Does anyone feel like this is the next-gen of forums?

[jmurrayhead]

We’ve been listening for months and making changes to go with it.

Unfortunately people are intent on giving us vague feedback like “it’s terrible” which just isn’t actionable rather than doing the sensible thing of feeding back to us in the appropriate and constructive manner and in the designated places.

If we’re not listening it’s because there’s nothing (actionable) to hear.

This isn’t the right place for this discussion though (if you want to affect change). That should be done in the Suggestions forum.

well here ya go:
https://xenforo.com/community/threa...is-the-next-gen-of-forums.132438/post-1167497

 

[Type RA]

The mobile version of XF should probably just mimic that of Facebook, Twitter, etc. And I know a lot of people are going to hate on that. When you open up XF on a mobile device, the first thing seen should be a posting box that looks like the facebook app (no wysiwyg). Inside the box, it will allow you to just post text, post a photo(s), or photo(s) with text. When choosing photos the user could be prompted to choose whether it's a new thread or should go to the media gallery, or *gasp*, their own profile. For new threads, they would be prompted for a title and forum to post in.

Below the posting box should be the feed, configurable by the user, to either display all new posts for the day, posts by people they follow, posts in forums they watch, threads they watch, or any combination with preference on what they see first being allowed. With that, the OP and avatar/username should be displayed with some of the latest posts shown underneath and allows for displaying more posts asynchronously if the users chooses to.

In many cases, less is more...specifically on a mobile device. We really need to simplify the user experience there.

Facebook, Twitter etc are for people that want to talk. Forums are for people that want to read & learn. So a "post first" model isn't the way IMO. That said, the FB ease of posting/uploading/interacting is very addictive!

 

[drastic]

Facebook, Twitter etc are for people that want to talk. Forums are for people that want to read & learn. So a "post first" model isn't the way IMO. That said, the FB ease of posting/uploading/interacting is very addictive!

You state FB's ease of use is addicting, which is probably a good reason why it should be explored.

For your other post, which doesn't really make sense, you say forums are for people who want to read and learn. Have you been on any Facebook groups that are targeted towards niche topics? There's tons of information in them. Also, in order to read, someone must first post something. Otherwise, there's nothing to read. Not all forums are for learning. Some are just hangouts, much like some parts of social media.

Social media's ease of use is worth exploring and implementing, where appropriate, for a future release. Ease of use is something everyone should strive for anyway. Taking the best examples and molding them into your own easy to use site usually ends up with good results.

Today's generation has no attention span for learning, so whatever we build has to be easy enough for like a three year old to figure out. Otherwise, the goldfish generation can't figure it out.

 

[oO5 Dynasty]

You state FB's ease of use is addicting, which is probably a good reason why it should be explored.

For your other post, which doesn't really make sense, you say forums are for people who want to read and learn. Have you been on any Facebook groups that are targeted towards niche topics? There's tons of information in them. Also, in order to read, someone must first post something. Otherwise, there's nothing to read. Not all forums are for learning. Some are just hangouts, much like some parts of social media.

Social media's ease of use is worth exploring and implementing, where appropriate, for a future release. Ease of use is something everyone should strive for anyway. Taking the best examples and molding them into your own easy to use site usually ends up with good results.

Today's generation has no attention span for learning, so whatever we build has to be easy enough for like a three year old to figure out. Otherwise, the goldfish generation can't figure it out.

Very well put!

 

[trapped_soul]

You state FB's ease of use is addicting, which is probably a good reason why it should be explored.

For your other post, which doesn't really make sense, you say forums are for people who want to read and learn. Have you been on any Facebook groups that are targeted towards niche topics? There's tons of information in them. Also, in order to read, someone must first post something. Otherwise, there's nothing to read. Not all forums are for learning. Some are just hangouts, much like some parts of social media.

Social media's ease of use is worth exploring and implementing, where appropriate, for a future release. Ease of use is something everyone should strive for anyway. Taking the best examples and molding them into your own easy to use site usually ends up with good results.

Today's generation has no attention span for learning, so whatever we build has to be easy enough for like a three year old to figure out. Otherwise, the goldfish generation can't figure it out.

Very well put!

Agreed.. This is the key thing; it has to be easy, fluid, mobile, and quick - as in quick to use. People want it yesterday and want to post, add their photos or videos etc, information, then move to the next thing they're doing. Not spend countless hours trying to learn a system and package that even after months they still find things out about which they never knew existed. (due to just being lazy and/or so much navigation etc involved on mobile).
Mobile users now are king. Yes we're still using PC's and desktops, but mobile users are king and it's them we all mostly need to focus on.
Not all forums are used as learning portals etc. Some are communities and a lot more.

 

[ManagerJosh]

Today's generation has no attention span for learning, so whatever we build has to be easy enough for like a three year old to figure out. Otherwise, the goldfish generation can't figure it out.

Or patience.

 

[Mouth]

I use XF 2.0 on my mobile all the time. It's a great experience and superior to XF 1.x in almost every way.

Feel free to make some constructive suggestions once you're able. You've been using the XF2 demo for quite some time so that feedback would have been useful earlier, but we'll take it on board and see what we can do if there happens to be any actionable feedback.

https://xenforo.com/community/threads/8-things-wrong-with-the-xf2-mobile-experience.132715/

 

[jauburn]

I think it's important to recognize or remember that "most people" have never used, much less contributed to, forums of any kind. Most people won't. Most people are consumers, not creators. Of those who create, a minuscule number has interest in contributing to some kind of online discussion.

My point is that forum admins and software makers are always trying hard to engage the unengagable.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think it has to diverge in recognition of the clear line between Facebook-style engagement and forum-style engagement. The former encourages ephemeral response. The latter encourages thought and reflection.

If this demarcation is accurate, then the majority of effort for a software like Xenforo would be to be the best in one area or the other. If the demarcation is not accurate, well, then, never mind.

 

[jmurrayhead]

I think it's important to recognize or remember that "most people" have never used, much less contributed to, forums of any kind. Most people won't. Most people are consumers, not creators. Of those who create, a minuscule number has interest in contributing to some kind of online discussion.

My point is that forum admins and software makers are always trying hard to engage the unengagable.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think it has to diverge in recognition of the clear line between Facebook-style engagement and forum-style engagement. The former encourages ephemeral response. The latter encourages thought and reflection.

If this demarcation is accurate, then the majority of effort for a software like Xenforo would be to be the best in one area or the other. If the demarcation is not accurate, well, then, never mind.

I've participated in several facebook posts that were full of thought and reflection. In that aspect, it's not the software that encourages it...it's the topic and what's on people's mind. The difference being, facebook makes it easier to participate.

 

[jauburn]

The difference being, facebook makes it easier to participate.

Has it made it easier to follow and retrieve conversations?

 

[jmurrayhead]

Has it made it easier to follow and retrieve conversations?

No, and I don't think anyone is suggesting we lose that ability. We're suggesting making the creation and participation of content easier. If all you're seeing from the suggestion is a post with some hidden comments that get buried over time...we're not at all on the same page.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I've participated in several facebook posts that were full of thought and reflection. In that aspect, it's not the software that encourages it...it's the topic and what's on people's mind. The difference being, facebook makes it easier to participate.

Many like me (and many of our members) don't want all the excess baggage that comes along with Fecesbook. Nobody wants all of those intrusive ads. Nobody wants to be "suggested" things continuously. Nobody wants to know what their "friends" are posting. Some, like me, also don't like having our privacy raped when signing up for that social media trainwreck--not a month went by, when I briefly joined several years ago, that they weren't sticking in some new "feature" without telling us, and leaving permissions open to the entire world. No, there are still a lot of us out here (and many in the enthusiast/hobbyist community) who would rather "suffer" through the indignities of using forum software, vs. dealing with all the unwanted baggage of social media.

Forums and communities like ours are a respite from all that. Most appreciate it. And to be honest, we still do get the occasional village idiots who wander in from social media...they never last long without losing interest or getting banned. A good thing, in my book.

And I think in general, after viewing many similar threads here and elsewhere, the audiences we cater to are different from typical social media users, and we need to stop treating them the same. If they want utter simplicity in posting, let them stick to social media. If they can't operate something as simple as a forum, then maybe they will not be a good fit. We've even had a small number of older users on a few of our forums (I'm talking, visitors in their 70s or 80s) and after minimal handholding, they have been able to figure out how to read and reply to messages.

Something like Sonnb's live thread should be in core and active for all threads. Refreshing or clicking a link to view new posts is so 5 years ago. People are adapted to new content appearing in front of them on the fly.

It is a neat idea, I agree. But how many of us can afford the server resources to do that? On big boards with 1000+ active users online during peak hours, each little "nibble" of data eats up both bandwidth and CPU cycles--it can add up fast. On smaller forums, content is not posted enough for this to even be a factor. A thread posted in once per day certainly won't see any advantage. It would be a nice option to have available, though, and enable it when desired. (And that may forever relegate it to being an add-on, but, no big deal here. If we want it, we'll purchase it!)

At least if you have to refresh a page in XF, it only takes a second or two. I remember our vB 3.7 taking several seconds, if not longer, for a refresh. Sometimes I give myself a little wake-up call. If there is a little feature I don't like on XF, I remind myself...would I go back to our old (modified) vB 3.7? Nope! I still visit a few forums that use 3.7 or 3.8 and they seem like dinosaurs.

 

[jmurrayhead]

Nobody wants all of those intrusive ads.

Ads have always and should always be controlled by the site admin, so not sure of your point here.

Nobody wants to be "suggested" things continuously.

If that were even a suggested feature, it could be turned off. But I have yet to see anyone here suggest that.

Nobody wants to know what their "friends" are posting.

'Nobody' represents a large number of people. Are you sure about that? You seem to be speaking for a lot of us.

Some, like me, also don't like having our privacy raped when signing up for that social media trainwreck

Not sure where anyone was suggesting something like that, either.

No, there are still a lot of us out here (and many in the enthusiast/hobbyist community) who would rather "suffer" through the indignities of using forum software, vs. dealing with all the unwanted baggage of social media. Forums and communities like ours are a respite from all that. Most appreciate it. And to be honest, we still do get the occasional village idiots who wander in from social media...they never last long without losing interest or getting banned. A good thing, in my book. And I think in general, after viewing many similar threads here and elsewhere, the audiences we cater to are different from typical social media users, and we need to stop treating them the same. If they want utter simplicity in posting, let them stick to social media. If they can't operate something as simple as a forum, then maybe they will not be a good fit. We've even had a small number of older users on a few of our forums (I'm talking, visitors in their 70s or 80s) and after minimal handholding, they have been able to figure out how to read and reply to messages.

It sounds like you missed some of the point of these suggestions. And it also sounds like you're of the mind that if you don't want it, the rest of us shouldn't have it. And what may still work for your community doesn't necessarily work for all communities. Not once have I suggested take away what works well for others, rather, provide the experience for those who do want it.

Maybe I'm just reading your post wrong, but regardless, there is a lot of benefit to some of the social networking-like suggestions people are making and to simply dismiss what customers want because you don't want it isn't really fair.

 

[Mouth]

Feel free to make some constructive suggestions once you're able. You've been using the XF2 demo for quite some time so that feedback would have been useful earlier, but we'll take it on board and see what we can do if there happens to be any actionable feedback.

https://xenforo.com/community/threads/8-things-wrong-with-the-xf2-mobile-experience.132715/

From https://xenforo.com/community/forums/xenforo-suggestions.18/ to
https://xenforo.com/community/forums/general-xenforo-discussion-and-feedback.45/

Hmmm, not worthy of suggestions after all I guess.

 

[Paul B]

Suggestions should be explicit and one per thread.

The thread was more along the lines of feedback and did not contain any actionable suggestions in the first post.

Subsequently, it has evolved into a general discussion thread comparing it to social media and mobile based use.

 

[RDR]

Don't post much anymore but must admit I am speechless at the moment seeing that

 

[Mike Fara]

. If you agree that Forums are dying out, then XF needs to be more than just a forum system but a suite of community engagement and collaboration functionality so that it supports and provides for a wider breath of customers requirements and enticements.

I agree with this but I think XenForo 2 is forming the framework to provide more features and more promising additions to the software that don't bog it down with nonsense. In my opinion, vBulletin has gone down the crapper due to their stupid "cloud hosting" nonsense, which I never agreed with, and its sluggish interface. IPB and phpMyBB have been compromised a million times and have had very similar, mundane code, mostly forever.

XenForo, on the other hand, continues to update itself with the latest web standards. The ability to use elasticsearch, for instance, could allow you to have a forum with billions of posts, and potentially have no issues.

What HAS changed is that companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have started to realize that they can profit in this area through horizontal monopolization. These companies want to corner the market on information procurement and retrieval. And they are spending BILLIONS of dollars on it, whereas "forum owners" do not have these resources.

When ChaCha.com, a service where you could ask for and get any answer by human or bot, got too big, Google pulled the plug on their AdSense and downranked them in the search results. I know someone who was a personal assistant to the founder of that company, who is, quite frankly, a genius, or at the very least, smart innovator.

These companies don't like forums unless it helps them profit, in my opinion. They can't control the content, otherwise. Why do you think you have Google Groups, Facebook Groups (or whatever the hell its called), etc etc. I mean arguably Facebook itself is just a next-gen forum/bbs.

So there you have it.

Now when you talk about introducing new features, I think XenForo can and will do this, but thats only if thats where the developers want it to go. There is something to be said about a platform that offers good features, provides information in a way in which it can be easily retrieved, and gives you a platform for communication.

A forum is not a blog. If you want to run a blog site, install WordPress. But if what a forum is begins to change, that will be real innovation. Thats how I see it.

 

[RobinHood]

Some, like me, also don't like having our privacy raped when signing up for that social media trainwreck

Which is exactly why we need to replicate the best parts of other community software in forums.

No, there are still a lot of us out here (and many in the enthusiast/hobbyist community) who would rather "suffer" through the indignities of using forum software, vs. dealing with all the unwanted baggage of social media.

Take the good parts out, and leave the baggage

Forums and communities like ours are a respite from all that. Most appreciate it. And to be honest, we still do get the occasional village idiots who wander in from social media...they never last long without losing interest or getting banned. A good thing, in my book.

And I think in general, after viewing many similar threads here and elsewhere, the audiences we cater to are different from typical social media users, and we need to stop treating them the same. If they want utter simplicity in posting, let them stick to social media. If they can't operate something as simple as a forum, then maybe they will not be a good fit.

I'm a member of many facebook groups that are full of engineers and professionals who are are far smarter and more articulate than I am, who know their stuff, and are very capable of carrying out interesting and informative discourse on the platform.

The admins, mods and keystone users set the tone and culture of any community. Whether it's a forum, Fbook group or any other community software, not the platform itself.

That last sentence sounds like something someone who owns and sells old motor vehicles would say, where you have to light a lantern under the engine to heat it up the engine oil, then crank the front, and pull a choke before you can attempt to start it and drive away accelerating through 5 gears.

Then a high tech 2017 sports car comes a long where the doors unlock as you approach, you start it with a single button press, put it in drive and accelerate to 4 times the top speed of the old car using an automatic transmission.

Then you try to defend your old classic car by saying the customer should prefer jumping through hoops to get where you're going and anyone who can't drive one is an idiot and it's a superior car because it weeds out people who would rather utilise easier to operate more modern technology, rather than learn something old and clunky. If you do that, you're only kidding yourself. The 2017 model is selling like hot cakes right now and they don't care if you're a commuter, school run parent, Sunday driver, long haul trucker or professional rally driver. Over a billion people bought into that model in 2016 because they're doing a lot of things right that need to be emulated for the classic car to stay relevant. (That's 1B users in Fbook Groups alone)

If you love the overall feel of your classic car so much but want to keep selling it alongside with the 2017 models you have to carry out some major upgrades. Otherwise you're going to be pottering about on your own or with a few of your classic car buddies at 15mph as the rest of the world gets where they're going much easier, more enjoyably and much more quickly.

 

[W.D]

I feel XenForo 2 is a good step forward but there is a long way to go. however, as pointed out 2.0 was just an updated XF1 to match the features mostly within 1.5 which is why I'm more excited for XenForo 2.1 myself.

Features wise, I do feel little things need changing such as live threads as pointed out. if on mobile it would be a nicer experiance just to see posts appear without refreshing.

Replacing likes with emotions or something like IPS has done would be a neat way forward too. we're way beyond liking even FB have started adding dislike etc.

A paid first party chat app would be also another feature that would be nice on XenForo 2, While Siropu chat is awesome I feel other chat apps are lacking.

I also feel a nice feature would be a built in mobile app as a paid extra but made by XenForo. I would pay instantly to have a mobile app for my sites and I am sure many other XenForo users would. At this time I don't trust the current mobile offerings enough to risk money there.

XenForo has some catching up with IPS but I'm sure once 2.0 stable is out this will change. My only fear at this time is the timescale on addons being updated/ported to XenForo 2. This is the one thing that will prevent me updating instantly. I'm sure others would agree and they'll also likely hold out until XenForo 2.1.

 

[oO5 Dynasty]

The on thing i read that is kind of disturbing is the fact all of the add-ons we paid for will not work with X2. So i now have to spend more money to these developers for add-ons i already paid to use with X1 for X2. To me this is doing a disservice to the normal consumer and only benefiting the people who make add-ons. Where do people like me gain from having to spend more money for add-ons i already paid in full to use. To me this is not right and If you are going to build a new xenforo to make things easier for add-on developers, people like me should not have to get the short- end of the stick with having to dish out more money to make add-ons work with xenforo 2. If that is the case i rather stay with X1 and just receive security updates for that, and not move to X2.