Can someone explain what the new forum stuff is supposed to mean?

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

So, yeah, like so many others, I logged into the forums and got confused.  Can someone explain how the changes can help people better use AVSIM to discuss flight sim?

• There are "questions", "topics" and "posts".  If you want to post screen shots you have to ask a 'Question'...something that makes little sense. 
• You also can't preview a topic, as far as I can tell.  Haven't found a "go to last unread" or "mark as read". 
• Items without a best answer are floated to the top.  Why?  Most items never get a best answer.
• There's 'voting'.  What's it do?

Also, it's harder for my eyes see which topics I've read.   Is there a 'skin' that makes it easier to tell?

To me, without a guide, it's mixed up.  We've lost some features that were really nice and aided navigation.  Now I'm scratching my head.

[skwaL 36]

Just like many EA Games, this forums was released before finished. Maybe a cleaner look, but not very user friendly. Lots of bugs and things not working

[Chase 303]

Thanks for the feedback.  The new design will take some getting used to for both the readers and the staff.  It was an update we needed to make for many reasons, not the least of which the coding base on our old forum was old and had many bugs.  We will work on some of the items you mentioned, especially how un-answered questions float to the top.  I'm thinking that has to be a setting somewhere.

[Chase 303]

Figured it out... Each forum has to be manually categorized as a question forum (probably customer support oriented) to a discussion forum.  It will take some time but I at least figured that out so far.

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

23 minutes ago, Chase Kreznor said:

Figured it out... Each forum has to be manually categorized as a question forum (probably customer support oriented) to a discussion forum.  It will take some time but I at least figured that out so far.

Thanks for the quick reply.  I sort of hope there is a way to get rid of the whole "question" thing, except, maybe, in a forum in which you should only ask questions.  A "topic" seems fairly self explanatory and is less confusing than "question" for most things.  We're not, in general, acting as support staff...mostly just posting a comment. 

Can I ask...what does voting do?  Does it move topics/posts up and down or just give reputation?  We'd disabled downvoting in a previous iteration because of concerns.  Maybe it has value?

[MarkW 1,490]

Selecting Results As - Condensed is way better.  (To left area of the main page).

When I select on "Content I have posted in" - nothing happens.  Maybe because the forums are still indexing?  A shortcut to this feature would be very useful.

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

26 minutes ago, MarkW said:

Selecting Results As - Condensed is way better.

True, yes.