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Support Forum Issues

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    Posted on Oct 14 2011

    Hi,

    I'm sure that you are aware of the several issues with your forum software.

    - It is really difficult to search for previous topics, especially by product (i.e. searching is global).
    - Search results are not by threaded.
    - You cannot edit a post (why?)
    - Posting code samples, using the preformatted style, horribly breaks the page (see my last post in the WPF Elements forum).

    It could be that we have all been spoilt by the quality that is Stackoverflow. The support provided is absolutely first-class, however unfortunately the issues that we have to put up with to get that support is not.

    Is there any plans afoot to fix these critical issues? 

     

     

     
    Post reply
  • Posted on Oct 14 2011

    Hi Dennis,

    Plans are afoot. Currently the forums are the worst part of our website and hark back to using Community Server many years ago (every other aspect of the site has replaced CS, just not the forums... yet).

    I'll update this thread as we start having something concrete to share.

    John-Daniel Trask
    Post reply
  • Posted on Nov 14 2011

    Hi Dennis,

    We have just released an updated version of our forums taking into account everything you fed back.

    • Search should be improved. You can now limit by forum and it only searches by thread.
    • You can now edit posts, however only new posts being made as the editor expects markdown...
    • The editor is now the same markdown editor as StackOverflow. Great suggestion.
    • Code samples will be automatically highlighted if you use the code tags in the editor

    There's also a bunch of other improvements such as just being cleaner, faster and improved ability to add attachments (you can drag and drop them as well as choosing the upload a file button).

    I appreciate any further feedback you have. There will be gremlins in the system initially so do sing out if you find any problems.

    Thanks!

    John-Daniel Trask
    Post reply
  • Posted on Nov 15 2011

    Good to hear JD. I haven't needed to post any questions in a while (busy with getting a release done), however I do have a backlog of fixes/bugs that I will submit soon.

    Feedback
    - Being able to edit a post is fantastic.
    - Code with long lines continue off-screen, breaking the visual style. Code blocks should be inside a scroll viewer (e.g. like StackOverflow and any other forum software).
    - On the compose view, add a notes about the syntax of the editor. If I wasn't familiar with StackOverflow, then I wouldn't know that I needed four spaces characters to make a new line.

    Post reply
  • Posted on Nov 15 2011

    Hi Dennis,

    Thanks for the feedback. We've added the visual improvements to the code view as you suggested. No details on how markdown works yet, but we'll get that up soon.

    Cheers, JD
    Post reply
  • Posted on Nov 20 2011

    Are returned search results still in some random order, rather than reverse date order? What is the use in being pointed to out-dated information?

    [Note: the topic I'm replying to is not the "thanks for the feedback" one, but the announcement post. Some problem with the "reply" forum functionality.]
    Post reply
  • Posted on Nov 20 2011

    Hi Alex,

    Thanks for the feedback. At present the search uses Lucene's built in ranking mechanism which does not account for fresher information. We've seen some ways of adding the ability to weight newer items more strongly but haven't added it yet. What we'll likely do is add an option to just sort by date rather than rank.

    The replying to is pretty naive at the moment - it just grabs the last post in the thread since it's not really a threaded forum. We'll likely just remove the 'reply' from every post as it does confuse things.

    Appreciate the feedback, we'll make an update this coming week and I'll update this thread when it's done!

    John-Daniel
    Post reply
  • Posted on Nov 21 2011

    What we'll likely do is add an option to just sort by date rather than rank.

    Perfect! Many thanks for adding that.
    Post reply
  • Posted on Nov 27 2011

    Hi Alex,

    Just as an update, we deployed an enhancement last week that adds the ability to sort by date.

    Thanks,

    John-Daniel
    Post reply
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