New Topics/Category Organisation Update 20:45 - Post 100

Wibbs

Quazzie wrote: »

It was started as place for people to talk about Quake. There was nothing commercial about that. You need to brush up on your "History of Boards.ie"
there Dav

Ah c'mon Quaz, let's not lose the run of ourselves, Dav was one of the original Quake heads from the start. I think he might know more than a little about the history of the place.

The fact is without Boards becoming commercially viable it wouldn't be here today. I remember when I first signed up here back in 03 IIRC(had a different username which completely escapes me now. Senility ahoy) and the pretty regular slowdowns and offline events. Hell when I registered this handle ten years back the slowdowns and occasional offline events were still going on. Keeping the tech alive requires money to pay for the tech and folks to run it. It has to come from somewhere. Google ad BS won't come close to supplying it. That emperors new cloths biz model has long sailed away. Having Talk To and Adverts in the menu is hardly a big issue, if it helps keep the site running.

The new category lists are a big improvement(and a herculean task with it) too. If a problem exists - and IMH it does - it's how the community core of the site is accessed and while the new approach seems more simplified it's less conducive to browsing.

Dav himself noted that;

Dav wrote:

You aren't dealing with the emails we get saying "I have no idea how this site works" and they're the people who were bothered enough to want to tell us that. We also talk to people at events, in organisations we'd love to work with (and I don't mean commercially), via other social media and they all tell us the same thing. They do not understand our site and how it works.

He also noted that;

when one considers that people are FAR quicker to post something in complaint rather than in praise, I think that means we've clearly done something right here.

See what I did there? This community grew from a bunch of gaming "nerds" to an open voice for the Irish interwebs user and reached its peak a few years ago with just such a "cluttered" layout. It flew by others in the same market with a layout that apparently people "do not understand".

One might consider that some part of that was down to the Boards clutter, the smorgasbord of forums and discussions all over the place. One might also argue that it's more attractive to people to want to explore such an environment, rather than be corralled into "where we think they should go". One of the biggest reasons I liked Boards on first sight was that aspect of it. Its like the difference between a guided tour of somewhere interesting that doesn't go off the itinerary or exploring somewhere interesting on your own.

zeffabelli

Wibbs wrote: »

Ah c'mon Quaz, let's not lose the run of ourselves, Dav was one of the original Quake heads from the start. I think he might know more than a little about the history of the place.

The fact is without Boards becoming commercially viable it wouldn't be here today. I remember when I first signed up here back in 03 IIRC(had a different username which completely escapes me now. Senility ahoy) and the pretty regular slowdowns and offline events. Hell when I registered this handle ten years back the slowdowns and occasional offline events were still going on. Keeping the tech alive requires money to pay for the tech and folks to run it. It has to come from somewhere. Google ad BS won't come close to supplying it. That emperors new cloths biz model has long sailed away. Having Talk To and Adverts in the menu is hardly a big issue, if it helps keep the site running.

The new category lists are a big improvement(and a herculean task with it) too. If a problem exists - and IMH it does - it's how the community core of the site is accessed and while the new approach seems more simplified it's less conducive to browsing.

Dav himself noted that;



He also noted that;



See what I did there? This community grew from a bunch of gaming "nerds" to an open voice for the Irish interwebs user and reached its peak a few years ago with just such a "cluttered" layout. It flew by others in the same market with a layout that apparently people "do not understand".

One might consider that some part of that was down to the Boards clutter, the smorgasbord of forums and discussions all over the place. One might also argue that it's more attractive to people to want to explore such an environment, rather than be corralled into "where we think they should go". One of the biggest reasons I liked Boards on first sight was that aspect of it. Its like the difference between a guided tour of somewhere interesting that doesn't go off the itinerary or exploring somewhere interesting on your own.

These are some really good reminders.

This layout forces the categorisation to be more precise in a way and relies on a consensus of where things belong.

For example, when I was trying to find something, which I still haven't found so I have given up, I noticed FARMING was under SOCIETY AND CULTURE...and honestly I'd never think to look for farming under SOCIETY AND CULTURE.

One wont find what they need or want, at all unless it happens to coincide with what the designers think of category.

The previous layout, made this less important. Thing to remember to though is that forums come and go. Television without Pity was a terrific board, and it has died because people now are acustomed to tweets...to speed and immediacy.

It may simply be a case that you wont get new users no matter what you do, but the job is to hold onto the loyalties of the ones you do have.

No one has the patience to go digging.

Wibbs

zeffabelli wrote: »

No one has the patience to go digging.

QFT.

Way back in the day those folks online and generating content were a much smaller subset of the population. They were generally "nerds" and "techies". Those type of folks have a few characteristics; they tend to be into categories, they tend to be more content focused and into creating content, even if it appears to the "average" to be in narrow subjects.

Times have moved on in a big way. These days the majority aren't "nerds" and "techies", they're more into being content consumers, rather than content creators. And where they do create content it's often as a response to existing content. They need a more "easy", less rigid and categorised environment to be able to do jump into that. Going "nerdy" will tend to alienate them. Plus these days they have many competing arenas in which they can view or create content and those competing arenas tend to be simple to jump into.

My concern for this community is that we may be applying the old "nerdy" way of thinking to a very different audience and while it may feel more correct and logical, it may not turn out that way. Again I'd go back to the council planners that put a path where they think it's the most logical(and is BTW), but ignore where folks actually walk.

Oh and to be clear I'm pretty bloody "nerdy" myself. OK not in most subjects that are considered nerdy, but most definitely in outlook. I do not see it as an insult. That said I've just enough of a footing in the non nerdy camp to have the feeling that where Boards goes next and how it makes it easier for everybody who is online today, those potential viewers and content generators, is something that requires great care and a step back to see the lay of the land.

All MH of course.

AmyPL

Just wanted to add my voice to the rest of those who strongly dislike this change. I have My Forums for the forums I check daily but I like to browse Boards by hovering over the menu and selecting forums from there depending on what takes my fancy (e.g. Hover over Soc > click Accomodation and Property > Result!). It might not have been the slickest or fanciest of menus but it served it's purpose and was unobtrusive. Above all, it was intuitive and simple and that's why I prefer it. This new menu feels like a UX nightmare to me and really put me off using the site.

the_barfly1

hate the new layout. Category reshuffle i can live with. "Topics" as a heading is just plain stupid, I'm sorry to say.
As you can see from my post count i'm more of a lurker, and tend to browse around varios forums.
Only saving grace for me right now is that once I'm past the home page I'm back to the classic black skin which i prefer (probably not long for this world either).

Oh and one more thing, i use full site on opera mini on mobile, because I cannot abide the m.boards or touch.boards interfaces because its much more difficult to navigate between forums, but i digress - anyway- using the full site on opera mini, the new menus dont work at all. I have to get past the homepage and into my classic black skin to be able to navigate forums.

I love the site btw, but I'm actually concerned for your future overhaul and its implication for my preferred browsing technique. I'm really bewildered considering the many huge forums (much larger than boards) around the web which have stuck closely to their original UI (basically boards old ui) and haven't fallen off a cliff.

But sure what would I know anyway.

Turpentine

This layout would make sense if "Talk to" and "Boards.ie" had as many interesting sub-forums as the newly conglomerated "Topics". Personally, I can't count one.

Why are you trying to hide your interesting forums?

It may make sense from an admin point of view, but as I look up the screen "Topics" isn't going to grab my attention the same way the other titles used to.

I'm going to end up going for the address bar, whereas I used to look up and find reminders of other forums I was actually looking at before.

Hank Scorpio

Layout seems to prioritize the talk to and adverts links which is why I think these changes were made, obviously income is essential for you guys to keep the site running

I came here to post because in the last couple of days I've been having problems finding forums I like to browse, it used to be hover and click and now it seems very squished and hidden

I echo similar feelings as the other users, don't like the changes at all

nxbyveromdwjpg

Where's AfterHours? Where's Bargain Alerts?

A couple of times I just switched to the Touch Site and other times I just gave up and went to reddit. I wonder will boards see a drop off in page views or will people get used to it eventually like all the agonising updates that facebook do.

zeffabelli

Wibbs wrote: »

QFT.

Way back in the day those folks online and generating content were a much smaller subset of the population. They were generally "nerds" and "techies". Those type of folks have a few characteristics; they tend to be into categories, they tend to be more content focused and into creating content, even if it appears to the "average" to be in narrow subjects.

Times have moved on in a big way. These days the majority aren't "nerds" and "techies", they're more into being content consumers, rather than content creators. And where they do create content it's often as a response to existing content. They need a more "easy", less rigid and categorised environment to be able to do jump into that. Going "nerdy" will tend to alienate them. Plus these days they have many competing arenas in which they can view or create content and those competing arenas tend to be simple to jump into.

My concern for this community is that we may be applying the old "nerdy" way of thinking to a very different audience and while it may feel more correct and logical, it may not turn out that way. Again I'd go back to the council planners that put a path where they think it's the most logical(and is BTW), but ignore where folks actually walk.

Oh and to be clear I'm pretty bloody "nerdy" myself. OK not in most subjects that are considered nerdy, but most definitely in outlook. I do not see it as an insult. That said I've just enough of a footing in the non nerdy camp to have the feeling that where Boards goes next and how it makes it easier for everybody who is online today, those potential viewers and content generators, is something that requires great care and a step back to see the lay of the land.

All MH of course.

Also because even the non nerd technies of previous generations had to "get under the hood" of the machine in a way newer generations don't have to.

New generations are used to windows and ipads etc, now that technology is much less demanding of us, any demand it makes, is met with wtf? WHY WHY WHY? In otherwords, there is a much lower frustration level among users.

For me this essentially that I work better with a little chaos, after I clean and tidy I can never find anything. And this is the same feeling I have now.

If you want to generate traffic, this is not the way to do it, not if you can't find the local towns and villages.

Dont be at yourself

Do boards.ie log data on user behaviour? What forums people visit, how they access them and so on?

Would be really interested to see if the impact this change had had in real terms. Is traffic really dropping off to certain forums? Are existing users sticking to their My Forums list more? Are new users using more forums than before?

nxbyveromdwjpg

Dont be at yourself wrote: »

Do boards.ie log data on user behaviour? What forums people visit, how they access them and so on?

Would be really interested to see if the impact this change had had in real terms. Is traffic really dropping off to certain forums? Are existing users sticking to their My Forums list more? Are new users using more forums than before?

Same here. It must be impacting the traffic in someway, I'd say a drop-off initially but people will probably get used to it.

ThisRegard

nm wrote: »

but people will probably get used to it.

I don't think it's a matter of getting used to it like you would the category reorganisation (which I've no issues with) because it just doesn't lend itself to casual browsing very easily. It'll be interesting to see what the final roll out will be like but I know for myself I don't peruse as often as I did bar the 20 forums have in the My Forums drop down.

fitz

I actually think Dav and the team deserve huge credit on the category re-org btw. It's a huge improvement (minor teething issues aside).

That's getting more than a bit lost in the dissatisfaction with the navigation I think.

borderlinemeath

I'll echo other posts that say there's no problem with the category reorganisation. That doesn't bother me at all, although it might bother some if one of their favourite categories to browse has been buried elsewhere. I don't subscribe to any forums, so to say "just go to my forums" means nothing to me, I don't use that feature and never have - if I take an interest in a particular thread I see on the homepage I'll post in it. I will use the search feature from time to time, although what tends to annoy me is it brings up the "best match" post list for whatever I might have typed in, and it could bring up a post from 7 years ago ( which is why I assume zombie threads get resurrected), If the newest post came up first in search I'd use it more. Anyhow my point is I don't use search that much because it can bring up out of date irrelevant info.

I really don't like everything lumped under "topics" and again, like others "topics" is a bit alien to existing users, I mean even the search bar says it's to "Find Forums, users and Posts" nothing about topics. I think "Forums and Discussions" - whilst longer, is a lot clearer and user friendly for old and new users. Whatever about an extra click or two, the fact that sub categories go off the page and need to be scrolled down to will mean I will visit a lot less forums. And I just won't bother with using boards on the mobile except to reply to a pm or a followed thread that I've got email notification for that will bring me to it directly.

I will probably get used to it, but I've barely browsed over the past couple of days outside of 1 or 2 forums. One thing I do check on a daily basis is "post of the day" - it was interesting to note that the most thanked posts for Tuesday and Wednesday were on the same page of the You Laugh You Lose thread. Says a lot for traffic site on Tuesday while regular users tried to make head or tail of what the hell was going on.

ThisRegard

fitz wrote: »

That's getting more than a bit lost in the dissatisfaction with the navigation I think.

Maybe, but the re-org is lost in the step back in navigation.

hmmm

Dav wrote: »

Well based on this thread alone, that's simply not true at all. It's about 50/50 in just this thread and when one considers that people are FAR quicker to post something in complaint rather than in praise, I think that means we've clearly done something right here.

I imagine there's quite a few of us lurking and hoping some fix or change arrives quickly - but if you're measuring feedback based on response to this thread then I'm sorry, I also don't like the change for the reasons others have stated, and saying "it's temporary" is really odd. That's no reflection on the amount of work you've put in, and I wouldn't be making these comments if I didn't want the site to succeed.

EmptyTree

Dav wrote: »

You aren't dealing with the emails we get saying "I have no idea how this site works" and they're the people who were bothered enough to want to tell us that.

Dav wrote: »

when one considers that people are FAR quicker to post something in complaint rather than in praise

I think these two statements need to be considered together; based on this assessment I think one could also conclude that a lot of people were very happy with the old layout (but they didn’t e-mail you about it because as you say, people are less likely to send a complementary e-mail than a complaint.)

Dav wrote: »

We are nothing without our members, this is why we engage with you to make these changes

Dav wrote: »

For all the people asking for a roll-back: The Category structure is not going back to the old way at all.

Don’t mean to sound too harsh, but to be honest, I can’t really see the engagement here, at best it appears a bit one-sided.



All that aside, personally I don’t see the logic to “hiding” the topics behind the “topics” tab, once I select boards from my search engine or bookmarks, then boards is where I want to be. Why put in another tab to obscure what I am looking for? – Feels a bit like I am being asked “are you sure you want to be here??” Maybe I should have typed “topics.ie” into the search engine??:p

Maybe it’s just a psychological thing (maybe I’m mad), but once you click on topics there seems to be less choice – boards seems to have lost a lot of its “depth”. It feels like all the great content on the site is being hidden from view. If anything I think newcomers will find this less attractive as they won’t immediately see all that boards has to offer.

Massive work has been put into this, no doubt about it. I look forward to seeing the finished product, but for the site and the users I hope this "temporary" current version isn't like it.

enda1

I honestly prefer the new method of navigating. I prefer click to hover.

Clicking is more universal too and I guess will work better on touch devices where hover is generally not a function.

Pawwed Rig

nm wrote: »

Where's AfterHours? Where's Bargain Alerts?

Hover over topics - click social & fun - click afterhours - 2 clicks
i never looked for bargain alerts before so have no idea where is used to be or where it is now

....................5 seconds later
I typed bargain alerts into search and found it under Business and Finance - Consumer

zeffabelli

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

Hover over topics - click social & fun - click afterhours - 2 clicks
i never looked for bargain alerts before so have no idea where is used to be or where it is now

....................5 seconds later
I typed bargain alerts into search and found it under Business and Finance - Consumer

This is the problem. Isn't the point of menus that you don't have to type everything into the search box.

As of now, all I am using is teh search box, may as well get rid of the menus entirely.

Pawwed Rig

Possibly but as I said that was a forum I have never entered before so would have had to search for it under the old headings too.

To be fair I can see some of the issues people are having but those who say they spent 10 minutes looking for a forum must be typing with their fists.

I find the look alot neater and the topic headings alot more useful than before (I still don't know what Soc, Rec, Sys were meant to mean:pac:). I tend to use 'my forums' so don't tend to go searching too often but the few I have searched for has taken seconds at most.

rex-x

Throwing my hat in and saying its a really poor implementation of a menu, would rather see a rollback than tweaking to this one its so bad

Peregrine

nm wrote: »

Where's AfterHours? Where's Bargain Alerts?

BA is in the same place it used to be, no?

my3cents

The old system was flawed but the new system doesn't improve on it so because people are more used to the old system I can see why the new system doesn't get universal praise.

Then there is the problem that isn't going to go away of having so many forums that navigation is never going to be fool proof but I can't see the current menu implementation making any improvements.

The only good thing I can say is the new nav bar looks tidy. The downside of that is once you start to use it too much untidy stuff is hiding underneath.

CatInABox

Not even sure if this hasn't been reported all ready, but after reading a fair few pages, I didn't see it.

If I click on the topic "Sports", it opens the list of sub-topics, unless I click on the word "Sports", which brings me to the Sports page itself. This is all fine, I don't ever usually go to the page for any of the topics myself, I usually just click in through the menu system.

However, the topic "Science, Health & Environment" doesn't behave this way, nor does any topic or sub-topic that spreads over two lines. The "link" part of the topic is much larger than the words themselves, so if you want to open it through the menu system, you've got to click much closer to the drop-down arrow.

Other than that, re-org looks good to me.

kerry4sam

I'd like to bring some Positivity in here if I may

~ from a modding POV I like it. When moving threads before I knew exactly whether I needed to scroll up or down and even knew exactly how many clicks of the mouse before I found the (most frequent) forum for the thread to be moved into.
I did have to do a few searches recently to find a few different fora locations, but once found once, then it's all good

~ from a poster POV, the word topics doesn't really seem like a word for boards.ie if I'm honest. Something like 'Now you're talkin' maybe would be more apt imo.

~ the 'topics' do seem better organised now. They do seem to be better placed and categorised more suitably right now.

~ I like the front-page has not changed with trending etc; nice way to see different threads etc that may not be easily seen now with the tidying up in the topics area.

~ It has grown on me. When I first joined, it was just a random search for GardaRecruitment results from a boards.ie kept popping up. I kept looking in and eventually signed up to join the discussion.
^^^ That won't change with these recent changes I'd imagine. You will find what you're initially looking for & browsing is much more neater now so that's another positive.

I like it. If more changes will arise, then given a few days after that I'd prob be content again.

Just my thoughts,
Thanks,
kerry4sam

riffmongous

One nice thing about the new design is that it's really easy and fast to find the feedback forum and this thread to complain about it..

I like the new categories, just don't like the menu bar, it feels a lot slower and going through 'sports' is no fun at all.. much easier to use the site map and open multiple tabs for each forum

Just my 2c

Dav

The reaction to the new category/topic structure has been extremely positive, so thank you all for that again, it was no easy task.

The menu, it's not right and we agree. It's not right, I've said this from the start, and many of you raise a flag saying we should have invested the time in making it work better than it does. We do understand that discoverability through navigating the menu is a big deal, we don't want to get rid of it at all. We just don't have a neat means of presenting it at this moment and as I've said, we are working on that. Extremely limited tech staff is the reason this didn't get more time - when our sys admin (Chris) is the one who has to get elbow deep into the code to try and make these things work, that'll tell you how stuck we are. I don't know if I mentioned it earlier in this thread, but a new dev team member, Jason, joined us this week and he's going to be getting up to speed on our code and set-up and all the rest for another week or two yet.

A lot of commentary on how needless this is given a new design is coming - our decision was to roll this out now because combining this and the new layout will be a fairly monumental pair of changes to roll out at once. Some of you will agree with that idea and some will disagree. I dunno what more I can say about that, we always try to make the decision we feel is best for you and not us and we thought letting you get a feel for the new categories now would make the transition easier.

Also, Quazzie, your join date says 2008 and mine 1998. Just since you say I should "brush up on my history of Boards" I think you should probably remember that I've been here and in the thick of it for half of my life (today's my birthday - I turn 37, I got involved with this when I was 18 in first year in college).

But if you want a more detailed history lesson, Quake.ie is what you're thinking of, that was around for 4 or 5 years before Boards, I should know, I was there and involved with it and ran the Irish Quake Clan League through it in 1998. Boards was started after a conversation between Cloud and DeVore who were thinking it would be great if they could take the popularity of the q.ie forum and make it into "the kind of site my dad would use" to quote Dev's exact words (the IRC logs of the conversation are somewhere out in the wild).

OK, silly nostalgic trips down memory lane not with-standing, it's Friday evening, we're certainly not pushing any changes out or anything of the sort for the weekend. When we have our team catch-up meeting on Monday morning, I'll have an update on the menu which I think we can all agree is probably the biggest issue with all this.

Sad Professor

Here’s what I think:

The categories don’t work anymore and I don’t think there’s anything this or any future reorganisation can do to fix them. Whether it’s this menu system or the old one, categories are just a fundamentally flawed way to navigate so many different forums. And I’d argue any attempt to create a forum navigation system will turn out equally flawed. We’re talking about mini communities based around particular topics. Once established most of them take on a life of their own regardless of whatever category or sub-category they belong to.

The solution I’d argue is to stop organising forums around categories or at least hide any such organisation away from the user. Keep the sub-forums but ditch the categories and sub-categories. Have a simple A-Z list of forums on the front page. Provided the naming and descriptions of the forums is clear and obvious, new and existing users shouldn’t have any difficulty finding their chosen topic. In addition, all forums could have a short list at the top or in the sidebar linking to other forums that might interest the user. After Hours could have a link to The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ranting & Raving, etc. Apple Devices could have a link to the Mac forum and Tablets. Film Production could have a link to Audio-Video Editing, Animation and Theatre. And so on and so forth.

This would be a great way to promote smaller forums that are currently all but ignored as a result of their category placement and would be a great way for new users to gradually discover all the forums on offer, especially the more unique ones that they might not think to search for.

Harry Palmr

Its a completely different approach but I'd have a front page of named thematic buttons, when hoovered an overlaid page of individual forums would be visible for each.

There would also be a red panel in the middle marked Random Thread which would take thrill seekers to a current matter of discussion

Like this

http://s4.postimg.org/benfcru99/Hovver_menu.jpg (obviously excuse the 5 minute lash up!)