Okay, so the boldface threads have posts I haven’t read. Uh, what are the numbers in circles? Is that threads I’ve interacted with (viewed? posted in?) that have new posts, as per malkav’s comment?
EDIT: Uh, nevermind, stusser stealthposted an answer as I was asking.
And, yeah, I’m kind of attached to boldfaced as well as a different color, which is how it is now. The mental model I have is that when a thread gets stuffed with new info/posts, it inflates (boldface). When I then see that info/posts, it deflates (regular font). Losing the boldface and going to just the color doesn’t fit that paradigm for me. But again, let’s see what others think.
Correct, this is topics you are tracking/watching that have new replies. Note that Discourse will auto-track/watch topics if you
reply to the topic
read the topic for more than {x} minutes (defaults to 4)
created the topic
(you can change the reading time for auto-track behavior in your user preferences, but you will always watch a topic you create, and you will always track a topic you explicitly reply to.)
You can also explicitly indicate your notification level via the control in the right gutter, or at the bottom of the topic.
The problem I have is that every topic will be bold, forever, unless I read every single post in it. At the very least, I suggest making them all bold and moving to a lighter grey to distinguish “hey you read the whole thing”.
I think the reason this exists in vBulletin is because vBulletin doesn’t track exactly how many unread posts you have in a subscribed topic, nor does it show a “new” indicator.
My suggestion would be to make the distinction between read and non-read links more distinct; the color change was very subtle.
I’m fine with it remaining bold until I read every post in it, because that’s actually how I, personally, use the forums. If I’m interested in a thread, I read (or skim, for some boring people!) until the end.
I prefer the “pop up to the top and bold” scheme as well. Mostly because every other email/forum in my life uses that method and I don’t see the point of change for change’s sake.
It’s not for change’s sake, like a lot of discourse actual thought went into the default configuration-- but it is very different from what we’ve all been using for well over a decade, and while it may indeed be better, the question is whether adoption is worth the growing pains.
@wumpus so mute 'em! I took great pleasure in muting the sports threads myself.
vBulletin definitely does denote brand new threads, but it turns it back off after a certain number of posts or a certain amount of time. I believe it’s done by making them a different color.
Yeah, I see that and I think “Ooh, those thread have been puffed out with new stuff in them! Maybe I should check it out!” Except for that one about soccer. That one I just want to go away because I know I’ll have no idea what’s going on in there.
Just for the record, this was brought up and discussed on the test forum (probably by me - the color distinction originally was between black and dark grey on a blinding white background, which seemed hard to distinguish), and at some point Clay added the bold to make it more QT3-like. Far as I remember, at the time everyone was happy with the change and the topic died. Granted, it is very possible the only people discussing it were those that wanted the bold.
I think some of the issue here is, as Jeff’s pointed out, Discourse has far more–and more subtle–“newness” categories for a post than vB ever did. There’s something logically different between TOTALLY NEW POST, POST YOU’VE READ WITH NEW STUFF IN IT, and even OLD POST YOU HAVEN’T READ WITH NEW CONTENT IN IT, and of course OLD POST YOU HAVE READ ENTIRELY.
vB more or less lumped the three first ones into a single visual category (bolded text for thread title, plus one of a number of weird little icons to the left that I never learned to reliably interpret cuz I’m stoopit), and then mixed together all “FULLY READ” posts with “REALLY OLD, UN-UPDATED” posts by de-bolding them. I think the cut-off was something like 2 weeks before an unread thread was de-bolded by vB, but it might have been more like a month.
I’ll be honest that I’m still getting used to Discourse’s more informative, varied visual nomenclature across the various test boards and Discourse Meta, etc. I think it might be better, but using it successfully to extract the same information I used to extract from vB is taking a LOT of time and mental effort.
In that regard, if it just behaved the way that vB did, I’d be perfectly happy and stop trying to learn something new. If we elect to make fuller use of some or all of Discourse’s newpost notification methods, I’ll eventually figure it out. Maybe. (remember, I am stoopit)
edit: Also, I may or may not have elected to use random full-caps to make Tom and Jeff feel like I’m yelling at them ;)
Yes, this is an excellent summary. Discourse tracks read state in a much more sophisticated way than vBulletin. So what “bold” meant is a gross oversimplification when brought over to Discourse.
Are those useful distinctions? Bold indicates “thread has new posts since the last time you opened it”. It’s a binary state, or should be. All those other possible states are adding complexity to what end?
They’re more information, and to some people, presumably useful information. It’s information I’ve never actually used when interacting w/ a forum, so right now, it’s just noise. It could become more useful in time, though!
I think the “how many new posts” counter is only for posts you’ve “followed,” either directly or automagically.
Think I am in the bold camp as well. I tend to read the majority of QT3 and like a stronger differentiation for anything with new posts. Bolding achieves that better for me than just the notification.
I’m in the “do not like the Bold” camp now. I liked it on vBulletin. But that was a different presentation. Here, it makes me feel like I must read or click to the end of every post artificially, just to remove the bold title. Even those I have no interest in.
The “new” keyword and number of posts indicators already do a good job of telling me what has new content. and slightly clearer colour differentiation would too.
But the bold is really unnecessary in the context of Discourse, IMO,
Bold tells you what topics are unread, regardless of tracking. That information is not conveyed by other functionality and I find that very useful, personally. What is lacking is a way to force multiple/all threads to fully read status (I wouldn’t use such a thing but it’s clear other people do). It’s certainly possible that there is an aesthetically superior way to convey that information, but it needs to be a sharp contrast to read topics, which bold definitely is.
