I actually like the new forum style - yet I still believe it will have moderately significant negative long-term consequences for Unreal Engine developers. Let me explain what I mean by that:
It basically feels like this design is trying to imitate social media websites or applications. Now, on the one hand this is good, because these services are designed to be pleasant to use. But more importantly… these services are not designed to be useful tools! They are just designed to get people to spend as much time on social media as possible, because that is how social media companies earn revenue. And, this new forum style has introduces various features, which, while being “kind of nice”, are ultimately harmful for productivity:
- The like-button. From now on, posts will no longer be judged by their content, but simply by their popularity, because it is less effort to look at this number than to actual read some text
- As a consequence, posts will also be shorter and more emotional, because it is easier to get likes this way. Look at my second post below this one to illustrate my point
- People will also offer less help to others, because they can get a similar emotional reward by just pressing the like button
- Long complex technical explanations in particular will become a lot more rare, because the effort/reward ratio in terms of likes is very bad for these
Overall, by gamifying discussions, you are replacing peoples intrinsic motivations with extrinsic ones, and the latter are no longer connected to what this forum is actually supposed to achieve: Teach people how to use Unreal Engine.