unread content in Topic Feed not appearing as BOLD after upgrade to 4.6

[Nahash5150]

Hello,

 

The Topic Feed blocks appear to show all topics as 'read' (normal type) even though there is new, unread content (even since the upgrade has completed). If I go to the category, then unread topics show up in bold as they should, and switch to regular type after visiting.

[Marc Stridgen]

This is something that has not happened for quite some time. This was removed as it wasnt really something that could be accurately represented due to the caching of data

[Nahash5150]

That's because I put off upgrading for so long since it breaks so many custom features and as time goes on, Invision takes a stronger and stronger control over the appearance of the UX.

I don't like the change to the Topic Feed. Makes it kinda useless now.

[Jim M]

1 hour ago, Nahash5150 said:

That's because I put off upgrading for so long since it breaks so many custom features and as time goes on, Invision takes a stronger and stronger control over the appearance of the UX.

I don't like the change to the Topic Feed. Makes it kinda useless now.

As mentioned by my colleague, this was done because of the caching in place you would have a topic with incorrect unread/read status so in fact, from our point of view, was worse as people may think they read something when they didn't or get frustrated when they read something it did not properly be marked as such. You're more than welcome to post a feature suggestion for this but at this time, this is the decision we're moving with. Sorry I do not have better news for you.

[Nahash5150]

I have never experienced that problem with the Topic Feed before. I've been using Invision since 2017.

 

Also, the BOLD shows up on an activity feed for unread content.

 

Let me ask this - is Invision interested in creating a CMS for people who manage forums or are they going in a different direction? Like eCommerce or something? 

Edited February 1, 2022 by Nahash5150

[Jim M]

13 minutes ago, Nahash5150 said:

I have never experienced that problem with the Topic Feed before. I've been using Invision since 2017.

 

Also, the BOLD shows up on an activity feed for unread content.

Are you referring here to a Topic Feed block still or the Activity Streams? The latter is not a block so would not have the same caching.

[Nahash5150]

12 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Are you referring here to a Topic Feed block still or the Activity Streams? The latter is not a block so would not have the same caching.

Yes - the Activity Stream.

Different caching - got it.

So let me ask this - can you show a good example of how your 'modernized' forums are set up?

I'm at a serious loss here. How are visiting members supposed to keep up with active content without having to navigate the entire freaking forum?

[Jim M]

Just now, Nahash5150 said:

Yes - the Activity Stream.

Different caching - got it.

So let me ask this - can you show a good example of how your 'modernized' forums are set up?

I'm at a serious loss here. How are visiting members supposed to keep up with active content without having to navigate the entire freaking forum?

The Activity Streams are a great way to organize and keep track of content which is important to a user or group. I personally use them for support on this forum because we are responsible for a few forums and it allows me to view things as they come up.

On my personal community, I use Activity Streams and the Follow system to keep track of everything throughout the community. Additionally, using them together with Activity Stream subscriptions is fantastic to stay alerted. (I like to welcome new users personally when they post in our intro forum is a good example)

Again, this goes back to my own personal community but I have a homepage using the block system to showcase new topics overall, new topics in certain forums (i.e. we have a for sale and traders forum so good to see what's going on), and  the Our Picks system to call out important topics. Users have enough information there to see what is going on without needing to see the read status. If they want that, they view the Activity Stream where it tracks that for them.

There are plenty of options and I can move this to the Community Managers' Lounge if you would like to hear from fellow community owners.

[Nahash5150]

Ohhhhh...

So you want it to act more like a social media platform.

 

You know, not all content fits neatly into a Twitter style UX. And not all users on the internet are under 17.

So yeah, if you can point me into the direction of people who can fix this terrible change and deviation from a bulletin board format to a Twitter format - I'd really appreciate it.

[Jim M]

1 minute ago, Nahash5150 said:

Ohhhhh...

So you want it to act more like a social media platform.

 

You know, not all content fits neatly into a Twitter style UX. And not all users on the internet are under 17.

So yeah, if you can point me into the direction of people who can fix this terrible change and deviation from a bulletin board format to a Twitter format - I'd really appreciate it.

The Activity Stream is a means to find content, it is not a means to read content. Just like on the Feed Topic feed block, they would click the topic link to read the full thing. By no means am I suggesting to setup your community like Twitter, I am merely informing you how you can use the software to find content without viewing each and every forum.

[Nahash5150]

On 2/1/2022 at 2:31 PM, Jim M said:

The Activity Stream is a means to find content, it is not a means to read content. Just like on the Feed Topic feed block, they would click the topic link to read the full thing. By no means am I suggesting to setup your community like Twitter, I am merely informing you how you can use the software to find content without viewing each and every forum.

The Activity Stream is not as practical as a Topic Feed. With a Topic Feed - you are one click away from engaging in a discussion as soon as you visit the site. With the Activity Stream, unless you are viewing regularly, it takes a lot of totally unnecessary hunting to find current topics of interest.

The AS is great for Mods - it's terrible for people who only visit once a day or so.

The AS easily gets filled up by one or two hot topics, and floods everything else out. That's silly for infrequent visitors to have to deal with.

Following every topic you engage in is a notification nightmare. Following topics needs to be well managed by a user - it doesn't replace a Topic Feed in any practical sense at all.

The Topic Feeds need to be fixed. Virtually all other forum engines have used them for decades. I've managed forums since EZ board in 2000, and this recent change by Invision is really, really bad and is in now way a step 'forward'. It's totally backwards, like 1993 backwards.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Nahash5150
misssssspels

[Jim M]

2 minutes ago, Nahash5150 said:

The Activity Stream is not as practical as a Topic Feed. With a Topic Feed - you are one click away from engaging in a discussion as soon as you visit the site. With the Activity Stream, unless you are viewing regularly, it takes a lot of totally unnecessary hunting to find current topics of interest.

The AS is great for Mods - it's terrible for people who only visit once a day or so.

The AS easily gets filled up by one or two hot topics, and floods everything else out. That's silly for infrequent visitors to have to deal with.

Following every topic you engage in is a notification nightmare. Following topics needs to be well managed by a user - it doesn't replace a Topic Feed in any practical sense at all.

The Topic Feeds need to be fixed. Virtually all other forum engines have used them for decades. I've managed forums since EZ board in 2000, and this recent change by Invision is really, really bad and is in now way a step 'forward'. It's totally backwards, like 1993 backwards.

Activity Streams are by far more powerful than a Topic Feed as it can adapt to whatever it is you are wanting to see. A default Activity Stream can be set as the homepage, should you desire. I would say their only downfall for your use is the Activity Stream cannot be combined on another page it sounds like.

Activity Streams can be customized to what you want to see, you can also set it to only view content items rather than replies, etc... so it is only one entry per topic (content piece). If you have a set of users who only care about a few forums on your community, I would setup a stream for them and set it in a prominent place in your navigation. 

 

As mentioned, if topic feeds are something you care about, I would create a Feature Suggestion forum for this change you are requesting or hire a third party provider to help you bring this functionality back. The alternatives which I mentioned here goes back a few replies where you requested a means for users to keep up with your community without having to navigate and review each and every forum on your community 🙂 . If they do not fit, they do not fit. Unfortunately, the topic feed acting in the way it is now is intended and I am sorry I do not have better new for you.

[Nahash5150]

25 minutes ago, Jim M said:

s mentioned, if topic feeds are something you care about, I would create a Feature Suggestion forum for this change you are requesting or hire a third party provider to help you bring this functionality back.

1) I can't image people liking this change. I'm sure Invision is getting a lot of feedback about it and I'm definitely going to add to it.

2) You've been very diplomatic about the situation and I respect that - but I'm afraid you haven't convinced me that by breaking a feature you've made less used alternatives better. That's a wholistic non-sequitur.

3) I can't imagine anyone complaining about a Topic Feed block (what the heck guys, the AS so so much better! The Topic Feed block just takes up space unnecessarily in the Page Editor) LOL I don't think so...

4) I've learned my lesson with custom apps. They work wonderfully until a major software update breaks them. Waste of money and time - most of the time.

 

tl;dr

There was once a company that got very big and very wealthy, and became a sort of industry standard (Pelco). Until they managed their company according to a very small set of very large clients that they didn't want to lose, and tailored nearly all of their developments around this narrow group of clients. Then they got smashed by competitors, as their features were not very good for most applications, and their vision narrowed and clouded, unable to respond to the needs of the much larger general public.

[Jim M]

19 minutes ago, Nahash5150 said:

I can't image people liking this change. I'm sure Invision is getting a lot of feedback about it and I'm definitely going to add to it.

You've been very diplomatic about the situation and I respect that - but I'm afraid you haven't convinced me that by breaking a feature you've made less used alternatives better. That's a wholistic non-sequitur.

I'm sorry to hear that these alternatives do not meet your needs. However, I will re-iterate that the feature was originally broken due to the nature of blocks and their native caching which would not show the user the correct read status. Removing the read status to make it agnostic is the change which was done some time ago. On small boards, it could be this was never found due to caching times and infrequent users but on a whole from all sized communities, self-hosted to our Cloud, we heard significant complaints about the read status not being correct. I'm afraid, it's a damned if we do and damned if don't scenario by all involved as the bug would require significant rewrites of the block core code to fully resolve so this was the solution to appease all involved. Once again, I am sorry this does not meet your needs and I hope in the future you can find something that fits them.

18 minutes ago, Nahash5150 said:

I can't imagine anyone complaining about a Topic Feed block (what the heck guys, the AS so so much better! The Topic Feed block just takes up space unnecessarily in the Page Editor) LOL I don't think so...

This was never mentioned at all. What I mentioned was I can see the downfall of the Activity Stream in your use if you are looking for something which would embed in other pages. If there is confusion, please ask as we do not want to mislead other clients.

32 minutes ago, Nahash5150 said:

There was once a company that got very big and very wealthy, and became a sort of industry standard (Pelco). Until they managed their company according to a very small set of very large clients that they didn't want to lose, and tailored nearly all of their developments around this narrow group of clients. Then they got smashed by competitors, as their features were not very good for most applications, and their vision narrowed and clouded, unable to respond to the needs of the much larger general public.

Once again, I assure you that all feedback is considered. Unfortunately, we cannot appease everyone all the time. However, all ideas and suggestions are thoroughly reviewed and vetted by our team.

[Nahash5150]

16 minutes ago, Jim M said:

I'm afraid, it's a damned if we do and damned if don't scenario by all involved as the bug would require significant rewrites of the block core code to fully resolve so this was the solution to appease all involved.

Indeed.

Only one correction - it's not a solution, but another cache problem, however more cerebral.

 

I know you guys work hard and I'm not diminishing that. I know that there's a multitude of requests and bug reports and UX evolutions to consider.

But of all things forum - the Topic Feed is...fundamental to what a forum is! In fact I see all the block feeds behave the same.

This can't be happening...

[Jim M]

Thank you for your feedback but I believe this topic has ran it's course. If you have any further recommendations about the topic feed block or any other features, please post them in our Feature Suggestion forum for further evaluation.