Forum changes
Are the current changes a glitch or a new update with more lost features?
Can someone explain how to get to the forum page without typing it in? I don't know how to do that on my phone without switching to another browser.
@7CupsCommunity @Mel
@AffyAvo This is a nightmare! I can't subscribe to new threads. On the laptop I can't reply to anything. There's no post to thread button. I get notices for things I wrote! I hope this is just a glitch but - BUT they could have given some warning they were going to make changes again
Sorry - it's just frustrating
@mytwistedsoul I agree, although I can at least use my computer it seems.
Fingers crossed this is just a glitch, as there was a glitch for quite some time for subscribing when posting. It's so difficult to know what is a glitch and what is a planned changed.
@AffyAvo They must have decided the first post was unhelpful because I can't upvote it lol. But I could your reply - I just can't reply on the laptop. I had to use my phone to reply back
@mytwistedsoul Ooo wait. I can only post via replying. I can't make a post within a thread otherwise 😢
@AffyAvo im sure more people are trying to upvote this thread than what its showing i cant upvote this thread but i checked and can upvote every other thread so far including another one you made so not sure whats going on but to be sure a lot of people are wondering whats going on with the forums changes (if anyone wants to subscribe to this thread just tap on the icon before the facebook and twitter at the bottom of the post)
the twitter and facebook share should only be enabled on some threads such as threads created by admins or forum leaders/helpers - there should be no share to social media for personal threads at all ... can you imagine finding a place online you felt comfortable sharing very personal things maybe the very first time youve ever shared those things expecting it to stay here in this safe place you found only to be viewed by people on this site and then all of a sudden everyone can share it on their social media ?! consider the panic some people are probabally having right now seeing that ability to share on social media with no personal ability to edit or change anything - of all the things that need to be changed and tweaked about this please do this first remove the social media shares for personal threads
@jennysunrise8 I don't see to have the subscribe option. I also don't have the social media either. It sounds like there are various versions of what the changes are doing.
@AffyAvo maybe people with different browsers or operating systems can do/see different things ? if so that will just confuse everyone but this is what i see at the bottom of your post...
@jennysunrise8 Oh, yes! Sorry, the brain fog is strong today. It's at the bottom of the original post, I was lookin at the last post in a thread. Ok, so subscribing manually is still possible, just not obvious that it's what that thing is for. Thanks for the screenshot, and the social media options are there for me too.
@jennysunrise8 @AffyAvo i cant reply to you there is no reply button at all on your post so i have to reply to myself and manually put in your name lol but this is your only post on here that doesnt have a reply button so it seems just random yours is the first post ive ever seen without a reply button but its probabally happening all over the forums now some posts you cant reply to no reply button hopefully thats fixed soon another confusing thing people will be wondering about why are some of their posts are missing a reply button did they say something wrong? but still i hope first they remove the share buttons most important two things to fix right away before more people notice
@jennysunrise8 Hmmm…no Reply button. What if I add one and reply anyway? 😕
Charlie
@jennysunrise8 @AffyAvo i cant reply to you there is no reply button at all on your post so i have to reply to myself and manually put in your name lol but this is your only post on here that doesnt have a reply button so it seems just random yours is the first post ive ever seen without a reply button but its probabally happening all over the forums now some posts you cant reply to no reply button hopefully thats fixed soon another confusing thing people will be wondering about why are some of their posts are missing a reply button did they say something wrong? but still i hope first they remove the share buttons most important two things to fix right away before more people notice
@jennysunrise8
I Agree. Looks like some of us have the social media icons at the end of the post and some do not. I do have them and decided to click on the FB icon to see what it would do, and it took me straight to my page in the "Share" window. Not good.
PS
I immediately left that page, canceling that action.
@jennysunrise8 It seems rather contradictory doesn't it? Don't share your personal information but yet someone can share what you write here on social media websites. If I remember correctly didn't they try this once before?
@mytwistedsoul yes and its still there today on all threads anyone can share their own thread on their twitter or facebook (or anyone elses thread without them knowing or ability to stop anyone from sharing what they wrote anonymously and with the understanding it wouldnt leave this site) they did this before put social media share buttons on the activity feed but they didnt work and they were removed quick these share buttons actually work and worse is what they share noone should be able to share personal diaries of other people thats so wrong and not at all what people signed up for when they created those diaries (and cant change or delete anything themselves) i just hope theyre removed very soon hopefully today 😕
@AffyAvo New update with amazing new glitches, I guess. Unannounced and mostly pointless as usual.
Anyone who has my enhanced editor installed will have to turn it off temporarily. I'll publish a new version as soon as I can and announce it here.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
I'm subscribing to your message but please tag me when you update (just in case I miss it). I would really appreciate it :)
@Sher217 Hi Sher!
Version 4.0 of the enhanced editor is now available in the usual place.
For anyone who hasn't used it before, instructions are here: Enhance the editor (I'm sorry they are a bit out of date—I'll update them soon.)
This new version is intended to work again after the recent forum changes, but I haven't tested it much. It also adds Reply buttons to any posts that don't have them, and it adds links to all posts (so you can copy the link and paste it in another post, or bookmark it).
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie You are a genius Charlie! Thank you!
@RarelyCharlie
Thank you very much!
@RarelyCharlie If there's any type of improvement with the update I would love to know what it is. I don't see any old issues that would brought up being fixed with this change.
@AffyAvo One old issue was that when you clicked a link to a thread, you always went to the last page. You had to know to go to page 1 to find out what the thread was about. This has now been fixed. For example, on the Browse Listeners page the Long Term Support Information button now works properly. Alas, in the intervening years while the button didn't work properly, the sponsor program was abandoned, and if you really do want to see the last page, good luck finding it! But…half a loaf etc.
Another old issue was that when you clicked a link to a post (within a thread—a notification, for example), the head of the post was hidden under the navigation bar at the top of the page. This has now been fixed too, though in a sledgehammer…nut kind of way that simulates vertigo. Also, the system now seems to find the right page in a long thread, even if the post moved between the time when someone captured the link and when you click on it. For example: this. I think the sledgehammer has broken existing links to posts, though.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie It's now possible to go to the last page. Work is in progress, evidently 😀
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie Thank you Charlie! As soon as I disabled it Now I can use the laptop to reply :)
@RarelyCharlie
I agree, it is a pointless edit. Who really needs to see the first post in the last thread?
@RarelyCharlie since i cant reply to your other post i just will here yes! help!!! lol add reply buttons if you can somehow to your editor if its possible its just confusing for people and annoying causes everyone more work just explaining to people when they could be spending time on something else just why it was all fine before 🙈 😐
@AffyAvo In case it helps I click on Community on the top blue header bar and then "Forum" heading on the yellow header bar. You could also consider bookmarking the forum main page for quicker access.
@AffyAvo
I couldnt even reply to any messages on the forums until I turned off Charlie's editor. @RarelyCharlie they broke it. again!
Going to test to see if I can do a post on itself
@7CupsCommunity
Do you still want everyone to submit bug requests using the Help Center, or will there be an announcement thread where people can post bugs/feedback (similar to what was done when the member dashboard was launched)?***
1) As Jenny noted, it appears that once a reply chain within a thread gets to 6 or more levels of hierarchical nesting, the "Reply" button disappears completely.
Explanation: if person 0 creates the original post, person 1 replies to person 0's post, person 2 replies to person 1's post, etc. ...then any posts by persons 6, 7, etc. do not have the "Reply" button.
2) It appears that the timestamp above each post (below the post author's name) is not updating. Currently every post made after a certain time across the whole site displays a time of "now" for when it was posted.
3) It appears that the thread-level count of hearts is not updating.
@QuietMagic I haven't put in a bug report yet, as I have no clue which if any of these changes are intentional!
Does anyone know if this thread not have any recent single posts? Only replies?
It seems very odd that the last post on the thread is from 2017.
@AffyAvo
The posts are there, but there's something really wrong. Check out page 10 of that thread. The posts are from February with one from March but then suddenly everything after a certain point jumps backwards in time and it's only posts from 2016-2017. I checked a few other long threads with lots of pages and they're exhibiting similar behavior.
I see so many replies to this (like last reply 5, 10, 15 minutes ago) but none of them are showing up for me? No idea when this post will show up either.
@AffyAvo
Great post here are some weird things I have found
Upvoting leaves a pop-up which does not fade
https://ibb.co/yd691bJ
https://ibb.co/S50fN4P
https://ibb.co/nzDHXT5
I have no idea what I think about this update. As a Teen Community Star who spends tons of time on the forums it is a little strange
@KyleBorg Yes, I had to refresh the page to finish reading a post because of the popup. And the long threads are very confusing to try to follow!
Sorry everyone for the sudden change. This got pushed sooner than expected. Here's a summary of the changes! Just for browser at the moment and not app:
- Cleaning up the layout of the lead post when viewing a thread, and ‘pinning’ it to the top of the page when you load up pages 2, 3, 4 etc of comments.
- Adding in an extra set of page navigation buttons below the lead post
- Reducing the amount of reply to a reply you can do to max 5. This is because too many threads of replies to replies were crashing big threads. Not ideal but necessary.
- Reducing the top and bottom padding of white space for lead posts and comments
@Heather225 Why remove the post to thread option? It affects diaries and the game threads. What are we supposed to do after we reach the max of five replies? It seems like it's going to just make threads more confusing. I might just be being thick about it though
@mytwistedsoul At the risk of sounding disrespectful - I thought I should make it known that if I wanted things I wrote on FB or Twitter - I would post it there myself - just saying
@mytwistedsoul I think the work around is to reply to the top/original post every time. It's frustrating, especially with being used to the old format.
@AffyAvo Ok thank you :) It is frustrating but I guess doing it that way will save time rather than going through all the pages to get to the last post. I guess we either have to just adjust to the changes or we don't lol
@mytwistedsoul Or a 3rd option that we don't have control over, it gets brought back! *fingers crossed*
@AffyAvo :) That would be awesome! Crossing fingers - toes - legs - eyes
@Heather225
and was this intentional?
@Heather225 @7CupsCommunity
I also keep getting notifications on the app saying I have upvoted my own posts which is not even possible @rrretsuko also had this issue.
I currently do not have a screenshot of it as I swiped it not thinking, it has happened about 4 times but as soon as I do see it again I will screenshot it and update this post :)
*Post Edit*
Screenshot:
@Heather225 3. Was not necessary, it seems to me. It's possible to allow replies to replies to any depth. The trick is simply not to store them in the database that way. So in the database the maximum "depth" might be 5, but users can still reply to any post. It's important to focus on what users want from the software, and to find efficient ways to deliver it.
In fact, the most successful Internet forums have a flat structure. It's very efficient, and there's no possibility that you might miss updates to a thread because they happened in the middle of some page you weren't watching. All posts are simply added to the last page, and users can reply to any post.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
I agree massively however I personally think 95% of it was not needed whatsoever, as Heather stated it was rolled out sooner than expected which is the main reason for all these bugs it's almost as if the developers changed these and rolled it out without proper testing or warning to the end user (us forum users)
Take when they changed the upvote from 👍 to 💓 and now allow daily upvoting of the same post (Or so I have gathered) again without any means of telling the end user, yeah changing an upvote icon was nothing major but I would still of liked to know compared to randomly coming across it later
@Heather225 Thanks for explaining Heather. 2 and 4 sound mostly cosmetc. I can understand 3. Navigating forums is eorse than before though, why does the tree at the top go to community and not forums? I think this shows a bigger need for a forum link when using the forums. Chatrooms are part of subcommunities too but you can navigate from one chatroom to another fairly quickly.
