Newbie observations

These are just some usability issues I've noticed in the short time I've been here.  These boards are great; my suggestions are things I think would make the experience even better.  Nothing here is intended to get anyone's knickers in a twist.

Post pages:

 All post pages have the same title: "Laser Pointer Forums - Discuss Lasers & Laser Pointers".  I tend to use a lot of tabs when I am browsing, but on this site the individual sections and individual posts have no distinguishing features.  You know how, on the home page, each section has a 'Last post' entry that shows the name of the thread that was last edited?  If thread post pages had that same data in their title, it would increase the bandwidth for us out-of-control multitaskers.  Right now I have a dozen tabs open that all have the same title.

Search pages:

 There are two ways to search: there is a field at the top (the Google custom search) and the 'Search' button in the YaBB toolbar.  The Google search dutifully reports the name of every page it returns... it's just that they are all (as mentioned above) named "Laser Pointer Forums - Discuss Lasers & Laser Pointers".  Even looking down at the URL doesn't help, because the post pages don't have useful names, just links like "YaBB.pl?num=1213471542".  I'd found this to be essentially unusable - it was easier to just read all the posts than to read the (short, context-minimal) blurbs returned by the Google search.  Having post page titles that contained meaningful data would make the search function easier to use; it would also make the site as a whole more accessible, since Google's ranking algorithm uses the page title as one of the indicators of a page's relevance to a search.

 c0ldshadow mentioned in a recent post that the Google search is preferable because it returns more results and doesn't put any load on the server.  From a usability standpoint I've found the YaBB search to be preferable because it returns more context.

Random stuff:

 I don't know if I got here at a bad time or what, but I know I'm not the only new arrival who has been dismayed by the amount and severity of the fighting going on, especially when it involves people who appear to be pillars of the community.  I've read the discussions about moderators and/or the lack thereof, so I know things are in flux - but in general I feel it's best for everyone to be personally responsible and to police themselves and not piss in the pool.  Some tools might be useful in that regard: specifically, the recent fights have made me wish for an "ignore" button.  If we had the ability, for example, to ignore specific users for a two-week period, everybody wins: we get a higher signal-to-noise ratio, the people causing the disruption get slowly tuned out, and it could be useful for admins: if a large number of people start ignoring a specific user, it's clear there's a problem somewhere.  We'd basically get to be our own moderators, to an extent, reducing the need for actual moderators.

Anyway, just some thoughts.  I know some of this stuff could be a pain to implement, and not everyone will agree with me on what needs to be fixed or how to go about fixing it or whether it needs to be fixed at all.  Sorry this turned into an essay.

- Foobario

You can haz rep, great points (And great avatar! yay zim!)

I agree with each and every one of them points Go go c0ldshadow, make some changes!

Good job.




dude, it's not always fighting, welcome to the forums, you'll have a great time here

agreed. the title could be more descriptive... if it's possible? it helps a lot when bookmarking a page too. i bookmark many threads and they are all the same title... hence useless.

welcome to LPF by the way

Welcome to the forum Foobario All of those are great suggestions. I'll comment on the last group. Normally this forum is a great place to learn anything you need to know about lasers, but there are times that some of us that are just trying to go about or business on the forum, and others jump in and throw a torch into it and wreck the whole thread.. It comes with the territory I guess, but any tools cOld can implement will surely help, since he has some very good reasons not to have mods here.

I think some of this forum's limitations are because of the YaBB software itself, though. We may have to wait until the YaBB developers make the necessary updates.....

Hello Foobario, welcome to LPF. [smiley=laugh.gif]

Your post reflects intelligence, and the contents of your suggestions seem great.

And now, for my opinion... :

I guess I'm a little more "old school", to the fact that I remember which tab is which, although they all have the same name, or with a click of the mouse can easily switch. I don't like having too many threads open at once anyway, because I can only read/write one at a time, although referring to others, or opening up multiple links can help...is why I have multiple monitors! ;D

The search engine works as well as I’d ever needed it, but there’s always room for improvement!

The ‘ignore member’ sounds like a good idea for “self-moderating”, but I’m sure that I personally would never use it, and for anybody who does would probably get confused when discussions don’t “chain-up”, if you know what I mean. With a free public site, these forums are subject to ‘flame’, which in my opinion is unavoidable. Of coarse there is a limit to the morality context of one’s posts, is why we can always PM c0ld and he will always consider our complaints and make a point of keeping the forums as clean as possible. It is some work for him, and moderators would be the best help for him. We as members have our influence, with our posts and reps. Sometimes it turns into a game, but the truth is evident.

The term “discussion” is as follows:
an act or instance of discussing; consideration or examination by argument, comment, etc., esp. to explore solutions; informal debate.

So naturally, there will be many “fights”, because we never want to be misinterpreted causing others to look down upon us to where we feel we need to redeem ourselves by clarification. And there will always be different opinions.

It's the spamming, and serious business arguments that can sometimes be annoying, and when it our threads get ruined that’s unfortunate. I don’t think ignoring a member would prevent that.




Other then that, I hope you enjoy the forums! Thanks for reading my essay!
– Peace Ace