Plans for updating the archaic forum?

My thoughts are that this forum may not be the best but it's OK and one can jog along nicely on it. It has limitations but nothing too bad that one can't deal with. To me it's fine as is but I appreciate others get upset by it's limitations and there are reasons to change.

To me I find the Model Engine Maker the best forum site to read and follow, I like the way the posts are presented, easy to read and follow, very clear, easy to refer to other posts as they are numbered, putting photos on are a pain, so not perfect. Home Model Engine Machinist is also a not bad forum site, perhaps clearer than this one, not that I post there much.

There has been talk of the RCM&E website, had not been there recently so took a look. Awful.

PLEASE, don't go down the RCM&E website route until it has been improved greatly, if we must go that route, as has been alluded to in previous posts on this thread. Went on there and it was awful, really awful, not at all user friendly. Trying to find your way around a nightmare, a complete turn-off, do I really need a whole white screen between posts, do I really need to scroll down miles to read the next post, and text is not that clear against the background when you do find it. Got so fed up with it I couldn't be bothered to explore it further, too much effort with not enough interest to reward that effort, so binned the site pronto. A site needs to be easy to use to encourage users to use it, the RCM&E site definitely fails in that respect.

And on the subject of text against a background please take into consideration that some people, like me, are partially colour blind. With certain colour combinations of text and background, blues and yellows and reds and greens, all of certain shades, for starters, means we literally cannot read the text, or can only read it with a lot of difficulty and squinting and frowning and concentration, so get put off and bin the idea and go to something else we can read. Colour blindness also means that those with it 'sees' certain colours completely differently to how other people see it, a certain shade of yellow can appear as a shade of green for example as we see it, which further complicates the issue. To assume all can read all colour combinations demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the abilities of those with less than perfect eyesight.

Chris

PS - I have just been back on the RCM&E website and it has changed since my earlier visit and the posts are much better now, more a more normal look, so I take back some of my earlier criticism, but I am still not liking much of what I see and do I like the adverts between posts -NO!

Edited By ChrisH on 13/02/2021 19:01:03

From the OP's comments they are obviously very well experienced and skilled in such matters.

Can we take it that they are going to volunteer to develop for MTM a new platform with the features that they want and the features that the rest of us all enjoy on the existing Forum?

Howard

Good news for Howard. Part written comments are persistent if you navigate away, of course this means you have to delete them if you come back later and change your mind.

Lots of things are configurable and David Ashby has been making tweaks to the modelflying website in response to user feedback. Overall, apparently there is more positive feedback than negative.

I have raised advert placement.

The weakness with this site is that the 'mobile' version doesn't work very well and when you zoom in to make the posts readable the ads are all hidden at the right anyway and may as well not be there.

Invision does 'flow' better on a mobile. I have given feedback on advertising placement. The difficult bit is that on a proper mobile website everything is in a single column. This will limit where ads are placed (look at other mobile sites) and a new approach may be needed.

Obviously we need ads to 'pay' for the forum but we also need to avoid them being so obtrusive they spoil the experience. A circle that will have to be squared.

Neil

The problem with catering for mobile use is, as you say, a narrow column width. This is usually OK with posts but the adverts either end up all at the bottom where there is no click through or between posts which creates a very poor experience for the user. Some forums, HMEM for example, turn off the adds between posts if you are logged in, a possible solution perhaps.

I thought that the RCME site and others linked to were quite acceptable, nothing that can't become familiar with a little use. Benefits of upgrade/change probably outweigh the drawbacks.

John

Neil, are the MTM back room boffins able to analyse their data to see how many visits they get from mobile devices and how many from PC/desktop as it would be a bit pointless making the forum suit mobile users if that only accounts for 10% of the users?

One only has to look at the near zero activity on ME's Facebook, twitter etc sites to see there is little demand for that form of access.

Safari has had this feature for many years but it doesn’t work for all websites. Not surprisingly it doesn’t work with this one. I’m guessing the software is too ancient ...

.

... as easy as Pi

MichaelG.

Hi, well if this one ends up like RCM&E, I'll probably not bother using it anymore, (some may jump for joy perhaps) looks like your reading through a letterbox, with the writing on a back wall and the words too grey, made it hard for me to read and gave up.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 14/02/2021 17:08:58

Nick, I've just looked at the RCM&E forum and I get plain black text on pure white background filling the whole screen without adverts on the side. Perhaps it is different in another operating system or browser. Seems quite clear if a bit stark without the green name/date/time bar separting each post.

With people here checking out the RCM&E forum and many (presumably) creating new logons to do so, the owners of that site might conclude that their new look is having highly positive results!

.

... and lots of posts dated October 1, 2019

MichaelG.

Hi MichaelG, yes it is a white background as Bazyle has said and mostly the width of the screen with pale blue margins each side and the same pale blue band between each post which makes them all look like letterboxes to me and the writing is small, so with all that brilliant white background, makes the writing look grey, a matter of contrast I suppose.

 My browser in MS Edge in Win 10.

Lots of dated posts 1 Oct. 2019, maybe lots of people have got fed up with using it already.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 14/02/2021 18:41:58

Hi Peter, didn't create a new login, just clicked on Ketan's Link.

Regards Nick.

.

Yes, that was the totality of my observation ... the rest was just quoting Bazyle.

I don’t have enough interest to bother checking, but I suspect that date is erroneous.

MichaelG.

Sorry, Nick. My mistake I read your "back" as "bLack".

Nothing to do with site layout, but I feel a verification of some description would be a good idea, a photo id or some kind of Identification to moderators, when posts were made of fake ebay listings, there were some suspicious comments from new accounts, maybe nothing nefarious going on, if someone doesn't wish to make their name public on the forum that's fine, but it would remove the the ability for potential scammers to use the site, post classified etc.

Hi Bazyle, no problem, my post was probably not the best description of what I was thinking.

Hi MichaelG, you are probably right about the dates and I didn't enough interest to check either.

Regards Nick.

I think it would be well worth changing the forum software just to read the comments in this section.

Not trying to be negative, but lots of good conversation and pro's and con's going on here.

.

Not to brag, but 10% of our users is more than many forums get in total...

We post very little content to Facebook and Twitter because there's little interest, but you could argue there's little interest because there isn't a lot of content...

Neil

The colours have been changed.

Neil