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yuval 264522 years ago
first experience

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I'm here because I am critical of web based forums and am looking to see if this can and will replace them. my feedback will be based on this being critical. the intention is to express positive criticism.

the number one reason why i do not use web based forums is the user interface. I am reading dozens of mailing lists and if each of them had a different user interface, with different colors, placement, etc., I would go crazy.

it would be nice if I could read and write to glorum from my trusted desktop based application - email, newsreader - maybe a "glorumreader"? there I can set the font size and color I want, just to name one important factor. Kudos to the glorum people for a user interface that is relatively (for a web based tool) to my liking. I would still prefer to read the posts in fixed width font (I am a speed-reader and it has been scientifically proven that a grid makes for a faster reading) and I would hate to change options/setting on each individual website.

the number two reason why i do not use web based forums is because i am lazy. my newsreader and my email application are set to consolidate everything for me. with web based forums i have to log on to each one's web page, which makes both participating and following cumbersome.

part a: participating: I have to sign-on (and unfortunately this seems to be true with glorum as well - it would be nice if I could participate in a glorum discussion w/o having to sign on, exactly like I do now by simply hitting "reply" in my mail/news-reader.

part b: following: In my mail/news-reader I can mark a message or a whole thread as read. I can download them for offline reading (don't assume we are all the time online). I can keep a copy of messages I deem important and they will stay on my computer. web based forums are vaporware - a wrong manipulation of the SQL database, a bad backup, a virus, whatever. Seen too many of them (with valuable content) get lost forever. Also seen a mailing list that has gone through painful deletions and migrations reconstitute 99.9% of its archives thanks to a simple subscribed mailbox.

the number three reason why i do not use web based forums is because of a too high noise to signal ratio. avatars? put them in an "about me" page, not on every posting. so far i have not seen anything like that in glorum. i hope it stays that way. other factors contribute to the high noise to signal ratio, such as improper quoting.

I wish glorum luck with the endeavour, and I hope it will have an interface through which I can participate offline. The "email me when a new reply is posted" tickbox is a start. Should be ticked by default if you want to animate discussions rather than choke them.

Companies who want to *reduce* traffic move their customer support systems from mailing lists to web based forum. They must know what they are doing.

Yuv

mario 264336 years ago:
Hi Yuv, thanks for the feedback.

- Participating from a (possibly 3rd party) desktop application would be nice. It will eventually come down to considerations about spam and abuses. I would open it with an API.
The no-moderators requirement will probably demand certain compromises and barriers. I guess it is very early to evaluate that.

Right now RSS makes almost everything readable externally, if you use an RSS aggregator. Anyway the navigation (people/keywords) and of course the ablity to post is at glorum.com only.

- I didn't know about the fixed-width font increased readability. I am going to give a look at it.

- I am not a fan of avatars and emoticons neither. If possible, I will try to work at and keep a noise-free interface.
Some work has been done on a variant of the interface which will be online late today or tomorrow. Hopefully it will reduce noise some more.

yuval 264285 years ago:
Hi Mario,

thanks for the quick reply. I assume you are the developer of Glorum from what I read.

Some more usability feedback - in order of how I experienced it.

This morning I open my email. Knowing that something has changed in my world (i.e. I registered here) I wanted to be sure I don't lose emails. I went into the Junk mailbox and Yahoo had put the glorum notifications in there, among dozens of spam.

So I get online to read the reply. Interesting. RSS might make things readable, but access is a two-way thing. As you state yourself "the ability to post is at glorum.com only".

So I sign in (pain, higher barrier to post).

I would like to quote from your original message so that whoever reads this does not have to read the whole thread. Plain old netiquette exist for a reason. IMO any post should be crafted so that even if taken completely out of context it is relevant. Instead here, like in forums, I am forced to read through the whole thread.

It was Goethe who once wrote "dear friend, I write you a letter because I do not have the time to write you a postcard".

For participating from a (possibily 3rd party) desktop application, how about using API that are already tested and working? I'd recommend to use e-mail and to add custom headers to it. The same way mailing lists do. Then also the barriers and compromises can take advantage of existing barriers (spamassassin and co.) and compromises.

RSS is great for reading, yes. And you also point out to its weakness: it is one-way. But reading is less interesting if there are no post. So RSS is not that great after all. A community where everybody just reads and does not post is not a very lively place to be. To make Glorum successful I recommend you make it easily accessible for writing.

Good Luck
Yuv