I agree with the sentiment above. We are getting new gimmicks which are not really needed for a good forum experience, yet the basics, which have been broken since the forum migration have still not been fixed:
- There is still no proper discourse “homepage” where you can see categories and recent posts at once. The combination of the factors of being able to see recent posts without explicitly going to another page, being able to see avatars of familiar users, and seeing a feed of recent posts is what generates the user engagement on discourse:
- There is still not option for cleaner, visually simpler theme. The current one is so flashy and visually complex it takes away focus from the content of the posts themselves.
- The “Remember my choice” checkbox in the external content overlay just straight up doesn’t work at all. Every time I watch a video on this page, I have to get over the redirect overlay. I do not use any special setup. Latest chrome browser without any plugins on Windows.
- The content bloat is just too much. Combination of too much UI fluff and too many sticky posts. For example if I go to the rendering section, this is what I see:
Only the small area marked gree is actually relevant data, the new posts in rendering section. The massive amount of the screen is taken by UI, all sorts of useless thick bars of various colors, and ancient sticky posts.
Just please make the forum not painful to use before adding gimmicks. I used to post on these forums a lot, but after the migration to the developer community, I’ve mostly stopped. The amount of clutter surrounding the actual content I want to focus on (the users’ posts) has became so extreme I just don’t have energy to put up with it anymore.