I recently signed up as a member here at the Asylum, and I would like to say that I find the overall design and functionality of this site's discussion forums to be terribly cumbersome, frustrating, fatiguing, and remarkably illogical.In my opinion, the gold-standard example of how Internet discussion forums ought to be designed would be Phillip Greenspun's www.photo.net. For example, click here: http://www.photo.net/bboard/forum?topic_id=1545 and then watch how logically and effortlessly the information flows, in chronological order! At web site's such as Photo.net, when a topic or question is posted, one has only to click on that initial post in order to see (in CHRONOLOGICAL order!) all subsequent responses as they unfurl and progress on a SINGLE "page". By contrast, the Asylum uses an unwieldy, agonizing, and infuriating system of progressively "indented" replies which must be repeatedly clicked on in order to see what's said next. And worse yet, the reader can't see what's been said PREVIOUSLY in a thread unless he/she repeatedly "BACK CLICKS" or backs up. This is akin to trying to read an article or discussion with sentences and paragraphs scattered randomly over multiple pages, rather than flowing continuously, logically, and effortlessly. Here's a generic example of what I see when I try to follow an Asylum thread:
-Is this speaker too big for my room?
---RE: Is this speaker...
------RE: Is this speaker...
----------RE: Is this....
---------------RE: Is this...Gee, thanks Bob for the info!
--------------------RE: Is this... Hey, George, you're welcome...
RE: RE: RE:You get the idea. What a mess! "Audio Asylum" is perhaps a very apt name.
Indeed, I've noticed that the Asylum's "indented" method of tracking threads often results in highly fragmented and disjointed discussions that often seem to dead-end, only to seemingly resume somewhere else!
Another constructive criticism would be to point out the frequent choice of useless "tag lines" (as lampooned above) that many "inmates" seem to write. Again using the above example, suppose one has a specific question or comment about the suitability of the Meadowlark Blue Heron 2 loudspeaker in a smaller listening room, and that he/she wishes to start a new thread for discussion. In my opinion, the correct way to build the Asylum's DATABASE would be to write a concise and logical tag line such as "Meadowlark Blue Heron 2: room size?"
Let the flames begin...
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Topic - Newcomer offers a few thoughts... - kjaz 17:58:12 08/23/04 (0)