At last! DPreview.com moving to Xenforo

[Digital Doctor]

Shouldn't posters have a choice ?

chit chat discussion thread (unthreaded threads)
information oriented thread (threaded threads).

 

[smallwheels]

Shouldn't posters have a choice ?

They have: Stay on topic, have no problem. What they do is their choice...

 

[Digital Doctor]

At least a more information oriented thread, like a Q&A thread, should have threading. Even one level of post threading would help alot.

Active Xenforo suggestion outlines the details (147 upvotes)

Thread 'Allow nested replies in Q&A Threads'

Jun 18, 2020

Context:

XF 2.2 - Forum and thread types

Forums contain threads and threads contain posts. It's been the essential framework of forums on the Internet since the public migrated from usenet to the web. The structure is well known and well understood - though the origins of some of the terminology are lost in the mists of time. Who ever...

xenforo.com

The Q&A thread naturally lends itself to "post comments". Now, I never thought threaded conversations really worked well in the traditional forum setting -- I recall vBulletin's attempts at it. But, when you are talking about a Q&A where the A's are pieces of votable content itself. There is naturally going to be discussions around the A's.

The problem with the flat structure is what happens when someone replies to an Answer? That answer's reply gets its own Vote button, which doesn't make...

• arn
• Replies: 109
• Forum: XenForo suggestions

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[click here]

Is their home page on Wordpress or something?

 

[Digital Doctor]

Is their home page on Wordpress or something?

Tags look wordpress like

https://www.dpreview.com/tag/drone

About staff ... not sure

https://www.dpreview.com/about/staff/richard

The fonts and feel of the homepage is very xenforo.

Probably been on Wordpresss for ages and wanted to stay on it.

I would have suggested

XenCustomize News Publisher - Add-on for XenForo 2

A powerful news CMS for XenForo with unique layouts, modern design, and categorized news on the main index.

xencustomize.com

if they wanted an integrated option.

 

[Digital Doctor]

They have Cool article comment options.

 

[Suzanne O]

They have Cool article comment options.



View attachment 330208

As i said most Newspapers have these threaded replies.
If you decided to poll your own forum members i'd have my doubts they would want them.
Why? You wouldn't have left vBulletin so quickly.

 

[smallwheels]

They have Cool article comment options.

Looks nice but in practice I'd say barely anyone would use it, let alone profit from it. A very good example of feature lust. Most forum users are overstrained with things like question threads, voting threads or switching to discussion tabs. Some even with quoting, posting to the correct forum or thread or opening an own thread. Not to speak about using prefixes or tabs.
So basically: The simpler the better. More features are not better in most cases, it is forum owners who want them, not forum users. It is easy to overload your forum with features. It is way more difficult to only offer the relevant features and this way to keep a clean UI and easy user experience.

 

[dutchbb]

You could use profile posts for threaded

 

[Digital Doctor]

You could use profile posts for threaded

It’s a good point ! Xenforo does have threading, in the almost unused profile posting (a copy of Facebook wall from 2010).

 

[scskmg]

The fonts and feel of the homepage is very xenforo.

Forum -> ...who use XF and are also on the XF Cloud

 

[scskmg]

Probably been on Wordpresss for ages and wanted to stay on it.

...otherwise, an MS framework is used.

 

[scskmg]

I would have suggested

Do you work with “XenCostumize News Publisher” and have you already had good experiences with it in terms of your recommendation?

Thank you very much for the brief information.

 

[smallwheels]

Forum -> ...who use XF and are also on the XF Cloud

Oh really? Did you bother to read the topic of the thread you are posting to? It is called "At last! DPreview.com moving to Xenforo" - probably for a reason... Also the second posting in this thread says:

Say's in the comments they're using XF Cloud, which is good.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Do you work with “XenCustomize News Publisher” and have you already had good experiences with it in terms of your recommendation?

Haven't used it but the developer is committed to Xenforo and the demos are fantastic.
I wouldn't hesitate to use it.

 

[BrettC]

From what I can see, the old DPReview forum utilized a really old school method of threaded/nested conversations on a thread-view point of view. To be honest, it is probably along the lines of late 90s, early 2000s style of nesting. That form of nested comments/content I've almost always regarded as a 'threaded overview' is based solely on nested headers, extremely similar to mailing list nesting of constant "RE: RE: RE: RE: Subject Name' in response to the original user emailed styled nesting. While there's nothing wrong with that, that particular style of nested discussion is quite confusing to current-day internet users, and is legitimately dated.

The newer generation of content nesting doesn't utilize a discussion subject, it just attaches to the parent comment. Numerous platforms across the internet, big and small use this newer style of comment nesting. It's also a layout that I personally do not mind, as it keeps sub-discussions to the overall thread of discussion/submission generally on topic and in order without causing too much of an end-of-thread-discussion-hijack (a linear thread issue). Effectively the newer generation of comment nesting includes the content "right then and there", and no longer requires additional clicking to begin reading.

The old style that they had was legitimately overwhelming due to the sheer amount of nested discussion links without a logical display-culling limit set in place.

A decent example of quite the nested thread layout: http://web.archive.org/web/20210514064424/https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/65047483

Same thread but in flat mode: http://web.archive.org/web/20211024...com/forums/thread/4568381#forum-post-65047483

TL;DR: Threaded/Nested comment chains work better on some platforms, while linear comment chains work better on different platforms. Best of both worlds is to support both modes, but that's exceptionally uncommon.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Maybe getting a big photo site like this on board will give the XF team a nudge to give the media gallery a much needed proper revamp.

I beg for that!

 

[Levina]

Maybe getting a big photo site like this on board will give the XF team a nudge to give the media gallery a much needed proper revamp.

I beg for that!

You and I both!