Forum Redesign Announcement

Old_Wrinkly · 25 July 2013 at 12:22PM

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

I don't believe this is the case at all.
I believe that f e ckless is an insult used against unemployed people and others claiming benefits. In that context it has become quite an offensive word, and so it was banned.

Obviously there are contexts where it isn't offensive, but the filter can't be that clever.

I assume 'scrounger' will be next, then.

meher · 25 July 2013 at 12:23PM

please could you take away the use of tag feature in sgniatures thanks because some posters put the entire quote box in signatures and sometimes they turn out to be bigger than the text in the post itself; i've often found it confusing

Old_Wrinkly · 25 July 2013 at 12:30PM

meher wrote: »

please could you take away the use of tag feature in signatures thanks because some posters put the entire quote box in signatures and sometimes they turn out to be bigger than the text in the post itself; i've often found it confusing

I've had signatures disabled for as long as I can remember.
(Can't see the point of them in most situations.)
It certainly cuts down on the 'clutter'.

Former_MSE_Forum_Manager · 25 July 2013 at 1:44PM

bylromarha wrote: »

Ditto.

Am not on Facebook for that very reason - even though that means I miss out on things like the preview email. Which I find wierd if I'm honest as I still think MSE should get the preview, not Facebook.

My only request is that MSE stays true to MSE - saving money. I can adapt to forum redesigns - what I can't adapt to is something that makes me reveal everything about myself to just post a comment.

Hi bylromarha,

Thanks for your feedback. The Facebook preview thing is an editorial mechanism/decision so not specifically to do with the forum, but I'll certainly feedback your comments.

I agree with your other point. "Being MSE" is very much the core ethos of what we do.

Former_MSE_Forum_Manager · 25 July 2013 at 1:47PM

whitewing wrote: »

MSE is the only "social media" site that I post on. I like the anonymity of the users and the relative honesty of the posts. I hope it doesn't become a 'see and be seen' kind of place.

Thanks whitewing

jamesd · 25 July 2013 at 3:05PM

It's not on your topic directly but if you have a look at the discussion here, for the shorter posts, what is causing the use of vertical space and what would the effect on scrolling needs be if that was reduced? My answer uses that post from whitewing as an example because it has significant meaningful content that is not, in the view I use, the main user of vertical space. Instead, that vertical space user is the information about the poster:

1. "Fantastically Fervent MoneySaving Super Fan" takes three display lines, though in a smaller font, and is above a pictorial representation. Perhaps having the word meaning as text displayed while hovering over the pictures would be viable?
2. User icon. Half size display option would be useful. Maybe also double size for those with more visual acuity issues than I already have.
3. Join date, post count, thanked in how many posts info. Perhaps one sentence of wrapped text in the general format "Joined mmm yyyy, xxxxxx posts, xxxxx of them getting xxxxx thanks".

It's not a space user in this specific discussion but there's also:

4. Long user names with no spaces that can significantly reduce the display space for post body text. Perhaps if a "word" within a username is long, gradually reduce the font size so that the width of the name part remains within the size currently used by names such as JimmyTheWig? Perhaps advise about this at username creation time or mandate spaces to allow wrapping?

For a fairly broad range of discussions I expect that the vertical space use and scrolling of a whole page of discussion would be reduced by perhaps 30% after such changes.

Former_MSE_Andrea · 25 July 2013 at 3:17PM

Hi everyone

We're looking for your thoughts on what you'd most like to see and not see on the redesigned forum.

Please come over to the Marry, snog, throw off a cliff? thread to let us know.

Even if you've said it in this thread could you join in on that one so it's all in one place.

Thank you

Andrea

redux · 25 July 2013 at 11:30PM

MSE_Forum_Manager wrote: »

Clutter : I suspect most of you never notice the top, right hand side or various other elements on the page. I probably don't myself and yet it all pushes content down the page and at thread level is can be distracting. At this point we don't know specifically what we might change, but those are the type of things. Likewise, are heavy green bars and multiple boxes everywhere the best approach? Maybe/maybe not - but my inkling is that a lot of the forum look ultimately hides content unnecessarily.

I don't see the stuff on the right hand side on this old PC, as the screen resolution is just the width of the thread

However:

In some mobile phone browsers, if they are set to the single column display option (to avoid side to side scrolling), all of this plus the other headers takes up about half of a what will be a forum thread page. Admittedly much of it appears at the bottom, so might not be scrolled down to, but even so it uses up data capacity

So even if a full mobile forum version is a bit further off, a way of stopping much of that appearing would be welcome

redux · 26 July 2013 at 12:16AM

MSE_Forum_Manager wrote: »

All I can say is we were getting hit with a lot of spam that used the acute lower case to avoid the spam filter, so we filtered it and it stopped.

We never added any of the others as, to my knowledge, we weren't getting hit with spammers using anything else, or certainly nothing to that level that we spotted a trend in.

If we're getting hit with spam from any of the other letters you state, let me know and we would be happy to add them. There was nothing much else to it than that.

Do you mean actual spam, as in people placing junk adverts, or just a handful of since banned members who thought it mildly amusing to type in swear words by substituting in such letters? The shrewd ones can still bypass the swear filter by other means.

If there are phrases relatively commonly used in English, such as deja vu or cause celebre, then maybe it can be accepted that they are assimilated to the point that some people will use them without accents.

But like someone else above, I find it frustrating to occasionally type in foreign words and place or person names correctly and see them unnecessarily mauled like this.

Duna!jv!ros
Électricit! de France
pât! on toast
Qu! ser! ser!
Sin!ad

Former_MSE_Forum_Manager · 26 July 2013 at 9:05AM

redux wrote: »

Do you mean actual spam, as in people placing junk adverts, or just a handful of since banned members who thought it mildly amusing to type in swear words by substituting in such letters? The shrewd ones can still bypass the swear filter by other means

Both.

I'll reiterate; the main reason was that users complained about spam getting through with lower case acutes. I checked with the development team and they've clearly shown me that putting it in the spam filter stopped a huge amount of spam happening.

We consistently get told that we need to do everything we can to tackle spam, so in this case (versus the inability to use some words that have fairly marginal forum use and can still be typed without the lower case acute), what we currently do seems the best decision.

This thread is about the forum redesign so can we get back on topic. Thanks.

Forum Redesign Announcement

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