Feedback on the new forum

Kiril 2017-12-09 14:16:52 UTC #383

Oh yeah hugely different demographic, in Statcounter the 360x640 is 21% or something so its much lower and the 1920X1080 and 1366x768 is much higher percentage.

That said, the steam hardware survey is only for where Steam is installed and it might not be what they use when they visit the forum. The RPS guys will have the stats to know if its worthwhile to set aside the time to fiddle with the widths.

Vicious 2017-12-10 21:11:56 UTC #384

The frontpage isn’t the forum!

360x640 is a CSS trick to be easily able to show the same content on different resolution screens that have the same pixel ratio: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8785643/what-exactly-is-device-pixel-ratio/8785677#8785677
I would hope it’s obvious that there hasn’t been a 360x640 smartphone in about 7 or 8 years!

Discourse also has a different layout on mobile, so changes to desktop css won’t affect mobile usage.

BillButNotBen 2017-12-12 03:15:04 UTC #385

RPS will have the data on their visitors, so only they will know specifically.

But i assume that Discourse will also have a fair bit of data about what resolutions people are using, so if they’re targeting specific widths with their layouts it seems likely that they feel that’s a common width. (and most other sites seem to agree).

To be clear, I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be nice to have a wider layout for those that would like it, just that I felt the forum was getting a little unfairly criticised for something that seems pretty standard among many sites.

I don’t use the forum much on mobile, but (as long as you’re signed in) I’ve gotta say it’s a huge improvement over the old forums on that front. (Not that that was hard)

[edit] Random aside that Graham won’t be happy to hear:
Since the new forum came online I’ve basically stopped visiting the main site.
I’d been visiting less over the past year anyway, but I still tended to check it pretty often. I think I’ve only checked it twice since the new forum came online.

The reason is very simple, and shallow. There is no link to it.
I always used to check the forums first, and then click on the link at the top to check the main site. Now I have to retype the address, and it turns out I’m just too lazy to do that.

And I just realized that the advent calendar is in full swing, so I need to go and read those now.

Thermal_Ions 2017-12-12 09:17:00 UTC #386

I’m also finding this an oversight - to the detriment of RPS ad revenue (they may have had 0.01 cent more than they otherwise do).

EDIT: Don’t however change the existing top left icon to the website, as it’s what I use to get back to the main forum page easily. Needs an additional icon or link in the header dropdown on the right.

plasmiusnake 2017-12-17 02:22:46 UTC #387

I don’t like how threads can be years old, contain an infinite number of posts, and simply pushed to the front when there’s some activity. Other forums have archival systems, and frown upon “necroposting”. Whenever I see a thread I’m interested in, but the last comment it’s months old, I wonder “should I post here? Has the conversation died?”

BillButNotBen 2017-12-17 03:29:33 UTC #388

You mean the “Suggested Topics” section at the bottom?

Thermal_Ions 2017-12-23 05:05:07 UTC #389

I’ve noted that the header on forum pages are inconsistent, and frequently only showing ROCK rather than ROCK PAPER SHOTGUN.

Turns out the missing PAPER SHOTGUN isn’t actually missing it’s just effectively invisible due to the graphic have a transparent background and me using the default white theme. Change to the dark theme and it’s visible in all it’s glory.

Still not sure why sometimes it has the above header and other times it includes the thread name…

I like the white theme and given it’s the default, it seems odd the transparency has been used on the image.

Thermal_Ions 2018-02-01 15:52:42 UTC #390

Looks like someone is playing with the header images, having swapped the previously white sections of “Paper Shotgun” for black.

So it looks right now on the default (white) theme:

Of course given the specific change, with transparency still in play, it looks less clear on the dark theme (Paper - essentially disappears, with Shotgun - just visible).

Things were so much easier in the '90’s when it was mandatory for everything to be flashing horrible contrasting colours.

EPICTHEFAIL 2018-02-01 17:17:31 UTC #391

Is there any particular reason why there can’t be two header images, one for each theme? Or just ditch the transparent layer and stick a white background on it or something?

BillButNotBen 2018-02-02 00:18:39 UTC #392

AFAIK discourse supports 2 different header images. I think there were some links/discussion further up the thread.
Alternatively, putting a white shadow behind the text is invisible on the white theme, but makes the text more visible on the dark theme (though that’s a little tricky because the image doesn’t have much space around the text). See also further up the thread.

BillButNotBen 2018-02-06 13:17:05 UTC #393

Did something get changed with keeping logged in when messing with the header images?

I used to stay logged in, but for the last few days I seem to have to log in each day… which is somewhat annoying.
Is it just me?

Qazinsky 2018-02-06 15:03:07 UTC #394

While I need to log into the RPS main site once a week/ every other week, I can’t remember when I needed to log into the forum last. I have checked it most days too.

Thermal_Ions 2018-02-06 15:20:47 UTC #395

No need to log in daily here either.

BillButNotBen 2018-02-07 01:45:07 UTC #396

Hmm. must be on my end then.
I’ll try clearing my cache / cookies / etc…

I wonder if logging in from my work PC is logging me out on my home PC… though I swear it wasn’t happening last week.

nickfourtimes 2018-03-03 16:22:36 UTC #397

Not a huge issue, but on some Discourse forums, you can set your landing page. Under Preferences -> Interface, there’s a setting for “Default Home Page,” which lets you change your default page to Latest rather than Categories, for instance. Could be that that setting was disabled here for reasons, but if not, it’d be a nice touch for those of us that just want to see the newest topics first.

DanMan 2018-05-04 19:24:08 UTC #398

It’s dead, Jim.

Maybe you can rescue it by integrating with the main site. Instead of using Wordpress comments, create a new thread here in the forum for every blog post, and let people participate on both ends. Or at least after the 1st comment has been made. There’s got to be APIs for that on either side.

In fact: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-discourse/

BillButNotBen 2018-05-05 00:07:30 UTC #399

It is rather quiet… mostly only the big threads that are still active.

Apparently they’re working on a main site redesign, so I don’t know if that’ll highlight the forum more, or integrate. I imagine they won’t do anything like that wordpress plugin at the moment as it’d be a waste of resources if they’re planning to change the site in the future.
(seems to be the same reason they haven’t bothered fixing the images at the top of the page, despite that being effectively a 30 minute job).

Given the rise in Discord (apparently, I still can’t access it), social media, etc… I don’t know if a site redesign and integrating comments will be enough. Even commenting seems down these days.

I thought that one of the advantages of Discourse was that it allowed people to sign up with google/facebook/etc… accounts, which would reduce the barrier to entry. But they turned that off almost immediately, which was odd.

It’s a shame, as I’m finding the actual forum software so much better.

Thermal_Ions 2018-05-05 01:48:16 UTC #400

I don’t get this. While the administrators can create channels in Discord, it seems a terrible solution for a traditionally forum based community, given there’s no other structure to enable conversations. It’s a chat program (with history), and not really a lot more.

I guess the appeal is that it’s free. That’s basically the reason my group of friends moved over to it when our Venty server was up for renewal.

lemonade 2018-05-05 04:29:52 UTC #401

I don’t see the comparison either, but I’ve seen small forums die because the community moved to Discord. I’m on a traditional phpBB board that got a few posts a day with ~20 active members. Someone made an unofficial Discord for the community, and now the forum gets maybe 1 post a week. The Discord room is more active than the forums ever were, and now the admin is considering shutting down the forums because the hosting costs aren’t worth it. A similar thing happened to another small forum I was active on.

Part of it is probably that most PC gaming people already have Discord accounts at this point, so clicking join is little effort. And it’s a centralized service, you don’t have to go visit a certain site for each community.

BillButNotBen 2018-05-05 07:57:45 UTC #402

I also don’t get it, so I’m definitely the wrong person to ask.

I do 95% of my RPS usage at work, and they use OpenDNS and OpenDNS has Discord flagged as Social Media, so I can’t access it and probably will never be able to.
So I’ve never used it and have no idea what it’s like. If everyone from RPS moves over there then I’ll be sad and lonely

I assume it’s very similar to Slack, which also seems to have taken over the business/tech world.
No one has ever really explained the popularity of Slack to my satisfaction either, but if I recall correctly it was based on IRC. So, in some ways, we’ve gone full circle.

I guess they combine aspects of social media/messenger services that a lot of people rely on these days (whatsapp, etc…) with elements of IRC and forums. Plus they’re SaaS rather than something you have to download and host yourself, and that’s another big trend. (see also the rise of things like Medium).

I can see the appeal of their more real-time elements for organizing games, and it turns out a lot more of our community was in the games subforum section than I realized.

Imho, Discourse seems a nice balance between a traditional forum and having a few more real-time elements like telling you when people are replying to you and dynamically updating new/unread post counts.
But maybe I’m from a slightly older generation.