Ultimately, I think the poor man just wants some constructive feedback.
I will say as a front-end engineer myself, we do like to upgrade and improve things for the fun of it admittedly (lol), but it’s quite important to address real problems people have with an interface. Thus he is asking about that. I wouldn’t assume he is nuking all the things you like about it and are used to just yet.
And yes, attracting new users is super important. And the more dated and uninviting the interface looks, the less new users will want to visit. It’s better if they can collect data about user behavior and answer the questions themselves, but even that takes a lot of resources… much more time and money than simply asking in a thread.
Great questions, I’ll try to answer some.
We are looking at prospects to see if Paddlingforum is compatible with a different platform. It doesn’t mean now though but perhaps later.
We want to ask users to see if they have anything on the forum that they like and we’ll look to see if there’s any options or tools we can make to have that transformation possible or a similar feature to convert to.
Of course time and money as things we have to consider too but the more we talk about what we like and what we don’t like, it gives us more push to do better for the community.
Since most of us are very unfamiliar with this platform, we definitely want to know what’s good. I’m very used to vbulletin, xenforo, reddit, livejournal, tumblr and disqus but I can’t say the same for everyone on my team.
Which is why we are asking
But let’s say we have a few of the nice features that you guys want, such as better distinction between PMs and threads. More embed media options and user customization. A nice gallery that’s constantly being upgrade and a built in marketplace. What are the cool things on this entire site that you love?
To be more specific, what’s so good about this page:
Do you guys go here often? Can it be move somewhere else?
and what about this?
Who updates these reviews?
and Finally, this app: Go Paddle | Paddling.com
Do any of you guys use this and what for specifically?
we do collect data on user behaviour, what pages are constantly being used but user feedback is equally important.
for example:
A kayak registry or something might be a place where there’s a lot of content due to the community and site being really old and therefore there’s a lot of people uploading their gear into that library but it doesn’t necessarily have a lot of member engagement show in our database because they only do it once or twice and then focus mostly on posting on the forum.
If let’s say analytic tagging was done poorly on that page, then we would have very little idea as to why we need to keep it, right?
We only bring up the things we miss when its gone. And so I think it’s important that us as community managers who might not know a lot about the topic be able to preserve what you contributed so that you guys don’t miss them.
I just learned about the app and have downloaded it. It’s useful for finding locations to launch the kayak onto the water near to my location. It can be challenging to determine places that are appropriate without it. I find it could use some extra information about each launch spot though.
Direct loading of pictures or video without a separate host to give it a HTTP would be user friendly. See thread about Webshots and how content was lost etc…
Have replies to show up under the original comment only instead of there and again on its own. You end up looking at it twice, it throws the flow of the conversation off and it makes the thread longer than it has to be. Or at least an option to format it that way yourself.
It used to be like that either here or at BoaterTalk. You can see the “rabbit holes” and who went down those, while the main conversation continued on.
Some folks liked that format and others hated it.
For me, in the past PNet iteration, the “borders” of the different forums, i.e Advice, Paddlers Place, Fishing, etc., were very distinct. A forum visitor or participant had to choose which forum to go to. I trended increasingly towards the Paddlers Place forum and skipped Advice and others. Somewhere along the timeline, the site began to do a “push approach” where all new topics/posts, regardless of forum origin, would show at the top of the forum pages. I initially resisted and reverted to an option for the “classical look” that kept the forums separated. But, each time I cleared by internet history and cookies (which I do periodically) and come back to the site, the “push” is back. Now, I just leave it alone. Obviously, the push does work as intended in that I am participating more in threads that come from forums other than Paddlers Place.
I raised up the point of the “borders” because BoaterTalk also had clear borders between different interest groups/forums. I stayed just in the confines of whitewater and surf there. (In those forums, you had a shared basis/perspective to start from so you didn’t get into contentious discussions whether “bracing” or “rolling” was/is needed or not. It was/is for folks in those venues. The discussions than honed in on how and what training methods.)
Most times I am halfway through a thread before I even take notice what forum header it is under. Some topics tend to branch off quickly and / or get hijacked, so what it started as is not always what you end up reading about.
I hear you. So, I try to be cognizant under what forum category a post is made. If it is under Advice, fishing, Tripping, etc. I tried my best to stay within the parameters of the original post. If it is under Paddlers Place, I let myself rip and riff since this forum is supposed to be about “Discussion” which allows forum participants to get to know each other (sometimes for better or worse).
There must be an option set somewhere for this, because for me the new posts ONLY show up at the end after all of the earlier posts. This sometimes makes it hard to see exactly what a person is replying to, but allows me to see only the newest posts without having to rescan the whole thread. I would not want to have to scan a 100+ message thread looking for new replies that could be anywhere.
I’m thinking more rich text features and allowing users to embed pictures and other major website widgets such as youtube. I don’t think we have the capacity of user uploaded videos but more embed features is always a plus. Don’t really want users to have to hit the back button just to come back to a thread to discuss a video or something.
New posts at the end for sure but then have a reply highlight (like the number that tells you how many new posts there are) so you can go to that conversation and see the whole thing if you want.
I tend to read the post and replies as I go and am not a fan of rereading the replies as they show up as new posts further down the line. A setting to view either way would be ok by me.
For clarification the replies I am talking about are the ones directly put to a member’s comment. I consider a reply to the thread as a post.
is there no section for that? and how many people are cool with that? I can play around with the admin tools to get that rolling if the majority are in favour of that?
That would be a good thing. The only attempt at this was/is by Broze Brothers at the Mariner Kayaks site (even though Mariner kayaks are no longer produced). Don’t know if that Excel database spreadsheet of “Found, Lost or Stolen Kayaks” is current or not.
I think it would be great to have a section listing stolen kayaks. If I had the info on Jon’s boat, I’d be sharing it with other paddling sites just to get the word out.
