UI and Feeds Update

We have just updated the site with a new UI and features. Please note that we are still making some adjustments and configuring things. Please let us know if you see any issues or bugs.

[If you would like to continue to use the legacy "What's New" page, I have added the ability to add a "What's New" link to your primary navigation bar and mobile bottom navbar (only effects the non-pro 2022 styles, as the pro styles already have a "What's New" link there). You can turn this on by going to your Account Preferences.]

The main updates are the following:

1. New UI Style: We have new style/theme called "TMC 2022" and TMC 2022 Dark". These are very similar to our old styles, however they are a little more streamlined, should provide better performance on both desktop and mobile, and significantly improve readability (in particular for the dark style). There are some more consequential changes that you will notice, such as: the sub-navigation bar is no longer sticky on scroll-down; on mobile, the Conversations, Alerts and Account/Profile buttons are now merged into one in the top navigation bar; and on mobile the bottom navigation bar now has the navigation menu button as well as other useful links. If you are unhappy with any of the changes, please use the "TMC Pro 2022" and "TMC Dark Pro 2022" styles which are almost identical in function to the older style. You can change/specify your preferred style on your Account Preferences page.

Or you can change it by scrolling down to the bottom of your screen:

2. New Feeds Feature: Feeds is our new way of making TMC's Community content more accessible and easier to navigate and filter. Feeds will ultimately be taking the place of the "What's New" section, as it provides the same functionality and much more. What's New will remain accessible for those who still prefer it, however we will be removing What's New from the navigation bar at some point, so please bookmark it if you really want to use it and not Feeds.

You will notice on the Community homepage, a tab bar which allows you to switch between the various feeds that we offer. By default, existing logged in users will be taken to the "Forum list", which hasn't changed. However, you can switch to other Feeds easily, and even change your default feed from "Forum list" to a feed of your preference. This can be done in your Accounts Preference page in the section entitled "Default feed". You can also set a feed as default by going to your preferred feed, and selecting the "Set as default" button as seen here:

3. Voting: We have added the ability to vote on threads. This affects a given thread's vote score, which can be used as a sort option for your thread. Vote scores are also used to help determine which threads make it into the "Hot" feed.


Below are sections from the new TMC Website Tutorial that cover Voting and Feeds.




Feed tabs:
On the Community homepage there are various feeds that you can view:

• Blog: A selection of curated article threads from our community.
• Hot: A curated list of some of the best and most recent threads created by TMC members.
• Discussion: A full list of all threads (similar in function to the older “New posts” page).
• Questions: Displays all Question threads. Each of these feeds can be filtered by forum and more. For example, you can display only threads with unread content by clicking here.
• Social: Shows the latest social status updates (AKA profile posts) from across the community.
• Forum list: Not actually a feed, but rather is a shortcut to jump to the traditional list of forums, which can also be accessed by clicking on the “Forums” link in the sub-navigation bar under “Community”. On this page you can select.

You can choose between two different formats for thread feeds:

• List: The classic, more condensed, view of the threads.
• Card: A richer layout which previews the actual content of the thread’s first post, allowing you to take actions such as reacting to the post.

There is also a “Set as default” button. This option allows you to change what feed is shown by default when you come to the TMC Community homepage. This option can also be adjusted within your account settings in the “Preferences” section.


Feed Filtration:
The “Filter” section allows you to drill down to the specific content that you’d like to see. You have many options for filtering, including:

• In forums: If you’d like to limit the feed to content only from specific forums that you select..
• Unread content: If you’d only like to see content you haven’t previously seen/read.
• Watched threads: If you’d only like to see threads you’ve created, interacted with, or manually watched.
• Watched forums: If you’d only like to see threads from forums you’re watching.
• Unanswered content: If you’d like to see content that doesn’t have any replies.
• People you follow: If you’d only like to see content from your members that you have followed.
• Order by: This option gives you a variety of sort orders such as:
  • Promotion date - when the threads were promoted to the feed by TMC Staff.
  • Last post date - when the latest reply to the threads were posted.
  • Thread creation date - when the threads were first created.
  • Vote score - the number of votes the threads received.
  • First post reaction score - the reaction score (incl. Likes, Informative, Helpful, etc.) of the first post of the threads.

Once you have specified your filtration options, you can select the “Save” button if you would like them to be saved and selected by default the next time you visit that specific feed.

Thread Voting: On any thread list page, such as a forum or a feed, you can up a thread. You can also up vote a thread on each thread's first post. The vote score is taken into account for curated feeds such as Blog and Hot. It also is a sort option that you can use in order to see threads with the highest vote score.

 

[tps5352]

Hmm...that is very strange. May I ask what device and browser you are using?

Also, can you please try and access this from another device, just to see if it may have something to do with a given device/browser?

Dell XPS Gen 5 desktop computer (big and still powerful). Windows 8.1. Pretty recent Firefox browser (v82.0.2 [64-bit]).

I can access TMC on my iPhone 11 Pro Max. I just looked and I can edit the first post of a thread I created, but I do not see a way to save a draft. There is a piece of paper + magnifying glass icon, but no floppy disk icon.

Prior to the recent software change I used save-a-draft all the time. I am sticking with the anti-George Castanza, "It's not me, it's you" line of thinking.

 

[tps5352]

OK, this is interesting. Just as I was sending that last message to you, I noticed the floppy disk icon.

This screenshot shows that the FD icon is visible for a new message to you (like this one I am writing right now), but not for a previous one I am legitimately editing (the previous message).

 

[tps5352]

I was just looking at a previous private conversation thread, and the "Respond" space at the bottom did not have the floppy disk icon, like this one does right now. But it had the three vertical dots next to the squate brackets icon. When I clicked on the dots, the floppy disk icon was one thing that appeared. Good.

But when I returned to previous regular threads, still no floppy disk icon, and worse, no three dots on the upper right. The other ones to the left in the banner have other features, but not saving a draft.

Just wanted to update you.

"Is it something I said?"

 

[MorrisonHiker]

I confess I'm a little sad about the new "reveal" buttons to show total posts/likes of posters. I know is compresses the post vertical size, but it also makes it more work to spot trolls (who typically you can spot as a flame post from a very new aka low post-count member).

Can you post a screenshot? I'm not sure what reveal buttons you are referring to. I did try going to some profiles but couldn't see any way to see things. As before, I still see the member's avatar, message count, reaction score and location on the left of a message.

Conversations icon? It’s now a sub-icon (menu?) under your profile avatar. More clicks to get to it.

Well that avatar is a combination of the three, such that it includes a number/counter indicator which is a combination of Unread Conversations and New Alerts.

Can you post a screenshot? I'm still seeing all three icons:

Desktop:

Mobile:

 

[JRP3]

Can you post a screenshot? I'm not sure what reveal buttons you are referring to. I did try going to some profiles but couldn't see any way to see things. As before, I still see the member's avatar, message count, reaction score and location on the left of a message.

His complaint has been fixed. Initially the update hid all member information other than avatar and name, now it displays as it used to.

 

[cwanja]

Can you post a screenshot? I'm not sure what reveal buttons you are referring to. I did try going to some profiles but couldn't see any way to see things. As before, I still see the member's avatar, message count, reaction score and location on the left of a message.



Can you post a screenshot? I'm still seeing all three icons:

Desktop:
View attachment 741582

Mobile:
View attachment 741583

Clear your mobile devices cache. However, your desktop image pictured is working as intended. Here is mine.

Mobile is either cache or stuck in the old design. You might need to change it at the bottom of a forum webpage per the steps in the original post.

 

[MP3Mike]

Yep, this appears to be a step in firmly in the wrong direction, as it's now even harder to quickly judge a poster's credibility. Account age, post count and "reputation" (which... needs an overhaul on its own, IMO),

It seems that the "reputation" score now excludes dislike ratings. So it is now only a count of positive reactions, making the score less useful than it was before.

 

[wk057]

It seems that the "reputation" score now excludes dislike ratings. So it is now only a count of positive reactions, making the score less useful than it was before.

Looks like the hidden stats thing was fixed. Thanks, @danny

But yeah, the reputation system is definitely pretty broken and not really representative of the user's reputation, nor by extension is it really a proxy for content quality.

For example, someone who posts 100x per day likely isn't making 100 awesome high quality posts, even if they're agreeable or otherwise neutral or not objectionable. That user's "reputation" score under the current system will be highly inflated, where someone who posts high quality content regularly but doesn't necessarily do dozens of posts per day is going to be at a disadvantage despite the higher quality content.

I feel like that'd be a pretty simple fix with a weighted system. Let's say someone posts 50 posts in a day. Let's say those posts result in 50 positive reactions total, and just one negative one. Under a sum-them-up system, they've earned 49 points. But let's say 2/3 of those positive reactions are from the same other user who just always like's this person's posts for whatever reason. Should their forum reputation get such a huge boost because a couple of people like this user's continuous, but mostly noise, content?

On the flip side, say you have someone who posts regularly, but is consistently rated down by the same group of users, despite a very high positive ratio. Should those few users be able to continue to have the same weight against another user's content? Or should more users need to also dislike a person's content for it to affect their score?

Lot's of room for improvement. As of now, it's basically just post count * some-multiplier. If the multiplier is positive, the content might be good, but not necessarily. Like, right now mine is about 2.15 to 1, score to posts, and I think most folks would tend to agree the content I post is of decent quality. Some constant noise makers, on the other hand, who don't provide any real content (quantity vs quality for sure) have ratios of 3 or more. Heck, the top 5 users by reaction score are users I haven't ever even heard of here, but their scores appear to be ridiculously high just because of high post counts and content that just isn't objectionable in some sub-forums that don't appear to be heavily moderated anyway (insanely low signal to noise ratio in those threads).

There's also the issue for long time users where the "likes" (forget what they were called) from the vBulletin days were simply wiped out entirely, which puts long-term users at a disadvantage. I was actually ranked #2 on that old system by far, with @bonnie at #1 (rightfully so)... but that's a whole different issue. This was strange to me, since the data for converting those to the new system had to have been available, but wasn't done.

Honestly, I think until the score is meaningful, it probably should just be hidden.

 

[danny]

screenshot

You are on the "old" TMC style instead of TMC 2022 style. If you change it to TMC 2022 you'll see what we are talking about.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

You are on the "old" TMC style instead of TMC 2022 style. If you change it to TMC 2022 you'll see what we are talking about.

Ah. I thought it would change automatically. I'm fine with the way it is, but I will give TMC 2022 a try.

 

[danny]

It seems that the "reputation" score now excludes dislike ratings. So it is now only a count of positive reactions, making the score less useful than it was before.

This has been like this for a few months. Unfortunately, the dislike/disagree rating was getting abused.

But yeah, the reputation system is definitely pretty broken and not really representative of the user's reputation, nor by extension is it really a proxy for content quality.

Yeah, we are aware of this and will address it when we get all our other tasks out of the way.

 

[danny]

Ah. I thought it would change automatically. I'm fine with the way it is, but I will give TMC 2022 a try.

It only changes automatically for those who have "Default style" selected, but you likely selected a specific style previously, which means you don't automatically get changed to TMC 2022.

 

[ohmman]

There's also the issue for long time users where the "likes" (forget what they were called) from the vBulletin days were simply wiped out entirely, which puts long-term users at a disadvantage. I was actually ranked #2 on that old system by far, with @bonnie at #1 (rightfully so)... but that's a whole different issue. This was strange to me, since the data for converting those to the new system had to have been available, but wasn't done.

We've discussed this at length in the past, but the old system was a bit of a joke, too. I was also a 10-bar member, and it didn't take long to get there. All I needed was to have some reputation from already highly ranked members like @bonnie and @AnOutsider, and I would jump a full bar at times. Even vBulletin dropped the reputation system because it wasn't very well thought out. They've moved to likes as of a few years ago.

In my opinion, reputation or whatever you want to call it really only has value inasmuch as you're trying to determine if someone is trolling or not. It most certainly should not be a comparative tool or a contest - that's just weird. So I don't see the value in putting a ton of time into some reputation algorithm unless it's being regularly abused or is entirely deceiving to members new or old.

 

[wk057]

We've discussed this at length in the past, but the old system was a bit of a joke, too. I was also a 10-bar member, and it didn't take long to get there. All I needed was to have some reputation from already highly ranked members like @bonnie and @AnOutsider, and I would jump a full bar at times. Even vBulletin dropped the reputation system because it wasn't very well thought out. They've moved to likes as of a few years ago.

In my opinion, reputation or whatever you want to call it really only has value inasmuch as you're trying to determine if someone is trolling or not. It most certainly should not be a comparative tool or a contest - that's just weird. So I don't see the value in putting a ton of time into some reputation algorithm unless it's being regularly abused or is entirely deceiving to members new or old.

Yeah, I meant when moving from vB to just do a raw count, not the actual score. If someone gave kudos on a post, just count it as a "Like" here. Would have been better than nothing.

And yeah, the whole point of a reputation/merit system is to weed out trolls in a way that makes it so folks that post good content are easily recognized as such, and the barrier to entry for the trolls is high enough that they don't tend to reach the same levels as real contributors. A simple system that applies diminishing returns on ratings in a common sense way would go a long way towards making it more useful.

As it stands now, I could probably make a bot that hung out and just quoted stuff from a few posts back in the investor forum, and within a few weeks have a better reputation than my real account despite providing zero useful content.

This has been like this for a few months. Unfortunately, the dislike/disagree rating was getting abused.

It seems like dealing with the abusers (prevent them from being able to rate, perhaps) seems like a better plan than going full YouTube on us and making Dislikes not count. There is definite value to the forum in being able to point out that something is negative, but not rule breaking, and have that crowd-sourced input count in some way.

Yeah, we are aware of this and will address it when we get all our other tasks out of the way.

I kind of figured as much and didn't really expect anyone to really bump this in priority. Glad to know it's on the list, though!

 

[mspohr]

The Search results screen has been odd and less than useful for quite some time:

It's very cluttered and confusing.
The actual search results are redundant.
The links in the results often don't go to specific posts but rather to a thread or forum (page not found) or to another search screen.

 

[mblakele]

The Search results screen has been odd and less than useful for quite some time:
View attachment 741717

It's very cluttered and confusing.
The actual search results are redundant.
The links in the results often don't go to specific posts but rather to a thread or forum (page not found) or to another search screen.

Looks much better here (Safari 15.1, MacOS) — I'd suspect a caching problem on your end, or a browser incompatibility, or perhaps a malfunctioning ad blocker.

 

[cwanja]

The Search results screen has been odd and less than useful for quite some time:
View attachment 741717

It's very cluttered and confusing.
The actual search results are redundant.
The links in the results often don't go to specific posts but rather to a thread or forum (page not found) or to another search screen.

So I could not agree more, but then I changed to Elastic search. And it is so much much of what I would actually expect in search results. Threadloom is, well just a gargled jumble mess. I have no clue how to make sense of that. And to get to the post, you have to edit the URL to remove "threadloom" from it. It will then take you to the post. Super unintuitive and helpful.

 

[ohmman]

Agree with @mblakele, this must be some kind of incompatibility issue. Threadloom is clean and straightforward for me on Safari 15.0, Mac OS.

 

[danny]

It seems like dealing with the abusers (prevent them from being able to rate, perhaps) seems like a better plan than going full YouTube on us and making Dislikes not count. There is definite value to the forum in being able to point out that something is negative, but not rule breaking, and have that crowd-sourced input count in some way.

We didn't go full YouTube, as you can still see how many dislikes a given post has. YouTube doesn't have front-end like/dislike scores for its channels/users. Also, YouTube is a much larger website, with millions of users, so it is vastly less personal and is harder for any one individual to abuse. As far as I can tell, YouTube did what it did to protect its partners and buddies in the corporate media and government. We are not trying to prevent our user's from seeing that other users' content has been disliked.

Unfortunately, we don't currently have good tools for dealing with the abusers, so it was necessary (at least for now) to make the changes we did.

The actual search results are redundant.
The links in the results often don't go to specific posts but rather to a thread or forum (page not found) or to another search screen.

Yeah, that is broken. Please try Elastic Search.

So I could not agree more, but then I changed to Elastic search. And it is so much much of what I would actually expect in search results. Threadloom is, well just a gargled jumble mess. I have no clue how to make sense of that. And to get to the post, you have to edit the URL to remove "threadloom" from it. It will then take you to the post. Super unintuitive and helpful.

I think the issues you were having with Threadloom are because it was broken for you. It is not supposed to function like that.

 

[cwanja]

Looks much better here (Safari 15.1, MacOS) — I'd suspect a caching problem on your end, or a browser incompatibility, or perhaps a malfunctioning ad blocker.

View attachment 741739

Agree with @mblakele, this must be some kind of incompatibility issue. Threadloom is clean and straightforward for me on Safari 15.0, Mac OS.

I think the issues you were having with Threadloom are because it was broken for you. It is not supposed to function like that.

So @mblakele might be on to something. I tried on my mobile device, off wifi (so not behind my Pi-hole) and Threadloom seemed to work. I cannot get my desktop to work with Pi-hole disabled, cache cleared and private browsing. Maybe testing for later. But definitely potentially like an ad-blocker issue.