New Quote function... You like?

Very cool. I would make one change and allow it to quote different people in the same post. This could help with those long Q&A posts and some of the bigger "philosophical" discussions. Right now when you hit quote the users name and quote appear below, if you hit the quote button for a different user your original quote is replaced. Have it so that each time a person hits the quote button a copy of that quote appears below the most recent quote (even if they hit the quote button twice for one post so they can edit quotes and show different parts of it).

Gekko21:

Very cool. I would make one change and allow it to quote different people in the same post. This could help with those long Q&A posts and some of the bigger "philosophical" discussions. Right now when you hit quote the users name and quote appear below, if you hit the quote button for a different user your original quote is replaced. Have it so that each time a person hits the quote button a copy of that quote appears below the most recent quote (even if they hit the quote button twice for one post so they can edit quotes and show different parts of it).

cool, will see how easy it is to make the quotes add instead of replace...definitely a good idea, we just want to fix some other stuff before getting bogged downin quote for a few more days :-)

I was thinking it might be cool if WSO had a function to "call out" people in a post, meaning if I say "TNA could speak to this topic" then TNA would get highlighted and be notified he was being mentioned in a thread.

WallStreetOasis.com:

Small tear came to my eye this morning when I didnt see anyone raving about our new quote feature (probably because it took us ~3-4 days to get it functional).

Instead of the quote icon now taking you to a new page to type your reply, the quoted content hovers and slides down to the content box with some animation...all on the same page.

This may seem stupid, but just another small change to improve the usability of the forums...we'll keep going and keep making improvements :-)

I am also battling with some new design ideas in my brain for the header....

WallStreetOasis.com:

Amphipathic:

I was thinking it might be cool if WSO had a function to "call out" people in a post, meaning if I say "TNA could speak to this topic" then TNA would get highlighted and be notified he was being mentioned in a thread.

yeah, woudl definitely be cool to have an @ feature that could be used to call out users...looking into that. I think our next major change to the forums will be to fix our reply function.

I think the reason so many people use "quote" on WSO is because when you reply to a comment, no matter what comment it is, it gets put down at the bottom of the thread. We've resisted indenting for a while because I don't think it's a very elegant solution, but we may try experimenting with it. I think it would remove the need to quote ~50% of the time which would save a lot of vertical space...as long as the indented comment replies don't have like 10 levels of indentation. We may only allow for 2-3 levels, and only indent ~10 pixels on each, so we're only losing ~20-30 pixels of width on the comments that are replying to replied comments...if that makes sense?

That's a major change though, so may take us some time to implement right/test, but I think it would make the forums easier to read and more fluid (a bit less pretty / uniform)....welcoem your thoughts...

WallStreetOasis.com:

Small tear came to my eye this morning when I didnt see anyone raving about our new quote feature (probably because it took us ~3-4 days to get it functional).

Instead of the quote icon now taking you to a new page to type your reply, the quoted content hovers and slides down to the content box with some animation...all on the same page.

This may seem stupid, but just another small change to improve the usability of the forums...we'll keep going and keep making improvements :-)

I am also battling with some new design ideas in my brain for the header....

Legit! I like the other aesthetic improvements you guys have implemented. Site is lookin' good - keep going!

I'm not a fan of indentations on threads. This is just my $0.02 but I think it moves comments into a 'sidebar' conversation. Some view it as organizational, but I prefer the consistency of comments rolling in one after another.

UFOinsider:

WallStreetOasis.com:

Amphipathic:

I was thinking it might be cool if WSO had a function to "call out" people in a post, meaning if I say "TNA could speak to this topic" then TNA would get highlighted and be notified he was being mentioned in a thread.

yeah, woudl definitely be cool to have an @ feature that could be used to call out users...looking into that. I think our next major change to the forums will be to fix our reply function.

I think the reason so many people use "quote" on WSO is because when you reply to a comment, no matter what comment it is, it gets put down at the bottom of the thread. We've resisted indenting for a while because I don't think it's a very elegant solution, but we may try experimenting with it. I think it would remove the need to quote ~50% of the time which would save a lot of vertical space...as long as the indented comment replies don't have like 10 levels of indentation. We may only allow for 2-3 levels, and only indent ~10 pixels on each, so we're only losing ~20-30 pixels of width on the comments that are replying to replied comments...if that makes sense?

That's a major change though, so may take us some time to implement right/test, but I think it would make the forums easier to read and more fluid (a bit less pretty / uniform)....welcoem your thoughts...

I'd keep it simple. People are here for the content and contact. Don't make the mistake that facebook is making by constantly tinkering with the display and a zillion features that make things more complicated than they need to be. With quoting, perhaps create an algorithm that goes back and cuts down previously quoted comments: having the final reply sequence at the bottom of the thread makes it easier to just read through at my leisure. It's tricky, once you start cutting things out, you have to track the sub thread throughout the post and that can be a real pain in the neck if there are 50+ other comments on a very active thread. The other variable is when people reply to different parts of a heavily quoted quote....if parts are cut off, it drastically and arbitrarily restricts conversation and would prove a major drawback if done incorrectly.

interesting guys, thanks for that feedback. yeah, I've always struggled with the nesting vs. not nesting, floating higher ranked comment up vs. not, etc...

I tend to agree that the comments being in the order they were submitted makes it easier to read. What about if we did something with reply, so no indenting, but what if:

1. It scrolled down same page (no new page like issue with quote)
2. it somehow had some sort of 'Reply to username" in front of the reply automatically? That could also trigger a PM notification (which users can toggle off in their account settings...)?

Thoughts?

Thanks! Patrick

rufiolove:

WallStreetOasis.com:

Small tear came to my eye this morning when I didnt see anyone raving about our new quote feature (probably because it took us ~3-4 days to get it functional).

Instead of the quote icon now taking you to a new page to type your reply, the quoted content hovers and slides down to the content box with some animation...all on the same page.

This may seem stupid, but just another small change to improve the usability of the forums...we'll keep going and keep making improvements :-)

I am also battling with some new design ideas in my brain for the header....

I do like it... I figured you were in the process of rolling this out last night / this morning because last night I was trying to quote things and the quote button wasn't working. I like the fact that it stays on the same page.

yes, had some issues last night...still need to fix some things. next step is to do the same fix (keeping on same page) for reply icon and somehow make it clear what comments are replying to what comments...so far, sounds like people like the way the current layout is, but I think like quotes, if we would have something automatically inserted when using the reply icon like "(Reply to Rufiolove)" instead of me having to quote your whole post, would be more space efficient and easier to read...???

One personal opinion on replies and comments etc.

Can we have an option to view without HTML shown and with HTML shown in the replies? Like a tab back and forth. Because when I click quote it shows like 20 HTML elements and makes it hard to read what I'm commenting on if I have to reference it.

Also, I personally would not like the indenting for replies method, to similar to reddit and think it looks ugly.

Finally, for multiple quotes, I've seen forums do a button on each post that you can click "Add+" and when you finally click quote it will add all the posts you clicked "Add+" as a quote into the post.

Otherwise, like the new changes to the forum! And they actually work on my restrictive work computer pretty well.

also, UFO, we don't want to make things more complex...we want to make things cleaner (which I think the new icons and opacity does). One of our goals for the rest of 2013 is to improve UI so we have some nice features that make the forums more fun and intuitive to use. jquery like we are now using for icons and quote can be applied to many places around the site while making the site less cluttered and more intuitive.

One thing we struggle with is a cluttered header. It may just be a question of increasing padding and using white space better, but I think there is a lot we can do to improve to make things feel and look simpler.

yeahright:

One personal opinion on replies and comments etc.

Can we have an option to view without HTML shown and with HTML shown in the replies? Like a tab back and forth. Because when I click quote it shows like 20 HTML elements and makes it hard to read what I'm commenting on if I have to reference it.

Also, I personally would not like the indenting for replies method, to similar to reddit and think it looks ugly.

Finally, for multiple quotes, I've seen forums do a button on each post that you can click "Add+" and when you finally click quote it will add all the posts you clicked "Add+" as a quote into the post.

Otherwise, like the new changes to the forum! And they actually work on my restrictive work computer pretty well.

that html showing in quotes is a bug, we'll get that fixed. I think just making the quote buttons not replace previously quoted stuff is the easiest way to go here...need to work with my developer on that, but first I think we're going to fix reply icon since I think it could replace a huge % of the quotes and save space...

WallStreetOasis.com:

also, UFO, we don't want to make things more complex...we want to make things cleaner (which I think the new icons and opacity does). One of our goals for the rest of 2013 is to improve UI so we have some nice features that make the forums more fun and intuitive to use. jquery like we are now using for icons and quote can be applied to many places around the site while making the site less cluttered and more intuitive.

One thing we struggle with is a cluttered header. It may just be a question of increasing padding and using white space better, but I think there is a lot we can do to improve to make things feel and look simpler.

Have you considered reducing the number of icons? Maybe adding javascript so that if you highlight an icon, the image will dropdown numerous icons? Similar to how if you highlight text with your mouse it changes color/style but more complex. It would make the header less cluttered.

Suppose it would be similar to the "Recent FAQs Forums Groups About" section where it drops down more choices, except it would be using images instead of just text.