Infinite Scrolling vs Pagination

[Cory]

What do you prefer? Do you prefer when you can scroll down to load new topics/posts as a lot of sites do nowadays known as "infinite scrolling", or are you old-fashion and prefer browsing topics/posts through pagination?

 

[Arantor]

I don't like infinite scrolling, I never have. None of the implementations do it particularly well - but on social media that's entirely the point. You're not supposed to keep going forward, you're not supposed, not as such, nor are you particularly intended to find content - you're supposed to see what's fed to you and just keep scrolling so you can see more ads.

I also find it glitchy on mobile where the connection is in any way spotty, and most implementations that aren't straight up social media have a tendency to try to track your position in a topic in a way that spams your browser history; Discourse used to flood your history with a new entry for every single post you read.

 

[Strawberry]

I'm not a fan of infinite scrolling on forums, I prefer if there's a certain number of threads per page. I just find it makes it look a lot cleaner and organised, and surprisingly easier to navigate and find things sifting through pages rather than scrolling.

 

[Cedric]

It seems I’m the opposite. I would rather have less pages and more infinite scrolling. It’s why I have setup more threads per pages in the forum thread list. I don’t mind bumping old threads if it’s relevant to the thread and subject. I think members are not gonna bother viewing threads on the second, third, … page list, while it still has relevant and good threads.

For the actual thread post view, I rather have it less set and more pages.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I rather browse a site that had pagination rather than infinite scrolling. I think that's one of the reasons why I don't like social media that much, it's just not that organize IMO.

 

[veloman]

I don't particularly have a preference for either, although I suppose you could claim that infinite scrolling could be see as more modern.

I actually chose pagination for a different reason: firstly, it reduces unnecessary server load. Secondly, if I decide to display (a few) adverts in the future, then every time the user moves pages it refreshes the ad units. Thus it gives another chance to present something that the user will click on. You could integrate them into the infinite feed (like Facebook does), but I think it's more difficult to implement and do correctly.

I think @Cedric has a good compromise though by just increasing the number of posts per page - almost the best of both worlds.

 

[SDL]

I prefer pages as it’s a lot more organised and like @veloman said, it’s great for ad revenue. Even as a user I prefer pages, it’s a lot easier to navigate for me.