dynamic community sites- message board vs bulletin board forum

[yamahammer]

I recently got reamed by a very defensive admin at a design community site that i frequently visit. The site is set up in a threaded message board. Personally, I visit probably 25-30 forums daily so being able to quickly read topics that i feel are interesting is very important. I like Ajax features like being able to read the first post in a tooltip, sorting, userCPs to make it look and feel like i want it to and things like that.

 

So, I felt I would share my opinion and posted in the feedback section. It was a fairly short post, where i politely listed what i enjoy about the community and features i liked from the design. I contrasted what i like about the features on their site and on other sites using a php based forum like vB, phpBB, or SMF. I asked why they hadn't switched to a more modern featured forum.

 

What i got back was a very defensive reply from them. It really seemed like he took offense to what i had to say. Maybe he gets 100 emails/day of people telling him how to run his community and he just ran out of nerve or i just caught him on a bad day... idk. I don't usually spend my day looking for people to piss off. I certainly didn't mean to call his baby ugly.

 

So, i got to thinking... content is always king. But design and user experience would have to be queen. Maybe I'm way off... or maybe i should think twice about clicking on the feedback section. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on message boards vs bulletin boards. Is it really that big of a deal?

[Daniel0]

I think it's important that the UI is logical and easy to use. I'm mostly concerned with the admin/mod side of the features though. Essentially the core user functionality is the same in all forums. As a user I just need an easy way to track replies to topics I've participated in.

[zq29]

Those threaded message boards really annoy me. Is it just me or does it take way too much clicking and sifting through ugly quoted replies to find the actual information you're looking for?

 

I find forums such as this much more intuitive, efficient and friendly.

[Anti-Moronic]

It isn't just you Semi, they are extremely user unfriendly. To me, the next logical step from that structure and setup is a fully fledged forum like this.

 

Don't know why he got defensive - he can't defend something that he's already lost. Idiot - some people will always live in the past and refuse to conform to modern approaches.

 

 

[corbin]

I've come across a lot of forums where mods/admins are like "OMG WHAT?  NOT POSSIBLE.  EVERYTHING I DO IS PERFECT!!!!!!!!"

 

 

Fortunately PHPFreaks is a very laid back forum haha.

 

 

 

But yeah, all of the popular forum systems are laid out fairly well.  I can't imagine using a message board now x.x.  Ewwww......

[Philip]

Yeah, I'm the same way. The help/general discussion on HTML-Kit is laid out horribly in my opinion. I hate newsgroups/message boards like that!

 

I guess I'm just a forum guy

[Daniel0]

Yeah I hate that as well. I don't understand why people still use things like mailing lists. I find a linearly laid out conversation much easier to follow.

[yamahammer]

The discussion with the admin got skewed beyond belief. Its still going on, actually. So far, i have been accused of claiming the ad content is irrelevant/not needed, the community is sub par or inferior, and various 'personal insults'. None of which were ever mentioned. I simply wanted to express my opinion of the format.

If its not in poor taste or against the rules, I would very much appreciate it if i could post the link to the thread. I mean, I consider myself pretty respectful, and would never intentionally insult or undermine someone. Well, maybe if they provoked me, but not under normal circumstances. Mostly, I would like an opinion on if i am going crazy. Am I out of line? Should I refrain from posting my opinion as a rule?