Forum Conversation View: Now available

@EnaJane Don't mind me, I'm just testing out the new reply function.

@Adnash



To the three people I quoted/replied to, I'm just trying out the new function, so sorry for the unsolicited notifications.

Personally, I do like the reply function when I want to reply to just one user. I think that the feedback that others in the thread have left regarding quoting and manual pasting are valid complaints though. I think it would be more convenient that all quotes and replies went into the same body rather than start a new message. That way, you could put all of your replies in one message automatically rather than having to either manually paste and quote other users. I also noted that any quote after my initial quote did not ping any other users which I quoted. This is likely a bug, so I hope this gets fixed. Back to the reply feature, I think that the feature is a good addition to MAL, but some more love could be put into it to make it better. In the long run though, I see it being a positive addition to the forums.

What I am concerned about the most are these coming filters:


I think that a "friends & me" filter would be detrimental for the forums. I don't like the idea of filtering out entire threads to people that you have on your friends list because it would encourage people to exclude the posts of others from their eyes. I think these filters should stay to chronology and most posts.

As for the new conversation view, I just browsed the thread with it and I also like this change. I don't prefer it over classic mode in its current state though. The conversation view is reminiscent of Reddit, which I am most familiar with, mixed with comments sections from journalism sites such as The New York Post, though calling that drivel distributor site "journalism" is generous. I think that conversation view is a positive change, but it is harder to read than classic mode and it is easy to look over child replies. I think a good fix for this would be to automatically collapse all replies by default like how Reddit does. I can see myself using conversation mode in the future, but not over classic mode in its current state.

This is probably working as intended as they are moving to a "one-post-per-reply" system. The intention now is to address separate posts in separate replies, as stated by Kineta.

@Valerio_Lyndon





Looking at this at first glance makes me feel like I'm having a stroke or seizure

@Shishio-kun Lmao yeah this is where the quoting problem begins. Good gif edit.

Edit: holy shit this post looks even worse with your screenshot of the forum in the mix lmfao

@Valerio_Lyndon my initial thoughts are this is an overall downgrade, as it's a bit slower and less convenient to reply to ppl or use the forum this way. And the convo mode is absolutely useless to me and something I would never want to use. It offers no improvements over the classic view, nothing really fun to do with it, and its bizarre flow of communication (conversations split all over, having to open convos manually) makes it less than ideal for traditional MAL forum conversations. The wall of text view is nauseating making it a painful slog. Is this my punishment for 16 years of subjecting users with slow computers to overly-animated layouts?? Now I know how they felt D:


The very nature of the forum threads would have to transition to a I guess Reddit style for convo mode to really gain value to me. Otherwise, it's many negatives for the one positive of most conversations are a bit organized- although you may still miss replies if you dont view the entire thread, and that is easier in classic mode so why switch at all.


But thankfully, in classic view, classic forum features* were changed but are still useable in all their old forms from what I can see. Everything you can do before is still basically doable but may require some extra steps or getting used to.


edit: OK I notice "reply" has replaced the quote feature, that's very nice, although I preferred having the BBcode inspector and ability to split up parts of the quote (what quote reply is used for now) in one button like before or to be able to quote multiple ppl in one post which they dont want anymore. And quote reply is a bit problematic compared to the ever-reliable quote button.

edit 2: Sometimes quoting/replying can get a big confusing to sort through compared to before 😕





* btw the term "classic" features doesn't fit stuff like the quote button, as if they were outdated or something. They were simple and straightforward communication features and kind of the best way to go about things. There was no need to make them a tiny bit more convoluted when they were near perfect before. It's like if in Mario 1, jump is simply A button (perfect) but in Mario 2, to jump you must now press A button and up arrow together. That's how the changes to classic view feel to me lol.

@Valerio_Lyndon
Convo view is a slog to read through, the entire thread becomes a wall of text



@Kineta sometimes the quote reply doesn't come up. This is why you should really really add back the quote button if its gone (I can't find it).

In my quick test here just now, it went missing about 3/10 times. I don't know what causes this, as I can't find anything in particular.

Edit: this problem happens when I highlight "incorrectly"- if I first click down outside of the text (or rather outside the text box)🤦 we will just have to remember to not do that, very easy to make that mistake with the starting text

https://imgur.com/a/ALzCVan



Still please add back the quote button if it's gone D:

OK I see reply is the new quote button, I think we can do what we need with the quote reply but its more convoluted and takes more steps this way imo

Now try it on a touchstreen. It is impossible to do easily and takes several minutes to get right.

Edit;
Okay so this reply of mine made me realize because you cant edit out images and youtube videos in replies it will make pages load slower reloading the same images over and over and make computers with not much ram crash the browser although maybe not as bad when users fail to do this, in either case there should be a way to prevent unnecisary redundancies.

I think it would only degrade the conversation because type of Reddit tier format never fails to lead to derails that never get back on topic. I could only see this being possibly useful on the news board.




A "reply" places a copy of the message above your post and so does a "quote reply". If you try to reply or quote reply to another user it doesnt go the same box so it is trying to force you to send every response as a separate message instead of just one. The quote functionality is completely gone from normal user interface, they did not rename quote to reply they did the opposite making reply the only option without manually doing everything. You can only get around this by copy and pasting everything you do into a different box either opening post one or the floating box. which. Yes it is that intrusive now.

I dont even know why they added the floating box as per my suggestion from last thread but didnt utilize it as the go to box for all messages to keep things working like before and just hide content to make it appear different on conversation view. Earlier in thread i posted a link to the thread i made with strategies, though it was from a perspective of very limited website coding knowledge more focused on basic outline of ideas


Yes nothing dated about it. I think MAL being owned by a Japanese company they have no understanding of what we like in web design. They just copy whatever is used on large western corporate websites that make every site look the same. Even though Japanese websites are super cluttered they actually are closer to 90s and early 2000s web design that users here would prefer.


It actually gives me anxiety and makes me nauseous.

@Valerio_Lyndon
Convo view is a slog to read through, the entire thread becomes a wall of text



@Kineta sometimes the quote reply doesn't come up. This is why you should really really add back the quote button if its gone (I can't find it).

In my quick test here just now, it went missing about 3/10 times. I don't know what causes this, as I can't find anything in particular.

Edit: this problem happens when I highlight "incorrectly"- if I first click down outside of the text (or rather outside the text box)🤦 we will just have to remember to not do that, very easy to make that mistake with the starting text

https://imgur.com/a/ALzCVan



Still please add back the quote button if it's gone D:

OK I see reply is the new quote button, I think we can do what we need with the quote reply but its more convoluted and takes more steps this way imo

@traed



Oops I just realized when I made this comment I was thinking of MAL posts having likes and dislikes! But since MAL convo mode is organized by chronological order I guess it's useful for... somewhat organizing specific conversations in a big topic about some random anime. Um, great? Not really better unless you really want to see a few conversations nested together.

But the way so many convos get split up anyways irks me when I see convo mode lol. More sense to scroll through the forum thread in classic if you dont want to miss anything.

And I mean that's a lot of changes and a lot of negatives for that one feature..? And since replies gets hidden it becomes kind of annoying to click open every convo in convo mode lol. With a forum I can just scroll through the entire conversation as one and I can follow any individual conversations there anyways.

@Shishio-kun
Since several mods seem to like conversation view while majority of userbase hates it or just doesnt care I suspect they requested it to make it easier for them to moderate...by having all the comments in a chain clustered together which will delete all child posts following regardless of content which would inconvenience users having posts removed that have no business being removed. It's guilt by association.

Instead of this the devs should have just made it so you can click somewhere and all the comments in a quote chain show up right next to eachother either on a separate page or as a popup or something, maybe just as a moderator tool if it otherwise would cause confusion for users.

Also for what seems like years now ive been suggesting a user generated blacklist feature so users can self moderate content based on words and phrases they type list so the forum rules can be more normal instead of overbearing bringint it back to liked they used to be, then the mods wont have to do much and everyone would get what they want.

This is probably working as intended as they are moving to a "one-post-per-reply" system. The intention now is to address separate posts in separate replies, as stated by Kineta.

?

https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=2096391



I never got this private message, I asked other recently and they didnt either. I wonder if anyone did lol, doubt it

@Valerio_Lyndon Well, at least my post count will go up faster then. I don’t want to make multiple individual replies to people, but if that’s where things are headed then it really isn’t a big change for me to make.

@Dulonkk @Valerio_Lyndon I received notifications for both of your quotes of my posts. So the notification still seems to be working the same as before. Yellow highlights are for the posts where I was quoted second or third in your posts.

@Kineta That’s interesting. It didn’t show the @ when I typed it out initially (for you or deg) which is why I thought it didn’t ping you. Appreciate the clarification though!

As one of the opponents of the beta implementation, I will say you did a good job implementing some of the key feedback. Initial impressions are that the classic view is still understandable (unlike the beta), access to BBCode has been restored, and the new post preview is great. I actually love some of these new additions!

However, there are still some major flaws. I've tried to split it into more digestable sections.

Finding new replies is impossible.

First off, the "last post" button is still gone (that double arrow that immediately sends you to the most recent post in the thread). This already makes the view basically unusable for me as any time a thread gets bumped and you want to find a new reply in the modern view, it's hopeless. Or if I get a notification about a new post, I am unable to find it in Modern. I have no idea what comment thread that reply is in or how to find it as there is no indication of where it could be. This is compounded as "Newest" shows newest parents not parents sorted by newest children. The only way to find the latest reply is to switch back to classic, you NEED a sort option for newest replies that includes child comments in the calculation.

To re-iterate from my beta feedback, I use the "last post" button DAILY and have to find new replies to threads I am participating in even more so. Not being able to do so makes Modern entirely useless for any monitoring of a thread and thus useless for me. I have to monitor every reply on my list design threads and Shishio's Club, for example, in-case it is something I can address or resolve.

Sort modes don't help.

In modern, the lack of pagination makes longer threads an absolute slog to find content. Say I want to find something in a 50 page thread and I know it was somewhere in the middle. And yes, this is a realistic use-case as I have done this dozens of times to reference older replies in Shishio's help thread. Well, neither sort option helps me and there is no way to quickly navigate to the middle of the thread. I have to load the page at reply #1 and hold page down or scroll for MINUTES while it loads. Why is there no better navigation to replace pagination?

Additionally, just because I want to see "Newest" on the thread I just viewed, doesn't mean "Newest" is the optimal view for the 10 year old suggestion thread I view next. On many of these threads if you forget you're on Newest, it is highly disorienting to read the original post and then see the latest 3 posts which are so deep into the conversation they are unrecognisable from the OP. Unfortunately, due to how painful it is to get to the end of a thread on "Oldest", as in 3 minutes of holding the END key painful, I am often forced to use "Newest" which I then get caught off-guard by on the next thread. Thread sort should be set per-thread or not remembered.

Signatures are still broken.

Signatures in the new view are still broken. They only show blank, despite saying they will display in the popup. I would have thought that would be fixed by now. And I still think that signatures should be available in the new view and simply follow the forum preference that has been available for years.

Edited: I misread the OP, signatures have yet to be implemented... still.

Is one-level deep nesting really that useful?

On a subjective note, I am still not convinced that one level deep nesting will improve much as compared with the regular flat view. My reasoning is that after one level of nesting (parent-child comment relation) it reverts back to the same "flat" view as classic. The only problem is the flat view on Modern is worse than the flat view in Classic as you don't get any quotes, which means any reply chain longer than 5 posts just becomes an unreadable mess of @ user @ user2 @ user3. If it were a fully-fledged Reddit or Anilist styled infinitely-nested system I could definitely see the reasoning. However this is a very minor improvement that, just like the thread sorting options, suffers by making any diverging or simultaneous discussions extremely difficult to read.

I will give you that it could at least really help with Q&A style threads like my list design threads so I get that this point is somewhat double-edged.

Last thoughts.

This all said, with this release version you have fixed a lot of the breaking changes you had originally made to Classic and added the requested linked-quote and BBCode view options that people asked for. With this I can keep using classic and ignore Modern almost entirely, so thanks for that. But that said we should strive for making this thing actually good enough to use so that this change is worth it and there is a good reason to transition the community to a one-post-per-reply forum style.

I already posted much of this feedback in the beta thread and would have said the rest had you ever sent out the feedback requests you said you were going to. I may edit this post later with more feedback.

@Dulonkk Ah, I see. There are two notifications: quote and mention. When you click reply, a mention is automatically added so that the member receives the mention notification. If you quote with the msg-id in the bbcode, then it sends a quote notification. If you have both quote and mention for the same member, then I believe one supersedes the other so that two notifications aren't sent for the same post.

@Shishio-kun @Valerio_Lyndon I asked the devs to look into it when I saw your previous post in the other thread but I forgot to reply, I'm sorry. There was a mistake in the query used to grab the user list. MAL Supporters who had "Site and Anime Updates" emails or "All" emails turned off in Notification Settings did not receive the PM. Since PMs and emails aren't really the same, this setting shouldn't factor in to who receives the message on site. By the time the mistake was discovered, we were already moving towards public release so we did not resend the PMs. For future MAL Supporter PMs, we'll make sure this setting isn't included in the query. Sorry for the mistake this time.

WAIT A MINUTE WTF!!!

In convo mode, when you sort by new and look at the top, you don't see the newest replies to already active conversations.. so you'd have to scroll down and search/open conversations to see the new replies? Instead of just conveniently seeing them as in classic? Wtf? I hope I'm wrong somehow. How convoluted and annoying (seeing a pattern here).

A setting for See newest replies to conversations should definitely be a thing in conversation mode if it is to be more useable imo

New replies can have valuable or interesting info for you even if you aren't following or in the conversation they are nestled in. Wow, what a terrible oversight its like ppl didn't use it before trying it. It makes sense so many hardcore forum users think it sucks.

I don't understand why things couldn't just be left alone tbh. I'm hella confused about how quoting works since everyone that I try to reply to just gets tagged instead whether in classic view or conversation view (if I wanted to deal with having to @ people, I'd just go on Twitter/X). This makes me less keen to reply to people and more likely to just stop engaging in conversations with other folks, period.

Speaking of this selection quoting. I'm using an addon that automatically translates every piece of text I'm selecting to my native language, displayed in a small popup. Now whenever I use it on the MAL forum I get two popups overlapping each other which makes it pretty much useless. Whoever thought there should be a popup when we mark text without giving us an option to disable it is a fucking idiot. I'm never using this quote feature anyway.

look what it looks like when you use quote reply as it defaults to rofl

@ateks To be fair, they can't predict what browser addons or scripts people will use. You are probably the .00001% of users here. If you're never going to use the popup menu you should just disable it with another browser addon like uBlock Origin or Stylus. For uBlock you could use a filter such as:

Or for Stylus or any other CSS addon you could do:

Well at least one positive thing I can think of is that it's easier for me to read and digest longer posts in conversation view, as it actually uses line spacing nicely and has a better font.

But overall it's ... a bit messy (both classic and conversation view) like other users have demonstrated above multiple times.

@Uksi

That's interesting because I didn't notice anything like that (I go into convo mode very admittingly critical lol) so I'll look into if I can add that to my our Chrome extension which darkens the site in a more comfortable way and adds a lot of QOL features. I believe forum reading should be smooth and comfortable as possible

@Shishio-kun The conversation mode has 12px font-size and 1.75em line-height, unlike classic with is 11px and 1.5 respectively. Seems pretty common nowadays for websites to make things a bit more bigger and spacious, it's seen as good convention.

Fuck conversation view and replies. Classic and quotes for life.

I don't understand why things couldn't just be left alone tbh. I'm hella confused about how quoting works since everyone that I try to reply to just gets tagged instead whether in classic view or conversation view (if I wanted to deal with having to @ people, I'd just go on Twitter/X). This makes me less keen to reply to people and more likely to just stop engaging in conversations with other folks, period.

@EnaJane Since it’s not locked, you’re free to reply

Nice!
MAL终于有了贴内回复

@kinotabii
Yes everyone will just go to AniList, Anime Planet, Kitsu or Anime News Network's encyclopedia now to name a few.