We all just want a comfortable and functional and ethical place to hang out. Just had a quick look into alternative frontends, but doesn’t seem to be much currently.
But there might be some themes or plugins to address some concerns above?
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themes would definitely be a good start! they wouldn’t resolve the architectural issues per se, but may offset the emotional response by providing a more familiar look and feel. even if they wouldn’t change some of the poorly thought out behaviors of the underlying system.
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@Mel
Found the topic and saw Luka’s comment.
See the before and after screen captures below:
1. I clicked on the first topic and immediately went back
2. The list of topics changed entirely (it didn’t just remove the topic I clicked on (which it shouldn’t do either))
I don’t see how this is technically or practically different from an algorithm.
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All this discussion about the suggested topics at the end of Discourse pages has lost its connection with the initial “Hello federated world!” topic.
Are you ok if I test what happens when you split some federated posts to a new federated topic, knowing that this might break some connections on the other federated end?
It’s not just about this specific discussion. It’s useful to test what happens when federated topics go through multiple tangents. How can we reorganize them here to make them actionable.
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i’d say that’d be a good thing to try! but let’s wait for @sknob to confirm?
meanwhile, re: resolving this by theme customization, how does everyone feel about entirely removing the “new & unread” section at the bottom of each topic?
i for one would expect scrolling to the very bottom of the page to put into view the latest post of the thread – as opposed to a navigation section that may be most succinctly described as “internal ad”: presumably there to prompt people towards further engagement; largely unrelated to the user’s intent; and changing randomly.
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@unspeaker only seeing this lengthy thread now (seems it takes a while to federate, and I need to go to the first message to see the others).
You certainly don’t need my OK to split off the topic, but thanks for asking.
BTW, I figured out why I couldn’t find this thread on the forum the other day. Actually I would find it, but couldn’t see the posts I was looking for because of the progressive loading ! Another really counterproductive choice which would have been solved by pagination.
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@unspeaker I’m ok with learning curves, but a forum should have a very shallow one. That being said, the more I use it, the more my negative first impression is reinforced. It’s opinionated software, which is fine, but I really don’t adhere to its ideology. A lot of flash at the expense of usability.
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Tbh one can’t know how the learning curve feels for others.
To some extent we all grew up on some corner of the Web or other – while some hypothetical person who is seeing a computer for the first time would have a steep learning curve with any software.
You and I have intuitions and preconceptions from things like IPB and phpBB, others have preconceptions from things like Facebook and Instagram, the latter group is larger, so the software caters to them – and thus maybe reinforces biases inherent to those, to some degree 
Just as long as we don’t end up with the worst of both worlds… 
For me the impression remains about the same. It does recede in the background somewhat as the space becomes filled with conversations – I’ve fallen into a groove where I spend little time exploring.
I do hope the forum grows to a size where there’s a lot more to explore on any given day! But even now there are more discussions happening than a Matrix room would support, so in that respect it’s an improvement.
100% this.
@unspeaker there probably exists a middle ground between a matrix room and a full microblogging platform. The sheer number of topics exceeds my personal threshold for casual use, and reinforces the general impression that I don’t get much of a say over my experience. I just don’t have the bandwidth or the spoons to sort through what feels to me like a giant random algorithmic mess.
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