What should we improve about our forums?

Hey,

We have long term plans to improve the way we facilitate our users to learn, and to help eachother.

Those are not done yet. In the shorter term, we want to see what changes we could make to our existing forum infrastructure that would allow our users to "get more" out of our forums.

Who knows this better than you?

We'd greatly appreciated if you could write a short post in this thread, saying what parts of the forum do and do not work for you, and roughly how long you've been using Unity.

We're looking for both technical issues (search has this annoying delay), as social ones. (signal/noise ratio is too low)

We can't promise we will fix your specific requests, but knowing what you find most annoying / would benefit most of, will at least allow us to make better decisions.

Thanks for your help,

Lucas Meijer
Unity Developer

 

Hello Lucas

I do have a thing that would be awesome to fix


And its that when I enter the forum, since my last visit, sometimes shows that all
the posts have been read :S

that makes me difficult to keep my self up to date on which are the newest posts


and another thing. for some reason, my session is not stored everytime, so like each 2-3 days I have to log again :S, sometimes 2 times in the same day

 

On one forum system (can't remember where) I saw a feature that would let you save favorite posts (useful code snippets, tutorials, etc) in your account. That would be a cool feature.

I also have the issue mentioned by naruse... Sometimes I log in and everything is marked as read, even when I haven't had a chance to read it. It's annoying, but it's also intermittent.

 

Social Bookmarking
To expand on the idea of personal bookmarking above, it would be interesting to have a del.icio.us style of bookmarking; social bookmarking. A way to identify which posts are the most beneficial/favorite throughout the community. I don't see this being used as a vanity thing, but rather a 'solutions promoter'. Not every solution is going to get posted on UnifyCommunity.

You could see which topics are the most popular. Outside of Showcase, this popular topics are going to be problems and solutions. GUIManager, UISprite, SmartFox, Pathfinding, etc.

FAQ
Ideally, it needs to evolve into a better run FAQ. I know the search option is there, but we all know it's not used as often as it should be. Most posts are one-line questions, concerning one feature/function. I don't have an easy solution for this aside from "build an FAQ manually." However, once built and stickied, it really should cut down on the number of repeat posts.

Unsolved/Solved Status
This feature is on some Q&A sites/forums, and it could work here in the same way that you can flag a post with a Poll. Basically the post would be tagged as "Open" or "Solved."

Solved posts would let someone know that the original post question had a solution as a response, which is nice. Sometimes I start reading a topic only to realize no one ended up solving the issue.

Open posts would let someone know that the problem is unsolved. You could even browse by "Open/Unsolved" in an attempt to answer questions/problems, and not get distracted by gossip/showcase-type posts.



There are a lot of things which could be done, but I think the most effective ones will be those which target the one-line question/problem posts, and assist those people getting those problems answered (by Unity staff, or by the community). An easier way to identify/sort those will result in more answers, and more solutions available for all.

 

Unsolved/Solved Status Totally Agree with Tempest!!!!!

 

Maybe hire more people whose sole duty is to answer questions on the forum.

(Since the release of 2.5 and the boom of new users I see a lot of unanswered posts or questions)

Otherwise I see it turning into like the other engines forums, where people will get agitated because they arent getting any timely help or advice.

 

I'd like some type of scoring/ranking mechanism that would allow users to give out and earn points based on the questions they ask and/or answer.

This idea could be extended to allow users to earn points based on informational posts (maybe on the wiki). I.E. write a great article on how to improve frame rates on the iPhone and users will reward you with points.

There could also be sometype of widget that users could place on their websites that show-off their ranking. Achieving a certain high ranking would be almost equivalent to earning a Unity Certification (or something)... a "Unity VIP"

 

Add mine as a second vote for:

- Points / credit to those who help
- Mark threads as resolved / open

It's probably not possible, but it would be nice if I could set a default filter on the "messages since last visit" that ignored posts to sections I don't want to watch (which in my case is anything to do with iPhone). Sometimes when I've been away for a while and I hit the "messages since last visit" and it spans several pages. Would be nice to be able to filter out some of that.

 

I'd like to see the option to disable avatars and signatures. Most other forums have this, which I appreciate, since I find that some people abuse these by having annoying animated avatars and/or large images in signatures, which just makes the forums more of a chore to look at. Also better anti-spammer measures.

The system of whether posts are read or not does indeed seem to be flawed, except I have the opposite problem where posts I've read usually show up again as unread next time I visit. I work around this by always using the "mark all forums read" link every time.

--Eric

 

This is the 3D GameStudio forum, maybe there are ideas here ?

http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/

I like the idea of a neebies section where people can ask (seemingly) trivial questions without feeling too stoopid

Thanks

 

I love this forum and it has been essential in learning Unity.

1. SEARCH: make results link to the actual post (at the very minimum, the page). Results shows one result per hit, with snippets perhaps. Perhaps you can try using Google's site search? It might make relevant topics rise higher rather than sorting by a fixed thing like date (http://www.google.com/sitesearch/). I think you can try it for free.

2. I'd like to see you force something along the lines of "This request is for: Standalone/iphone/web" on new posts, and make it very clear and obvious in threads and in searches. Right now it's not always obvious (iPhone shaders: go in the iphone section or shaders?) and even when it's posted to iphone, it's just a little thing up in the corner, easy to miss.

3. I like the notion of "resolved", and a noob section. I tend to see a lot of repeat questions, over and over, that are so hard to answer. Things like "how do I make a gun".

4. This isn't forum related exactly, but I'd love to see user notes in the online manual. I don't like how php.net does it, and I don't want users to be able to completely re-write official docs, but perhaps a hybrid where a wiki page appears below the official docs or something, or stack-overflow like where the best posts rise.

 

Some of my opinions:

- I agree with the delay. For registered members, it should be removed or just two seconds to cut down on bots or what not .

- And personally, a limit on avatar dimensions. This forum will eventually become crowded with huge animated avatar gifs or signature images which will reduce the readbility of the forums a lot. (Look at any game website which does not enforce such rules). (What Eric5h5 says applies as well).

- Point/credits systems will lead to abuse. Just look at Gamedev.net for an easy example. Right now the Unity forums are still relatively small. My experience (I moderate and have moderated quite some game sites) is that eventually you will have less friendly and understanding people around. Points will be abused then.

I'm glad that you guys are looking for forum improvements! But I am a pretty happy using this forum already .

 

I agree with the above points

- Noob section, we're all noobs at one stage or another, and walking into the noob section is a lot easier for people joining the forums than posting a "How do I load Unity" question right next to a "How do I interact with an SQL database from inside the webplayer app".
- Points system could be good, I do see some useless/flame comments around, and while they are few and far between, it would be nice to be able to weed them out, or let those people know those comments aren't welcome.
- Resolved status on threads. Too many are sitting around unresolved that are sometimes 3 pages long. Thats a lot of reading for no result......kind of like cricket .

I'd also like to see these.

- Highlighting of Unity developer responses. I know it comes up next to their names but this is quite easy to skim over, and 9 times out of 10 they are going to provide the best possible response.
- Vote for best answer. This can quite often make finding the answer to the problem a lot easier. I know this won't exactly translate to every thread as some end up being lengthy conversations, but if it's a question, a highlighted best answer would make searching the forums a bit quicker. Would probably say use this over the Unity developer response highlighting.

The main reason I say highlighting of these is that there is a lot of great information on the forums, but it can sometimes be a slight chore to sift through. Any way that we can speed up finding of information is good in my books.

 

Hierarchical answers are what I think is one of the things most needed.
On longer threads its completely impossible to usefull find out which answer went where and realistically we can't assume that all just post on the initial posting, so a board technology with support for hierarchy in the answers would be a great step forward at least to me

 

One point for me would be to use a Google indexer hardware box actually on the forums. Finding the answers is the most difficult part and for now, Google offers one of the best searches around. That would be for me step 1 to solve the issues. Note: Google offers hardware pizza box servers to put into your own infrastructure and they run Google specialised to your site. GarageGames did this years ago and it was a very good step in the right direction beeing able to use the standard search (like Google is for most of us) combined with the Unity forum.

(oh, and improve the speed another time of the forum, starts getting slow again)

Further: Some intelligent system to rate answers and questions based on experience, own written answers and such.

Tighter integration of the Unify Wiki, maybe with own BB syntax tags.

Maybe integration of BB Youtube tags for the forum.

Hmm, need to think more about these issues.

 

Hiya,

1. Make the whole forum faster, its usually quite slow at browsing and searching. Lately it shows the forum posts as a list then it loads in icons for each post. This makes clicking a thread difficult as its loading in.

2. Have an option to view latest posts only, this is nice if it lists forum wide not just the sub forum you are in and shows top 50 or so latest posts. Also maybe to show top 20 unanswered posts.

Thats it, I think in general these forums and the IRC channel are a great resource.

Geoff

 

the first half of 2 is already present actually. I only visit the board through that way, "view post since last visit".

 

I would like a search function that searches the entire website including the documentation and forum. The old posts are very valuable to understanding the engine as is the documentation.

When making a switch DO NOT lose the old posts. They are a real reference source. Most of us search them with google site:unity3d.com commands.

 

It's been mentioned before but a much better Search would be very handy. I've given up using the forum search and always go to google and type

'[question] unity3d'

 

my start page is at google with site:unity3d.com already entered.

 

I asked for faster forum but just discovered that the slow loading of the forum appears to be at my end, on my PC using Firefox. IE on the PC or Safari on the mac is 3 x faster and will be what I will use from now on. Also, the new posts and unanswered posts links from the forum root is great.

The only other request I would like is to have the forum fit my monitor rather width rather than a fixed width.

Thanks
Geoff

 

Actually I just found one.

When looking through the unanswered posts, replying to some and looking for more unanswered ones it stopped me by saying "[color=red[size=6]]You cannot make another search so soon after your last; please try again in a short while[/size][/color]." which was frustrating.

 

I would like the ability to specify the language of code blocks and have syntax colouring applied accordingly. I notice that the Unify wiki colours code blocks properly -- something similar for forum posts would really enhance readability.

 

@Geoff : If you're looking for a much faster browser on the PC, try out Google Chrome. I haven't touched IE or Firefox more than a couple of times since installing it, as it is so much faster than any other browser I've found on the PC.

On topic, I noticed the poll option today as I was putting up a post in the iPhone section, but now I look and can't see it.......is that some context or thread starting option you've added, or am I just blind and never noticed it before?

 

I repeat the post, placed here : http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=31698

 

I request the feature of

*drum roll please*

the points and ranking system even though someone already said it.

Also!
I request we get a *prettier* forum. One that isn't grey and red. Yuck! I want it t be like white and black and of course

Shiny!



like the unity logo!

Edit: Also to be able to run this forum built in to unity so you can view posts in unity and get help from in unity AND be able to copy and paste code between unity and the forum.

[offtopic]

if you add the forum in unity also add irc

[/off topic]

 

The only changes I would like to see (and shouldn't be hard to add compared to other stuff) are:

a) Reduce the avatar dimensions.

Limit them to something like 128x128/256 and remove the ability for users to use anything but a simple jpeg to avoid them using animated (SLOW) GIF avatars which just ruin the professional atmosphere of any forum and add to the load time of a thread. I like avatars but I end up disabling them on every forum cause anything above 128x128 (or maybe 256x256) just adds to thread loading time.

Luckily on Opera I can just disable GIF, Flash and Java for any site just by right clicking, permanently. But what if Unity adds some flash feature or Java feature which requires that enabled for me to view one day? Maybe GIF animations from some user to show something in a thread even... something other than a overused animated avatar.



b) The forum doesn't fit to width and even worse, uses a small font.

On 1280x1024 I end up zooming (good thing Opera zooming doesn't suck unlike other browsers) the whole view to make things readable. But that meants unless I make the thread fit to width, if there are huge images in it, they will scroll off the screen as well (not a biggy on Opera but on something like Firefox it's a pain).

So a new skin option with larger font size and width covering at least 90% of the monitor will help.



c) Option to show more than 15 posts in a thread will help a LOT.

I am not a big fan of clicking next for 15 pages of a big thread (not cause I am lazy ) while I can just view 40 posts in one single page at a time. Most forums have "Show Threads" options which lets you specify the amount of posts you want to read on one page. I usually set the limit to 40 posts instead of the default (which is like 10-15 anyway).



d) Automatic reduction of huge images to lower quality and size.

I have seen this used in forums where people post a lot of images. On Unity forums a lot of threads have people posting huge PNG (or even JPG) images with crazy resolutions one after another instead of just.. adding thumbnails and linking them to the bigger ones.

Most forums automatically reduce the size of these images to something like 800x600 and tells the user to click the image to view the bigger size (we have seen this on a lot of places). Considering a lot of threads here completely forget the bit about thumbnails, Unity forums REALLY need this feature.



e) Ability to add YouTube videos? (or is that possible already?)

 

You mean like http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=002470491425767499270:iugs1ezlsfq which was created by a nice and helpfull user (sorry don't know who did it anymore )



Image size control would be nice but is realistically only possible if all images have to be uploaded. The board can't control external media.
That beeing said, I would love to see a spoiler tag , a "folding area", which would if not specified automatically enclose img tags. Then images only exists if the spoiler is folded out, saving screen space AND loading time.

 

Why not just set a minimum font size in your browser? As far as large images that blow out the page width, I agree that this forum should scale images to fit like most others seem to. Massively wide pages are too hard to read; there's a reason why newspapers and so on use narrow columns, so a fairly conservative fixed width doesn't bother me at all, since I'm not going to be making my browser window full-screen anyway.

Invision forum software manages size control on external images just fine.

--Eric

 

That's why I specifically mentioned adding another skin option. Those who want these features together won't mess up the current skin for people who have no issues with how the forum is at the moment (I think there is even Ajax method I have seen on a lot of sites where they add font size option on top of the page).

Other options like image resize obviously can be global but something like font size change should be present in a new skin option (I can't go around changing font size on different PC's or laptops I come across). You login, you get your customized options and skins, pretty much the point of user CP on forums.

 

It would be great if, when searching the forum, the search string appeared prominently at the top of the Search Results page.

I often have multiple search result tabs open in the browser, and there is no way to later determine what search query generated the results. I usually have to search the forum again with the same exact query, which just wastes bandwidth and server CPU cycles.

Perhaps "Search found 413 matches" could be replaced with "Search for 'orientation landscape' found 413 matches". A more detailed string could be shown if the search was for posts by author, or if it included other search options, such as forum and category.

Simply including the search query (keyword search) would be a great start.

 

Hello !

It could be great to have a dedicated space for downloadable content !

Cheers,
Romain.

 

When the forum visitor is a "guest" (not logged in), and viewing a post that contains a file attachment, there should be a prominent notification at the bottom of the post stating that the user should log in to access the attachment. Perhaps in bold, surrounded by a box, or following warning (or exclamation) icon.

"File attachment(s) available. Log in to access"

I've come across a number of posts by confused individuals claiming they cannot find any "attachment download" links that other users are talking about.

I believe most users don't log in unless they are going to post, and will therefore never know that attachments exist in the thread they are viewing.

 

Thanks for all the commentary folks, I'm not full caught up on all the posts but a skim shows lots of great material for us to digest. Keep it coming!

 

I gotta add my inputs as well. As a newer user I think better searching is critical. Newer users tend to do alot of searching. Well, the smarter ones try searching first.

Also, i'd like the idea of blogs for people similiar to garage games. It gives the community a better connection to each other if you can see what sorta stuff people are invovled in.

 

Since this update didn't happen last year...

How about this year?

 

We now have a full-time web developer on board that is looking at our website, our blogs, our Feedback and Answers sites, the forums and future plans we have and he's mapping out an overall strategy. Of course this feedback (and others) is going to be used in that so yes, changes are coming now that he's on board. I would say I'm very confident in changes coming in 2010, it's just a matter of when. Should you expect it this month? No. This quarter? First half of the year? I don't know, Justin has a lot of planning, and then implementing to do across the site. So hang in there, we have a man on it now!

 

Thanks for the heads-up.

Knowing it is on the way, is great to hear!

 

I'm a bit late with this suggestion, but it'd be nice if usernames were linked to user profile pages whereeve they appear. Right now, I only see them clickable in the index views, not when reading the posts. Maybe that would encourage more succinct signatures.

 

There's a profile button at the bottom left corner of every post in a thread, which links to the posters profile.

Around here or therebouts.
|
|
\/

 

Oh, thanks, for some reason I never tried clicking on that! In that case, I agree with Eric's suggestion on an option to turn off signatures and avatars.

 

Oh I see how it is. You're racist against fungii from pluto, eh? :twisted:

I have some ideas on improving the forums.



Make this button incredibly gaudy. Flashing loudly between orange and green and triple it's size.

Then, the first 10 times a new user clicks on the post button, he's redirected to the search function instead! This would not only help train those new users, it will also get rid of the porn spammers getting through captcha as of late.

 

Hey, no offense! Some of my best friends are avatars! (at least avatars take only a fixed amount of space)

While I'm on this topic, I have one minor feature suggestion - add a twitter ID field to the profile - and one fantasy feature - when someone mentions a Unity class or function in a post, it's automatically wrapped with the script reference URL.

 

Full 3D forums in a Unity web player, and with an iPhone version of course !

Otherwise, as a much simpler start, a forum version that would be fully compatible with an iPhone forum reader app like Tapatalk : http://itunes.com/apps/tapatalk

 

I have two suggestions:

- When a reply is received to a post that I am following instead of a generic email how about including the reply text in the email.

- RSS feeds for subsections of the forum instead of the whole forum

 

How about speeding up the forum? It is REALLY slow now. This started to happen right after Indie became free (I may be wrong about this though).

Time for server upgrades?

 

Just a sidenote: These forums are based on phpbb, therefore feature requests are somewhat limited to existing plugins and/or the forums extensibility.

Switching to a new forum software should be a no-go, because of the great content already gathered here. Although, cleaning posts that are older then 2 years shouldn't hurt since issues discussed then are likely to be outdated anyway.
And it could give the forum a better performance.

A new skin in a Unity-style would be great, I don't really like the current options. I would even participate in the customization, if any help is required.

 

I've been using Unity/these forums for the past few months and whilst I think they're a great resource, speed is my number 1 gripe - I've never used any forum this slow (not even remotely close). This isn't just the search but even just the initial loading of the home page. No joke, sometimes I set a search running and go and do something else for a bit.

The search could also be more relevant.

Other than that, many thanks to everyones posts that I've browsed and to you Unity guys for providing this resource.

 

Actually, reading the other posts, this may well be due to the large influx of users a few months ago - I was one of them ! ;-)

 

Yet another vote for listing which topics you are watching.

Marking topics you've replied to on the index page.