None of my responses (other than point 2 in this post) were subjective; they were all objective, so I’m not assuming anything. I’ve purposely been responding in an objective point of view, and after the next paragraph, will continue to do so.
If you want to know my opinion: at first, I didn’t like the infinite scrolling feature, either; in fact, I was pretty aggravated by it. But after actually using the new forums, I don’t even notice it, which I think is the point of why it exists in the first place: it doesn’t get in your way, unlike pages, which do.
Put simply: the contents of a forum are not pages, but posts, and you do not read a forum for the pages, but for the posts. Since everything revolves around posts, the goal is to allow users to read as many posts as possible in as little time as possible (maximize read time, minimize wait time). Removing the “next page” helps achieve this goal. If you think clicking “next page” and waiting for the next page to load is better than just reading posts uninterrupted… idk, you do you, but it’s an unnecessary extra step considering you likely want to read more.
As for organization: If you need to save a post, just bookmark it. If you’re trying to find a post, just search the thread for keywords (works with CTRL+F).
I was mentioning other widely used programs with similar functionality to the new forums to illustrate that we have already worked with infinite scrolling before, so it’s no different here.
Also, while a forum and, say, a Word document are different, they are similar, as both are meant for reading and writing, so it would make sense if they had similar features.
Even if that was true (which, by simple logic, is not), you still have to reload & redraw everything else. For pages, the entire page needs to be reloaded (granted, cache) & redrawn on each new page. With infinite scroll, you only need to load & draw new posts.
This would only be a problem if you’re not reading the post (like you’re
speedrunning:man_running: the thread). You would only need to scroll a page fast if you’re trying to get to a certain post deep in the thread, and, in that case, you would just use the post scrollbar:man_shrugging:. When you’re actually reading the posts (which is what you do in a forum), the hitch goes unnoticed.
This is because, by the time you’re done reading what’s currently on screen, the next set of posts are already loaded (so it basically “preloads” the next “page”). This contrasts with pages, where you only load the next page after everything on the current page has been read, which causes downtime as you are not reading anything while the next page loads.
It doesn’t load 1 post at a time; proof: the loading icon & hitch only happens after every 20 (or so) posts, meaning it loads multiple posts in one query. Once again, equivalent to loading pages automatically.
How bout this: there is a setting on deviant art where you can choose whether to use infinite scrolling or pages. Would you like that?