When I go to Latest, now I see the teeny color dots by subforum category. But I don’t see poster name. No, I can’t tell by some circle with a letter in it, offsides. One example has skieurope’s avatar, but I can’t recognize all of them. Or some may change their picture.
I also don’t want to pre-select the category (eg, College Search, Chance Me, Essays, etc.) Many of these are pre-admit questions and I’m fine with them being lumped together. I do see color coding- but now you’ve thrown the whole kitchen sink in. Look at Home Schooling, High School Life, CC Community and Comm and Forum Issues. All nearly the same orange. Lined up, sure we can see the diff. Just in random order on a Latest list, nope. Imo, overkill.
And the two I find most popular, Admissions and Parents, are in some washed out, receding color.
I still think some of the designers never use CC, But I still appreciate @CCadmin_Jon bringing us into this process.
On a desktop the format is quite pleasant. I like the different colors, and I like the index running down the left side of the page. I think I would quickly get used to the “latest posts” running down the right side of the page.
On a Samsung Galaxy however, the format is a disaster. Scrolling through that HUGE list to find what I want is simply too hard/takes too long. I am fairly certain I would stop reading CC on my phone, which is where I mostly read CC now. I see you’ve mixed the “latest posts” from each bigger forum into the box on that forum, making the list one has to scroll through even longer. And, not all of the forums have “latest posts” under them. I think you probably should not mix the list of forums in with “latest posts” as it makes it way too unwieldy.
I think the mobile issue is a very serious one that needs fixing before rolling out.
On my desktop, when I click a subforum, say, Athletic Recruits, I like the way things look. The colored dots representing posters who’ve posted on the thread I’m not sure adds value, in terms of knowledge. I do like the multicolors though from an aesthetic perspective!
When I – finally – locate Athletic Recruits on my phone, I do like how the threads are just listed in order of most recent posting.
I do like the way the new version looks, I do think it is better. I also think the huge list one has to scroll through on a phone is something that unless changed will lead to more loss of participation, and thus is a very serious issue that needs fixing before you make the change to the new version. Please, don’t shoot yourself in the foot again!!
Several forum posts that I have seen attribute the low participation to COVID. It is perfectly logical at a time when nothing about college is normal. The music forum and Harvard 2025 threads both have comments about how dead they are. Things dropped off abruptly on the music forum when COVID hit. I think the parents’ forum is pretty low too. I have gotten PM’s from people indicating that the uncertainty of COVID is keeping usage down. It makes sense to me.
I don’t think format and other changes to the site are going to bring things back, but I certainly hope so.
@milgymfam just said what I was trying to convey, in a much clearer manner. Those pages within a thread are USEFUL. I bookmark specific pages of a chat in my personal (non-CC) bookmarks when I get useful advice or suggestions so that I can go back and find that info later (recipes, travel suggestions, FA references, etc.). The search function on this site has stunk forever.
If you turn a thread into one long scroll, you are effectively eliminating the usefulness of the information people have gone to time and trouble to offer.
You’ve chased off most of this site’s institutional memory already. This would add to that.
I agree with many of the comments above. The new site seems to be an improvement and has a less-dated feel. My immediate reaction is that you should put the subtopics in the left-hand list into drop-down menus - there are just too many topics and they will inevitably increase over time. I also didn’t particularly like the colored circles showing who had posted, but on the other hand, there are people whose views I particularly respect, so it might be helpful. Perhaps it would encourage those of us who haven’t added avatars to get our act together.
My comments:
-I would like to see the post numbers kept
-Don’t need the anniversary notes/badges
-Not crazy about the white background
-Don’t like the date column on the right
-Don’t understand the color coding - distracting
-I do like the preview pane while you are in reply mode
-How can I tell if I’ve contributed to a post? I couldn’t tell on the test page
-I do not like the long scroll - prefer multiple pages and page numbers
-Like the look and organization of the left hand side (on a laptop)
-Prefer you keep post numbers and pages/page numbers (do not like the continuous scrolling of long threads)
-Keep agree/like/helpful…people are obviously using those, so instead of dismissing them because you don’t understand how people are using them, perhaps ask that question of your users
-My username is incorrect (correct is mwfan1921, in the beta test site it is mwfan19211
-Latest posts don’t seem to be most recent post firsts…which it should be
-Color coding and icons of contributors is distracting
Is the format on the ipad/phone different than the computer? For example, my name (jym626) on the computer is correct, but on the ipad/phone it is listed as jym6261. Whats that? And it jumps around when loading pages on my handled equipment, which seems to be to allow an ad at the top.
And I somehow stumbled into a list of admins, moderators and site statistics (not sure I could find it again if I tried). There were several unfamiliar moderator names, and a very familiar one was missing. Is that an accurate list of the mods, or just a sample?
Since my screen name already had a 1, my screenname on the new format is thumper12. I’m guessing this is to differentiate what is happening on Discourse for the time being.
I threw up in my mouth a bit when I saw that a major change was coming - history has shown that those are handled poorly.
However, I do appreciate the early access to try to avoid the sign in problems many have encountered in the past when changes were made.
I don’t look forward to learning how to navigate a new system, however, this one is pretty unwieldy and I never really have gotten it figured out. So I guess I will get a clean start there. At first glance it seems more logical.
I don’t know if this will be a fixable problem, but the navigation for a long thread, like parents class of 2021 for example, is pretty difficult without pages. It isn’t very laggy which is good. But over 8,000 posts are a lot to scroll through. At the same time I absolutely DO NOT want threads like this chopped up. They are essentially a running conversation and should be allowed to run.
I’m sure you are getting plenty of comments about navigation on the iphone using chrome so I won’t rehash the details but I find it more difficult to transition to than the desktop version. I do like that I can toggle back to the desktop version, it may actually help me learn what is going on in the mobile version when I can toggle back and forth.
The post count is covered up on iphone when I scroll up. since there are no page numbers that is annoying.
Overall I’m cautiously optimistic and again want to say that I appreciate you taking at least login feedback before transitioning. I hope that some of the other issues mentioned by other users above can be implemented. I think 95% of us agree with 95% of those comments.
Does CC even exist for the Ipad? I tried to install it last night, and it wasn’t even found in the apple store. I haven’t been able to get in for the past year or so - good timing for my daughter’s senior year!