Mike, No one is saying anyone is dumb.
People need to take it slow and look it over to organize their minds around it.
This is not a simple layout. It is not a complex layout. It is an easy layout with a handful of bells and whistles.
As far as mature, well I am a kid who still wants to run down a hotel corridor and push all the buttons on the elevator. Sue me!
Lux,
You are now telling two of us how to post.
We each know what we are saying.
At least in my case find someone else to tell how to post. Knock it off.
That last quote was true Lux but all the ones before that had nothing to do with concerns. If you have a problem with the boards, than post your problems and let’s see if you can get them resolved. Nobody is telling you to shut up what they are saying instead of throwing a tantrum, let’s hear what your problems are so they can be addressed.
Excellent idea Lux, now why haven’t you used it? It seems you really do understand this board but would rather just complain for the sake of complaining.
Frankly Lux you are fighting with people. People are going to post how they want to post. That leads to very little friction. Telling people to have no friction causes fights. You are also condescending in the process.
To you all who are good at this, maybe you can answer this? this thread keeps popping up. I read it, the exact same post, and then it pops up again, and again and again. The blue circle with the number 1 in it. I read it and it is still there when I come back another time? What am i doing wrong???
Hi Beginner, What I have found is that you have to go all the way to the bottom of the post and then get out of the string. If you don’t go to the very bottom it keeps coming back.
Andy
Also, when you go to the bottom, check out the “tracking” button.
You get several choices, including to ignore a thread
beginner,
if you have categories in the left hand column set up for this board, there will be a little blue text trailing off, the “unread”, with the most recent responses for all the threads you are in. When you go to the thread you are brought to the last bottom response. At that point it is read and disappears from the left hand column blue unread.
I get that is a bells and whistles. So it is one level up from where you are. It is very useful. It will be clear as you start to work with it.
Literally did.
Nobody is telling you to shut up
Has literally happened today.
they are saying instead of throwing a tantrum
I already asked you to cut out the condescending and demeaning attitude, but you’re doubling down.
let’s hear what your problems are so they can be addressed.
They’re already posted.
now why haven’t you used it?
Because I’m not interested in ignoring you, I’m interested in fixing a problem - specifically, by asking you & others to speak with a minimum of decorum and kindness / empathy towards others, as I described above.
It seems you really do understand this board
I can use this board, and I can use facebook - but I don’t enjoy either - on multiple levels, presently. The idea that ‘a thing can be made to work’ and ‘a thing is nice to use and free of flaws’ aren’t the same, regardless of your insistence otherwise.
Now that is really useful. See what you did there? Somebody asked you what your problems are and you decided not to post them. 
I can see why you are having so many problems.
Andy
Replying to the top post by captainccs.
If we lived in a world where the only choices were the “Old TMF” or “New TMF”, then life would be simple, because users of this site don’t get a choice - it was made for them by TMF staff. Use it as it is, or no more finance discussion for you!
The reality is that we live in a world where the choices are e.g. Reddit vs. New TMF, for new users in particular. Or perhaps the old bogleheads.org forums, or lemonfool. And not just one interface; Reddit has multiple interfaces - old.reddit, new.reddit, and a variety of mobile apps. Visually impaired? Can’t use your hands easily any more? No problem, you’ll find a solution for most of those platforms.
Reddit (at least old.reddit.com) has a simpler interface, a certain future, and a large and more diverse community and collection of investing forums. If you were enthusiastic about the fine details of option-writing, there’s ‘/r/thetagang’ for example. You can have threads & forums open in 20 windows at once, work on 5 different posts at a time, on multiple devices at once. You might not browse or interact that way; some people do.
It’s not locked behind a paywall or registration. You can print out individual comments or whole threads easily, and you’re free to archive whatever you like from it (API is provided). There is very little javascript cleverness, it works on old browsers & new, mobile & desktop with equal ease - even on my tiny old iphone SE I have 100% comfort in writing and reading and looking for new threads over there.
Whereas: I’ve had site errors here while printing; I’ve had site errors opening more than 5 tabs at once; I’ve had site errors trying to write messages in more than one window at a time.
On reddit, the users have complete control of which boards/topics get set up. If you have a disagreement with people discussing your ‘topic’, well, no problem. Set up two boards and split the community.
If a forum of people want to archive it all for posterity, close it down, branch to multiple different communities, merge communities, change the name or identity or focus of a community - well, nothing stopping you - the community belongs to the community over there.
Now, I’m not saying this to tell anyone to go to Reddit. TMF discussion boards have always had a different ‘vibe’ to them than most of the investment boards on Reddit.
I’m just pointing out: this is the choice of platform & community available for newcomers to investing (or newcomers to TMF), looking at these two and other finance boards. It’s not really about Old TMF or New TMF any more, unless TMF management & IT have a dramatic change of heart.
There’s absolutely more of a learning curve to browse/read/write effectively on this web platform than with either Old TMF or Old Reddit. Some people enjoyed that learning curve. Cool. I didn’t. Apparently neither did captainccs. This is a barrier to new users and to old users alike. Too much UI / UX ‘friction’.
Some people like the new and shiny, some people hate it. It’s how people are. Sometimes the new and shiny people ‘have a good point’, but more often than not, a platform that’s been popular for decades continues to be so, otherwise it would not have survived for decades in the first place. Hence, we still read paper books even though phones and ebooks and laptops came along.
I suddenly started posting on TMF USA, after more than ten years of silently reading, mainly because I was worried the transition might fail, i.e. the boards being frozen and abandoned, before I ever had a chance to say thanks to some people who have taught me a great deal over the last decade (and thanks to the IT & management who ran the site all this time). I also wanted to mention thoughts about digital preservation to try and preserve the wonderful repository of knowledge, history and ideas for the future.
I decided to try out active posting too. What I’m finding so far is that community here feels a little bit more ‘openly belligerent’, (I mean, good lord! Look at this thread), and a little bit less ‘nice’ than the reddit investment boards I’ve used in the past. But OK, that’s life, you get different things in different communities, and new arrivals can easily irritate old residents in long established internet communities.
Mainly though, I’m finding this new interface is vastly more clunky and distracting both in terms of visuals and in terms of interface action types and consequences.
Whether writing, reading or skimming around for topics that interest me, I keep bumping into inconveniences to my normal pattern of skim/read/write as well as visual distractions. Try opening a few windows into New TMF at once and see if you can keep track of everything and avoid getting any errors. I’ve had site errors while printing, site errors while opening >5 tabs to browse later, site errors while changing from Window A to Window B while writing a post (to look up something from another thread).
The UI feels ‘clumsy and low information’ - and by information, I mean, the information I’m here for - juicy finance gossip.
For example: The font size, ‘loads of padding and margins’ white-space big-button design means I see 1-2 posts on a page where I could skim over 10-15 posts on Reddit.
Space where I’d have been reading text about finance is now filled with icons, timestamps, ‘view’ ‘users’ ‘likes’ ‘replies’ ‘avatars’ ‘created’ etc.
I commented elsewhere that I’m not sure Pub/Sub tag/category/etc event feeds are a natural metaphor for a lot of people, compared to classic ‘messageboard’ metaphors.
Anyway, getting back to what I’m trying to say. Many of you are looking at this from the perspective that you are used to hanging around and communicating with a particular group of people here, who are being ‘moved on’ to this forum.
But I think New TMF is going to have a very different problem with this platform.
I cannot see why any new user without any ‘emotional/community’ connection to TMF, would sign up for this experience (with signup & login), when Reddit is free, has a bigger & more diverse community, more types of discussions, is fully open to read without login or signup, and a simpler tidier interface (& range of interfaces) that work great on all kinds of devices (and is also more disability & impairment friendly).
I can see why people would be interested in Old TMF, because it was fully open to the public as a simple text page, visually and technologically more straightforward & accessible, and topic-based content felt more discoverable.
There was an absolute goldmine of old posts that was trivial to start digging through - just hit ‘previous week’ over and over or ‘look back 365 days’. Or pick out someone’s top posts and comb through them, ‘best of’ ‘recommended fools’ etc. It really worked well.
I suppose that ‘easy browseability’ made up for ‘poor searchability’. It was very easy to find yourself down a rabbithole of interesting old discussions. Pages loaded super quickly.
If you came into the site on a google search, your first page was more or less ‘you now know the entire interface!’ and ‘the entire history at your fingertips, browse away!’.
The learning curve was almost non-existent, and there was no mandated sign-up friction.
This site has a tutorial to teach you how to use some of the features. That speaks volumes. Old TMF didn’t need that, bogleheads.org doesn’t need it, Reddit doesn’t need it. Think about that.
I would have paid to browse the old TMF discussion boards if I had to - up to a point - (probably $3-5/month) - but I don’t think I’d pay for this. In a strictly logical sense the content is exactly the same (i.e. text is posted by a group of people), but I just don’t like the interface or browseability.
I’ve noticed some posters saying e.g. ‘STOP CRYING!’ ‘STOP THROWING TANTRUMS!’ "LOL YOU THINK YOU’RE COMPUTER EXPERTS BUT YOU CAN’T EVEN UNDERSTAND IT! BUT I CAN!'.
This really isn’t the point and these responses are puerile in the extreme.
I fully understand strawberry-flavoured ice cream. But I don’t like it.
Strawberry-flavour ice cream does not stimulate a sense of joy or fun for me. I don’t eat it, because I don’t like it.
How about cars? There are plenty of models of cars I don’t like either. They’re functional. You can drive them from A to B. You can do all the things with a Ford that you can with a Toyota.
Some other people enjoy certain things which I don’t like. It’s not an attack on you because I don’t like using what you do like using, and you shouldn’t be responding to it like an attack.
It also says nothing about how stupid and ignorant and unable or unwilling to learn I am, or how much of a ‘tantrum-throwing’ ‘crybaby’ I might be, or anyone else might be, just because we don’t enjoy using this platform and interface.
Therefore, if you find yourself about to belittle or invalidate anyone else’s concerns or complaints about the platform - just remember - there’s no need and you add nothing by doing so.
You can simply go on posting normally, without needing to ‘*add your very important comment on the complaints page, pointing out that actually you do like it and the problem isn’t a problem at all, because it’s not a problem for you *’.
It’s not whining, crying, stupidity or technological incompetence or laziness for someone to point out they are not enjoying using something and why that is.
Anyway back to the topic. On Old TMF, clearly, enough people liked the platform to hang around for decades. But this platform has a few people quitting, or not bothering to keep posting, within days.
That feels like an error by TMF, because I don’t think this platform has the ‘inherent likeability’ or advantage over other platforms (for new users) to bring in new users to replace the ones who can’t be bothered with icon & update hyper-activity and all the frictional nuisances. It also doesn’t have enough ‘uniqueness’ for new users vs the range of forums on reddit.
Again: why would you pick this over Reddit? I don’t have much of an answer besides enjoying reading the posts of a few people that I follow here.
Anyway the first thing to try if you feel you don’t enjoy eating strawberry ice cream is to stop eating it.
So I will drop down my level of engagement with this site closer to passivity again and see what happens. Perhaps there will be such valuable content & discussion posted here (e.g. mungofitch, Wendy, etc) that it’s ‘worth the login’ and ‘worth the platform friction and annoyances’.
Maybe the interface can be improved to address some concerns people have raised; maybe patterns of use or workarounds will be established over time, or platform configuration tuned, to make the clunkiness and hyper-activity [A] of the interface easier to put up with.
For example - personally - I don’t LIKE automatically updating web previews on any URL I type - I just want a link. And I could do that (there’s a button </>) - but now it’s an extra step to turn off. It’s just … more friction.
Anyone who is defending the new platform as being wonderful, should perhaps try an account on old.reddit.com on one of the more relaxed investing boards (e.g. old.reddit.com/r/bogleheads) and ask themselves: is it actually better than this?
Again, huge respect to the people who did the transition. Went super smoothly, absolutely worth putting on the CV. On a tech level, I’m impressed. I sympathise with the constraints of e.g. old tech platforms, data security, maintainance costs, that affected the choice to move to this new platform. Respect too, to the people who pay the bills for TMF & this site in whichever form it’s in.
But as a user, I … just don’t like using this specific platform & ‘metaphor’. Sorry, it’s just got way too much visual clutter, and ‘writing process’ friction and ‘reading process’ friction and overall complexity, for how I like use online discussion forums.
No great loss of course, I mean I’ve only posted like 30 times on TMF USA in my life. I thought I should make you aware of the concerns here & on other threads though, because maybe some of this can be fixed over time in some way.
I guess I just like Old TMF (UK, in my case) & Old Reddit more. It feels like it is tiring me out to use this site - every time I stop writing and look for posts / replies, or try to find out what topics there are - whereas I can post on reddit for hours without any problem at all or feeling that I need to concentrate on what I’m clicking on next.
I keep wondering if I’m missing good new posts, or replies… and I think I am?
Reddit are the ‘competition’, now, not Old TMF, if it is being abandoned.
See also my comments above about the potential for racism, ageism, sexism, cliqueism this new site has enabled (“Seeing people’s…”). [B].
Remember these things don’t just show up as unkind words spoken directly to someone, it can often be treating people and their posts differently because someone disrespects a particular group, and sees from their avatar that they’re ‘in that group’.
Fortunately, as I am a goat in real life, I have less to worry about than others in that regard.
Similarly, seeing who liked and didn’t like each comment - pretty sure that’s going to cause tension at some point. A mistake, I think. The Alliances of Likes are no doubt already beginning to subconsciously form. The Great “Like” War of 2023 lies ahead.
Finally, congrats to those who enjoy the new platform more. I’m glad you enjoy it. Truly!
Just try to be sympathetic: The issue for some of us is not ‘how do I efficiently and effectively use the platform New TMF and find workarounds for all the things I hate or that cause friction’.
The issue is more like… ‘do I bother with this platform at all?’ or ‘why don’t I put my time into the communities on Reddit (or elsewhere) or read a book, go out for drinks etc’.
Regarding workarounds for friction and weirdness. Cool, workarounds exist. I don’t like using workarounds, I like sites that just work easily in the first place.
Someone insisting that they are 100% OK with using a workaround, does not take away the friction and annoyance that’s there for other people. Reminding me a workaround exists does not make me more happy. Every workaround posted is proof of the barrier of entry and friction for new users.
Lux
Footnote
[A] ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should’ applies to >50% of the UI / UX features in this platform. Not TMF’s fault, though.
[B] I would link to that my earlier post directly, but trying to navigate to it to get a hyperlink while writing, started bringing up modal error windows all over the place… argh. That hasn’t been a problem in >30 years of using the web, I don’t enjoy seeing it now. ‘good luck’ if you have multiple windows open and are navigating around multiple threads, reading/writing/researching on a few posts in more than one place at a time. Easy on Old TMF, easy on reddit, not fun here.
Thanks for the info, you two.
You are welcome Beginner
You are and have always been an intelligent person. As is anyone here. Run down the hall ways make mistakes. Learn. That is the best way.
Your welcome beginner, hopefully we can all help each other get through this learning curve.
Andy
Yes, thanks.
(Replying to this email, which I guess is part of the MF default, was easier than going back onto the message board. I could change it, but it might be easier in the long run. Don’t mean to run-on. Just thinking out loud.)
Might work to keep off-topic and one-on-one comments from cluttering up the board, as well.
This new format comes with a lot of pluses that go with the minuses.
What we’re used to, I guess.
A younger person with no prior experience will know nothing else, right?
Anyway—it may not be all bad!
Elizabeth
That is great Elizabeth, but to make sure your email does not get overwhelmed you might want to look at how it is set up by following this.
Click on Avatar at top right of screen on PC
Down to bottom click on profile
Click on preferences
Click on emails
Look and make sure everything is set as you wish
Andy
Soon we all will have this all down
Elizabeth this will keep you young.
I can appreciate the sentiment. I am going to give it a few days but I could see myself losing interest.
Is there a way to email an author from these boards?
The link button offers an email option.