The Artistic Outlaw

I’m continuing our open-ended discussion on the modern forum GUI with the third installment; topic reading view. This is going to be the most controversial view—I believe—because I’m going to suggest stripping out a large amount of clutter and secondary information that’s unnecessary to the task at hand; reading the topic. Today I want to discuss a little about why it’s important to focus on the topic itself more, and less on the secondary information that often accompanies the modern forum GUI topic reading view.

What’s important in a topic; the topic, what people are discussing, what’s being said. What else is important; who wrote what and when they wrote it and if they’re online now. What else is needed; ability to quote, edit and delete posts by themselves or in groups. What information is unnecessary and why, any and all secondary user information; titles, groups, pips, ranks, warning levels, registration date, post count, avatars, signatures, physical location and user contact links.

All of the above is secondary and it all pertains to a single user, and currently forum GUI’s repeat them on every post, and in most instances this information is all displayed on the left hand side of each post, making it the first thing our eye encounters, every time on every post.

Do we need to know this information every time we read a users post? No, in fact you don’t need any of it. None, nada, zip. That’s why with the exception of one piece of the secondary information, I’m stripping it all out of the topic reading view, now it can all be found in the user’s profile, where it belongs.

The only secondary info that is going to survive the cut is the signature; I think although secondary it can be useful for business and personal forums alike, if it’s moderated and restricted properly. The signature also gives the users a little something to help individualize them.

I’ve completely destroyed the topic reading view! Not the case, I’ve only trimmed the fat, the bloat, I’ve put the topic reading view on a diet and its lost fifty pounds.

Where are we then? Well, now we have a very clean, light, legible topic, with only the most necessary information available and very little extra. I can literally hear some of you grinding your teeth, because I’ve taken away all the nifty users stats and info and left you feeling naked. I promise this is not a bad thing. Let’s discuss each item I removed and why I feel it’s unnecessary to the overall topic view.

Titles, groups, pips, ranks; are all information of the same kind. They live to segregate us, to separate us from each other; these stats are community deconstructions not builders. They give us very little useful information whilst reading a topic, they only tell us who is the most important person in the topic, when in fact everyone should have equal weight in a true discussion, that is, until their own words cause them loss of respect or weight in the topic. These informational hindrances do nothing for us, but indirectly suggest a user’s validity before we even get a chance to hear them speak. With the exception of groups or user levels–which allow us to have differing permissions for the software–they can be stripped out of the software entirely. If they are left in, then display them only in the user’s profile, and put very little importance on them.

Registration dates, post counts and physical locations; again further unnecessary separation, who cares where you actually live, your location is not relevant to 99.9% of the discussions. Your registration date is irrelevant as well; if you are an active member of the community your length of membership is obvious, if you’re inactive enough for it to matter, than you should ask yourself why you’re even registered there in the first place.

Post counts, are a complete waste of everyone’s time, and only tell other users how you spend far too much time online and not enough doing other things. A post count should be an administrative statistic only; it doesn’t need to be displayed for all users.

Avatars, are useless pictures, that represent nothing, the same thing can be accomplished with a signature, and more flexibly, not to mention the load on each topic view when you request fifty, thirty kilobyte images, just so everyone can further differentiate themselves from the community.

Contact links; e-mail, www, pm, your IM of choice. These have no place being in the topic view, if you need to contact someone directly; you can look at their profile and choose a contact method from there. Personally, when I need to contact someone I’m not going to go look for a post they made, I’m going to search for them in the member list, or go directly to their profile and for those rare occasions when I do make a on-the-fly contact, it’s just as easy to click their name to go to their profile as it is to click a contact button and fill out a form. Just less clutter.

We’ve only discussed the posts themselves so far, because posts are the bulk of the topic reading view, what about the rest of it? For the most part it’s quite similar to the topic listing, with a few additions.

We add an “Add reply” button inline with the “New Topic” button and fade out the “New Topic” button so that the “Add Reply” button stands out more, making it easier to find and click without mistakes.

We’ll also add a text link toggle for standard and outline post views, as I believe both have their specific uses, and I find both useful at different times. I would place these links to the left of the page navigation and “Add Reply” and “New Topic” buttons at the top of the topic.

At the very top of the topic, below the bread crumb navigation I would place the topic name and description in large text like the category and forum names of the forum index and topic listing views.

We’ll keep the online users box from the topic listing, as well as the bread crumb navigation, of course adding the forum name linked back to the topic listing, and the name of the topic we are reading, without a link in the bread crumb navigation.

With the removal of so much extra, commonly used information the topic reading view is much more concise and easier to navigate and follow the topics actual progression. Here’s a full screen shot of what we’ve discussed.

Thanks for continuing to read our articles; I hope to see you again soon.

Next week: Profile View, Member list, and Inline Help.