Your Thoughts on Forum Design/Usability

Hate to say it, but those ads are probably AdSense and based on your browsing history. Mine are all for expensive men's shoes

 

First off, I really like the layout of the content pages. I like that the text is kept at a readable column width and the default font has serifs and is big enough to be easy on the eyes and legible. I like that there are no dividers between members' posts, or boxes around them.

There are, or used to be, some writers' forums that kept the old style of tiny print stretched out across the entire screen width. I believe there's been general movement away from that, but this is the first one I came across that didn't do that.

I, too, like the blue theme. You can do a warmer banner with it if there are blue elements in it to harmonize. No need to be matchy-matchy.

As far as the navigation goes . . . I would give a hearty "Hear, hear!" to the idea of moving Publishing out from under Creative Writing into its own master forum category. And I agree with the idea of combining that with anything having to do with the production and business end of writing.

The By the Genre forum has always confused me. There's a note on the page saying new genres will get their own forums if there's enough interest, but how is that supposed to happen if the only categories available to post in are Erotica, Fantasy, and Science Fiction?

In the Workshop, it'd be really helpful if Novels was (were?) broken down by genre like Short Stories is (are?). And if the Novels category was moved up to the top of the list instead of letting it sit down at the bottom. It's my impression that novels are what most of us are writing, and it'd be easier and faster to find likely entries to critique with such a change.

And, as I mentioned in another thread, it'd be great if, on our own pages, we could see a tally of how many Workshop threads we've contributed to, in addition to the number of WS threads we've started.

Thanks for asking.

 

Oh yes, this please! Biweekly hurts my writer soul anyway since it's horribly ambiguous.

 

Thinking about the tags question this morning:

Thread-starter tags are good. Being a long-time blogger, I'm accustomed to using them. But I was wondering, would it be possible for us to be able to see the whole list of existing tags when starting a thread? There'd they'd all be in a tag cloud or a list, and we'd go, "That one would work," and "Yes, I'd better choose that one," and "Oh, yeah, I wasn't thinking of that, but it'd be appropriate, too." There ya go, all tagged.

I'm not saying we should clutter up the page with a tag cloud . . . more like a dropdown box that would show all the current options.

But now that I think about it, maybe a tag cloud on the main contents page might not be a bad idea. Or a way to bring up a tag cloud, if having the whole thing there would take up too much space. It would sure make searching easier, and isn't that what tags are for?

Or do we already have this facility, and I just haven't noticed? (I just looked and I don't think we do.)

But speaking of taking up too much space, I wish the tag list could be edited from time to time, to combine redundant tags and correct those that are misspelled. Another tedious job for some staff member, but that would facilitate tagging, and help the search process, too. And be much appreciated, by me at least.

 

I don't care what you do, just please, please, please don't take away the "What's New?" and "Mark All Forums Read" options. These are my favorite features, and I now refuse to join any forum that doesn't have them.

 

Oh god, if the What's New/New Posts/etc. options were removed... They're insanely useful for moderating since it's easy to get a hold of everything that's been happening since the last time I was on the forum. Also, it's so annoying when forums don't have those options (or when they only show the ~5 latest posts/threads and nothing more).

 

I was surprised when I first looked at WF to see the white background. The first thing I do when setting up an app is to select a background colour. I like the sepia of Kindle and the grey of Scrivener's full-screen mode. White is hard on my eyes.

 

Having different colour schemes does sound like a pretty good idea. I personally prefer dark (but not complete black) backgrounds with lighter text/elements (grey/beige/etc., not white).

 

I love writing forums layout and the colors are great. I wouldn't change much. There are two features I love on another site though - Critique Circle. One is that when you critique a story you can critique by paragraph. A little box comes up and you can mention what works and what doesn't. You can also leave notes before the line by line critique and after. That saves a lot of time copy and pasting to highlight certain things - like this dialogue doesn't work or I don't get what this sentence means.
The other good feature is when you go to the authors page it has a tab showing you links to all their critiques so that you can see how good they are at it, what they enjoy reading and possibly send them a p.m. requesting their talents.

 

Doesn't the highlight and "quote" function work pretty much the same?

 

The contests might be run more like a coup in The Gambia (not a coup actually, but democratic and just.). After two, three months the current moderator is humiliated due to dwindling reader response - usually, real or imagined - actually, and particularly to my own writing occasionally (a victim), and then the fallen moderator is banished with pitchforks. A new prince steps forward to run the story-telling feature with fresh options, coloured fonts, and on-screen crayoning. We repeat the process for centuries.

Plato said the same thing over one hundred years ago. An idea going forward.

 

Nope - to me it suggests writing collaborations, like two people co-authoring a story.

IIRC there's something in Wreybies' welcome PM, or in the site rules, which explains what Collaboration is for. But I'm not sure how many people read those, and what proportion of the ones who DO read it actually remember it when they're in need of a beta.

 

I still think this tab line:


should include a tab that says New Members.

That way, new members are likely to open that tab first. In it, you could either put the New Members Guide in its entirety, now hidden at the bottom of the list of Information:



or you could just make a short statement that all new members need to become familiar with the New Members Guide, be a member for a specified number of days, make a specific number of posts, and do a specific number of critiques before they can post in the workshop or post their work anywhere for review. Then direct them to Information, etc.

I'm still seeing lots of new members who obviously don't go to "Information" first off—sounds dull, and they probably think they can wing it without reading 'information'—and instead start looking at the more exciting options on this Forum. They end up posting their work (often on the first day) in various threads. This can be embarrassing for them, when they get told they can't, because they haven't fulfilled the membership requirements yet.

I understand they get told by one of the mods when they first register that they need to read the New Members Guide, but obviously they don't all take it in. If there was a tab labeled New Members at the top of the page, I think they might be more apt to take notice.

It would make sense to make the New Members' task of getting to grips with this excellent site a bit easier, and an extra tab wouldn't derail any trains.

 

This makes me think of what's happened to niche markets in the bricks-n-mortar retail arena over the last 30 years or so. Once demand for a specific item drops below a certain level, it disappears from the market altogether, not because demand has disappeared completely, but because the cost of making it available is deemed too high to justify stocking it.

And I see a parallel with niche sub-forums. Sure they may bring clutter to the site, but niche sub-forums IMHO are what will relieve overburdened general category forums. This is going to be a fine line to walk because without those niche sub-forums, any post that would have gone into one is going to end up in 'general' or some other inappropriate forum.

Do you have a site traffic analysis (analyzed by topic rather than forum placement)? Is there any way to do one other than by using Google or some such to carry this out (I haven't kept up with this end of site design/management so I'm a bit out of the loop)? It could take some time to do, but would be a good place to start in trying to sort this out.

I'm speaking out in favour of niche topic sub-forums because, as clutter-y as they may be, they will help relieve traffic in overworked areas. Perhaps there's a way to do it so it isn't so in-your-face. Like, for instance, have the most popular forums listed first, followed by the next most popular, etc. down to the least popular (or niche) forums/sub-forums. Just a thought and I'm sure that given time, someone can improve upon it.

This issue may be resolved to a degree by using plainer language for forum/sub-forum titles.

With this community being as diverse as it is, including not just people new(ish) to English, but native speakers from several cultural backgrounds, using idioms or expressions to name forums may be creating a bit of confusion and leading people to post in an inappropriate part of the site. For instance (and I'm glad you brought this up)...

I can only speak for myself, but I assumed this forum was for people who want co-writers and so I've never read it, being completely uninterested in having one. And I made that decision based solely on the name of the forum.

I don't see feedback as partnering; same goes for seeking critiques. Since both are pretty much the same, a forum entitled Feedback or Critique Corner might help steer the appropriate traffic into this forum.

In fact, the revamped site might benefit greatly if it were broken down into the stages of writing, something like (and this is just off the top of my head):

• Preparation
• Writing
  
• Rewriting & Editing
• Workshopping
  
• Publishing
• Self-publishing
• Contests
  
• Success Stories
• Water Cooler

With appropriate sub-forums, of course.

 

I personally never had a problem navigating the site. It's always seemed very user friendly to me.

However, even after how long I've been here, I still don't know where to post certain things. I think the subforums could be renamed and described a little better to make it more clear.

 

One thing that just occurred to me, and more of a micro rather than a macro feature...

For some reason we don't seem to be able to link to Amazon in our posts. I'm not sure if this is because I do the links wrong or because of something to do with the Affiliates program or what it is, but it's kinda frustrating...

For the marketing side of things (like, discussions of how to market, not authors trying to market their books to other forum members) it would be nice to be able to link to examples. Amazon is a pretty huge part of the publishing world, after all.

And for book discussions, the "look inside" feature is really useful - a great way to point out writing styles, different features of different books, etc.

So if there's any way to allow links to Amazon (or to point out to me why I'm a loser who can't make an existing way work) that'd be excellent!

 

That was just a test.

 

Does my link to Amazon show up for you on your screen, @BayView?

 

Would it be somewhere obvious? I'm hunting through all the books in your sig line (so cool that they go different places!) but I'm not seeing anything obvious.

 

Not my sig line, post #45 of this thread.