EVE General Discussion

Most actual 'forum' software evolved from the old dial up BBS days. That's about mid 1980's folks and pretty much the longest evolution strain in modern computer communications. It's long before email and fax machines even existed.

All of this stuff has been analyzed to death by people/institutions over time. There was a period in the 1990's where major studies were done to figure out the 'best' type of post up style format communications were. That's what launched the design of systems like the super popular vBulletin and other forums of the late 90's. This forum is pretty clearly a decendent of vBulletin and almost identical in it's layouts.

When Myspace, and later Facebook came along, they tossed out the convention in favor of ad-driven interfaces. Then Twitter with it's chat style interface and toss in Redditt which threw out any semblance of readability in favor of the all powerful 'like/dislike' vote system.

You make choices when you design these systems. If beauty is your primary desire, everything else has to take a back seat by definition. If Readability is your desire, well, you get the picture.

It's very hard to make posting software that does everything well, there's always a trade off.

Smartphones are actually anathema to modern UI. They have small screens with limited interface options. This automatically cripples them by comparison to a normal/traditional computer interface. I'm not knocking them, they just kind of need their own way of seeing the world, but that is why webpages are actually coded separately for them.

So if you designed software to be smartphone friendly, you'd have to sacrifice the interface that regular computers use... unless you are willing to spend a lot of time and effort maintaining the code base for both PC's and Smartphones. Tablets are a strange beast that lives someplace in between those two worlds and while not mastering either, don't suffer the full drawbacks of either.

My personal take is that it's possible to have one size fits all 'forum software' but it's not going to be the best looking or working on any platform.

lol The problem with "one size fits all" is it fits nobody. My comments about design have to do with studies that track eye movement, and human behavior upon seeing, or not seeing something. Madison Avenue, of course, originated its interest with presentations such as billboards and newspaper ads. Columbia University was drawn into the subject when newspapers began to feel the heat from television in competing for readers...or customers...and with the advent of the computer we now say "users."

Functionality means X depending upon what school you're speaking to. Website functionality (more often than not) deals with navigating pages, finding tables of contents or links, the load speeds,...clickability as it were. Readability has to do with how humans obtain and retain information contained within text only. Regardless of all the bells and whistles available to digital presentation, how the eye functions in conjunction with the cognitive processes remains relatively constant for a species.

You might notice the black, serif text on a white background is still boiler plate for experienced publications to present lengthy textual material. This isn't because the ones doing it are unaware of, or are too stick-in-the-mud to use the almost unlimited colors and fonts available (and presentable) in the digital arena.

It has been ably demonstrated the human eye attached to the human brain reacts to all these elements, color, form, order, placement...and not all these reactions are conducive to the purpose of obtaining and retaining information contained within text. In fact, some of the possibilities available will negate, or prevent this process. Some color combinations will actually induce nausea. Others can cause headaches. However, for the purposes of readability, just flagging concentration, or wandering eye focus is a fatal failing.

There is a move for games using forums to minimize the actual contact between game management and players. Such forums are being provided only to meet a customer expectation, rather than function as a venue for interaction. Such forums can use the billboard ad approach of splashy colors and dramatic fonts to create a momentary rush of excitement from visual stimuli. However they were not intended to be used to convey any usable information. Success in communication is not a priority with these.

Whereas with the EVE forum we tend to expect to engage in rather involved discussions somewhat of a technical nature. We are indeed blessed with members of our playerbase able to walk us less tech-literate people through some of the more involved and intricate features of EVE. To do this though, obviously, their ability to write, and our ability to understand what was written is the key feature here, and what I'd daresay sets our forum apart from any other gaming forum - just another area where the EVE Community is digital history happening before your eyes.

I know I'm stating the obvious here, but gee, once you know enough what isn't obvious? I'd suggest any changes with this forum be done with regard to functionality in processing information conveyed through text, first. The last thing I'd consider is what a 13-year old thinks is cool (this week). Whether or not to format for screens other than the PC sized screen would entirely depend on usage numbers.

As was ably mentioned before, doing double duty (PC browser/smartphone screen) could become costly. You'd have to justify the expense to me. We'd roll with the clear majority. 50/50 wouldn't cut it. Why should CCP pay for your lifestyle choices? If you can access the forum on the same machine you keep the game on, what obliges them to also have a version for your handheld device? Nothing that I can see.

PS As an aside: Much of the TL;DR difficulty people have here is in background/letter color/font choice. This forum uses a dark background with white sans serif typeface smaller than 12point in actual size (not size on the label). This violates the information we have about eye-strain and fatigue. It also negatively impacts the attention span, and the brain's subconscious preferences for the method it wants to use to obtain information. Just sayin'...

Well, I may be too old (40+) but I really hate it to type a longer text on a Smartphone. Just watching the forum is enough for me on a Smartphone so I can live with limited functionality there. What I would love is a good reply functionality that cuts the text down to the thing you want to reply without any former text.
Responsive design doesn't mean that you have all the same functionality on any platform.

Please God no it's like a real crap gamer site

CCP is still around aren't they?

Are you implying that the Valk forums look good, are easily readable and an improvement over what we have atm?

I used a v Bulletin forum that had these functionality. It just quoted the text you where replying to and not what the other was replying to. This really cut down editing and post length. What would be great would be something that you can mark a text and reply to it and the forum does all the copying of the formatting. This would make it much easier to argue over different points but I haven't found a forum yet which can do that.

Gonna be honest with you.

Those forums make me glad I didn't get Valkyrie.

In all fairness though, they're still a lot better than the Elite: Dangerous forums and their ban-happy mods. The community there is cancer.

oldforums still my favo

/c