In my last post I noted many issues with these forums that could be improved. I was ragingly drunk at the time, and frankly I view the structure and clarity of that thread as a grand achievement. The problem of course is it came with a nasty tone. But all of the points I made were 100% valid, and I stand by them. So here is a compiled version from that thread without the sass.
Even if you think some of these issues are insignificant, I guarantee you from experience that they aren't. These issues are what stand between these forums and a good, usable interface.
These issues are in no particular order:
1. Signatures are hard coded into forum posts
If I change my signature, the change needs to propagate to every single post on the forums. This is what the user expects to happen based on the contract of a forum. It's also a potential security issue, what if a newcomer puts in their name or phone number, and then tries to edit it? It won't go away!
2. There no pagination, just a dropdown of pages
Pagination is a good thing. It's an accepted, standard, useful thing. A dropdown does not compare.
3. Email addresses are in plain text
As mentioned before, this is a huge security problem. You're putting the email addresses of people online. You know why this is bad. And don't think that bots are the only things that harvest email addresses. This forum NEEDS a system like a form that sends an email to the person, but never exposes the email address. This is how all other forums do it, because just putting a regular mailto link is a joke.
4. Links are not automatically hyperlinked in posts
There are many threads that are ruined because links aren't automatically hyperlinked. http://google.com <- That should be a link. No questions asked.
5. There is no preview post function
Did you know that on some forums, you can't even make a new post without going to the preview screen? This improves the quality of posts on a forum. It lets you know if your images are working and linked properly. It means you don't have to edit your post a million times to fix something.
6. No ability to sort table column headers
This is a feature of vBulletin and other forums, and it's very nice. See the most viewed thread? No problem! See the thread with the most replies? Simple! Unless you're really messing up your SQL syntax, this should be a simple order by clause.
7. The code tag is a joke. Plain and simple
Some people have said it's nice not to see a huge block of code, and the expanding box helps hide it. Of course it does, but it's a poor display mechanism. Look at other code tag models. Most put it in a div with a fixed height and a scrollbar. That way it doesn't take up a huge amount of horizontal real estate, but it also lets you SEE something without having to DO anything. And ALL CODE TAGS COLORIZE THE CODE. You MUST colorize your code tags. That's why people don't code in NOTEPAD anymore.
8. The "Top" link at the bottom of each page REFRESHES the page. AND the "link" for each post REFRESHES the page.
You know it shouldn't do that. Come on guys. Who made that?! Please read up on how to use anchor tags properly.
9. No auto-generation of thumbnails for uploaded images
This is a supremely useful feature of all forum upload tools (see PHPBB, vBulletin). I highly suggest you add this.
10. The link tag is broken.
It cuts off links when it shouldn't. If pressed, I will find an example. But manually adding a link tag around certain links will cut off the link too early, breaking the link.
11. The "toggle post" button is a joke, and should be replaced with a modern stylesheet
On any other forum software, the style is set up such that if a huge, gigantic image is posted, it won't stretch all the other posts. This is a relatively simple thing to do. Of course these forums would have to be re-marked up, because of the ancient all-table markup they currently use
12. The quote feature is unintuitive and doesn't show authorship
It makes no sense that you have to scroll up, highlight text, scroll down, then hit the quote button to quote something. It CERTAINLY isn't made clear anywhere in the interface that you can do this. You need to add a QUOTE button by each post that quotes the text AND shows the original author.
13. The reply box still shows in locked threads
You know it shouldn't do this, fellas. You're just asking for trouble.
14. Auto-locking of threads is a joke, and is a sledgehammer used to fix a tiny problem
Forums obviously stick around for a long time. And there are obviously projects that are ongoing, and sometimes don't receive attention for quite some time. So things get locked that shouldn't be. Threads that people still want to contribute to, or ask about, are gone forever. So they are forced to make new threads. It actually ADDS clutter to the forum. The correct solution is just to warn users who bump threads. I understand this is a forum for a younger audience, and younger people aren't always the brightest, but you WARN people who bump threads, you don't prevent ALL threads from getting bumped.
What I'm really saying here is TGC, you need to solidify what you have instead of jumping to the next thing so quickly. I couldn't help but notice that there's now a Facebook link by each forum post. Not only is it completely unclear what this button does (even after clicking on it, I still can't figure out what it does! Nor do I want to!), but your time could clearly be spent improving the foundation of the forums, which is usability.
From seeing how the forums are structured, it seems like you don't have a strong web team creating this website. I don't mean to be insulting here. There's just things like all these HCI problems, the fact that the forums are marked up as tables (even the posts!), and the lack of a consistent design theme that point to a need for improvement. I say this from the perspective of someone who works full time in the web industry, and seeing many examples of good, and also bad work.
Before you offer rebuttals, you need to understand something. Everything here is a real problem. It's not something you can argue for or against, it's a problem. Period. I did not come up with this list. Years of web usability came up with this list. Years of building up good software and user interfaces, books and blog posts, built this list. I am just the first person to translate all of that into a solid forum post.
I won't entertain people arguing against these problems, only people asking for clarification of what exactly makes it a problem. There's a lot more that I could say about each point and how it relates to good usability.
There are also arguments that we can get out of the way right off the bat, like:
No one is forcing you to use these forums
This is not a valid argument for obvious reasons. I hope I don't need to clarify why.
People go about using these forums every day with no problem
Of course there are problems. People fight with this interface to make it work how they want it to every day. They've just become used to it, so they don't know there's a better solution. Just because a bunch of people use something doesn't make it a good product.
TGC should focus on products, not the forums
This is both true and false. TGC should absolutely be spending more time on the products than on the forum. BUT, that's assuming the forums were built right in the first place, and don't have so many issues. From years of experience in the web world, seeing something built right the first time almost never happens. Which is why we need changes. It's also important to remember that building a community is an ongoing process, and if your vessel for that community has bugs and security flaws, then no amount of day-glo Facebook glitter will improve it.
That's it, except for when I edit my post to fix all the mistakes I find in it since there's no preview post function!
