Forum functionality issues

The 8, 8.5 and 8.5.1 forums are all the same. And they are all difficult to use. I’m all for progress, but this isn’t it. It would be great if these forums could adopt the same layout and usability features as the 6/7 forum.

If this isn’t possible because some higher-up at Lotus would get his nose out of joint, the following needs to be addressed at a minimum. All of these are implemented in the 6/7 forum:

  1. Show the post we’re replying to when we create a reply.

  2. Auto-populate the subject.

  3. Allow us to collapse threads by default.

  4. Show more entries per page.

  5. Separate the poster’s name from the hyperlink on replies so it’s more readable.

In addition to this, we desperately need the option to get e-mailed when responses are posted. It is very easy to lose track of a post or miss a response because there is no feedback loop.

Moving beyond this critical functionality, it would be really nice if you could clean up the Product Area, Technical Area, etc. on post we’re viewing. It takes up too much screen real estate right now. Also, on both a new post and when viewing one it’s laid out haphazardly. Could you put it into a table (or use CSS to style it) so it’s lined up nicely?

Anyone else have any input?

Subject: RE: forum functionality issues

Thank you!

It really annoys me when you lose the subject and each person has to type in what they think it was or should be.

I would also really appreciate an email notification, but not just to the threads I respond to. I would like to be able to follow a thread WITHOUT PARTICIPATING!

These two minor changes would make the forums much more useful to me.

john3

Subject: Look what I’ve posted over a year ago:

Do you think I’ve ever heard something to my feedback:

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd8forum.nsf/ShowMyTopicsAllFlatweb/1a9dfd5cbd5c96388525749000693c86?OpenDocument

There is also an ideajam-post:

http://ideajam.net/IdeaJam/P/ij.nsf/0/03DF231FFD5E29798625738C007A1EBF?OpenDocument

Subject: of course you didn’t get a response

I have been reading these kinds of posts for a long time, and it’s really getting absurd. It’s utterly ridiculous that a company selling collaboration software would have such horrible forums. I’m going to give Lotus an opportunity to respond to this, and if they don’t I’ll start sending out e-mails to some people to see if I can get a reason why they inflicted this insanity on us, and an estimation of when it will end.