TER's current format is by far the easiest and is by far the best site on the internet. The Beta site uses the format that many other sites use, and is IMO far inferior to what we have now.
TER is not perfect, but it is vastly superior to anything else out there. I implore you, please don't change what is currently the best site on the internet into a clone of these other, lesser internet forums. TER is the best, let's keep it that way.
I have joined other sites, but stopped using them because their discussion boards sucked. Why? Because there can't be any discussion, only a whole shitload of individual posts.
The format TER uses for discussion boards should be THE gold standard for ALL discussion forums.
PLEASE, I am begging you, don't follow the hoard and implement a discussion format that is cookie cutter common while also being utterly and completely WORTHLESS for actual discussion.
Your discussion boards, for all the train wrecks, and discordant personalities, are the best hands down. Don't mess up perfection. Seriously.
For any city whose name is later in the alphabet, the dropdown menu becomes an irritating, user un-friendly tool. Also agree on the shortcomings of the forum format.
...on the boards. With the current site, we can avoid certain users posts by not opening their posts. With the new format, we will be forced to read everyone's posts, even of those we are avoiding for a reason. Please consider an ignore feature if possible.
The current format lets me scroll past the posters who have proven to be a waste of time and just open the specific messages that might be interesting. The beta format will take much longer to read a long thread. Also the lack of indentation makes it impossible to tell which message is a reply to which other message.When someone says, "Fuck you," how do I know who he is talking to? Don't tell us to quote the message we are replying to. This does nothing to improve readability.
The beta discussion board format is not as good as the current one. The beta site also crashes my Droid web browser, and freeze Firefox on my PC. The new site sucks.
I do not like this new format. It reminds me of the ASPD boards. I never participated on those boards because it did not seem like a discussion. It seemed more like a lot of individual posts with no real discussion going on. I am not liking this!
I don't post as often as I used to. With this new setup, I fear many will stop posting and go elsewhere for discussion including me. I hope I am wrong. But, NO ONE seems happy about this change. Whos idea was it anyway? Also, why not ask the paying members what we think instead of simply changing the entire site?!
I do think a threaded view would be beneficial and maybe add some navigation links to the bottom of pages so one doesn't have to scroll to the top to return to the main forum or post a reply, etc.
I do like the message quoting feature since that can enable people to respond to specific parts of a post, if they want to address a particular point.
I find the current format cumbersome as it's difficult to keep track of threads of discussion of interest since they get bumped down as each new thread gets posted.
The javascript navigation is pretty cool, but doesn't seem worth it. There's nothing wrong with the old HTML widgets.
The main thing though, as everyone else pointed out, is that the new forum format sucks.
The current forum format is as good as it gets, don't change it.
Also, and this is just nitpicking now, the yellow header background color used: #f4dd90, is downright hideous, and clashes with the rest of the design. It should have been either #e5e5cc (like the current left nav main background color) or #f6f6e3 (like the current left nav selected background color), or maybe even #ebf0e8 (like the current thread reply background color). All links should have been kept the same dark green (#003333) as the current links.
The redesign has *too much* change. TER is already an established brand. In marketing, only on rare occasions is such significant change warrented, and this isn't one of those occasions.
Bring back the old Forums style. The new version is not user friendly. With the old version you can scan down a page and se all the Subject line replies to each post. It was so simple. Each had color changes (hyperlinks) if you read them so that provided useful info as well. The new version stinks. You have to open each message to see the replies and check to see if you have read them before. The new version adds to much work on the user. It may look hi-tech but not as usable as the old version.
If this is the format that will remain, I am gone when my current subscription expires. I have been a member since 2001 and always found this site to be the best in terms of user friendliness. It was always easy to scroll the forums. Now it is too much work to dig out the information. I guess I'll be going elsewhere.
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