I'm not really a fan of this forum behavior.

I open a thread, and it takes me to the last reply on the last page. Every time I want to read a thread, I have to scroll up and/or click on the first page link to even know what the original post even was.

Likewise, if I do catch up on all other thread pages, clicking on the last page of the thread jumps down to the last reply, so I have to scroll back up once again to read the page from top to bottom.

Other forum software I've seen will track where you've read in a thread and let you catch up to new replies since your last viewing, but I'm not suggesting that. However, trying to read threads on this forum is just so necessarily tedious right now.

I can guess the intention for this feature, assuming it's not a bug or perhaps is only partially implemented, but it should only take effect once you've already “read” the entire thread. The first time you open a thread, you really should not be skipping over the entire discussion and the original post to whoever just so happened to post last.

Thanks!

When this new platform was launched, the original implementation took you to the first post of the topic.

But then.. pitchforks came out with strong feedback that opening a topic should take you to the last post - basically the behavior of the old platform.

Now your feedback says that's not right, and the original implementation would be better. ? Can't win.

I've been considering making this an option in account settings - initially, either open a topic to the first post or go to the last post. Longer term, looking at tracking how much you've read could be looked at.

The desired feature when clicking on a forum is to go to the first unread post. Not the first post, and not the last post, but the first unread post. That is how the old forum worked.

khawk said:
Longer term, looking at tracking how much you've read could be looked at.

Tracking read/unread content is not something that “could be looked at longer term”, it is a critical feature. In my opinion, the new platform shouldn't have been launched without it.

1024 said:
Tracking read/unread content is not something that “could be looked at longer term”, it is a critical feature. In my opinion, the new platform shouldn't have been launched without it.

There's 4 long time communities (who shall remain nameless) I've frequented over the years that have been around virtually as long as the original gamedev.net has. These communities are still very active and large and have withstood the test of time like GD. All 4 of these communities are running VBulletin still.

When I click a thread in any one of those forums, I'm taken to the first post of the thread. There's no “read progress”, which is a more modern QoL feature newer forum software might have. It's not a “critical feature”, but rather a very nice “convenience” feature. I can understand how if anyone is used to such features, it might seem very inconveniencing, but from a performance overhead perspective, I can totally understand if such features aren't available on communities like GD that have boatloads of members and posts. That's why I stopped short of recommending it in my original post.

However, clicking on a thread and being taken to the last post in the thread, skipping over the original post entirely, makes no sense and I just don't understand how custom forum software like this has figured out a way to go backwards in forum functionality in the year 2020. I only have 1 theory right now, and my bet is a bunch of Reddit/Discord users who want to read a thread title in the Lounge and react without having to read the original post or what anyone else has said in the thread. In other words, they don't care about what a "forum" is actually supposed to be. I can't come to any other conclusion, and I've put quite a bit of thought into this issue trying to see if I missed something.

Imagine every YouTube video you open, the video doesn't start playing, but instead your page jumps to the end of the comment chain. When you do a search on Amazon, you're taken to the last page of the results to the very bottom. Opening an e-mail and you're reading all e-mails in the account from oldest to newest.

I'm not trying to drama queen this issue, because it's easily fixed, and I'll put up with the current feature if I want to read content on gamedev, but it's mind boggling to me the fact that somehow, a group of people were able to drive the development direction of this new forum software into the ground, and create a generally unenjoyable experience, and the justification for that is based simply on the fact “people were unhappy”.

My current issue isn't the feature itself. It could be reverted, or an option added, but that's not going to solve any of the real problems.

I'm all for “improving the forum experience” though. However, the “forum experience” needs to be the main focus of development. Reddit solves this issue by allowing you to see the original post and you can reply directly to it without reading or caring about what anyone else has to say. If you want to join the discussion with other commenters, you can direct reply to their posts and see everything on one page. Reddit isn't the “forum” experience though. Discord isn't the “forum” experience either, so I just hope future developments of this new platform are done with consideration to the “forum experience” it's attempting to provide.

khawk said:
When this new platform was launched, the original implementation took you to the first post of the topic.

FWIW: clicking on a thread from the Search results takes you to the first post in a thread still.

Also, I'm not frustrated at khawk specifically. I post because I care, not because I want to drive the development of this new platform or want this platform to be exactly what I want it to be. I'm sure this post will come off a certain way, but I still feel GD is worth our time, so I'll gladly use GD as it currently is, and provide my hopefully constructive feedback on it.

My current frustration is best summarized as the following though:

For the better part of 15+ years, gamedev.net has had this unofficial motto of “make games, not engines”. When it comes to GD itself, I feel like it's just always been stuck on “make engines to make games”.

Drew_Benton said:
There's 4 long time communities (who shall remain nameless) I've frequented over the years that have been around virtually as long as the original gamedev.net has. These communities are still very active and large and have withstood the test of time like GD. All 4 of these communities are running VBulletin still.

One of the forums I use is vBulletin 4.2.5 and it tracks first unread post. Although interestingly at least the theme they are using makes it a secondary “go to first new post” button in the list, or a “View First Unread” button at the top of the thread itself, but not the main text link, which does go to the start.

It looks like the official vBulletin support forum is the same. Not sure why they hide it as a tiny button.

Drew_Benton said:
Also, I'm not frustrated at khawk specifically. I post because I care, not because I want to drive the development of this new platform or want this platform to be exactly what I want it to be. I'm sure this post will come off a certain way, but I still feel GD is worth our time, so I'll gladly use GD as it currently is, and provide my hopefully constructive feedback on it.

And I appreciate the input. Truly. The topic of your original post in this thread was specifically due to listening to community feedback. In retrospect, maybe taking the short-term path on the issue was a bad decision, and I should have let the community take time to get used to the new platform. I'm not going to claim that I've made all the best decisions along the way here. All I can promise is that I'll listen, take the feedback, and try to continue to find solutions to improve the platform.

Drew_Benton said:
When it comes to GD itself, I feel like it's just always been stuck on “make engines to make games”.

When we started GD back in 1999, it was custom software, mainly because it had to be. In 2011 we switched to a commercial solution with some customizations. Nov 2019 went back custom (while purposely cutting out quite a bit of “features”).

Either way, lots of reasons for how we got here that I could probably write many pages of text on, but a lot of it comes down to adjusting to user expectations for modern platforms balanced with moving toward a vision of a platform that better serves gamedevs. So I get that it feels like we change a lot, but from my side of the issue it's because GameDev.net kind of has to change a lot. I know this isn't the opinion of some members here - “just keep it the way it's always been!” - but I promise from experience and data research that approach will kill GameDev.net faster than if I just walked away.

SyncViews said:
One of the forums I use is vBulletin 4.2.5 and it tracks first unread post. Although interestingly at least the theme they are using makes it a secondary “go to first new post” button in the list, or a “View First Unread” button at the top of the thread itself, but not the main text link, which does go to the start.

Something similar here might be a good path forward for the near term (near term is defined as potentially in the next few days). Until unread post tracking is implemented, which would be a long term solution (long term is defined as sometime in the future beyond the next few days), perhaps a near term solution is default to first post, offer link to last post from the topic listing. Or possibly even offer page links if the layout works.

Just a bump, cause I'd really really like to have the old behaviour as in “jump to first unread post”. Technically this should be easy to implement, or is this rather a too many entries in database issue?

Edit: Hey, I could post and edit a message without the editor messing up. Was there a fix issued for the previous problems?

Endurion said:

Just a bump, cause I'd really really like to have the old behaviour as in “jump to first unread post”. Technically this should be easy to implement, or is this rather a too many entries in database issue?

Edit: Hey, I could post and edit a message without the editor messing up. Was there a fix issued for the previous problems?

It's on the list to do this. It's not a technical challenge as much as a performance, legacy data management, priority-on-the-list challenge. It's not something I want to throw together quickly in an hour, which a lot of changes tend to be. Need time to focus on it.

Fixes are pushed live all the time, sometimes multiple times a day. Editing posts has worked for a couple months now, but I couldn't tell you when exactly without looking it up. A lot of other little things are working better than they were, and in some cases new things are in place, but there's still a few known issues and some embarrassingly missing pieces.

Sorry to nab this thread, but regarding the editor: When typing Windows message defines I noticed underscore toggles the italics mode. Can you turn that off?

I really really expect a DO-NOT-INTERFERE-WITH-MY-TEXT mode on a GameDev site. But we get something utterly useless like the math formula thingy.

Sorry, I do not want to be the constant annoyed nagging voice, but the editor really needs to improve. GameDev.net feels nearly dead, there's not much new posts at all. Anything that goes into anybody's way should go.