Community Updates - February 2019

Hello all,

Sorry for not updating anything recently on the Community - a lot of the team have been very busy with Big Garden Birdwatch.

However, our team of web developers have been busy making some improvements based on what you've been asking us. In this update we've been focusing on the layout of the forum posts. In the next 24 hours, you'll see the following changes:

  • Pagination - We have now added pagination, which lets you skip forward or back either a page at a time, or to the beginning or end of a thread immediately.
  • Discussion order - Adding pagination has allowed us to reverse the thread order, which is the other big change many of you have been asking for, so the oldest posts appear first and the newest appear last. Without pagination we had switched this around this to make it easier to see the latest posts but have now switched it back which should make it easier to follow the flow of a thread. 

There are also some smaller changes to the layout of the posts themselves and the reply function.

  • Quoting - The biggest of these changes is probably how quoting works; the drag-to-quote feature has been replaced with a simpler system, similar to how it used to be.

If you want to quote on a previous post, then:

  • Click on the ‘Reply’ button beneath that post which opens the reply box
  • Then click on the ‘Use rich formatting’ link which will take you to a new page with all the advanced layout options
  • Beneath the original post is a link to ‘Quote’. Click this and the quoted post appears in the text box for you

Many thanks for your ongoing feedback - we are working through all the great ideas for improving your Community experience as quickly as we can.

Elliott.

p.s. I also know there are a few concerns with the current rate of Moderation within the Community - this is being looked at and I hope to be able to update you further in the coming days.

  • Sounds good Elliott, nice to hear some people have been working in the background on this.

  • Really pleased to hear about the changes Elliott so thanks for the update and look forward to their implementation as we were beginning to lose a lot of regular members/posters on here and the amount of activity on this new platform had dropped considerably due to the frustration of following threads and posting, etc..       Photo dimension defaults are still a nuisance if the tech guys/gals can take a look at some stage  !    Thanks again,  it does sound like progress is being made to make this a more user friendly platform.

  • Thanks you so much, it will make a huge difference to the forum & personally will be great for me too!

  • Thank you, Elliott. I'm really pleased that you are taking on board our concerns. I think most of us have realised that the BGBW was a preoccupation with your limited staff resources so have been patient.

    Curiously, I quite liked the the new quoting system which allowed one to quote from anywhere in the thread. However, it seems I was in a minority so will bow to the majority view.

    Photo dimension defaults are still a nuisance

    This is my greatest bugbear. If people accept the default when posting photos they are so small that you inevitably have to enlarge them. This can be quite a slow process. Adjusting the size in the image dialog box when posting is frankly a pain. I think if the default size could be set to fill the space available it would, in most cases, obviate the need to enlarge them. 

  • Thanks for the update Elliott. Ian

  • Good news Elliott, fingers crossed it will simplify life for everyone :-)

  • You've been listening !!!  Thank you all !!!

    I've done hardly any exploring but just noticed this (may have more feedback later) - when dipping into "Hello" in the Chat thread, I could not tell who wrote the OP - yet others seemed to know :-/  Did I miss something?

  • "More feedback" #1:

    I can't see how to edit my post to take out the erroneous bold effect.
  • As already said in bright letters, "Thank you all".

    .

    Is there anything that can be done about the Media box defaults?  I hope you can see what I mean but I'm drooping now ;)

  • As Bob has commented, nice to see signatures are back - but where do we modify them?  I assumed it would be in the profile area but can't see it there...

    eta - it would be helpful if there was some demarcation of the sig as well, either a shaded background, or a line to separate it from the rest of the response maybe