PLEASE. Admit that your new discussion board layout is a MASSIVE failure. Fire the fools who thought this was a good change and wasted your money - and return to the old format.
My God! I mean really…
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Ya gotta love a UI where the icon disappears when you move the mouse over it. It’s almost as brilliant as the icons to edit the sidebar that don’t appear until you get close to them. [/sarcasm]
–Peter
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Some examples of the new boards real capability and worth –
Vicki
The problem is not the new formatting capability. Although I don’t see how including videos is a particularly valuable thing – this isn’t twitter.
The problem is the navigation & board (topic) presentation & formatting.
If you could replace all that Community & Categories & Tags crap with the “Favorite Boards” formatting & capabilities of the old my.fool.com it would be perfect.
Sadly, it appears that TMF has decided that the usability to users is secondary and the formatting of the site is primary. This is backward, forcing the users to conform to the site instead of the site catering to the users.
And along the way, lost 25 years worth of informative and valuable posts.
And drove away a number of the most valued and informative posters.
I am doubtful that the TMF boards will recover.
Especially since a number of the most valued and informative posters have bailed.
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I have set up my old favorite boards under Categories and it works similar to the old method. Also note the headers at the top after going to a board. Try them out: Latest, New, etc.
Razz
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I find the board to be mostly a significant upgrade. Searching is a game-changer, tagging is much more powerful (e.g. no more finding the same post on three different boards because it related to three companies), and I can use favorite categories exactly as I would favorite boards. My main gripe is that premium boards and free boards are separated so I can’t monitor them in one place.
That said, I do have one big request to TMF – please make the effort and investment to migrate the full history of the old boards. It’s ironic that in moving to a system that enables searching, you are leaving behind most of the material one would actually want to search through.
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Sad - many have left- some stayed and continue to attempt to make sense out of new platform. There are some new functions however I wouldn’t consider this new site “user-friendly” at all. Far far from it. Sigh……
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Hi RHinCT, quick question if I may – trying to tag a board, starting with the Stocks A-Z Category, it appears boards I used to post to, or visit periodically, when I type in the ticker, I get No Matches Found.
These were boards that were open prior to the migration.
Would you know if there is a list of the Company boards that are available somewhere in here (similar to how we could scroll through alphabetically on the former system)?
Thanks!
TH
Try company name instead of ticker.
If the underlying software was written for financial discussions ticker would be a specific piece of data. Since TMF adapted a more generalized software package some tickers become just about impossible to search on. Think of:
- T: AT&T
- F: Ford Motor Co.
- K: Kellogg
- X: US Steel
- Z: Zillow
One-Letter Ticker Symbols - [ Which Stocks Have Single Letter Symbols? ]
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All the open company boards that had a post this calendar year were migrated and you can see the list of all tags at the link below:
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Hi RHinCT, thanks for you reply. Actually, I think I have figured out my problem.
I need to first click the box labeled “Switch to premium”. Once that’s done, under the category Stocks A-Z, I can enter the tickers and then the boards I was looking for are available.
So, I am on my way again.
TH
Is anyone else having a lot of trouble trying to keep track of:
-
What threads they have seen and not seen on multiple forums
-
Which threads are still ‘live’ or becoming unalive
It was easy before. Now it’s hard.
I keep getting recommended threads in “Suggested Topics” on my phone after I read a post, which are completely out of date, and which is very confusing, because often the headline is something that sounds timely “FED TO RAISE RATES FASTER THAN EXPECTED” or whatever but it was from 6 months ago.
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I don’t know about anyone, but I am not.
Everything below is based on reading this site on my PC. So everything is based on how it looks on my PC. I have not tried to use my phone yet.
On the old system I had a list of My Favorites, boards that I followed. When the conversion happened those were designated as Tracked for me. On the left side-bar, under Community, the second item is Tracked. When I click on it I get all the messages related to my old Favorites, across all my Favorites, that I have not read. That is my primary way of keeping up, but not my only way. As I type this, Tracked tells me there are six unread messages.
Also on the left side-bar is Categories. I edited that list (click on the pencil that appears when the mouse cursor is there) and included all the Categories that interest me. Effectively those are groups of the old boards. My list is Financial Planning, Fool Community Help Desk, Industry Discussions, Investing Strategies, Investment Analysis Clubs, New Site Help and Feedback, Personal Finance, Roth IRA, Saul’s investing Discussions and Stocks A to Z. Right now six of them have unread numbers next to them.
Stocks A to Z is a bit different. On the old system some of My Favorite boards were company specific… Apple, Tesla, whatever. All the company specific boards fall within Stocks A to Z, and the transition from the old system created a TAG for me for each company that was a Favorite.
I can choose to click on any of those six Categories with unread messages, and just see that one or two. Or click on Tracked and see them all. That is how I found and read your message. When I’m done posting this I will read some more.
Two other bits worth knowing. First, the numbers (unread counts) don’t always make sense. Tracked says six, but adding up the Categories comes to seven. I just treat all the numbers as minimums - there might be more - and go on. The other is that above Tracked is Everything. THAT number includes everything else that I did NOT Track (plus what I do Track). When I get current - Tracked is zero, and a screen refresh doesn’t change that - I click on Everything to quickly review any unread messages for things I mostly don’t care about. Sometimes I read Topic (thread) that looks interesting, but I mostly just hit a button (name escapes me for the moment) that marks them all as read.
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Nobody seems impressed to Suggested Topics. You can be annoyed by it, or ignore it. I’m going with the second one.
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I think I have the surviving old boards in my Categories listing, but some, like the Apple board instead became part of ‘Stocks A toZ’, so when that is clicked I get the others I’m not interested in, maybe an Apple posting amongst them… But overall, all the Categories are very quiet… The ‘New Site Help and Feedback’ has even settled down, but I see AAPL posting mixed in in a few other boards, unrelated other than maybe pro/con comments… HWTSC has also quieted… I think we’ve lost a lot of folks, overall… No idea what’s happening on the PC side as it’s now blocked off…
Suggested is pointless, World, Local news isn’t here at all, and here we are about to hit the election that may have disastrous affects on all of us… PA may have been chaotic at times, but it was at least interesting perspectives on our real world…
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“Quiet”. That’s a polite way of putting it.
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Actually, one of my favorite things about the new boards is that it keeps track of the threads I have read, and how far through them I have progressed.
It used to be the case that someone would post a link to a post (say a deep dive on Saul’s board) and I would be afraid to read it because I was so far behind on reading posts on that board. In the old system, if you read a post, it automatically assumed every post older than that one was read. Not so in the new system.
Vicki
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Two thoughts on that.
First, at the bottom of the left side-bar is Tags. Click on the pencil that appears when the mouse cursor is on it. Add Apple as a Tag. Now when there is a post on the Apple board, it will appear on the Apple Tag. Do the same for other companies you are interested in.
Second, use the Tracked choice under Community. If the Apple board was a favorite in the old system, activity for it will also appear under Tracked.
I’ve done that, created the Tags for stocks, states, and see the tracked & Everything up top, but they still need a click to see whassup… Some I’d rather see in the CATEGORIES like the other old favorites, but, not my house/site…
We may have reached the point of “Yes, there are differences. Deal with them.”
I recall a cartoon I saw many, many years ago. Two men are standing in front of a complicated looking machine. The machine has one large button. One man is saying to the other, “It’s supposed to be automatic, but I have to push this button.” 
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