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Seriously, why is the default selection in the create new topic dialogue 'no forum'?
Seems a cruel trick to play, now the internet while be forever denied my wholey unique and scintillating thread about tyre clearances on road bikes...
if you can get a playing card in there it's fine
Where is this No Forum? Is it invite only? Is that where all the update information is?
The 'No Forum' is the future, all part of the plan 🙂
By making folk choose, it should reduce the number of "wrong forum" posts.
Wot scotroutes says. Post now disappears rather than appearing on the wrong forum if you forget to select
It shouldn't allow a "no selection" though.
It should default to ‘No forum’ to force a conscious choice by the user, but not allow submission of the post without selecting a forum.
Pretty basic UX stuff, but hardly surprising.
<Post-testing edit>
So it turns out it does exactly that. If you supply a subject and body, but leave as 'No forum' you get an error message 'No Forum ID' and it doesn't submit. Using Safari on a Mac.
Wonder why the OP's submitted, unless they've fixed it in the there hours since his post.
Can we get some google geo analysis to see if what is UX is top of the Tod searches
And to followup...
If you first submit with no forum, you get an error. But then the drop down vanishes so you can't choose a forum.
But if you submit again, it ends up in the 'Classifieds - Wanted' forum.
Might have just randomly picked one, or that forum's internal ID may be first in the list.
Either way, it's lousy.
First time was on an android phone and right enough, it didn't submit, but then the drop down vanished (and that post was a work of literary genius, definitely not a moan about sore knees).
This time on my work PC with Chrome also. Post doesn't appear to have ended up anywhere else either, so I just wrote another post which is now getting the attention it deserves and quickly dropping off the front page.
It might make more sense simply to remove the option to post from the Overview mode - that way you can only post from the forum you're in.
The post to No Forum does seem a bit daft though, surely the usual approach would be to be unable to post without making a valid selection with the default menu setting being unselected.
Using Chrome on a Windows desktop when posts have failed, I've always been able to use the Back button to go back to the post and my text has remained intact.
Me too PJay, back button. Then re-post.
[i]bensales wrote:[/i].
And to followup…
If you first submit with no forum, you get an error. But then the drop down vanishes so you can’t choose a forum.
But if you submit again, it ends up in the ‘Classifieds – Wanted’ forum.
That's because the error redirects you to https://singletrackmag.com/forum/forum/classifieds-wanted/ - at which point the forum is already selected.
It's surprising to find this sort of basic UI error has slipped through the extensive testing when the rest of the forum works so well.
It’s surprising to find this sort of basic UI error has slipped through the extensive testing when the rest of the forum works so well.
Buy that man a beer!
As @PJay says, the way to fix this is to prevent the issue arising in the first place, i.e. prevent posting unless you are in a specific forum by not having the editor on the overview page. Having a redirect is just a sticking plaster.
The old forum had something similar in that if you were on the overview page and posted something it went into one of the forums by default, can't remember which one, meaning that a) the poster went to the forum they thought they'd posted in and couldn't see their post. And b) one of the mods had to move it to the correct forum.
That's just hilariously bad. It just vanishes and you get dumped into the "For Sale" forum with no sign of your post.
There's another UK forum which was mentioned on here, I've forgotten the name but it seems quite good in comparison.
[i]whitestone wrote:[/i]
As @PJay says, the way to fix this is to prevent the issue arising in the first place, i.e. prevent posting unless you are in a specific forum by not having the editor on the overview page. Having a redirect is just a sticking plaster.
I disagree - I never visit any of the specific forums and just browse from the overview page, so that would force me to do something different in order to post. Having it redirect when you don't select a forum is clearly bad design, but it should simply prevent posting without selection of a forum using js on the client side - lots of UI works like that (in fact the UI I'm currently working on has functionality exactly like that, all done client side in js - it's straightforward to disable the post button until a forum is selected, this is nursery school web design stuff).
It's at the point now where I feel a bet is somehow involved.
A bet involving beer? Actually I'm feeling you may have a good point there, and can just imagine the conversation in some IT company...
Buy that man a beer!
Give him the weekend off!
With extra pudding!!!