When click the New button and there are only, for example, two new topics left, there is a message at the bottom of the list that says: “There are no more new topics to read. Browse all categories or view latest topics.” This is in a largish font and captures my eye instantly, which makes my brain think, “That can’t be right - I thought there were two more to read.”
Of course, there are two more, and they are listed in the box above, but the message distracts me. A rule about web design, “Don’t make me think,” comes into play here. How does the “no more new topics” message help me? I don’t think it does. It just makes me stop what I’m doing to consider it - a small thing, but significant enough for me to whine about it. I suggest removing it. It seems to me that having two topics in the New list makes it pretty obvious that there are no more messages after that.
People generally need a “bottom” so they know that they have definitively reached the end of the list.
The bottom also has other things to do – links to other signposts, like trail signs that take you in different directions.
This is particularly important in an environment of infinite scrolling, where it can be difficult if not impossible to reach the end depending on what you’re looking at – are you hiking the 1 mile lake loop, or the entirety of the Appalachian Trial?
Well, I disagree, and so far the responses I see agree with me that the message I cited is misleading. The positive message: “Loading more topics” is more than enough information for me. The message “There are x unread and x new topics” is useful, but this big, fat, in-your-face “There are no more topics to read” is confusing, misleading, and unnecessary. The box stops. The color changes. It is obvious that all the unread messages are shown in the box. The “no more topics” message just confuses things. It is not read by a new user as: “All the unread messages are displayed in the box above,” it is read: “You have read all the messages. The messages in the box above are not the ones you want (wave hand gently in front of face.) You are finished reading messages now. Go do something else.”
Your sign post is not an accurate analogy. The “no more topics” message is more like “Dead End.”
What?! I totally disagree. I’m quite happy with Discourse, the way it’s working now, and the direction it appears to be headed.
Remember, our goal here is to use a quality discussion platform out of the box - nobody at McNeel is interested in investing a bunch of development effort writing tools on top of this platform. We want to spend our time on our products.
That I understand, and I agree that I would rather you guys spend your time on Rhino than on a web forum. My comment was an expression of dismay that every, not some, suggestion made about this forum so far has been met with the attitude of “yeah, you guy have no idea what you are talking about, so piss off.” So it is going to be up to us, the dissatisfied ones, to do our own thing, if we can, when the API comes out as CSS cannot address all the issues of complaint.
I’m not reading any kind of “piss off” attitude coming from anyone, but maybe I’m just dense. It does seem like this thread got a little sidetracked since I interpreted Margaret’s initial request not as “get rid of the message”, but more of a “tone the message down” since it may not be the single most important thing on the page.
Margaret, are you using my “Discourse Compact” Stylish hack? If so, I can see where you’re coming from. When viewed using the standard Discourse styling, it looks just fine.
Nope, I’m using the out-of-the box version, because I wanted to be seeing what most users see. I used the Stylish version for a while so I could look a the possibilities, but I stopped because I wanted a “real” user experience.
To me this message is the most prominent thing on the page.
I was also reading a “piss off” attitude and I suppose that just exemplifies that communication can be a tricky thing. The Discourse developers should therefore perhaps have a bit more goodwill when they come over feedback that can very easily be used to make the product even better for more people.
I had to go looking for the wording and style since I don’t normally use the"new" button…
I suppose a simple rephrasing in the line of “the box above lists all new items. There are no further new topics” would meet some of the objections.
Perhaps I should say something and not just press the heart button (which I don’t like, but I’m lazy)… I’m sorry to say, but I do have the same feeling as Sam sometimes.
I’d also like to know the real names of all the developers. I do like the switch to Discourse, but all this “social media” stuff is very irritating (to me).
The issue is that there are multiple discussions going on at once. Mcneel community can decide on how to best style the forum for its users, we decide how to style the defaults.
Both @discourse and I don’t really agree that this particular bit of text should be made smaller, Jeff explained his reasons and @margaret does not agree with them which is fair enough.
Its one of those bikeshed problems, do you paint a fence red or green? (clearly red, its faster, but that is not the point)
I do not think this is a strong signifier that we are ignoring feedback, in fact we have been working quite hard on lots of bits of feedback from here, for example:
We have a developer working on implementing native to Discourse file upload feature, Mcneel being a big catalyst
We have labels implemented which was partly due to a need expressed here
We have fixed up quite a few bugs that were raised here
We are assisting Mcneel in setting up a more robust Discourse setup.
We have reply by email working that helps mitigate some of the mobile concerns.
We implemented this, solely based on Mcneel feedback:
Built in avatars without gravatar are on the near roadmap.
The reality is that much of the Discourse feedback has wound back quite a lot at mcneel cause instead most of the focus is simply in participating and building a community, we are totally ecstatic about it.
If you feel any of your concerns are not being addressed, listened to or dealt with properly, PM me and point me at the particular issues, I will be more than happy to respond / help.
Overall, I really love this community and am very happy that it is using Discourse successfully.
If you click on a user’s avatar, you can see their “profile page” which displays their full name. We should be able to add a tag when we u[grade the server next to show which users are McNeel employees since this is a feature the discourse guys recently added.
I use “social media” quite a bit and am having a hard time figuring out what part of this forum you consider irritating “social media” stuff.
