How are people feeling about Discourse?

[eschereal]

The thing I miss most is “subscribed threads”. That would be a big improvement, to be able to keep organized lists of threads I am interested in. It is great for referencing older stuff.

@puzzlegal

Anyway, I end up with a useless broken open reply window, and worse, I lose the thread I was trying to reply to. And IT’S REALLY HARD TO FIND IT AGAIN. Because Discourse thinks I’m done with it, I guess. Maybe I found it in my unread menu, maybe it was in the clickbait at the bottom of some other topic. I may not have been aware of which category it was in. (It would help if the category titles were in larger font – I wonder if an admin could adjust that) Anyway, now I may spend 10 minutes search for the damn thread, or I may just give up and feel frustrated.

If you recently posted in a thread and suddenly realize you have to edit that post, click the user icon (upper right corner of the window), click on the person symbol (on the right of header line) and select “Activity”. This will give you a clickable list of all the posts you have made, the most recent one at the top.

[puzzlegal]

@eschereal

If you recently posted in a thread and suddenly realize you have to edit that post, click the user icon (upper right corner of the window), click on the person symbol (on the right of header line) and select “Activity”. This will give you a clickable list of all the posts you have made, the most recent one at the top.

Yes, that’s awkward, but if I have succeeded in posting to the topic recently, that works. Another work-around is to look at all the topics that ANYONE has posted to recently. But sometimes neither is a good solution. Especially since I often run into this problem right before posting to a thread.

[Joey_P]

@eschereal

The thing I miss most is “subscribed threads”. That would be a big improvement, to be able to keep organized lists of threads I am interested in. It is great for referencing older stuff.

On the right, at the bottom of the slider (at least on the desktop version) there’s a bell with a ! in the middle of it. Click that and pick one of the options. Either Tracking or Watching, then go to your settings and tell it what to do for each of those options.
I know I have it set up (somehow, it was a while back now) so new posts to a thread I posted to give me a notification in the upper right hand corner. I can choose to watch or track (again, don’t remember which) and it’ll notify me about those as well.
Not quite the same, but it works well enough.
I don’t recall if there’s a way to get a list of all the threads your watching/tracking like clicking on the ‘subscriptions’ button.
Edit: you could play with the down arrow (carot pointed downward) at the bottom of the list when you click on your profile button. You could also see if bookmarking threads works the way you want it to.

One thing I have found with Discourse is they push for lots of new topics with lots of posters and seem to shy away from long running threads or threads with just a handful of people. I have a feeling that’s why subscriptions, like we had on the old boards, aren’t standard here.

[eschereal]

@Joey_P

On the right, at the bottom of the slider (at least on the desktop version) there’s a bell with a ! in the middle of it.

I am aware of the bell. Often, I do not even have to use it: if one posts in a thread, it gets set (threads show up in the unread bunch in the clickbait panel at the bottom when there are new posts) – in fact, if one even spends 20 minutes reading a thread, it gets flipped on automatically.

[codinghorror]

@puzzlegal

Anyway, I end up with a useless broken open reply window, and worse, I lose the thread I was trying to reply to. And IT’S REALLY HARD TO FIND IT AGAIN

It is possible to navigate to a lot of places with the editor open. Note that the editor does contain a link to the thing you were replying to when you invoked the editor, that is:

• the topic
• the post (if you happen to be replying to a specific post)

Screenshot demo:

So if you get lost, you can click on the link at the top of the editor / composer, where I have circled.

Also, re: the touchscreen / keyboard combo devices, this is a browser limitation that I suspect we’ll be able to conquer over time. Apple insists that such devices do not exist…

[Terminus_Est]

@puzzlegal

fwiw, I use Discourse on 4 different devices, and NONE of them has a middle mouse-button. (One is my phone, and the other three are laptops on which I use a touchpad.)

The middle mouse click to open a link in a new tab is a feature of the browser/OS you’re using, not of Discourse itself. If you were browsing Wikipedia with, e.g., Chrome on Windows, you can middle mouse click on a link to open that in a new tab as well. Ctrl-click works just as well. For a touchpad, you can usually set it up so that a three-finger tap works as a middle mouse click.

[BigT]

@codinghorror

Also, re: the touchscreen / keyboard combo devices, this is a browser limitation that I suspect we’ll be able to conquer over time. Apple insists that such devices do not exist…

So they don’t know about their own iPad/iPad Pro, which has keyboards sold on the Apple website?

One thing I don’t envy in UX is working around browser implementation stupidity.

@codinghorror

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

So if you get lost, you can click on the link at the top of the editor / composer, where I have circled.

That said, I say this is a bit of a UX issue. It shows the user’s name, not anything about the thread/topic/whatever you call it. So it’s not intuitively obvious that it will take you back to where you were.

I like how it appears when you edit a post better. It says “post ###”. That’s more obvious what the link would do (as long as it’s obvious it’s a link, of course.)

[codinghorror]

Thank you @Terminus_Est – shift-click and ctrl-click work as well. I should have pointed that out.

And yes @bigt it is funny because the iPad does work with a mouse and keyboard now. Note that when I am replying to the topic, rather than an individual post (depends which reply button you click or tap), it will show the topic title, like so:

Click the link at the top of the editor to return to where you originally invoked the editor.

[BigT]

@codinghorror

Note that when I am replying to the topic, rather than an individual post (depends which reply button you click or tap), it will show the topic title, like so:

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Click the link at the top of the editor to return to whatever you initiated the reply to.

That one I like, too. That’s definitely clear what it does.

It’s just that, when replying, it is the name of the poster. I think that’s a little less intuitively discoverable. Maybe even having it say “post by [name]” would be good, or something like that.

Again, it’s a small thing. I’m into UX that doesn’t require reading up on how to use it. I actually learned that from the UX Stack Exchange.

[puzzlegal]

@codinghorror

So if you get lost, you can click on the link at the top of the editor / composer , where I have circled.

I can click on MY NAME to get back!?

On the one hand, THANKS, that’s going to make me a lot happier. On the other, as @BigT says, that is totally unintuitive. I would never have thought to try that, despite having spent many hours of frustration wishing for that very functionality.

[puzzlegal]

I realize I’m afraid to test this, because I’m afraid I’ll mess up, and will have trouble navigating back to this thread. That’s a little silly, because i can carefully check and see what category it’s in, and there aren’t a ton of threads in this category…

And yet… Discourse has trained me to be fearful.

(Also, I’m thinking it’s probably your name, not mine. Still, it doesn’t look anything like a link, and it’s going to be unintuitive to me if the topic changes by clicking in the response window. That just feels… wrong. )

[SCAdian]

@puzzlegal

For instance, I am in a thread, hit “reply”, realize that I want to scroll up to review something else before I reply (maybe to quote it) and accidentally hit something other than “delete my reply”.

Why not just scroll up?

[SCAdian]

My biggest complaint about Discourse is that [expletives deleted] “Body seems unclear, is it a complete sentence?” message which forces one to edit the post instead of posting it as is.

[Heffalump_and_Roo]

@puzzlegal

I find Discourse unusually unforgiving. No other software I use punishes me routinely for touching the wrong part of the phone

From my experience, I’m finding this hard to believe. In vBulletin, if I started a reply and navigated away from the thread for any reason, whether back button, navigating to another thread or just had too much time elapse, my entire post would disappear into the ether, never to be seen again.

That’s happened to me dozens of times. I’ve lost hours and hours of time composing posts that disappeared. I used to have to post a copy to my clipboard and even then, if I didn’t copy often enough, I’d have to re-create most of my post when my post would disappear.

I realize we’re all different, but for me, any software that saves posts is less punishing than one that doesn’t. Even if I lost a post that I didn’t find for days or weeks, it’s still less punishing than losing a post forever for accidentally pressing a button.

@codinghorror

So if you get lost, you can click on the link at the top of the editor / composer , where I have circled.

You can also close the editor. The name of the thread shows up on the bar of the closed editor.

Also, if the reply button is pressed, it will ask where it should post, the original thread or the one you’re in. That will tell you the thread where the reply came from.

[puzzlegal]

@SCAdian

@puzzlegal

For instance, I am in a thread, hit “reply”, realize that I want to scroll up to review something else before I reply (maybe to quote it) and accidentally hit something other than “delete my reply”.

Why not just scroll up?

Because the screen of my phone is small, and i need to minimize the typing window to see anything else. That’s not a problem for me when i use a laptop. But i mostly use my phone.

[puzzlegal]

@Heffalump_and_Roo

vBulletin, if I started a reply and navigated away from the thread for any reason, whether back button, navigating to another thread or just had too much time elapse, my entire post would disappear into the ether, never to be seen again.

I used vbulletin in a browser. I just created a new page. That worked fine on the phone, as well as on a laptop. I did that all the time.

I’m actually finding discourse harder to do that with, perhaps because I’m using the discourse app instead of a browser. Discourse “remembers” more from instance to instance, which makes it harder to grab text from another window in another thread – because there’s a risk of discourse getting confused. I see that as a reasonable trade-off for the nice feature that i can start a post on the phone, and move to the laptop without needing to email the post to myself.

(Also, most of my time in vbulletin was on a different site, which had a MUCH more robust implementation of vbulletin. This site’s vbulletin was fantastically underpowered for the job and crashed a lot. But it was perfectly smooth and reliable on my other site.)

[puzzlegal]

@Heffalump_and_Roo

You can also close the editor. The name of the thread shows up on the bar of the closed editor.

I don’t find the buttons intuitive, and often click the wrong one. That’s usually how i get into this problem. Today’s XKCD is surprisingly relevant

Manage Your Preferences

Manage Your Preferences

[Ludovic]

@codinghorror

@filmore

For example, if there was a long thread about personal finance and I wanted to find a particular post where a common word like “mortgage” was mentioned, I would prefer to see the term in context since that would help me recognize the particular post I was interested in. With the Discourse way of just showing a couple of lines around the term, I lose that positional context.

This is interesting, because I’d think “a couple of lines around the term” is exactly the context desired? But it sounds like you mean something a bit different?

@Guinastasia

I don’t want to see my posts, or whatever – just the word highlighted, like it does on any other page on the internet.

For myself, I want to see the terms highlighted. When I’m making a point that I think is salient, I want to make sure no one has made it before or that it hasn’t been answered. When I am able to control-f like with most other pages on the Internet, it only shows what’s been arbitrarily loaded, and when I do a thread search, it doesn’t highlight the term. I then have to scan word by word to find the actual instance - or multiple instances that I could overlook! - of the word, to make sure I didn’t miss something that other people are going to call me out on. I could control-f control-f again, but a thread search, click on result, control-f, control-f is at least twice and up to four times as slow as control-f, hit next page.

[GreenWyvern]

@Ludovic

when I do a thread search, it doesn’t highlight the term.

Strange. It highlights the term for me. Perhaps it depends on which theme you are using? I’m using SD Light.

Another alternative:

• Press Ctrl-P, when not editing, to open a print window.
• Cancel the printing, which leaves you with the full text of the thread in one window.
• Search normally via Ctrl-F.

[RTFirefly]

What I find most awkward about Discourse is simply reading a thread. Noticeably fewer posts fit on my screen than on the old board, even with a smaller-size typeface than I remember the old board being.

And in other ways I really just plain can’t identify (so don’t ask me to, okay?), Discourse is just not as conducive to continuous reading as, say, comments at most blogs that I’m familiar with, let alone the old board. It just feels mushy and undifferentiated somehow.

And just like with a book, where I could remember that I want to go back to chapter 5, I miss being able to do the same thing with pages here. If one used the standard 50-post page size at the old board, this post would be at the end of page 6. It was easy to find your way back to the page a post you remembered was on, and scroll down until you found it. Here, unless you’re into memorizing post numbers, that’s a lot harder.

Which is one of the reasons I share puzzlegal’s frustration with being able to jump back and forth between different parts of a thread. (And the ‘Back’ thingy, when it’s there, only gets you back to one place, then it goes away.) The browser scrollbar is good for a dozen or so posts, then it jumps you to somewhere else.

And the short scrollbar - for one thing, a short movement on the short bar takes you way away from where you were, and for another, a careless mouse movement causes the damned thing to move you to a whole 'nother part of the thread when you weren’t intending to move at all.

Other identifiers: usernames are barely bigger than regular text; I don’t notice them the way I did on the old board. Sure, I can search by username, but if I didn’t notice who posted a post, I can’t search that way. Post numbers were a lot more noticeable on the old board too. All the clues that gave threads an internal geography have been muted or erased altogether.

I will say the a good word for Discourse’s within-thread search function. Good thing, because I sure need it a lot more here than I ever did at the old place.

It boggles my mind that, twenty years after the Dope went from UBB (remember that, old-timers?) to vBulletin, there’s nothing out there with a similar feel to vBulletin, but better underlying architecture.