towards the new system. Oddly, you appear to also either dismiss or ignored my comments regarding the "choice" ...

Now regarding our little debate here, I have replied to what I thought was a strong, north of just an opinion, piece in favour of the new system. I felt like it was legit to reply equally strong. Leaving out any personal touches, I never meant this to be anything BUT a debate (I thik you are one of the more pleasant characters here on dpreview, to be honest!), so I thought that, when somebody talks about a topic with some authority, there might also be some opposition to that view.

I thought you came across very strong, hence my strongish reply! I thought your tone didn't accept that the new system was anything, but just great Robust debate, nothing more which I appreciate!

The other item you didn't want to tackle was the 900+ threads how to navigate those?? Read those 38 pages in a blizzard?? Tesla-Speed?? ;-)

Also: a website lives on traffic, so if people spend less time here, it means less exposure, but I have been wrong before so what do I know??

All the best in the meantime, will ask you on a different level what you have been up to ok??

Deed

 

[surfoxy]

Sorry I guess I took your talking with some authority as a nudge towards the new system. Oddly, you appear to also either dismiss or ignored my comments regarding the "choice" ...

Now regarding our little debate here, I have replied to what I thought was a strong, north of just an opinion, piece in favour of the new system. I felt like it was legit to reply equally strong. Leaving out any personal touches, I never meant this to be anything BUT a debate (I thik you are one of the more pleasant characters here on dpreview, to be honest!), so I thought that, when somebody talks about a topic with some authority, there might also be some opposition to that view.

I thought you came across very strong, hence my strongish reply! I thought your tone didn't accept that the new system was anything, but just great Robust debate, nothing more which I appreciate!

The other item you didn't want to tackle was the 900+ threads how to navigate those?? Read those 38 pages in a blizzard?? Tesla-Speed?? ;-)

Also: a website lives on traffic, so if people spend less time here, it means less exposure, but I have been wrong before so what do I know??

All the best in the meantime, will ask you on a different level what you have been up to ok??

Deed

Just a lot of work and family stuff. Kids off to college, aging parents needing care. Lots going on, but precious little photography these days. Thanks for asking!

Hope this post finds you well, and please interpret my comments as...I guess...strong opinions loosely held. Hope this post finds you well, and thank you for the kind words. Getting much photo time yourself lately? Cheers!

 

[deednets]

Sorry I guess I took your talking with some authority as a nudge towards the new system. Oddly, you appear to also either dismiss or ignored my comments regarding the "choice" ...

Now regarding our little debate here, I have replied to what I thought was a strong, north of just an opinion, piece in favour of the new system. I felt like it was legit to reply equally strong. Leaving out any personal touches, I never meant this to be anything BUT a debate (I thik you are one of the more pleasant characters here on dpreview, to be honest!), so I thought that, when somebody talks about a topic with some authority, there might also be some opposition to that view.

I thought you came across very strong, hence my strongish reply! I thought your tone didn't accept that the new system was anything, but just great Robust debate, nothing more which I appreciate!

The other item you didn't want to tackle was the 900+ threads how to navigate those?? Read those 38 pages in a blizzard?? Tesla-Speed?? ;-)

Also: a website lives on traffic, so if people spend less time here, it means less exposure, but I have been wrong before so what do I know??

All the best in the meantime, will ask you on a different level what you have been up to ok??

Deed

Just a lot of work and family stuff. Kids off to college, aging parents needing care. Lots going on, but precious little photography these days. Thanks for asking!

Hope this post finds you well, and please interpret my comments as...I guess...strong opinions loosely held. Hope this post finds you well, and thank you for the kind words. Getting much photo time yourself lately? Cheers!

Not as much as I used to but will be off to South-India next week so will take some time to ponder as to what to shoot. Not because I haven't photographed "stuff" there, but because I look at things differently when I hold a camera ... have you been to India?













There's a LOT of really old stuff there, plus unbelievably good food ...

Take care!

Deed

 

[surfoxy]

Went for the first time a few months back, but it was a busy work trip and I didn’t take any time to see the country. Next time! Love the first shot.

 

[Impulses]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

You can get both actually, you get a notification when new comments are added to threads you follow (and clicking it takes you to where you last left off reading said thread) and you get a separate notification when someone quotes you. So for instance, if you were to come back to the forum under XenFoto tomorrow you'd get a notification like this:



But you will also get a separate one saying I've quoted you in this thread... It's actually very easy to pick up reading long threads right where you left off, and just as easy to jump to stuff that concerns you directly.

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

That's not right, unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

I do, I keep up with really long threads pretty easily without the endless scrolling needed on DPR to find unread comments. I'm not familiar with MacRumors but I don't think FM has a very full fledged implementation of XenForo, it pales in comparison to my experience with it in other places like Head-Fi, SBAF, etc.

 

[Impulses]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

AFAIK depending on the implementation you can actually get both or either...

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

I agree, threaded is much slower to work with. I use it to maintain the flow of these boards, but a quick read it isn't.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

--
Chris

 

[Impulses]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

Sorry if this came across like I was putting words into your mouth, but your unlimited enthusiasm, you understand that it's not compulsory as such to simply agree with you, right?

My take is that I will spend far less time on dpreview as, just by reading your lengthly response I must say that I have little appetite in exploring what you consider progress, I have highlightes the parts that simply make me shudder. macrumors.com is built on XenFoto, right? The 911 posts regarding a Pixel 10 over a multitude of pages, 38 pages the last time I looked:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/google-pixel-10-series.2458330/

So what you are saying is that you really like this? Your post may be sitting on page 14 - or 25?? So, if nobody reacts directly to your post, it's soon to be forgotten? And how would this work if you start a comparison, like a couple of Pixel 10 photos you compared to some iPhone 14 Pro pix, if somebody replies to YOUR post, you get a notification, right? And if a second person then replies to this person, you are not getting anything? And that's a good thing as the only thing you are interested in is the first response? But no follow ups?

You can get either or both.

But what somehow bugs me is the ease at which fans of the new system are dismissing the fact that there simply isn't a choice. Only Coke, but no Fanta, which suits those who like Coke just fine.

Ah, well, I disagree and certainly don't share your enthusiasm!

Deed

The choice has always lead to issues in DPR... I'm usually all for having options, but I dunno that it's sustainable or very welcoming to most online users that are accustomed to something different.

 

[Impulses]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

Sorry if this came across like I was putting words into your mouth, but your unlimited enthusiasm, you understand that it's not compulsory as such to simply agree with you, right?

My take is that I will spend far less time on dpreview as, just by reading your lengthly response I must say that I have little appetite in exploring what you consider progress, I have highlightes the parts that simply make me shudder. macrumors.com is built on XenFoto, right? The 911 posts regarding a Pixel 10 over a multitude of pages, 38 pages the last time I looked:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/google-pixel-10-series.2458330/

So what you are saying is that you really like this? Your post may be sitting on page 14 - or 25?? So, if nobody reacts directly to your post, it's soon to be forgotten? And how would this work if you start a comparison, like a couple of Pixel 10 photos you compared to some iPhone 14 Pro pix, if somebody replies to YOUR post, you get a notification, right? And if a second person then replies to this person, you are not getting anything? And that's a good thing as the only thing you are interested in is the first response? But no follow ups?

But what somehow bugs me is the ease at which fans of the new system are dismissing the fact that there simply isn't a choice. Only Coke, but no Fanta, which suits those who like Coke just fine.

Ah, well, I disagree and certainly don't share your enthusiasm!

Deed

"It's just an opinion", should have probably indicated I don't think it's compulsory to share my view, no? What a strange thing to say. No, of course I don't mind at all if you disagree.

Things change. Sometimes we get a say in it, sometimes not. It's just an online forum.

Cheers.

Sorry I guess I took your talking with some authority as a nudge towards the new system. Oddly, you appear to also either dismiss or ignored my comments regarding the "choice" ...

Now regarding our little debate here, I have replied to what I thought was a strong, north of just an opinion, piece in favour of the new system. I felt like it was legit to reply equally strong. Leaving out any personal touches, I never meant this to be anything BUT a debate (I thik you are one of the more pleasant characters here on dpreview, to be honest!), so I thought that, when somebody talks about a topic with some authority, there might also be some opposition to that view.

I thought you came across very strong, hence my strongish reply! I thought your tone didn't accept that the new system was anything, but just great Robust debate, nothing more which I appreciate!

The other item you didn't want to tackle was the 900+ threads how to navigate those?? Read those 38 pages in a blizzard?? Tesla-Speed?? ;-)

You keep bringing this up, but I really don't understand how a similarly long thread is any easier to navigate on DPR... If you're new to the thread it's still a beast because almost no one retitles sub threads so you're going thru the same amount of total content, only instead of being able to just scroll thru it you'd have to click repeatedly in threaded view.

If you're not new to a long thread and you've been participating then enhanced notice can make it very easy to keep up with it! In threaded view on DPR you have to hunt around for the different colored links and seek out those unread comments... Not terrible but it can be easiest. On a more modern system you still pick how to engage.

You'll get a notification when people interact directly with you and you can choose to prioritize those, but you'll also get a notification when new comments are made to a thread you follow and you can jump in right to that page. If MacRumors doesn't implement this (I wouldn't know) then they just have a poor XenForo configuration, there's better examples if so.

I actually kinda hate Head Fi btw (way too many people with way too many opinions and way too much sponsorship), the their UI is brilliant, much smaller boards (eg SBAF) are able to implement it just as well though so I hope DPR can manage.

Also: a website lives on traffic, so if people spend less time here, it means less exposure, but I have been wrong before so what do I know??

I don't think that UI actually has people spending less time on those boards TBH, extra clicks and scrolling for the heck of it isn't the way to achieve that anyway and the DPR threaded UI does force a lot of that.

I bet you or I can sorta recall the structure of a couple of threads here, but the vast majority of people aren't paying attention to that and almost no one is re-naming sub threads so I believe it's not very friendly at all to more casual users.

All the best in the meantime, will ask you on a different level what you have been up to ok??

Deed

 

[deednets]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

Sorry if this came across like I was putting words into your mouth, but your unlimited enthusiasm, you understand that it's not compulsory as such to simply agree with you, right?

My take is that I will spend far less time on dpreview as, just by reading your lengthly response I must say that I have little appetite in exploring what you consider progress, I have highlightes the parts that simply make me shudder. macrumors.com is built on XenFoto, right? The 911 posts regarding a Pixel 10 over a multitude of pages, 38 pages the last time I looked:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/google-pixel-10-series.2458330/

So what you are saying is that you really like this? Your post may be sitting on page 14 - or 25?? So, if nobody reacts directly to your post, it's soon to be forgotten? And how would this work if you start a comparison, like a couple of Pixel 10 photos you compared to some iPhone 14 Pro pix, if somebody replies to YOUR post, you get a notification, right? And if a second person then replies to this person, you are not getting anything? And that's a good thing as the only thing you are interested in is the first response? But no follow ups?

But what somehow bugs me is the ease at which fans of the new system are dismissing the fact that there simply isn't a choice. Only Coke, but no Fanta, which suits those who like Coke just fine.

Ah, well, I disagree and certainly don't share your enthusiasm!

Deed

"It's just an opinion", should have probably indicated I don't think it's compulsory to share my view, no? What a strange thing to say. No, of course I don't mind at all if you disagree.

Things change. Sometimes we get a say in it, sometimes not. It's just an online forum.

Cheers.

Sorry I guess I took your talking with some authority as a nudge towards the new system. Oddly, you appear to also either dismiss or ignored my comments regarding the "choice" ...

Now regarding our little debate here, I have replied to what I thought was a strong, north of just an opinion, piece in favour of the new system. I felt like it was legit to reply equally strong. Leaving out any personal touches, I never meant this to be anything BUT a debate (I thik you are one of the more pleasant characters here on dpreview, to be honest!), so I thought that, when somebody talks about a topic with some authority, there might also be some opposition to that view.

I thought you came across very strong, hence my strongish reply! I thought your tone didn't accept that the new system was anything, but just great Robust debate, nothing more which I appreciate!

The other item you didn't want to tackle was the 900+ threads how to navigate those?? Read those 38 pages in a blizzard?? Tesla-Speed?? ;-)

You keep bringing this up, but I really don't understand how a similarly long thread is any easier to navigate on DPR... If you're new to the thread it's still a beast because almost no one retitles sub threads so you're going thru the same amount of total content, only instead of being able to just scroll thru it you'd have to click repeatedly in threaded view.

If you're not new to a long thread and you've been participating then enhanced notice can make it very easy to keep up with it! In threaded view on DPR you have to hunt around for the different colored links and seek out those unread comments... Not terrible but it can be easiest. On a more modern system you still pick how to engage.

You'll get a notification when people interact directly with you and you can choose to prioritize those, but you'll also get a notification when new comments are made to a thread you follow and you can jump in right to that page. If MacRumors doesn't implement this (I wouldn't know) then they just have a poor XenForo configuration, there's better examples if so.

I actually kinda hate Head Fi btw (way too many people with way too many opinions and way too much sponsorship), the their UI is brilliant, much smaller boards (eg SBAF) are able to implement it just as well though so I hope DPR can manage.

Also: a website lives on traffic, so if people spend less time here, it means less exposure, but I have been wrong before so what do I know??

I don't think that UI actually has people spending less time on those boards TBH, extra clicks and scrolling for the heck of it isn't the way to achieve that anyway and the DPR threaded UI does force a lot of that.

I bet you or I can sorta recall the structure of a couple of threads here, but the vast majority of people aren't paying attention to that and almost no one is re-naming sub threads so I believe it's not very friendly at all to more casual users.

All the best in the meantime, will ask you on a different level what you have been up to ok??

Deed

Both you and surefoxy have very strong ideas about how fabulous the new forum is and you have now quoted a "strong" majority for flat view?? There was a little poll, I think on maybe the open forum?? Can't remember but last time I looked it wasn't as strong a majority for flat-view??

Truth is, I am losing interest. On the old forum you had a choice, on the new one, you won't - and I keep on hearing that's actually great?? ;-) (you know, what I mean?? The yeah-sayers are super vocal here!!!!!)

Will see whether I can dig up the current poll.

Deed