They will all have links. There’ve been some day 1 tech troubles. Discourse and Dean have been admirable in dealing with them promptly.
Thanks. Instead of having to scroll down a long list to find the thread/comments on an article, a link would be easier. It looks good in the rest. I’m a Luddite, so all the extra bells and whistles will never really be used by me. I wish you all luck on this.
After the discussion we had at Ars it’s great to finally see this in action. I played with an earlier beta briefly, but I needed it to be attached to a real site like Boing Boing to really see how it works out.
There’s no question threading is a terrible conversation killer. I’m not sure I feel the same way about single level threading, and reading your link it looks like you share some of those thoughts.
Here’s where this current system feels awfully strange to me: I read your post. I see it has 2 replies. I click to expand them to see what people thing and read them. Okay, done with that, scrollllling down the page. Wait, didn’t I read this already? It’s very weird to run into the same reply I just read a moment ago. Perhaps an option to collapse replies that you’ve already seen through expansion earlier?
Edit: Lovely, I rushed through registering and stick an extra capital U in my name. 
1 Like
I believe @neil made it so you can change case on your name at will now. Have at it, AuRiCH!
At some level all the hybrid partially threaded systems will be a compromise. I am a big fan of a simple, flat, chronological list whenever possible though. We can move laterally here through the right gutter linked topics and Reply As New Topic button in the same area.
My case sensitive eyes are saved!
Definitely going to keep an eye out for how things evolve here. Good luck!
1 Like
I wanted to be the first Ars staffer to comment, but damn it, looks like @Aurich beat me to it. /me shakes fist
@beschizza, love what you guys have done with the place! I’ve been fiddling with Discourse in my spare time and I’ve got a small test forum up on my home server, and I am totally cribbing some portions of your design. The red/white/black works for me, and big fat slab-serifs everywhere are excellent.
On threading, I’m of the same mind as the Discourse crew—I think at best it’s distracting, and at worst it demolishes conversation flow (for an example of “at worst,” see something like DPReview’s threaded mode, which is one of the most conversation-hostile forums I’ve ever interacted with). I’m pleased with the way Discourse handles discussions, with both inlined quoting and also hinting at the top and bottom (with the “in reply to” and “n replies” drawers).
Will be keeping an interested eye on how Discourse shakes out here at BB.
2 Likes
hi. can we get this
**
here:
**
? it would help with navigation.
Also, I notice that the “Latest” view does not list the posts from BB chronologically, nor does the “New” view. Those names are too similar, it cannot be intuited what the difference is (last response?) anyway, we need a listing that mirrors the order of the postings on the BB main page. then we can browse there, tab over to BBS, and jump into the conversation we want, finding it by knowing where it exists on the main page.
mostly I’m enjoying the new format, it’s good!
Not sure if this is temporary while you work things out or by design, but I miss the comment counts on the BB front page. I consider that pretty useful data.
Definitely. Gettin’ rid of social network counts, puttin’ back in the local.
Also, linking the speech bubble to the forum thread rather than the permalink.
6 Likes
As far as BB-BBS integration goes, the thing I want most in the long run is a single black navbar for both sites. We have them stacked here rather crudely.
The next iteration of the nav bar at BB is going to lose the ‘subjects’ (like technology, movies, music) which will go somewhere else. Instead, we’ll have something like this:
BLOG • FEATURES • VIDEO • PODCASTS • FORUMS: NEW LATEST CATEGORIES (BBS Controls site-wide)
So BBS and BB really feel like part of the same thing.
But I figure for it to work right, the wordpress plugin will need to integrate more of BBS (or substantial parts of BBS will have to be iframed by BB? something like that)
2 Likes
That’d be awesome, IMO.
So something like this functionally (blog page, topic unscrolled, topic scrolled) + with some more thought put into the visual design.
3 Likes
- Maybe the “hide or show composer panel” button could be on the left side?
I’m getting OOS going back and forth across the page - for no good reason, as far as I can tell. Also, it’s anti-intuitive to have it on the right (will explain, if necessary).
- Would be cool if preview pane auto-scrolled to the bottom. No reason not to that I can see, and - as it stands - once one’s comment is past the length of a single pane (ie when scrolling becomes an option) preview pane doesn’t show the line that the writer is currently working on when one is at the bottom of the composition, which is most of the time.
(Yes, I know that I can adjust the height of the composer; that’s not the point).
Thanks. 
Keep in mind, we have a very rudimentary implementation that keeps it scrolled to the end while you are typing, if you are typing in the last line. (this falls apart if you have images and links at the end)
I do want us to get to the state both preview and composer are constantly in sync while typing, even if you are amending the second paragraphs of a 3 paragraph post, however it does require some ninja work.
1 Like
Great. Thank you.
Interesting, why are you enabling / disabling preview often? is this a screen real estate thing? I would much prefer just to give you a keyboard shortcut that way the intuitiveness of the UI can remain but your workflow will not be hampered.
Well, we also need keyboard shortcuts in general. That’s been back-burnered for a while now.
Yes, that’s it. Minimising to check on comments I might be referring to.
If that’s truly what you believe, then just get rid of the reply function entirely. Let users handle replying inline, with quotes, and I’ll go use a proper threaded system like LiveJournal.
1 Like
On a constructive note, however, it would be nice if the “Notable replies” attached to the actual articles linked to that comment here on the BBS. That way people could read the comment there and then click through to read the context in which it was made.
3 Likes
Wow, yes, that!
1 Like
