For context, this was asked on a forum that has seen migration from something really old and clunky to Discourse to NodeBB with custom dev along the way. It is full of obscenely technical people - and, inexplicably, me - and people who know how to speak their mind should they want to. If you think I am a grumpy old man, you ain't seen nothing.
Now, for context, I raised the following pointed questions - while 3 & 4 are the ones relevant to this topic, all the questions and their responses were really, really interesting:
- Infinite scroll, yay/nay? If yay, what do you like about it? If nay, what about it makes you reflexively hate it?
- How often do you need to express something that mostly-basic Markdown can’t do? Do you find yourself missing bbcode?
- When you first visit a forum for the first time, how do you get there and what information do you want to see?
- When you return to a forum (having registered and are now conceptually on the journey to becoming a regular), what are the first and second things you most want to get at or be shown on the screen? (If you have a top 3, or more, please share)
- Does necroposting annoy you? If so, how come?
- Do you care about the ability to create polls?
- Live streaming of posts/updates as they happen, good, bad, you don’t care?
I was specific in what I wanted to know and what vibe I was getting at. Note that 7 specifically is a feature you don't see in XF much - it's not the 'more responses have been written while you were posting' message, but actually pulling the posts in *while you're on the page*, fully live. (Discourse and NodeBB have higher requirements for running than something like XF or phpBB. This is in no small part why.)
So, summarising of the results:
1. Infinite scroll
Meh: 5 (general responses aligned along 'yes if works and doesn't bounce all over the show, can't easily navigate to where you want but that's not necessarily a problem if you don't need to read every post; yes if it works but it doesn't usually work well)
Nay: 8 (general responses: too easy to lose my place, how many I read/how many left to read aren't clear at a glance)
Yay: 1 (general responses: likeable but best if optional)
Also worth noting that the 'meh' answers definitely had some on the fence vibes, e.g. 'yes if it works well, no if it doesn't' but the navigation complaint came up multiple times.
2. Missing bbcode
Virtually no-one really missed bbcode, most people noted that in forum posts Markdown was usually enough, and that for the cases it isn't, basic HTML is often accepted in its place which from a user entry perspective is often about the same effort. Buttons for the obvious functions are good. Probably the biggest complaint point was spoilers, which in NodeBB is done with the <details> and <summary> HTML tags, and something else would be nicer.
Some even noted that they were so used to Markdown that they were doing it habitually and then finding forums not supporting it.
Probably the most interesting answer was the person who referenced 1984, correctly noting that 'if you cannot express something in a language you use, you will eventually stop wanting to use it', which means if you don't have (say) tables, eventually you'll get to a point where you're so used to not having tables and having worked around it, that this will now be your default path even in places where you conceptually could.
Some cautionary notes in there on not letting content escape outside the post area for fancier things.
3. Visiting for the first time
Responses were split here, but about half the people who did response to this question noted that they came from search and so expected to be directly on some content; the other half noted the list of boards, and often specifically to find a board or boards for a specific broad topic to read one or more topics in.
General disdain for forums that hide things until registered. Several respondents did point out that easily-findable registration would be good, particularly if they're about to make the step from viewer to registered member, though most noted they only wanted to do that if they wanted to post.
4. Regular/recurring member experience
Now this was interesting. There were a few people who noted that they wanted the category listing to be able to see which board or boards had new items, but for the vast majority of respondents, they noted that what they wanted to see more than anything was content related to them. Where they'd gotten replies, where they'd gotten mentions, where they'd gotten likes/reactions, topics that they'd previously posted in getting new replies, followed by maybe a list of other current regular topics.
It was very interesting how people almost make the case for the front page replicating the alerts/notifications window in some ways, but organised by level of engagement rather than strictly chronologically.
5. Necroposting
Interestingly mixed reaction here but that feels contextual. This is a forum where 10 year plus necros can and do occasionally happen, though usually it's more like a year or two in practice.
A good proportion of the respondents were like 'nah it's all fine' but of those who did have anything more to add, the main bulk felt along the lines of 'if it's a topic I haven't seen before, I usually want to catch up' before noting that the UI may hide away how much of a task that might be (back to the infinite scroll problem)
One noted that spam was annoying when it did this (because spammers are more likely to do this)
6. Polls
Quite interested to see that almost no-one cared and that in some respects, they'd almost rather not have polls because it's the long-tail answers that are more interesting. Did not expect that.
7. Streaming in posts
This had some overlap with the infinite scroll situation - generally 'don't move things around the page unless I want you to' which can happen even on regular forums with images (because the images can resize the post area vertically once loaded) but is much worse with infinite scroll, and when adding new posts in rather than a small, easily-overlooked message above the reply box, this is far more likely to mess you up if you're typing.
It is, interestingly, one of the reasons that NodeBB's reply feature is basically a modal on top of the thread view, even in mobile, because that way if new content loads in, it doesn't move where you're typing.
But on a forum that does move enough that threads can get reactions and replies while you're reading, this was generally felt to be a positive move rather than a negative one (and is the reason that in the wake of Discourse, they went NodeBB rather than XenForo because they liked the modernness of it and this was one of the big selling features specifically, the other was Markdown)
There's more to share from that thread, and I'll do that some other time, but the board index in particular was interesting to me, especially because I think asking *users who aren't admins* gets you interesting feedback about how features really get used on a site. The rest just came along for the ride here but I think it reinforces the side point that we shouldn't make assumptions about user behaviours based on our own behaviours. We like the board listing - the users... maybe not quite so much.
Just need to find you someone to make it for you.
