How about an Outline with a title thread structure like DPReview (and Reddit)?

[kguttag]

How about using the "threaded outline with title" topic structure of DPReview (and Reddit)?

The current structure makes it impossible to quickly scan through threads to find things I might be interested in. If a topic gets long, it takes too long to scroll through pages of stuff, so I give up. It's hard to find what I want to read, even if there is only one page with all the scrolling.

This is a problem with all the alternatives to DPReview (other than Reddit r/canon). Adopting the outline thread structure will make this forum stand out compared to the many that use the endless scrolling paging structure.

 

[Tim Mayo]

Unfortunately a threaded view similar to the DPR forums is not supported by the forum software that this forum runs on (Xenforo) which makes it difficult to implement. Reading some threads on this over there it also sounds like it’s not something the developers plan to implement. But I’ll look into it and see if there are any add-ons that implement something similar. Although personally the first thing I ever did when visiting a thread over on DPR was to hit the flat view button.

 

[kguttag]

Unfortunately a threaded view similar to the DPR forums is not supported by the forum software that this forum runs on (Xenforo) which makes it difficult to implement. Reading some threads on this over there it also sounds like it’s not something the developers plan to implement. But I’ll look into it and see if there are any add-ons that implement something similar. Although personally the first thing I ever did when visiting a thread over on DPR was to hit the flat view button.

Thanks for your response, and I understand you are constrained by the software you run. Still, once there are many responses, it seems difficult to decide where to look in a long thread, and I will not scroll through reading everything.

Unless there is the option to put in a title for each response, the outline format becomes less helpful. The other thing that helps is the "likes" of a given post. I'm much more likely to read a response with a unique title that summarizes the response and one where several people have liked it.

 

[Tim Mayo]

Thanks for your response, and I understand you are constrained by the software you run. Still, once there are many responses, it seems difficult to decide where to look in a long thread, and I will not scroll through reading everything.

Unless there is the option to put in a title for each response, the outline format becomes less helpful. The other thing that helps is the "likes" of a given post. I'm much more likely to read a response with a unique title that summarizes the response and one where several people have liked it.

One thing that might help is when people use the question format instead of discussion (default in camera specific forums) This enables voting (up/down) similar to Reddit for the replies. The original poster can also select a solution if one reply hits the nail on the head. The solution is then displayed at the top of the thread. You can also sort question threads by votes to help find the most popular replies. Unfortunately despite having this feature for a while now it doesn’t get used very much. I need to look into encouraging its use more as it really is very helpful when used correctly.

 

[davidl111]

On DPReview I too always viewed threads in flat view. But it's good that DPReview gave people the choice of how they wanted to view a thread.