Hi everyone. I am having terrible problems getting to grips with this new forum. I don’t know if it’s the forum design, or if it’s just me. As I get older, I am finding complexity harder to deal with. There are a number of health-related reasons why I have this cognitive problem but won’t go into that here.
I feel overwhelmed with information on the screen. I long for the times past when you simply had a simple narrative, or thread, that you could follow.
Does anyone know if there is a way to display information in a simpler format? I’d love to be able to contribute more, but I feel this is becoming a barrier. Can anyone advise?
I’d suggest it’s more a matter of getting used to it. There are lots of numbers popping up, and I found it confusing to start with. I too have cognitive problems so I can understand where you are coming from. I’d just take it slowly and take comfort with the fact that you have been able to start your own post, and in the right place too. There are actually some really nice features in the new Forum that can make it easier to follow threads you are interested in. Good luck.
It’s less complicated if you use an iPhone, but on the other hand some features work better on an iPad. In any case it’s worth persevering and, like HH, I think it is preferable to the last forum platform now I’ve got used to it.
And you shouldn’t let the complexity stop you posting. Just try things out and if they don’t work the way you hope, no-one is going to be bothered. We all had to learn it and you must be a long way in now as I see you made “Member”. So you probably have already learned more about it than you have still to get the hang of!
Thanks for that. I have posted here a few times, but I find the layout of the page confusing. There is just so much information that I feel overloaded. What is particularly confusing is the way replies don’t seem to “flow” as a natural conversation would. For example, an answer such as this would appear at the bottom of the page, and not next to the entry being replied to! I just can’t work that one out.
Dave, sorry you’re finding the forum difficult to and confusing to use. The layout of replies is linear as that’s usually the style that most people find easiest. We have tried to ensure that the current platform is easier to use and clearer than the previous forum, but I guess we are all different and sometimes these things just need to be given a chance as we get used to them.
There’s a section of the forum and forum FAQ that was developed to help users get to grips with the new format. It may offer you some help;
If you look at a post and see an avatar in the top right corner of the post, then that means that it is replying to an earlier post and if you tap on the avatar you will then see the post to which the answer you just read is responding. Then you tap on “return” on the right side of the screen and it takes you to the bottom again.
And if you are replying to a post and it’s the latest post in the thread then you can just tap the bigger bolder reply arrow at the bottom of the thread, but if you want to reply to a post further up the thread then you use the smaller reply arrow under the right hand side of the posting to which you want to reply. Then your reply will appear at the bottom of the thread as always, but with the avatar of the person to whom you are responding in the top right corner, as I explained in my first paragraph. In this situation, if the other user has the default notifications turned on then he/she will get an email with your reply post in it.
Excellent! I’m sure if you have other things you would like explaining, if you post the question here then there are several of us usually on line within a few minutes who will be happy to help. And none of us (except maybe Richard!) knows everything so any question will help others who haven’t got round to asking !
Best
Ah now. If you want to address a remark to an individual member, then you write @davidhendon rather than davidhendon. That way the system alerts the person concerned. So if I write @DaveS like that then you should get an email telling you that I have done so.
When you type the @ symbol you get offered a list of user names to select from, or you can just type the name but with an @ in front (no space after it though).
@Richard.Dane many thanks for your assistance. I’ve down loaded the Discourse app for my android tablet, and it works quite well at stripping out the information that I don’t need to see.
If you are replying direct to someone you don’t need the @ thing. I’m replying to you so I’m not using it. However if I want to alert @davidhendon I’ll add him here. I hope that makes sense.
This isn’t a problem for me, but I do think an improvement in navigational clarity could be made.
I use the ‘numbered links’ - ‘# unread’ and ‘# new’ - at the bottom of each thread (as arrowed on my screenshot) but in my view the very subtle colour difference is not clear enough to differentiate within the sentence to show they are actually links! I would guess some Forum visitors don’t use these useful links because they are unaware of them.
If they were reversed to white text out of a grey ‘shape’ this would make them much more obvious.
GeoffC - the invisibility of links is across the board and renders all links [to the eye] as plain text that only show as links when the mouse hovers over the link, or when others have visited the URL and the number of clicks is shown alongside. A tweak to the css (content formatting instructions) would help enormously. Links are what make the interent work, the language of the internet is to highlight them.
