(Not sure what to call this page, but it would have been “Main” on the old site, it’s the one that lists the forum names and descriptions in nice large type.)
Not even remotely important, but I don’t get any use out of this “Latest” column, which I presume is a list of the most recent posts on the entire board. I don’t see much benefit to it since the forums are sorted that way already. And if it were removed, I hope the forum titles and descriptions could flow all the way to the right side of the screen, and thus take up a lot less vertical real estate. No lie, this is my end goal for this thread, to make scrolling on this screen less necessary. Or to necessitate less scrolling. Or something like that.
it’s really nice to be able to tell, at a glance, what’s happening elsewhere on the board. It’s really, REALLY nice that this updates live without needing to refresh or move to a new page. Finally feels like the Dope is out of the 90s!
That would be the most useful part of the page for me if I were stuck using that view. I do not see that, though. I went into my preferences to make my main page a view of new threads. (With new being everything since I was last here not the default last 2 days. There is a setting for that too.)
Admittedly, it was pretty rare for me to use that view during my time before on any of the VB forums I have been on. Its not really skin off my nose to make a change since I will almost never interact with that view. Still as @AlsoNamedBort points out you can tailor what shows up in that part of the page. If you never want to see Thread Games in your list of the latest threads there’s an app, er, mute button for that. That does not get the screen real estate back for the view you want but it might make the area more valuable to you.
There is generally more flexibility on the user side for how we interact with the board. VB skewed towards one size fits all. We all need to be more cognizant of that paradigm shift. My individual preferences may be controllable individually without a change on the board’s part. Sometimes they are not or are one of the areas where VB as implemented offered more control (like damnable avatars taking up my screen real estate. ) Still the question of “Can I change this to work well for how I want to interact?” should be one of our first steps as we work through the change.
One potential fix is shifting to mobile view. It is my default way I interact with the board on my laptop. The categories view only shows the latest for me when I switch back to desktop view. In mobile view it strips that piece away.
It may not be available for you. Someone who had an issue that “fixed” did not see it. I have a touchscreen so maybe the system recognizes that I might interact more like a mobile device. If it is there the three line icon up top gives me the choice between those views. YMMV
I think I’ve found it, under Preferences/Notifications/Categories, the section called Muted. I have marked all the categories as muted. This had two effects: the only Latest posts mentioned have to do with me specifically, which is OK, and all the Category descriptions have disappeared, which is an unexpected bonus. I got my wish for less scrolling on that page, now it’s about where it used to be on vB. Thanks, enalzi, even if you didn’t know it would have this second effect.
I think I’m going to like the consolidated recent posts view. It might get me to engage in the less travelled areas of the board which probably isn’t a bad thing. If I end up ignoring it that’s fine. It’s not blocking me from using any other features.
) Still the question of “Can I change this to work well for how I want to interact?” should be one of our first steps as we work through the change.