Recent Comments Side Bar

[CrickettGrrrl]

Frankly, I'm surprised so many people use it. It's meant more for the drive-by visitor to draw them into the forums than for day-to-day users.

I liked to think of the previous Recent Comments version as "curated" -- because I do use MacRumors in a drive-by way. I'd frequently hit the main page & then refresh for new threads. Also found many, many fascinating threads in categories i wouldn't have thought interesting by just looking at the category titles alone.

 

[LizKat]

LOL this whole thread must be why I have two bookmarks for MacRumors, one for the front page and another for the Forums... have at it, y'all, somehow I manage to have a good time here and/or find what I was looknig for no matter what of the forums and comments land on front page.

 

[Plutonius]

LOL this whole thread must be why I have two bookmarks for MacRumors, one for the front page and another for the Forums... have at it, y'all, somehow I manage to have a good time here and/or find what I was looknig for no matter what of the forums and comments land on front page.

Do you browse through all the sub forums when you are on MR ?

The forum button is on the top of each page so I'm not sure why I would want to bookmark both ? I think the issue is that most people don't want to visit each sub forum to see what's new. People were using the sidebar as a curated list.

 

[LizKat]

Do you browse through all the sub forums when you are on MR ?

The forum button is on the top of each page so I'm not sure why I would want to bookmark both ? I think the issue is that most people don't want to visit each sub forum to see what's new. People were using the sidebar as a curated list.

I'm just lazy. One click to forums page off a bookmark. And I do sometimes just cruise around looking at what people are buzzing about in random forums for the heck of it. It's like dropping into the general store in a nearby village and catching random bits of news one might be able to use -- but that store is shuttered now, so... this is that grapevine.

 

[organicCPU]

How about making the Recent Comments column user-definable? Meaning, that we can select which Forum groups will be included in our particular view, according to our interests.

+1 for the idea to get customised Recent Comments on the front page.
If one is logged-in, it should be configurable on a per account basis similar to the watched threads option.
If MR could turn the hard coded Recent Comments tab into a dynamically one, that would be great.

 

[imaccooper]

+1 for the idea to get customised Recent Comments on the front page.
If one is logged-in, it should be configurable on a per account basis similar to the watched threads option.
If MR could turn the hard coded Recent Comments tab into a dynamically one, that would be great.

I’m for the idea, but that would likely be a lot of work and not ultimately practical. A possible compromise would be an additional page as part of the forums that could reintroduce the sidebar idea in a full page format.

Something like a list of all the sub forums with the 5 most recent threads in a list format. This would allow people like us to have a curated list where we could get a quick look at all the threads while leaving the front page as it is. Think of it like a forum roundup page.

 

[green86]

I’m for the idea, but that would likely be a lot of work and not ultimately practical. A possible compromise would be an additional page as part of the forums that could reintroduce the sidebar idea in a full page format.

Something like a list of all the sub forums with the 5 most recent threads in a list format. This would allow people like us to have a curated list where we could get a quick look at all the threads while leaving the front page as it is. Think of it like a forum roundup page.

What about this idea is not practical?

 

[imaccooper]

What about this idea is not practical?

Without having any inside knowledge, I could point to a few reasons why I would call it impractical.

First, that was the seemingly the original point of this thread. From the staff responses it appears to me that this is not practical at this point.

Second, purely based on time and effort, more coding might not be possible for the dev team. This was also hinted at by staff in this discussion.

Third, per WildCowboy (post #24) the intended goal of the recent comments bar is to draw in visitors to the forums. You and I are both interested in using it as a curated list customized based on our login, but visitors have no log in and would therefore not see anything or would have to be given some type of designation for comments to be generated. Again, that would take some work, planning and ultimately time that may not be possible.

Again, I think it would be a cool idea, but i just don't see it being practical without a full site redesign. And for a full redesign to be justified, we are going to need more than a 20 people out of almost a million voicing their interest in this.

That is why I find it likely impractical and also why I put forward a possible compromise that would curate a list for people like us, but also leave the front page as it is for visitors.

 

[green86]

Without having any inside knowledge, I could point to a few reasons why I would call it impractical.

First, that was the seemingly the original point of this thread. From the staff responses it appears to me that this is not practical at this point.

Second, purely based on time and effort, more coding might not be possible for the dev team. This was also hinted at by staff in this discussion.

Third, per WildCowboy (post #24) the intended goal of the recent comments bar is to draw in visitors to the forums. You and I are both interested in using it as a curated list customized based on our login, but visitors have no log in and would therefore not see anything or would have to be given some type of designation for comments to be generated. Again, that would take some work, planning and ultimately time that may not be possible.

Again, I think it would be a cool idea, but i just don't see it being practical without a full site redesign. And for a full redesign to be justified, we are going to need more than a 20 people out of almost a million voicing their interest in this.

That is why I find it likely impractical and also why I put forward a possible compromise that would curate a list for people like us, but also leave the front page as it is for visitors.

Without having inside knowledge, I think it would be impossible to tell that it is impractical in a technical sense.

And it happens to be very practical for me to pick out 5 posts I thought were interesting as I read the 1st page every morning. What is impractical is for me to open up 8 forums and hope something new interests me.

 

[C DM]

Without having inside knowledge, I think it would be impossible to tell that it is impractical in a technical sense.

And it happens to be very practical for me to pick out 5 posts I thought were interesting as I read the 1st page every morning. What is impractical is for me to open up 8 forums and hope something new interests me.

What about going to the trending threads or new threads section of the forums for a similar quick look?

 

[green86]

What about going to the trending threads or new threads section of the forums for a similar quick look?

They take quite a few clicks to get to, which I would live with if I could only see those threads from specific forums.

I would always pick out posts from MacBook Air/MacBook Pro/Mac Pro/Mac Hardware/Mac Gaming/High Sierra forums on the front page.

 

[deep diver]

The previous "Mac Hardware" section was actually only the Mac Pro, iMac, and Mac mini forums. We just renamed it to "Mac Desktops," so the content hasn't changed at all. MacBook Pro and MacBook weren't included at all in the recent comments section, so we combined them with the MacBook Air section that was already there and renamed it "Mac Notebooks."

The "Mac Software" section was simply pulling from the Mac Apps and Mac App Store forum, so it's still there...just renamed to properly reflect the forum name.


As for all of the other requests, I'm not ignoring you. Still seeing what the pattern is to determine priorities. We won't be able to make everyone happy, but we'll see what we can do.

Frankly, I'm surprised so many people use it. It's meant more for the drive-by visitor to draw them into the forums than for day-to-day users.

I don't know where else you asked for feedback, but the consensus here seems to be that the redesign is a failure.