I wonder if any of them were substantial users on the old boards. I’d bet not. The people who work for the provider and/or work on development of the system are rarely heavy users of it.
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Or…I wonder if they use it in the same way. We “outside” users may use the boards in a completely different way than someone who is required to use them, and/or there are probably several different ways that people interact with the boards.
I was asked how I use them earlier (in some thread, somewhere, which I will never find again) and my response differed from some others. One thing I have noticed is that it seems harder to “follow” someone now (yes, yes, I know I can find their profile, see everything they’ve posted even though I don’t want to see everything they’ve posted, blah blah). I offer Mungofitch from the Berkshire board; I wanted to read everything of his n the BRK board, but nothing on the Mechanical Investing board (or elsewhere), and that was intuitively easy in the old system by just opening up the BRK board and seeing his posts laid out. If they were in a thread which interested me then I could follow that, too.
I mention that because I think the new boards have lost some of that ethos, and I believe it is more important than the decision makers realized. For instance: I am likely to read Wendy’s posts on MeTAR. And Mungo’s on Berkshire. And there’s obviously Saul, who has a flock of his own. There are other examples, I used to be one of those on the AOL (investing) board back in the day. Now there’s a new post on MeTAR and there’s no indication who it is until I launch into the thread, and it’s nobody I care about and I wind up with the Flying NitWit or whoever. I wonder if TMFers used the boards in that way. I suspect not.
I have gotten over a bit of my early angst, and find stuff to click on in the left side bar, but it still makes no sense to me. Sometimes I click on a thread title only to be presented with more thread titles. Sometimes I click on “unread” and the number goes up, not down. It’s Alice in Wonderland, which is OK I guess if I’m just wasting time; it seems unlikely to produce the same learning experience as before, but as I say perhaps that comes with time and use.
Or not.
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Hidden under that drop down menu is the option to save each tag that you want to follow and yes, it’s a known bug that it’s hidden. Try a different device with a different screen or try to nudge the drop down to reveal the save option. Do this for every company you want to track.
Good point. That was a wonderful feature of the old boards that I completely took for granted.
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Take a few minutes to learn use the Search Advance Filters and no one can hide from you ever again, not even yourself 
GoofyHoofy since 9/20/2022
All
https://discussion.fool.com/search?expanded=true&q=%40Goofyhoofy%20after%3A2022-09-20%20order%3Alatest
Building/Maintaining a Home
https://discussion.fool.com/search?expanded=true&q=%40Goofyhoofy%20after%3A2022-09-20%20%23personal-finances%3Abuilding-maintaining-a-home%20order%3Alatest
Etc etc
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Yeah, I get that you can kludge a more inconvenient way to get to what was a one-click stop before, but that’s not reassuring.
I’d like to open the MeTAR board and see if there are posts from Wendy. Or from Rayvt. Or Syke6. Or, well, it’s a good list, but now I open onto I don’t know what. I get the NitWit as often as not. Every post has equal weight, every poster is the same. I don’t want to read every post, but now I get no choice. That’s pretty much the opposite of how I prefer the boards - and my life.
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I’m a TMF’er who has been helping folks get over the hump of the learning curve here.
Let’s look at your 3 choices of why I might be doing this…
corporate dictat - NOPE, I don’t work for the TMF
resignation that “this is what it is, so get over it” - SURE - A bit of that. Let’s face it, the OLD BOARDS are not coming back.
actual joy having had several weeks more to get used to the experience - SOME OF THAT - I took the time to learn and had the patience to just figure it out instead of constantly griping about the situation.
WHY? Cause I value the community - that’s why.
'38Packard
– just wish people would quit complaining and get on with it.
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So it’s basically “America love it or leave it”, eh? Complaining is a natural human tendency. When something “pretty good” is replaced by something “not so good”, expect complaints.
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Surely you’re smart enough to know “You get what you pay for”.
'38Packard
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Ahh, does that apply to taxes, too?
Denying the obvious confusion, frustration is not a path to solutions… Discovering, pointing out the problems, are part of the system analysis that it takes to find the solution… Expecting the wide range of interests, ages, abilities, backgrounds to simply fall into the system and understand it is folly…
We all have lost many good web friends we’ve gotten to know, enjoy, respect over decades, whether on the subscription side or not… So far it is not a good fit for many…
Some of us might be stubborn enough to hang on, but, we’ve still just had a great loss…
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Absolutely. I’m not happy that others are not happy with the new platform. Not sure what to do except try to help those that look for assistance.
Besides trying my best to help those that ask for help, what more could someone do?
'38Packard
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All any of us can do is continue nudging, helping, nudging, and see where it goes… And likely remain frustrated at the changed policies, after decades of generally good things in all the ranges of our worlds, and that does not include this forced tunnelvion of no politics… As though politics don’t affect our financial as well as every other parts of our time in this world… There was a decent mix available… only a few months ago…
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Well, the premium side uses the same interface, same issues.
So there’s that…
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But that’s not the same. It’s just not.
Going to Goofy’s thoughts on reading Mungo on BRK - which I did as well. I didn’t read every post of his. I’d only read the posts with higher recommendations. And when he started engaging in long discussions with nitwits who lack the ability to even comprehend that someone would have an opinion other than their own, I’d quit reading even the highly recommended posts. The first few often contained valuable information (which was completely wasted on the nitwit). After a while there was nothing new - other than a profound respect for Mungo’s combination of patience and optimism that he could make a difference.
Then there’s selecting “highly recommended” posts. That isn’t a bright line cutoff. By seeing all of the posts, you could judge whether lots of people were reading or few. So on days when every post was getting 10 recs, my threshold for reading Mungo’s posts would go up. On days when lots of posts were getting no recs at all, that threshold would fall.
Then there’s another effect. While I might go to BRK to read Mungo’s posts, I’d see other posts that looked potentially interesting. Maybe it’s a highly recommended post by some other author. Maybe its a thread that sounds interesting. Maybe it someone that I know from elsewhere dropping in to post.
My point here is that picking which posts to read on a heavily trafficked board was an art, not a science. You can’t boil it down to a set of programmable criteria. By trying to stuff artistry into a box, you kill off the artistry.
In a cynical bent, the significant drop in posting volume at TMF (at least on the free side) makes much of that artistry irrelevant. You no longer have to pick and choose which posts to read. There are so few that reading them all has become feasible again. Not a profitable use of time, mind you. But at least feasible.
–Peter
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Without complaints, many improvements wouldn’t happen.
And there are different kinds of complaining. There’s the useless whining and moaning, without saying exactly what the problem is. These can become useful if you can get the complainer to state their issues more clearly.
There are complaints with clear statements of the problem. These can be quite valuable. If there is a problem in the system, the problem needs to be fixed. If I hit the letter “P” on my keyboard, and your system continually interprets it as a backspace, that’s a problem that must be fixed. There could be multiple causes (bad keyboard, or the system itself mis interpreting the keystroke, for example). But it’s the kind of problem that requires a solution. You need people to point out these problems.
Then there’s the whining just because of change. Yes, these are not terribly helpful. But you can help people adapt to change. Something that TMF didn’t do a great job of, IMHO. But the community did step up to help other community members learn about this new software and how to adapt to it. That’s a great benefit of a good user community - helping each other.
And there is a group of people who learn to use the software, and only then decide that it just isn’t going to work for them. You really want to hear from those people. They are the ones who can provide some of the best feedback. They took the time to figure things out, and then can usually tell you pretty specifically what is and isn’t working for them. That lets developers and decision-makers both know how their choices are playing out in the real world.
So bring on the complaining, as long as the complaining is written and expressed in a useful way.
–Peter
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First of all, I appreciate your efforts to help people navigate the new system and help preserve the community. A sincere thank you.
But here’s the problem: Let’s take the Berkshire board. There are a few posters that I will always read. Quite a number that I may read if I have time/inclination. Sometimes that’s based on the number of recs. And a few posters I always skip. I felt that was a really efficient way to digest the material. And there was lots of really good material.
I’ve gathered that a number of people digest the boards in that exact same way. The problem is that even if you incorporate all the new features (as you have generously suggested), there is still no way to efficiently read the boards the way we used to.
To put it another way, there is no easy way to login and hit all my favorite boards, read all my favorite posters, and read the best posts of the rest. Can be done, but it requires a lot of karate.
My fear is the barriers to easily seeing good material will snuff out creation of good material. The free boards were already in decline heading towards life support. This might be something that kills what was once an epic community.
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I agree. While the new boards are better in many ways, skimming the post list for a few good posts was much quicker on the old boards. So what now?
The features being asked for are highly unlikely to be added to Discourse. The author feels very strongly about his flat topics. Maybe we could get Discourse to add an optional feature? I have an idea for that.
TMF could go back to the old boards. I’ve heard the old boards were a mess internally. I don’t know if this is a viable option.
TMF could move to another board software. Does this just trade current problems for new problems? What are viable options?
I’m disappointed that TMF kept the whole process a secret. There was no open testing. There was no survey of required features. They wouldn’t even reveal the name of the platform “Discourse” beforehand. I don’ see any easy way out of this.
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Hi Wayne - Actually, TMF DID disclose the new platform prior to rolling it out. Here are some posts from the old boards that I created to try and help folks with the transition.
https://discussion.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=35164997
https://discussion.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=35165002
I also don’t think that TMF will take on the work to migrate the boards to yet another platform. These projects are pretty complex in terms of planning, coding migration programs, configuring the new platform and running the conversion.
It’s too bad that folks are struggling with / don’t like the new platform. Hopefully this too will pass.
'38Packard
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This sure has the markings of an absolute epic fail. It’s a shame, are there any alternative boards people are migrating to?
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I totally agree, and to me (and I gather others), being able to skim in an effective way was extremely important for staying engaged with the boards.
The only thing keeping me going so far is some very nice work and ensuing discussion by cwags02 on the BRK board, " 1Year Berkshire Price Prediction - Inflation +17% From 10/22"
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