As David has indicated the programming wizards are working to incorporate many of the suggestions.
I do see a lot of new threads regarding the wishes and it is great that people have migrated here but many individual wish threads is starting to clutter the board (and pushing actual mutual fund discussions below the radar). It is probably making it harder for David and crew to refer to in one place.
Let's keep all the wishes, improvement requests into this thread.
Moderator, could you make this thread sticky for a while?
Comments
These thoughts reflect back to the FA board, but also to my earlier days of message boards on the young interenet.
1. FULL VIEW of all LADDERED replies that have been posted to the FIRST message; as is now available at FA. I personally find it very easy to take a quick glance of all the messages; and it does save time. I know that TIME allowed in one's day for fund research and interaction here is critical for most, and especially keeping "newbies" coming back to this site is of most importance. So, ease of use to "discover" what one is most interested in at the time is high on my list of desired functions.
There could be many examples going backwards into the current posts, but one recent example is a post question about "real estate" funds. While this is usually some discussion related to this common style of question, many of the replies are at the subject line only. These type of replies are not readily viewable without a dropdown, laddered style....."quick view" thread list.
THIS site is one big online REFERENCE. Not unlike any printed reference book; be it auto, gardening, cooking or whatever, one should first go to the index to find the major topic areas which are then sectioned into the specific areas within the major topic: Cooking....under the MEAT section are all the meat types within the book and perhaps further under CHICKEN are the recipe types related to chicken....fried, roasted, etc.
For me, the biggest drawback to the site at this time is the inability for a "quick' overview. When I return from one week of business or whatever, and have not had access or time to visit the current FA; I can pop up that discussion board and within a few minutes, do a broad scan of all the starting subjects and everything threaded down from the first post. I am concerned that the lost of this quick view will, especially keep newbies from returning; AS their/one's first impression (ease of use) is most critical.
2. LINKS...AUTO INSERT AND NAMING. While I am able, but lazy to insert and name a link within the text here; I am not likely to do this, as I just won't type through all the HREF...dah, dah. Although I did learn HTML needed to construct a pretty EBAY auction in the very early days; this is now an auto feature at EBAY. I suspect the vast majority of members here will not take the time to name a link with HTML coding.
ALTHOUGH I suspect this feature is pending for the site and not yet set into place. YES, one may just copy/paste and drop a link into the text area for others to use, but it doesn't look very clean.
OK.....enough for now. Outta the house I must go.
Respectfully,
catch
Regards,
catch
2. Agree, would like to see name of OP consistently, not just last poster in a thread.
Thanks for getting the site up and running!
Agree with Catch. Would prefer laddered view and ability to respond directly to individual posts within the thread. However, this is a wonderful board. Very neat and clean. Navigates easily. Its layout should discourage devolution into off topic ramblings or personalities. I can see where a moderator would welcome that. The cost resides in giving up some of the spontaneity and give and take we've grown accustomed to.
(My computer also does not follow the links as posted quickly.)
Also, maybe it's there already, but it would be nice to know which posts are just links to other site's articles. At times we are bombarded by 6, 8 10 in a row. I do appreciate the links. I often print them out and read them on coffee breaks or after work, but other times I'm just trying to view opinions and discussion.
Whatever you end up with, this "Who Moved My Cheese" guy will adjust because I enjoy the people and the discussions at FundAlalrm.
* Each new discussion on the main list is taking too much screen estate. Can you switch to a smaller font so we can pack a bit more posts and it would make it easier to scan through the posts. With wide screen screens on laptops, it became important to manage the vertical space more efficiently. A lot of current laptops have 1280x800 or 1366x768 format. At least for logged in users allow them to have a smaller font choice.
* My own posts are being colored with a light blue background. The font color contrast is not good enough against this blue. I would prefer better contrast for easy reading.
AND, for some reason I do not see the handle of the original poster!
In my view (unless I am somehow missing some setting) that is a major omission!
I have my own list of those to watch for, those to ignore, those to never-ever-ever miss. The "original" FA format allows one to see the original poster "&" quickly skim the repliers, giving a quick likely appraisal of both the original post and the following discussion before I decide whether to dig in. (Which to read, which to skip, and which to walk away from.)
If these two features can be readily incorporated I believe it would be a value-enhancer.
recurring themes.
Is there a provision for member investing-related blogs? On FundAlarm, lots of posters had thoughts on organizing or tweaking investments in relation to changing personal or family circumstances; blogs might be a way to capture these closely related issues w/o using the main discussion board.
Thanks.
Paul
The other issue is that it would be hard to find the previous article [i.e. others may post one article twice or thrice because we cannot 'find' the previous link to the same article].
just a few minor points but this website is AWESOME
thanks
There are a few contributors from whom I read every post, whether or not the subject of the original post is of immediate interest to me, because I've found that they almost always say something that's worth my while to consider. The FA board format allows me to find their posts by doing a text search (ctrl-F) on their name. Without the ability to quickly and conveniently locate those contributors' posts, for me, much of the value and utility of the board will be lost.
Thank you for your consideration.
Thanks.