Griping about moderation, bias, et cetera

I wonder where we are on “sidebar” a week and a half later?

Like it? Dislike it? Always have it hidden? Something else? Can’t type in this topic Elon Musk has consumed all the oxygen in the room?

10 Likes

Never use it.

3 Likes

I always keep it hidden. I do find it more convenient to skip to my bookmarks this way. No gripes from me so far.

7 Likes

Yeah, I’ve yet to use it either…

The new feature I DO like and use is the ability to sort and dismiss individual categories in the notifications. That’s great.

12 Likes

I haven’t been using it much. I tried at first but I find the list of unread posts in Topics I’m tracking (below the current Topic) more useful.

8 Likes

I’m mostly on my smartphone, so it doesn’t make a huge difference in terms of UX. It makes it a lot easier to get to messages, but I rarely send or receive PMs.

I do like that I can sort out “Earned Nice Reply” badges when I wake up to a bunch of replies, likes and badges and am primarily interested in the replies.

6 Likes

I keep it hidden, but use it occasionally. The new notification features are great though.

9 Likes

I echo this. I don’t use the sidebar, but the individual categories thing is a great feature. I’d say that it’s how I do 90% of my interfacing now.

10 Likes

I can see where it could be useful, but I haven’t used it yet. I’d like to be able to make “hidden” the default.

As I said earlier, I miss the colour-coded notification dots beside my avatar for DMs and other notifications.

Why yes, I am afraid of change. :older_man:

10 Likes

I don’t really use it but I could imagine people liking it. One thing I don’t like about it is that it feels like the existence of the hamburger menu creates more visual complexity. It may just be my cheese getting moved, but when the menu is closed I really, really want the “BBS” logo to be aligned with the left gutter of the comment area in web view. Right now the hamburger menu has that alignment and it makes the header bar feel off.

image

What I’d prefer is for the “BBS” to be aligned with the vertical dashed line here, rather than the div for the hamburger menu.

image

The current placement makes the header bar feel busier to me. I know this violates some of the basic principles of visual complexity on the web – there is acutally more element alignment if the hamburger menu is where it is right now. But I think what it is, is that the “BBS” logo and topic title conceptually serve as an <h1> for the page content, and I want the heading element to be aligned with the content that is subordinate to it, rather than indented. The hamburger menu is not conceptually part of this heading element, it’s a separate thing – so it feels more appropriate for it to be offset.

To be sure, the exact placement of the hamburger is less relevant to me than the BBS/topic title being in alignment with the comments below. It also does seem a little weird for the hamburger to be separate from all the other site controls (link to BB home, search tool, user menu) on the right, so maybe the sidebar should be over yonder? That would make things a bit harder when using it as a navigational tool, though.

6 Likes

YMMV, and all that. Mine looks like this:

4 Likes

Mine’s the same, I think it’s just less clear from my images. I guess I see the headshots as part of the main content, and that’s what I – for some reason contrary to standard UX heuristics – expect to see aligned with the “BBS” logo. Having them aligned to the hamburger feels wrong somehow.

I could also be wrong; it’s hard to really get a sense for how the alternative would look without seeing it in action. I could imagine seeing it in “real life” the way I’m describing, and immediately realizing that I was wrong based on that.

3 Likes

I’m in the ‘never use it’ camp as well. I didn’t even know I could hide it. :slight_smile:

7 Likes

I like it.
I never really felt like I got how to navigate around the site before, so now that I’ve put my most-visited categories in the sidebar, it’s way easier to bop around.
I like the messages icon, too, those used to get buried and it took a couple more clicks to get there before the side bar.
I’ll echo what @teknocholer said about the color coded dots, I miss the green and blue.
Another thing, Ken mentioned there is some way to bulk archive messages, like one can with email, using the list icon or something, but I don’t seem to have that. I’m on safari on an older iPad most of the time. Do you know anything about that?

11 Likes

I don’t use sidebar. The new notification dropdown is nice. I can clear likes and “nice reply” notifications quickly and go straight to thread updates and messages. I find it an improvement.

11 Likes

No need for me to use it, really; though big thanks for putting the shortcuts back on the right hand side.

My muscle memory appreciates you.

Freakin’ A; between him and Kanye, it’s like a race to be the world’s most annoying, desperately needy attention whore.

13 Likes

Yep Reaction GIF by Rosanna Pansino

9 Likes

I also like how the likes all float to the top, so I know I haven’t missed any.

ETA: I like a clean timeline.

9 Likes

My hamburger is right-aligned.

May have something to do with the Coriolis effect, or the eclipse this morning.

8 Likes

It looks like it changes with devices…it’s on the right on my phone and on the left on my laptop. I never use it, so on the left it mostly just trips me up when I try to click on the bbs icon.

3 Likes