Forum UI development

forum is great but it’s complicated. people are used to using social media apps… understanding how to operate in forums was quite difficult for me, even though I am a techy person. How much hard would that be for a non techy person? They will just leave it. I left, but after a few days came back trying my best to understand what to do here. For most of the time I only understood the introduction page lol :joy: Your quick start texts and that video wasn’t very helpful for me, understood very little things from there. @Kees I am not telling that your efforts are useless, just saying that we must need something better. Seen those guided animations in many apps and games, which tells user to push this button to this action. Not just telling them, it’s vital for them to push that button and explore plus understand features, in order to continue in that certain game or app. I think we really need that thing, because this forum is loaded with very useful features, but mostly only you know how to use them, and many times you tell us some about them …

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Can you describe how your first interaction went on the forum? What was it that wasn’t clear and needed info about the most? In what way could things be improved? I’m looking for practical examples. Otherwise I can only guess at what should be improved :nerd_face: For example creating topics? Or navigating the forum? In what way comes the current quick start short? The video is also old and I’ll make a new one as soon as I have the time. But the quick start topics can be updated with less effort.

To me the forum works a bit the same as Reddit and Facebook Groups. With indeed extra features and a different approach. Everything that’s new takes time to digest as well. A better quick start may help, but it also takes some effort from the users. Once the basics are clear I guess things would be manageable. The Fairphone forum has some old people joining there to ask questions. They don’t even have a quick start guide :nerd_face:

There is also the bot @Louie that can help you. It automatically contacts you when you sign up and helps you interactively with some basics.

Once I know some details I can for sure change/update things. You can also reply in the help topics in the quick-start or any of the docs and wikis. For example, if you would write a quick-start, how would it look like?

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Hi! To find out what I can do, say @louie display help.

By the way, when you complete the tutorials, you also get 2 badges. I don’t see them in your profile yet, let me know if the tutorials helped you. The above bot has sent you automated personal messages about this and how to proceed.

https://tzm.one/badges/100/certified

https://tzm.one/badges/101/licensed

How about this how-to.

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I’ll replace the current how-to with that one then, below was the old one from the quick-start page. I predict that the next complain will be that the new how-to will be too long and a more to the point how-to is needed so that people will actually read it :nerd_face: But let’s see.

I also removed the video since it contains old information and people may just check the video, while it’s just complementary to the how-to topics listed there.

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Also, when you signup there is a visual tour showing the basics as well. Unless you clicked on ‘skip these steps’. Was that tour not helpful either? I also don’t see the badges in your account for completing the 2 tutorials.

sorry I wasn’t active for a couple of days… I also saw that I didn’t had that badges, idk why… and I forgot what guidelines were there when I first logged in😶

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In your inbox you can find messages from @Louie, follow his instructions and then you complete the tutorials. These are different than the first tour, which you probably skipped. Please keep these things in mind before suggesting changes :nerd_face: it’s not that there aren’t guides and paths to learn the forum. It requires some patience and time. Doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but best to start providing suggestions after going through the existing stuff. Otherwise things keep changing while it may already be sufficient :slight_smile: And it’s okay of course, I like things to be clear from the beginning as well and make it work according to my logic. So I know this feeling of seeing improvements. :v:

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Hi! To find out what I can do, say @louie display help.

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