There’s a dark background theme instead of the default white one. Look for the settings gear under your profile and then see below.
I agree alternating shading of posts is nice.
3 Likes
How does everyone feel about nested replies? I always wish FW could do that instead of the clunky quoting system. Threads like the RE Investment thread were so hard to follow, for example. This forum kind of hybrid implements it… you have to click the “X Replies” button to nest them, but very few are aware to click reply on the post instead of at the bottom of the thread. Is there a way to show all replies nested by default? And the reply button at the bottom say reply to OP. I think this could solve a lot of the readability issues here… but I admit I have no idea how customizable any of this is.
I 
. But I find that the best way to reply isn’t to just hit “Reply”, but to also highlight and quote whatever you’re replying to.
2 Likes
Uhm… second bullet in the wiki?
Doh. I apparently got stuck on the filtering aspect of that.
I like the newest replies at the bottom of each thread. This is especially useful if someone replies to a much earlier post in a long thread. A nested reply would go unseen by most, buried under the post in the middle of the thread.
I think the current system is a pretty good compromise, putting all new posts at the bottom of the thread, but creating a link to them from under the post that is being replied to.
2 Likes
Same here, scrolling way down to the bottom loses a bit of the thought momentum, so I’d like to see a reply box immediately underneath like Reddit.
Also, is there an easier way to quote another post? Would like to see a “quote” option next to the Reply, like FW, to immediately quote that post 
Rather than copy, pasting, and having to select the blockquote function in the response box? Even for shorter threads, it’s hard to follow along with conversations as folks reply to something 10 posts up…
The easiest way is to select the text that you want to quote and hit Reply. That’s how I quoted part of your post.
4 Likes
I’m not sure why, but I can’t receive any emails from the site. I spent about 10 days trying to figure it out, creating a second email address, trying to register from a vpn ip, and an ip out of the country, but continually failed. Finally, I created a throw away email address and that worked.
I’ve tried to edit my account settings to reflect my real email address, but have yet to get any email. Spam assassin is turned way down, but nothing.
All suggestions appreciated?
Is it possible to add tags to posts and a tag cloud or search by tag?
If not, at least this software allows OP to move the whole thread to most appropriate subforum - let’s set up a bunch of second level subforums within Finance.
1 Like
Tags are a built-in function so they would just need to be enabled by the admins. Not sure about tag clouds but I imagine once they’re enabled it’s possible to search by them.
If required to pick between tags and second level forums I’d definitely go with tags. Second level forums are a little too forceful of a separation in my opinion.
It is only my second time visiting and I have not really looked around much yet.
However, here are some of my initial suggestions:
A. I would put the name of the site, Fragile Deal, somewhere in the page template, at the top.
I came here tonight from a link on the other other place (not the SD “other place”), then I had to leave my computer for a while, came back to it later and saw “Discourse” at the top of the screen and didn’t know what this was (it has been maybe a week since my only other visit to this site, which was a brief one).
Actually, though, I can see where not identifying the site visibly (except for the web address in the address bar) might be convenient for people who try to read it at work or who might want to keep private what site they are reading in a public situation.
It’s just that as far as branding, name recognition, creating a distinct user experience, developing an image, etc. – putting the name somewhere would contribute to that.
B. I agree with the suggestion of using shading/alternate colors to demarcate one post from the next. All this white – it’s too much white.
C. I do like the width of the comments area – it’s a good width and height for each individual post.
(As compared to the other other site where the comments are currently 16.5 inches wide on my 19-inch-horizontal screen.)
D. I don’t like the heart symbol for up-voting.
I don’t think a heart (=love/affection) accurately conveys the varied motivations for approving of a fatwallet-style post, the reasons for which could include: “that’s funny”, “that’s true”, “that had to be said”, “you are a nut”, “I agree”, “gosh, I never knew that”, “this will save me time”, “this will save me money”, “oh, this will tick off someone whom I want to see get ticked off”, etc.
I really dislike the thumbs-up symbol to mean a “like”, but an arrow would be okay. I suppose a plus sign would be fine too.
E. I would like to see a way to down-vote as well as up-vote. Not allowing down-votes gives only half of the picture regarding readers’ responses.
F. I don’t like constant scrolling and would like a way to have pagination
G. The way to quote another person’s post is not straightforward the first time one is trying to figure that out, and I’d prefer to have a “reply by quoting this comment” button next to the “reply (with no quote)” button.
That said, however, the current quoting method (which makes it pretty easy to choose just a small part of the post that is being quoted from) should cut down A LOT on the mindless repetition of very long posts (in quotes) that would happen on FW, particularly in Finance, when people just wanted to indicate that they were responding to a particular poster and didn’t actually need to repeat any of what the quoted post had contained.
So maybe I like the current quoting method. I’ll have to try it again.
Addendum:
When I first typed out this post, I used numbers 1 to 7 instead of letters A to G.
In my composing window, they showed up as numbers 1 to 7.
However, after I submitted my post, the site reformatted my points and they were numbered 1, 2, 3 then 1, 2, 3, etc.
When I pressed “edit” to come back and fix that, in the editing window, the numbered points still showed up as 1 to 7. So something weird might be happening to a numbered “bullet-point” section when a post is published by the software (and it shows up in the thread) that the editor of the post can’t prevent on his/her side of things.
I changed my points to be lettered A to G instead of numbered 1 to 7, and the letters are showing up fine.
1 Like
I just noticed that someone had posted a thread in the Off Topic subforum asking for the site’s name/logo to be at the top of the page:
2 Likes
That was me… I didn’t know there was a thread for “fixin’” or adding things to the forums…
Hi,
I use the desktop version of this site, not mobile or tablet. Firefox and Chrome.
When I want to quote a reply, I click the reply button, then try to click the “quotes” icon in the message composer window. It does nothing.
The only way I can find to quote a reply is to select the whole thing before hitting the Reply button, which is a pain. I would prefer to just click the “quote” button and have the whole thing pasted into my message.
Is there a way to quote the entire message (or nested messages) without selecting them all?
One more piece of feedback: The javascript on this site is capturing Control-F (“search for text” on desktop browsers) and forcing us to use the site search instead of the browser search. Sometimes I just want to do a very simple search on one page and not use the whole site search.
I can get around this with a addin on Firefox but haven’t figured out how to do it on Chrome.
1 Like
Press Ctrl-F twice.
4 Likes
Thanks! Very useful!
I’d like to see topic alerts via email be an option if available?
Thx!