Forum Feedback

[Sean]

The close button on the crimson alerts is far too dark, to the point that I didn't notice it until one of the alerts told me that it existed. Make the buttons white instead of black?

Is it better now?

[Flickerdart]

Dunno, I closed them. If new ones come up I'll chime in again.

[LoliSauce]

What is the significance of the five starred threads?

[Sean]

What is the significance of the five starred threads?

Community members can "rate" a discussion (or thread) using the "Rate This Thread" option at the top. Casting a vote for threads you view is entirely optional, but if you think that the thread is superb, you might rate it as a 5-star thread, or if you think that it's unspeakably dismal, you might choose to rate the thread with a single star.

Once enough votes have been cast for the thread rating, you will see a set of stars appear with the title of the thread in the thread listings. These stars reflect the average vote cast, and can allow you to quickly see which threads are worth reading if you are on a very busy forum with a lot of threads.

I've also been looking at an option of rating individual posts (although probably an up/down instead of 5 stars).

[LoliSauce]

Oh word. That's kind of obvious, now that I think about it. I guess rating things just isn't something I normally think of.

Thanks.

[lamaz]

Uhm these new thread icons are a bit.. hmm.. lets say chaotic. I personally prefer something a bit more simplistic, just my two cents

[Sean]

Uhm these new thread icons are a bit.. hmm.. lets say chaotic. I personally prefer something a bit more simplistic, just my two cents

Thanks for the feedback; they are definitely a work in progress. And seeing them in action, I can already think of some tweaks to make to, well, make them less chaotic, so to speak

My original thought was to use an axe (to make it viking-themed), a firey axe for hot topics, an axe with a silver blade for "new" posts, an axe with a black blade for old posts... and then the other icons as needed (locked, moved, deleted, etc).

[LoliSauce]

Screenshot

^ The "New" icon seems to be causing the thread titles to get obscured in the "What's New" page.

And honestly, I prefer things minimalistic. Small, unobtrusive icons and whatnot.

[Sean]

You're right. I'll fix this as soon as I get home tonight.

[Flickerdart]

IMO the "popular thread" icon doesn't need to be so blatant (since you can see, by the page count, how popular a thread is anyway) while the "I have posted in this thread" icon could stand to be a lot more prominent, since it's really helpful in keeping track of threads.

[Sean]

Thanks for the feedback! I did update the "new" icon to make it less of an eye sore and I was in the midst of getting this all done last night but we had a rain storm move in caused a lot of short power-outages. Since I would get bored quickly if my computer went b00m due to that, I just left the system unplugged last night. I should get a good update tonight or tomorrow, though.

[LoliSauce]

Cool. The new alert close buttons stand out very well, by the way.

[Sean]

Okay, made some edits and ready for the feedback. I'm working on a totally different set (more because I am wondering if it'll look cooler or not) but let me know what you think of the latest changes... are they less chaotic?

[LoliSauce]

It looks good. I like the more subdued look from this iteration of changes.

Is the other set going to be the more viking themed one you were talking about wanting to do previously?

[lamaz]

Yeah looks better now, easier on the eyes

[belamoor]

I guess it's just me, but i kind of liked old stoic post icon more, new one doesn't mix with the color pattern that well.
I like when stuff looks like forum branch icon, nice, fits the overall looks, different states are easily distinguishable, but still as similar as possible. Makes it not that distractive in an already information-dense environment. I cheered a little when i first saw this change.
Not that it's so much of a problem as new stoic post icon fits better thematically and are good by itself.

[Sean]

Hmmm, do you think it'd look better if I used the Stoic icon with a black or dark background vs the white one now? I can see how the white one might stand out a little too much...

[lamaz]

Just noticed that the facebook 'like' text is too dark so it doesn't stand out very well. Also the new font used on the navigation links seems to get a bit smudged on the edges, maybe a bigger font size would help?

And one other thing, I suspect that you can't do much about this, but when using IE 8 the forums break in various places For example this quick reply box is all over the place and the font, smiley etc. options don't show properly. There are a lot of small things like that which don't work properly. Before someone asks, I use IE8 at work and unfortunately am stuck with this for unforeseeable future.

To not make this post about bad stuff only here's a squirrel playing a banjo(or something)!


You are doing great job with the forums!

[Sean]

Thanks for the feedback and I'll definitely look into what's going on with IE8. IE appears to be the 4th popular browser for viewing this site and about 25% of the IE users are using IE8 (there are even a few IE7 and IE6... O.o!!!). I'll install it on one of my older sys at home and see what's going on. It might be a CSS issue because I've been trying to use more CSS3 and HTML5 methods but doubting the older browsers really support that much.