Think of your members

[Paul B]

I recently signed up to two different XF forums for some help and advice on a particular issue.

I won't mention which ones as this is not intended to be finger pointing.

In both cases the end user experience was frustrating and put me off posting there long term.

The first one was related to ads.
Everywhere!
Ads in the sidebar, between posts, under the editor, all over the place.
Trying to compose a post and an ad would slide up and cover the editor window making it impossible to write the post.
Dismiss it and a few seconds later another one would.
The dismiss link was so small that in most cases I ended up triggering the ad and being sent elsewhere.

I stopped using that site almost immediately.

The other site had great members and I got lots of help but good grief, the auto merge add-on for subsequent posts by the same author is just awful.
A member would post a reply, which I would read, then they would post another one before anyone else posted and it would be merged into the previous post.
As I had already read it, I was missing pertinent information - who reads old posts?
There was no notification a new post had been made, alerts don't work (naturally, as it's an edited post), so a lot of stuff was being missed.

For my own part I would make a post which others would read and several hours later I would add something else to the thread, asking another question, and the post is auto merged into the previous one.
Again, everyone who was following the thread had no idea and missed the new information, which resulted in fewer responses and information not being provided.
I resorted to posting a new thread in the end, just so people would be aware.

I understand why posts get merged - we do it here (manually) but to do it automatically and silently without alerting those involved in the thread is a massive UX failure.

Food for thought for those of you trying to attract new members and complaining about social media killing forums.

 

[M@rc]

@Brogan Did you voice your feedback to their staff or did you just bounce?

 

[beerForo]

The other site had great members and I got lots of help but good grief, the auto merge add-on for subsequent posts by the same author is just awful.

Good grief, this legacy forum add-on to combat post count padding is the worst. Does anybody pad the count anymore? Let people make as many posts as they want. Sometimes you need to add something, and yes, it should be bumped. What's the crime?

 

[Paul B]

The first one I just left.

The second I mentioned it in a couple of posts but no, not to the staff.

I assume the staff are well aware how the site works and it's not for me to tell them.

 

[beerForo]

Full disclosure: I used the auto-merge at one point. It stayed awhile until I realized how annoying it was.

 

[sbj]

I mean social media killing forums is not related to that. If you have none of these mentioned things like ads or auto-merge, you still aren't gonna compete suddenly with social media.
But obviously if you also manage to shy away the few guests who land on your site, then you can right away close the board.

I never understood the auto-merge thing. Maybe in classified sections this might be useful to prevent bumping, other than that any new post at this day and age is useful. Let them post, activity is always good and has no downsides.

The one with the massive ads. Sigh. As a non-commercial forum owner I can clearly see a mile away who does it for passion and who does it for money. In this case it is ultra-obvious. Trying to maximize ad revenue for those poor smartphone users who land through Google on those sites without having an ad blocker... Poor guys...

 

[Max Taxable]

I get REALLY annoyed at the flood check, here at xf particularly in the private conversations. The default setting is just too limiting. Have to take convos elsewhere because of it.

 

[Paul B]

If you have none of these mentioned things like ads or auto-merge, you still aren't gonna compete suddenly with social media.

True - but you also aren't going to keep members.

Both forums have probably lost me as long time posters because of the issues - so the next time I have a similar question, I may post elsewhere, possibly on Reddit.

those poor smartphone users

Indeed.
I was limited to my tablet.

 

[Paul B]

I get REALLY annoyed at the flood check, here at xf particularly in the private conversations. The default setting is just too limiting. Have to take convos elsewhere because of it.

Good.

We're trying to save on DB storage costs.

 

[beerForo]

I get REALLY annoyed at the flood check, here at xf particularly in the private conversations. The default setting is just too limiting. Have to take convos elsewhere because of it.

 

[Old Nick]

@Brogan don't hang around on forums you don't know, if you need any information ask me !

 

[Dixie McCall]

@Brogan
Was it worse than this?

Christian Forums

Christian Forums is an online community for Christians around the world to find fellowship with other Christians.

www.christianforums.com

Checked it out for the style, didn't stay long.

 

[Dixie McCall]

Not bashing. LOve their style just so many ads.

 

[Masetrix]

In both cases the end user experience was frustrating and put me off posting there long term.

The first one was related to ads.
Everywhere!
Ads in the sidebar, between posts, under the editor, all over the place.
Trying to compose a post and an ad would slide up and cover the editor window making it impossible to write the post.
Dismiss it and a few seconds later another one would.
The dismiss link was so small that in most cases I ended up triggering the ad and being sent elsewhere.

I stopped using that site almost immediately.

The other site had great members and I got lots of help but good grief, the auto merge add-on for subsequent posts by the same author is just awful.

The first case that (too many) advertisements are shown is simply to bypass by an ad blocker.
Only when anti ad blockers are used there I never come back there.

The second case is also not a problem and should prevent the bumping, we also use that and if someone writes a reply to their own post within 5 minutes, it is merged and marked as such.

What is worse is that e.g. with forum software like XF JavaScript is absolutely necessary if you want to click away the cookie notice for the current session, which is not possible without JavaScript.
Even worse with XF forums, if you click a thumbnail, you get an error message that you have to be registered to do that ...

Since I have deactivated JavaScript for unknown pages by default for security reasons, I cannot use any XF forums as a guest. So that's a "forum killer", not advertising.

 

[Wildcat Media]

The other site had great members and I got lots of help but good grief, the auto merge add-on for subsequent posts by the same author is just awful.

I'm using an auto-merge add-on and have to say that proper setup, and a well-written add-on, will take away some of the frustrations. I install it mainly for those who, rather than edit their posts, will just post things a minute apart, one after the other, as they think of them. Keeping the timeout short will help (maybe five minutes at the very most), and I think an add-on should probably check to see if there are subsequent posts. The add-on I use will also issue alerts when a post is merged. So it can be done, but has to be done correctly so members don't get frustrated by it.

I can relate to the ads. One of the XF sites I'll be working with had ads that would cover the screen and frustrate many members. In addition, the ads at the top of the page pushed the content so far down that at times, all you could see was the header logo, and none of the node listings--you'd have no idea it was a forum unless you scrolled down. I won't name the ad company behind it either. They basically walk all over pages with the ads, unless someone uses an ad blocker.

 

[beerForo]

I install it mainly for those who, rather than edit their posts, will just post things a minute apart, one after the other, as they think of them.

What is wrong with that?

 

[Ivancas]

Was it worse than this?

God doesn't pay the bills. In fact, it doesn't even exist