Enjoying reading forum

Posted by Christoph
Oct 30, 2020 at 08:33 PM

Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Christoph, for me part of the charm is that this interface has become
>comfortable over the years. While other software might be more
>sophisticated, it might not be more user-friendly. Chris’ software has
>always been easy to use, and while it lacks a few features, such as
>being able to edit posts after they are sent, these additions can be
>made without substantively changing the easy and positive experience of
>communicating with each other in a good way.

That may be true. However, the forum should also be attractive to newcomers and maybe younger people. You’re right in that the main problem is lack of features (e.g. editing notes, subscribing, bookmarks, reminders, better search, rich-text formatting etc), not user-friendlyness. But yes, meanwhile I agree that having all these features may not be really necessary for this forum and may come with the drawbacks we already discussed.

Btw, an “edit” feature is not so simple to implement as it looks, because it can compromise the integrity of the online communication. It could be abused in forums where people accuse and troll one another, and then change postings and claim they never said something. That’s why many platforms (like Twitter) don’t allow editing or also store earlier versions for comparison. Luckily, this is not this kind of forum, and I guess nothing bad will happen if we simply allow editing in its simplest form.