Few forum feature requests

Still unable to get used to it… From which, The followings :

1. When typing a ‘:’, I would like to not end with a slight-smile smilie instead…
2. Is it possible to, at least, have the user name beside the title of each topic created ? Most of the time the rounded badge, with the first letter in it, is anything but informative : a bad idea directly copied from Android…
3. I would like the Computer/Studio hardware & setup subforum be set as an independent one : for me, it’s meaningless to have to go in the Lounge to reach it…
4. I would also like to be able to see an eventually existing signature when hovering the mouse cursor over an user badge : it would save us from added clicking and page changes. Several other buttons allow this kind of thing for other added informations.
5. Last but not least, I would like answers from a mod to my inquiries posted here, as I’ve only got very partial ones (thanks to MatthiasNYC, though)…

I’ve adjusted the site settings to only show the emoji popover when at least one extra character is typed after colon. If people want to discover the emojis then they can use the icon in the message composition text area.

If you’re using a desktop browser, you can hover over the rounded user icon to see the username. I’d imagine the rationale for doing it this way is that using the rounded user icons is more space efficient than listing usernames and gives you an immediate sense of the participation in a given topic.

We already have a lot of top-level categories and I’m reluctant to add to them. You can click directly on the subcategory listing to straight to that subcategory.

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There aren’t any settings that I can see that would enable this. If you think it would be a useful feature to add to Discourse, it would be interesting to see how people respond to the idea on the Discourse feature requests category.

If you could repeat any points you feel went unanswered here, it would be most helpful.

Hi, Ben, and thanks for chiming in. About your answers :

1. Indeed, it’s more convenient now.
2. Yep, but precisely, we need to hover the mouse cursor over the said icon. Never mind, I’ll do with it…
3. I see, on the main Steinberg page, 13 top-level categories on 4 rows : adding another one wouldn’t harm, I think : just an added category to the fourth one. Actually, I think that the Made-with-Steinberg tag should take the present ComputerStudio… place. Again, I think that discussions about how to set up our gear/soft have nothing to do with any ‘lounge’ ones. I truely think that this important aspect of the forums should me more seeable and we shouldn’t see a ‘forum’ tag in it - makes no sense, in my view.
4. OK, I’ll try to make such a request : the idea is that it would at least solved partially the fact that signatures are no longer visible on posts.
5. Done below, for the ones still unanswered…

5a) Where is the forum help for users ? I finally found a ‘newbie’ one in an indirect way (unable to make a link to it, actually, see 3.) which only answers to basic questions. At least, I now know how to reply with quote, which seems a rather basic feature to me and is not directly available.

5b) How to define ALL threads as Normal instead of seeing messages piling up in the ‘Notifications’ section of my profile ? In it, there is no ‘Normal’ setting, whether in Categories or Tags …

5c) What are Profile headers and User card background made for ? And how to eventually set them correctly (image dimensions and format) ?

5d) How to change the posts font ? It’s a challenge to read posts with the more or less ‘Times new Roman’ like one used, with a dark background (the white one isn’t an option : an eyes killer…).

5e) What is the ‘Vote’ number displayed under some topic titles for (not all of them, strangely…), and how to eventually use it ?

5f) in the Preferences, what on earth Enable defer to mark topics unread and Show counts on browser icon options are actually doing ?

5g) I suddenly have seen a lot of new user names, since the transition : obviously, a lot of them have been changed during the platform migration process. So, at the end, who is who ?

5h - an added one) There is a tag issue : how to combine in example ‘Cubase 11’ and ‘Feature request’ tags ? Beside this, I’m not sure that the ‘solved/unsolved’ added tags are really useful…

5i - also an added one) I see some topics with a ‘This topic has a solution’ mark : how to use it ?

I would like to insist on the lack of an exhaustive and easily reachable on-line help about the different forum features. Anyway, thanks for any added enlightment…

I’ve been referring people to the Discourse New User Guide.

All threads are “Normal” until you interact with them. Check out the settings here:

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Here’s a profile header:

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This isn’t a user preference and was configured by us. Here’s some background: New Forum! - #122 by dspreadbury

Some enterprising users have found ways to customise the look and feel of websites to their preferences.

Each product team had the choice whether to enable or disable this feature for their category. I think some of the product owners who enabled it are still deciding what to do with it. In the meantime I think you can safely ignore it for the time being.

Google is your friend here:

One common complaint with phpBB was that users were unable to change their usernames themselves. This is now possible on Discourse and people have been using it - so that might explain why you’re seeing a lot of unfamiliar usernames.

Filtering topics on multiple tags is a bit of a weak spot at the moment. It’s possible, but only by searching: Search results for '#cubase-11 #feature-request' - Steinberg Forums

A quick Google for “discourse solved” takes me straight to how this works:

When I first started using Discourse, I wondered the same thing about a comprehensive user manual, but I’ve come to realise that most answers to questions I had were just a Google search away.

I appreciate the exhaustive answer, Ben, thanks ! I’ll keep your previous post as an added reference, when I’ll need it.

Concerning Google, well, I use it only when all the other search engines I know have failed (Qwant, Duck Duck Go, Startpage…) which is probably something like 0.2% of the cases. Why so ? Simply because I know that Google (as well as the others AFAM) is not my friend, actually…

This, to suggest again that an exhaustive and directly reachable forum guide could be of great help. I would also like you to reconsider my point 3)…

Thanks again for the tips…

We (Steinberg) are unlikely to produce a comprehensive user manual for Discourse, but I’ll certainly pass on your request to my contacts at Discourse and see what they say.

Comprehensive user manual?

Just the idea that such a thing might be required indicates that this new forum is way too complicated, complex and unintuitive to use. It might be possible for the developers to understand, but we, the users, do not need all the tags, buttons, childish ‘Let’s all welcome little Johnny to the forum’ or ‘You haven’t posted here for six months, you naughty boy’ type messages and God knows what else.

The old forum was the opposite of this - simple, clear, easy to use and understand.

@fenderchris

I totally understand that you don’t like the new forum, you’ve made it very clear in many other posts,.
Of course it’s a totally valid opinion and not everybody embraces change (for good or bad!) but do you think it helps anyone to jump on other, rather positive and helpful posts, to have a rant ?

There is zero chance of going back to the old forum so I’m not quite sure what it is you’re trying to achieve ?

I did not intend to criticise anyone for requesting a user manual. Doing so is perfectly valid.

I was merely stating that, in my view, the idea that one might be necessary is likely to be an indication that things are too complicated.

IMO, I don’t think it needs a user manual. Nevertheless, I respect the fact that people like to learn things in different ways.

Given the much richer functionality of Discourse compared to phpBB, I think the site is pretty intuitive and a few Internet searches answer most questions I have. (If you’d prefer not to use Google, that’s fine - you can search directly on https://meta.discourse.org too)