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

zeffabelli

Dades wrote: »

I suppose if you ran a company you'd let anyone with a passing interest decide what direction it should take? Goodwill won't keep the power on so the job of the people of Boards is to ensure the bills get paid.

As mentioned many times in this thread already, the current links at the top are temporary. The idea was to give users a chance to get used to reorganised catagories within a single dropdown. That dropdown will no doubt be tweaked before it is reintroduced as part of the complete redesign that has also been subject to a large feedback thread.

Goodwill is exactly what does keep the power on.

Without you have no contributors, no traffic, no nothing.

Basic customer service.

Dades

zeffabelli wrote: »

Goodwill is exactly what does keep the power on.

Without you have no contributors, no traffic, no nothing.

Goodwill is what kept the power on - a business model is what will keep it on. Clicks and banner ads don't pay many bills any more, unfortunately. Decisions aren't made to alienate users - they're made to keep the site running. There'd be no site without our users, for sure, but there'd be no site without some form of income, either. Are the (temporary) links at the top of the page that intrusive?

zeffabelli wrote: »

Basic customer service.

I don't understand the context of this statement.

zeffabelli

Dades wrote: »

Goodwill is what kept the power on - a business model is what will keep it on. Clicks and banner ads don't pay many bills any more, unfortunately. Decisions aren't made to alienate users - they're made to keep the site running. There'd be no site without our users, for sure, but there'd be no site without some form of income, either. Are the (temporary) links at the top of the page that intrusive?

I don't understand the context of this statement.

If you alienate your users you don't have a business anymore. Most business have to bribe customers with vouchers and prizes for feedback, but here they are getting it for free but they really don't seem to want to receive it in the first place. Most customers wont bother unless they get something in return.

Even in business they understand how community works, community is an essential part of business. Thousands are spent on social networking experts for examples, companies hire email consultants...these are all integral to sustaining your business commuity. It would be foolhardy to ignore that.

I find the links incredibly constricting, far less fluid and more social corridors to negotiate, leading to less cross pollination, less visual scanning of other boards even if you don't click on those boards, as a user I was exposed to more before.

Now I'm seeing three forums at most, because I am not interesting in the rigamarole of unearthing other ones.

It might be an idea to start monitoring and tracking traffic.

Dades

zeffabelli wrote: »

If you alienate your users you don't have a business anymore. Most business have to bribe customers with vouchers and prizes for feedback, but here they are getting it for free but they really don't seem to want to receive it in the first place. Most customers wont bother unless they get something in return.

Are you even reading my posts?

I was addressing the poster who brought up the Talk to/Boards links, with the point that mouse clicks don't pay the bills anymore.

How is anyone here being alienated? Everybody has got their two cents in. Some great feedback and also a lot of people trying really, really hard to get offended. Short story: Most people are fine with the categories, but most people dislike the menu (myself included).

Dades wrote: »

As mentioned many times in this thread already, the current links at the top are temporary. The idea was to give users a chance to get used to reorganised catagories within a single dropdown. That dropdown will no doubt be tweaked before it is reintroduced as part of the complete redesign that has also been subject to a large feedback thread.

tracert

OSI wrote: »

Submenus always required a click. The only hover function was on the top level categories.

I've forgotten the old menu already! My bad.

Tokyo

OSI wrote: »

Submenus always required a click. The only hover function was on the top level categories.

I imagine the issue here is for people who don't delve into subfora (which is probably the majority of people). Having the category names (REC, SOC etc) as the top level entries in the menu meant that the majority of people could navigate by mouseovers straight to their forum of choice, only clicking into it then to view it.

Having 'Topics' as the umbrella top level entry means that every choice has to be clicked into (because you now have to click into a category before making a choice), wait for menu dropdown, clicking into forum to view.

From my reading of the preceding posts, this seems to be the bone of contention for those who dislike the menu in its current form.

my3cents

Is it me or has there been a minor change today so the colour of the sub menu changes subtly when you open it?

Good move but too subtle needs to be more obvious plus it also highlights the start of the next submenu which I don't think it should?

Cathmandooo

Under the boards.ie menu the new forums now link to adverts.ie. Is that meant to happen?

Zymurgist

Cathmandooo wrote: »

Under the boards.ie menu the new forums now link to adverts.ie. Is that meant to happen?

This is happening for me too

Peter Anthony

In some of the smaller forums traffic and posts already are down. It will kill off many forums on Boards with casual users.

Peregrine

Cathmandooo wrote: »

Under the boards.ie menu the new forums now link to adverts.ie. Is that meant to happen?

I think that actually is a list of new Adverts categories as opposed to new Boards forums. That hasn't always been the case, has it?

my3cents

Nim wrote: »

I think that actually is a list of new Adverts categories as opposed to new Boards forums. That hasn't always been the case, has it?

I see what you mean but Weddings is not a New Boards.ie forum even if it is a new Adverts.ie section anyway Adverts.ie take up enough space on the nav bar already.

Dav

All those Adverts links are created as "forums" within VBulletin in order to build a proper menu. It's a pain in the arse to be perfectly honest, but it was the quickest and easiest way for us to be able to include it in the menu structure. The knock on is that they are all the most recently created forums and so show up on that list under the Boards.ie Category.

I'll see if we can re-jig that and remove the Adverts links.

El Guapo!

Sorry if it's been mentioned before but on the touch site, the A-Z menu starts at E and seems to be random after that.
And how come "Topics" "Regional" etc are now in my followed forums on touch too?

Boards.ie: Chris

Yes, there is a bug in the way touch is presenting forums atm. I'm hoping to sort that tomorrow. A couple of fixes were pushed earlier today, mainly the fix for certain sub-foums already being open when you open their parent, and a couple of colour tweaks. Will get some more out tomorrow.

Ken.

I didn't like it at first, then it started to grow on me, now I can't remember what the old one was like.

Zaph

Boards.ie: Chris wrote: »

Yes, there is a bug in the way touch is presenting forums atm. I'm hoping to sort that tomorrow. A couple of fixes were pushed earlier today, mainly the fix for certain sub-foums already being open when you open their parent, and a couple of colour tweaks. Will get some more out tomorrow.

Thanks Chris. You might already be aware of it but I've noticed on touch that the asterisk denoting that there are unread posts in a forum is missing.

G_R

Zaph wrote: »

Thanks Chris. You might already be aware of it but I've noticed on touch that the asterisk denoting that there are unread posts in a forum is missing.

It's also added the top level menu (talk to, boards.ie, topics, regional and adverts.ie) to my followed forums, but they aren't in alphabetical order, they're just tacked on to the end (on touch, haven't been on the desktop site yet today)

ballyargus

Too many clicks. The old way wasn't as "tidy" but it was a lot more functional and user friendly

Dyr

zeffabelli wrote: »

If you alienate your users you don't have a business anymore. Most business have to bribe customers with vouchers and prizes for feedback, but here they are getting it for free but they really don't seem to want to receive it in the first place. Most customers wont bother unless they get something in return.
c.

When people outside the bunker disagree then defensive behaviour ensues.

Group think. Much Powerful. So consensus

channelsurfer2

El Guapo! wrote: »

Sorry if it's been mentioned before but on the touch site, the A-Z menu starts at E and seems to be random after that.
And how come "Topics" "Regional" etc are now in my followed forums on touch too?

yes I mentioned that already. its a right pain and no logic to it.

Alun

Peter Anthony wrote: »

In some of the smaller forums traffic and posts already are down. It will kill off many forums on Boards with casual users.

I certainly have cut down on my random browsing of non-subscribed forums.

Hollister11

Alun wrote: »

I certainly have cut down on my random browsing of non-subscribed forums.

So have I, I have no interest in digging through the site to find something I might be interested in. If I see something that catches my eye in "Latest Posts" it may cause me to subscribe to that forum, but other than that I doubt i'll be subbing to new forums anytime soon.

Cathmandooo

+1, I find myself confined to my followed forums. Stumbling upon random forums has completely stopped, the site feels so much smaller.

Joe Doe

Hire an 'external' ux agency for a few hours.
Whilst developers, stakeholders, channel and project managers mean well, they can often be concerned with the road map target destination, than the actual vehicle to get them there.

Red Alert

Please just revert it. The new bar is a solution looking for a problem.

Nody

Cathmandooo wrote: »

+1, I find myself confined to my followed forums. Stumbling upon random forums has completely stopped, the site feels so much smaller.

Myself I've found myself to simply go to the two/three forums I'm usually posting in (and I'll scan my daily e-mail summary if there was any thread I want to read on the rest) skipping the rest and even the number of visits have been reduced because the general content (i.e. new posts) have greatly decreased noticeably and hence no need to check in as often.

Yakuza

The new toolbar does look cleaner, but it also looks more sparse. I didn't think there was anything wrong with having Boards/Topics/Regional under the one bar - it shows how all-encompassing and diverse boards is.

Having the topics bar in the middle makes boards look like it's had both a lobotomy and had the heart cut out of it.

I strongly urge you to rethink this change.

kerry4sam

Any thoughts on a separate thread with a poll attached to gauge votes on this?

Thanks,

Lemming

kerry4sam wrote: »

Any thoughts on a separate thread with a poll attached to gauge votes on this?

Thanks,

I don't think this is really something that's suitable for a vote; if it was down to purely aesthetics I'd agree with you in putting it to a vote, but plenty of users have said why they dislike the new menu and the recurring theme is that it's not down to aesthetics but ill-conceived browsing behavioural changes for the worse. The common complaint sees users reticient to explore and becoming more insular in not straying far from any subscribed forums. It does not encourage forum hits and participation.

But it does look aesthetically pleasing, which is apparently where it's all at these days; style over substance.

TL;DR - the new menu is fundamentally flawed from a UX point of view, along with plenty of implementation bugs to add additional warts. Should never have gotten past design stage with a few simple user-oriented questions rather than aesthetics.