FeedbackGeneral observations about this forum. 67129
tisuchi
Hi @alex
I have been using laracasts forum over the last 7 years and I am one of the active users there. Based on my experience with Laracasts, I listed down the following opinions that might be helpful if you can implement them.
List of discussion
- On the
/forumpage, currently, the discussion title is clickable only. To open a discussion, need to click on the title particularly.
From the user's point of view, I believe it will be better to make clickable the whole div section of each question so that it can be accessed easily.
Create a new Discussion
- The Markdown preview toggle button should have short-cut key options so that the user can easily preview it. e.g. Laracast use
cmd+/for mac user.
Reply to a discussion
- If you add a "reply" button at the bottom of every reply, it would be better to reply easily. Currently, you have a reply button on the parent "reply" section only. No child discussion contains a "reply" button.
- (Nice to have): If you include ❤️ or 👍 option so that community contributors will be inspired to answer more.
User Profile
-
Maybe you can think for user's profile accessibility publicly that what Laracast does. Maybe the profile contains # of course completed, # of total best answers, and total experience that you currently showing in
/dashboard. -
Maybe applying some rankings will help people to contribute to this forum. In addition, adding leaderboard will give some recognition to users for intuitive contribution.
Access discussions via category.
Currently, discussions are not accessible via category. It will be better if you consider this as well.
Markdown support.
Currently, the markdown is not supporting fully ( I guess). For example, the h3 is supporting only, none of the heading supports here.
For example-
H1
H2
H3
H4
H5
H6
I know, it will be time-consuming to complete the whole forum as a one man army
Looking forward.
kikter
also I made mention of not receiving an email when a user reply to a topic
tisuchi
@kikter I support your idea. 👍
alex
I'm literally working on this right now 🤝
alex
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! I agree with every point here and I'll be working on these shortly. Feel free to add anything else you come across!
tisuchi
👍
tisuchi
@alex another point.
It seems /forum is only accessible via the authenticated users. It might be a good approach to make it open for all to read all questions and answers.
alex
It’s currently closed to specific members while I gather this feedback
tisuchi
Totally agree.
Make sense.
tisuchi
@alex I think you can put theme switcher is in your top priority.
It's really hard for me to read and track with this dark theme.
Please consider it. 😊
alex
Once I’m done with discussion notifications (pretty much ready to deploy), I’ll start on the theme switcher
haz
Too kind sir, too kind.
kikter
it took some time for laracast to implement the follow feature , I think it's a nice feature to have here
tisuchi
@kikter I totally agree.
I saw the laracast progress day by day. Surely it was not like overnight magic!
tisuchi
Another point @alex
If I click on reply button for any comment, it would be better if you tag that comment owner automatically.
I think it will be more user-friendly 😊
kikter
I support this
tisuchi
Hi again @alex
Another point:
-
The discussion view counter is not really working.
- Is it cached?
- Or do you track count per user instead of page refresh?
If I refresh the page, it doesn't really reflect on the counter.
Please take note of that.
alex
It’s per unique IP
tisuchi
@alex hmm..
Isn't that view count? If so, does it appropriate to track by unique IP instead of refresh count?
alex
I guess I was going for 'the amount of people who have viewed this discussion'. I think using the amount of times the discussion has been clicked on or refreshed would show a huge amount of views.
tisuchi
alex
I see what you mean. I'll add this to the backlog to consider. Thanks again!
tisuchi
❤️
aymmuazu
"Emoji" to explain and show reactions which is very important in social networks.
alex
I've just added the ability to like posts, and I think we'll be leaving it at that for now. Thanks for the suggestion though!
tisuchi
@alex Good job. ❤️
tisuchi
Another observation @alex
Currently, email notifications are always sent from you (alex@codecourse.com).
From my point of view, I think it would be better to use a general email from the domain instead of you.
alex
Ahaha I noticed this was a bit weird earlier when I kept getting emails from myself. I'll change this up for forum notifications specifically, since from the main site it makes sense for the emails to come from me.
Thanks for the feedback!
haz
I'm actually not a fan of the animations. They are great for the first 10 actions, but it's getting a bit annoying. At least on mobile. May I suggest a profile setting to disable them? Alternatively you could make it random?
Regarding the leaderboards. What's the plan with those? I'm worried that it will make things too competitively focused.
- People posting for the sake of increasing their post count.
- People rushing with their replies to get the best answer award.
I get the incentive though. I would much prefer a system similar to SO. That way, everyone can be rewarded.
alex
Thanks for the feedback on the animations. I really like them, but understand they could be annoying. Let’s keep it in mind and wait for more feedback.
The leaderboard currently pulls from the most best answers, but this can easily be changed since it’s just a query that pulls from data. I’ll do some research and figure out how other forums handle this.
Eventually XP will be given for best answers, etc, so once profiles are live, it could just be XP/badges instead of a single leaderboard.
Because the forum is new, I really need to encourage discussion and participation, but of course, not at the expense of low quality posts.
haz
To clarify further: The animations are not so annoying on desktop. I think the problem with mobile is that the animation takes up way too much of the viewport height, even if it is just for a very short amount of time.
tisuchi
I totally agree with you @haz
It doesn't have any issue with the desktop version.
However, in my personal opinion, most developers use a big screen, at least a laptop screen in order interact to with this forum. It's arguable. But still, I will say so.
alex
Gotcha, thanks guys
haz
Yeah, that's true. Though since we are doing a lot of testing, I've actually been using my mobile much more. It's not a huge problem though.