Low activity

[Eric the Green]

(12-07-2021, 12:34 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-03-2021, 08:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Low activity on this site results in part from defects in the way the site is set up.

1. It often does not scan well on a phone. The type is too small to read.

2. To see the last post on a previous page, in order to follow a conversation, you have to hold down the scroll button down and go all the way down to the bottom of the previous page. It would be more convenient if when going back to a previous page, you could go to the bottom of the page. Also, even to see the actual subject matter and title of a thread, you have to scroll all the way up to the top of a page to see it. If it were more visible, people might be more inclined to stick more-closely to the original subject.

3. Every time I respond or reply to a post, only a small portion of it can be seen, without taking your mouse and using the little square at the bottom right to expand the message space. That is very tedious. The previous forum would give someone more space to see a message.

4. After only 1 day, you can't edit a post. That is way too strict, without reason. This is new to this version of the forum too. We should be able to edit for a much longer time after posting. Otherwise we have to post the entire post again. People are not perfect and they make mistakes, and we should be able to correct them so that we say what we mean to say.

5. The search function is useless.

Well, that's enough for now. I wonder if anyone can do anything about these defects. Rather than blame what people post here, I think the mechanics of the site make it too difficult for some people to post here. Dedicated members like me can muddle through, but others may get tired of these defects and move on and not say anything.

I guess we all get what we don't pay for.  It's either advertisement or minimal functionality.  Of the two, I take less function.

I suspect someone with knowledge of this program could make some of these changes, especially since the older version had fewer of these problems and yet had no ads.

I think there is some setting an admin could make that could permit longer time for editing, for example. Or allowing the screen to be larger when replying to a post. Etc. I think someone could change some settings back to like it was with the older program without having the program cost money. THat might not make the program more visible to people on phones, but it would correct most of the other defects.

Another defect: The process of quoting a post in order to reply is not intuitive. Requiring people to click on quote, and THEN to scroll down to the pottom of the entire thread and click on "quote these posts," is probably beyond newer participants to realize. It used to be that clicking on "quote" as you see here below would enable someone to quote a post.

I assume there would be ads with discord, and I don't like their visual presentation in comparison with here. But it might be an alternative in other respects.