Who else thinks that this new format is terrible?

Question

I like that they don’t show the total number of votes. It encourages more engagement.

But I don’t like how I can’t access my favorite forum sections (Starting Out; Buying & Selling; House Flipping; Real Estate Deal Analysis and Advice; REI News & Events) with ease. They’re buried down in this tedious drop-down menu.

There is also less whitespace so it makes it more difficult on the eyes (compared to the previous Google-ish format that so many are attracted to).

Also, I noticed that when you click the title link of the post, it takes you directly to the post and when you back out, it refreshes to the top of the section which is frustrating if you're buried deep in the section. When you clicked the title link of the post with the last formatting, it opened a brand new window which made organizing the posts you wanted to look at easier and also kept your place when scrolling through the section opposed to taking you to the top of the section.

I also hate that there aren't links for pages. Instead you have to endlessly scroll to find newer posts on a very long OP.

Aleksandar Popivoda · Answer

Agree. Another "change" just for the sake of change, without any improvement and clear goal. Btw, what in the world happened with the "Followed forums" option that was my favorite one? Cannot find it anymore.

Henry Clark · Answer

On another forum one of my posts has 2,947 views and 8 votes.  I have other posts that have 8 views and 4 votes.

On the BP forum page just like the members blog page why doesn’t BP track views?  Views is far more valuable as an indicator than votes.

Views would be more useful to me to help guide what is useful and not useful when I post.

The majority of BP users don’t vote.  Only about .1% of BP users vote.  100% view.

This is technology BP already has and is familiar with.   Doesn’t take a lot of bandwidth to store data or to install. Has almost zero downside to its users.  And to me is extremely useful.

BP has a position posted for a person to focus on its top 1% (content providers) users.  They have posted several what improvements would you like posts.  But have provided no feedback.   Just a “plop”.

I have been in charge of our IT department at different companies.  The way I chose to communicate with the user group was to ask for a list, prioritize it, vote on it and then communicate the direction and tasks for the next 6 months until we did it all over again.  I do not expect BP to take the same approach except on the communication side.   What would you suggest, here is what we are moving forward with.

Take my view idea.   I think it’s the one and only improvement needed and is the greatest thing since sliced bread.   Now you show me the list or direction of where the forum is heading, then I say wow I like their ideas better than mine.   I understand why mines not number one.

For example ads.  Getting tired of wading through ads for Chicago.  Why don’t ads have view and vote counts? Just because someone can pay money doesn’t mean the rest of non Chicago has to see the ad.  This does not enhance my experience on BP.

Communicate.

Justin Phillips · Answer

Agreed, on desktop the forums are much more tedious to scroll through. The forum "backspace" was driving me nuts, I now left click and "open link in a new tab". Updates should make the system more intuitive and streamlined, they went backwards on this one.

Allen L. · Answer

The only things I like about this is the ability to sort by Oldest and Newest and reply is now embedded in the page instead of taking it to another editor page. Reply following source post is meh. It saves me a lot of time and scrolling compared to previous format. This should have been rolled out to beta users who want to engage not to everywhere. If it had gone through beta testing then I am a bit sad.

Jim K. · Answer

One thing I'd like to propose, now that we're stuck with this, is that BP includes the option to sort by the most upvoted response.

Mindy Jensen · Answer

Thank you for your feedback. The Followed Forums has been requested by several of our members and we're working on adding this feature back in.

Genny Li · Answer

The old one was also bad. They should use the free BB software that actually works rather than paying a lot of money for a very substandard product.

Who else thinks that this new format is terrible?

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