Great detail, Jeff, diolch yn fawr iawn - that’ll be a huge help…:seren:
Ref the jiggling, I’ve noticed on the iPad, if you concentrate on the left-hand column as you select a post, then select the next one to it and then reselect this two, the selected one jumps very slightly and we’re talking pixels here to the right and up before settling back in line. Have only just looked at this thread and haven’t checked it on my PC or laptop.
Aran: and Craig, thank you very much indeed for all your practical and useful suggestions and comments
:croeso:
I’m afraid lots of new users found the sheer size of the forum daunting and unhelpful, and truth be told navigating from category to category was never a particularly efficient way of keeping up to date with what was going on. We’re going to be working on a tagging system which will make it easier to filter by interest - in the meantime, the search is a good way to fine tune…
I think there are at least three types of users of forums - there are those who want to keep up to date on everything, and the new forum’s bubbling, or standard forums ‘read unread since last visit’ work well for this. There’s users who need a specific bit of information, and search is what they need. There’s also those folks who just want to browse sometimes, and I think category/hierachy works very well for those. I alternate between the three, on different forums. I’m quite sad to see the category/hierachy go - I suspect it’ll mean less browsing of the forums for some folks (although as it’s probably folks like me who aren’t the super-posters and super-helpers, maybe that doesn’t matter much).
I think that’s a good overview, Kev - the one hitch from our side of things is that there are people who fit your first two categories who try to get what they need by browsing the index, and get lost/frustrated. We’ll be working on different ways to pull out the most interesting stuff (which usually starts out life as a good thread, and then becomes obviously valuable enough to work like more static content) - including most popular posts, most useful posts, that sort of stuff - so fingers crossed we’ll be able to re-build a satisfactory browsing experience…
I found the threads on questions for each lesson really useful: (a) to see whether someone had asked a similar question before and (b) to provide reassurance that everyone else also has little stumbles from time to time.
The fact that these threads were already set up invited people to ask questions and showed they are to be expected, i.e you’re not an idiot just because you are getting a bit stuck.
I’m hoping to do something that ties them to lesson pages while also making them accessible on the social layer - entirely agree that they turned into a surprisingly valuable resource…
Re. Questions about lessons … I found these to be an integral part of the learning process. I would hate to think of new learners not getting to see them easily.