Improve this forum

[seltzdesign]

Dear Chaosgroup, can you please improve this forum. It is riddled with bugs and weird behaviour. One example, if I paste some text from a text editor I get the following error:


First there shouldn't be any errors pasting some normal text and if there were, this error message doesn't help anyone. It really is UX101.

Also notice the button in the bottom left saying "Upload AttachmentsUploadUpload".

I know you are using vBulletin, but I think these things still should be fixed, because they are not only annoying, but also look super unprofessional.

Or just migrate to Discourse..


Thanks!

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi thanks for posting. I have never had the error message when pasting text into the text editor. Also on my end the button looks as it should -
Probably try a different browser?

[DanSHP]

I got the same error trying to post something yesterday. gave up in the end. Seems ok for me today

[vladimir_krastev]

Yeah I guess you may have a point. The "upload attachmentsuploadupload" button appeared to me as well but it is fine after refresh. Thanks for bringing these minor imperfections to our attention.

[seltzdesign]

One more thing I noticed:

1. Times are not localized. That means it always shows time in PST, which is super weird if you don't happen to be in the PST time zone:



Note how the time of posting and my actual time are very far apart. I know from experience that localization in times and dates can be tricky, but it's nothing so complicated that it would outweigh the benefits. I always look at when someone has posted a reply and it takes me a while to work out why I just got the email notification, but the post seems to be from 10 hours ago.

Thanks for fixing that!

[seltzdesign]

The copy/paste bug is driving me crazy. I wrote a long reply and it wouldn't post it. So I opened a new browser window and tried to copy paste, but I always get the non-descript 403 error. I even copied into a text editor first to make sure it's just plain text, but as soon as it contains line breaks it throws an error. Single lines are okay.

See it in action here: http://recordit.co/oKtAvzxaM9

Then when trying to Post a Reply I get an equally cryptic - and therefore useless - error message.

At least if you can't find the bug, just fix the error messages!!

[seltzdesign]

Grrr. I will stop posting about this now, but the experience of posting on here is a real test of patience! Constant Error messages, attachments other than images not uploading and of course the weird time thing. I love how at the bottom it has some kind of disclaimer about all times being in GMT-8 instead of adding literally one line of code to show local times:



I know Discourse costs a bit, but it is so much more reliable. Please consider migrating to them.

[Joelaff]

You can set your timezone in the prefs (top right on your username User-Settings->Account->Timezone) and get times displayed in whatever timezone you prefer.


Oh, please don't move to some other third party provider for the forum. Last thing we need is some other company stealing and aggregating all your personal info. Companies should run their own forums, not rely on third parties, especially big ones like google (puke), or even worse, Meta (puke, puke, puke).

No problem with FOSS, though.

[aleksandar.kasabov]

The copy/paste bug is driving me crazy. I wrote a long reply and it wouldn't post it. So I opened a new browser window and tried to copy paste, but I always get the non-descript 403 error. I even copied into a text editor first to make sure it's just plain text, but as soon as it contains line breaks it throws an error. Single lines are okay.

See it in action here: http://recordit.co/oKtAvzxaM9

Then when trying to Post a Reply I get an equally cryptic - and therefore useless - error message.

At least if you can't find the bug, just fix the error messages!!

Hello seltzdesign,

I regret to hear that you experience this issue. Please note that I have reported it to our developers so they can have a look. In the meantime, as I can see that you are copying the text from a text document, can you please share this document with us so we can try to replicate the issue? Also, have you tried pasting the text as plain text (ctrl+shift+V) to see if that helps? Thanks.

[seltzdesign]

You can set your timezone in the prefs (top right on your username User-Settings->Account->Timezone) and get times displayed in whatever timezone you prefer.

Thanks, I didn't realize that! My bad.

Oh, please don't move to some other third party provider for the forum. Last thing we need is some other company stealing and aggregating all your personal info. Companies should run their own forums, not rely on third parties, especially big ones like google (puke), or even worse, Meta (puke, puke, puke).

No problem with FOSS, though.

This Forum is using vBulletin, which is.. a third party provider. It also isn't open source.

Discourse is not owned by Google or Meta. It used by many companies for their forums, like McNeel, who make the 3D software Rhino https://discourse.mcneel.com/. Imho, Discourse is much nicer to use, looks better and I have never experienced any of the bugs I experience with this forum regularly. Don't mistake Discourse with Discord, though. I know many companies are using Discord, but I am not a fan of that at all.

A company should NEVER build a system themselves, if good alternatives with little downsides exist. It would be a waste of money and resources to hire a developer and take a away resources from UX, design and others to create something that is readily available.

So I am not sure what your point is, even though I agree whatever forum provider/software they use it probably shouldn't be anything by Google or Meta. They don't offer any forum software I am aware of. I guess you might mean a Facebook User Group.

[seltzdesign]

Hello seltzdesign,

I regret to hear that you experience this issue. Please note that I have reported it to our developers so they can have a look. In the meantime, as I can see that you are copying the text from a text document, can you please share this document with us so we can try to replicate the issue? Also, have you tried pasting the text as plain text (ctrl+shift+V) to see if that helps? Thanks.

I am copying plain text. It doesn't always happen, but when it does, I cannot paste anything without getting the omminous "403 Error". Normally 403 is an error that occurs when trying to access something that you are not authorized to, which doesn't make sense in this context. Also once you got that error after pasting, when you press "Post Reply" you get an even more cryptic error and it won't let you post. Reloading the page does not help.

This is in Brave/Chrome on Windows 11.

[aleksandar.kasabov]

Hello seltzdesign,

Thank you for providing those details. As I mentioned earlier, I have reported the issue to our developers and I will keep you updated on the progress. If possible, please share the text document with your text so we can perform some additional tests on our end. Thanks.

[Joelaff]

This Forum is using vBulletin, which is.. a third party provider. It also isn't open source.

Correct it is not open source, but it hosted by Chaos, AFAIK. It's canned software a company can buy (or rent) and run. Only the hoster has the data.

Discourse is the same way. Discord is completely different, and is for chat and collaboration, similar to Slack, but for gamers (in general, though they are trying to push toward other uses).

I cannot stand the Discourse UI. It seems so clunky, trying to be a phone app. Too much rollover crap, and other completely unnecessarily "modern" web garbage. I would much have this or PHPBB, or any other traditional forum that doesn't try to act like a phone app for teenagers. It makes this narrow centered layout, which looks absurd on a large screen-- looks like an iPhone emulator. That is probably my least favorite forum. Thinkbox has used it for a while, and it is a chore to work with.

But everyone has their own opinion

A company should NEVER build a system themselves, if good alternatives with little downsides exist. It would be a waste of money and resources to hire a developer and take a away resources from UX, design and others to create something that is readily available.

Sorry, not saying they should write their own forum software, but running it is not so hard.

So I am not sure what your point is, even though I agree whatever forum provider/software they use it probably shouldn't be anything by Google or Meta. They don't offer any forum software I am aware of. I guess you might mean a Facebook User Group.

Google Groups (did they kill that?), or Groups.io, or any FB anything. Facebook is the most egregious, since you can't use it at all without having a FB account. While, obviously not a forum, a lot of companies use FB, which drives me nuts.

The point? Keep it as an independent forum without some third party data broker running it, and fix whatever the occasional error is, as this works well here.

[seltzdesign]

Agreed. We all have different preferences in terms of design and functionality. This Chaos forum is not particularly pretty, but that's fine. I just find it very buggy. Around every second time I try to post I get an error pop up that just says " 403 Error " or another one that is just some random letters.

I am not sure if vBulletin is to blame for this or if it is something Chaos can fix. Either way it's terrible UX and should be fixed. In the many years I have posted on other forums that use Discourse I at least never had such troubles that I wasn't able to send a reply or something stupid as it throwing an error when I copy paste in some text.

[Joelaff]

No doubt the errors are frustrating. I see them occasionally. For me I would much rather put up with the occasional bug than the terrible UI of Discourse. Discourse looks pretty, but functionally it is like modern Apple stuff... useless... it breaks every rule of the original Apple Human Interface Guidelines that made the old Mac so great (unlike modern Apple UI, which is literally trash). It all went downhill when they started going form over function, rather than following function.