hi toribash staff. this is an issue that has bothered me for a long time. any post with less than 2 full paragraphs leaves a huge amount of empty space for literally no reason. even with signatures and avatars off, i can only see about 3 to 4 posts on the page at once.



why?
this next image was all I could fit into 1 visible space and none of the posts had even extended the box at all. this is the MINIMUM SIZE for posts.




here. for reference, lets see the post size of some other popular bulletin boards and social media.


Reddit:



here you can see multiple posts.





wait a sec. those reddit posts are pretty dang small! let's see how many we can fit in one Toribash post.



three posts! goodness gracious

>>but boStaff, Reddit isn't a bulletin board! toribash doesn't have nested replies; that's an unfair comparison!

that's a fair point. why don't we look at a more traditional bulletin board without any sort of default nesting.

4chan:







Bear with me; I know 4chan isn't a shining example of a functioning community, but its design is brilliant and fundamentally compact. look at those teeny tiny posts! wowie zowie!!

>>B-b-but boStaff, 4chan doesn't have avatars and signatures!! That must be the reason posts on Toribash are so bloated, right??

well, first off, all the toribash examples I've posted are with avatars and signatures disabled. how interesting

but you're right -- the posts are EVEN FUCKING BIGGER with avatars and signatures enabled.



Wow, glad i had all that blank space for that 2-sentence shitpost. how practical! wait no

Here's what it would look like if the post was resized proportional to the amount of content.



you could probably optimize space even further, but you get the point.

lets see how many we can fit in the original, unaltered post!



that's almost 2!

now how many can fit in a full page?

wow. instead of the 3 original posts that I showed in that section of my screen, it totals to about 5.2. my monitor is pretty low-res too (1280x1024). keep in mind that the original picture had NO avatars and NO signatures, yet the edited version has both.
This is also keeping all the user information intact, too. belt rank, join date, report button, whatever. if users didnt feel the need to be special snowflakes then we could make the posts even smaller, but I can only argue so much.

I understand that this specific method would be awkward with larger avatars. maybe you could have the avatar on one side of the post and the information on the other or something. i'm not a web or graphic designer. these ideas aren't perfect. that's why YOU are the staff and I'm not. but that does not discount my suggestion; it is in no objective way a negative change and can only help the quality of the board. as far as I'm aware, it should be easy to do, too. my suggestion isn't a complete overhaul of the interface, it's just a minor change in the usage of screen space.

get on this please, devs. i guarantee none of you want to have an inefficient or impractical looking board. bostaff out

This would make my raging around the forums more compact and streamlined, I find this idea great.
Also, to hell with signatures entirely. Usually they are just a waste of space with some super dank inside meme that actually isnt dank at all.
Double also, so much effort into this suggestion, I love it!

So you like a clutter fuck of things smushed togeather? Great for you. Toribash has been functioning off of the current layout for quite some time now. Who are you to come in here and say it's fucking stupid?

I wish I could use this layout for every one of my forums I make and use, honest. It's a preference thing and changing it now might make a lot of people upset because most of us are accustomed to it.

To me, the way the forums are, act like a button layout on a controller.

Idk though, people might disagree, but whatevs.

Explain what you mean. how is removing useless space a "clutter fuck"? when you read a book, do you prefer 3 inches of blank space around the text on all sides?

It's always been this way, so it must be the best way!


also, i guess you havent been on the forums long enough, but when I joined the forum changed themes all the time and did for many years. only a few years ago did they settle on this one. not that it's ever not been a bloated mess of course

Eh, you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist in my opinion. Getting rid of white space is nice and all. But its not like these forums are active enough for that to matter in the first place. Can't think of the last time I thought "Wow, I wish these posts were smaller so it'd be easier to skim through all the new posts in this thread."

Oddly enough, this thread itself would already look pretty funky with the setup you recommend. Particularly with Link who's a VIP with the large avatar and whatnot.

But that's an aside really. Toribash doesn't have the millions of daily users boards like 4chan and Reddit do. Giving the forums a layout designed to support millions when it only services a few hundred at any given time would just make it seem more dead than they already is.

A clutter fuck is when a lot of things are smushed together.
Seriously?

That was sort of, *cough* ignorant *cough*. That wasn't even used in the correct sense. This isn't a law that harms the masses like slavery, this is what everyone (at least myself and a quite a few others) are accustomed to. This isn't appealing to me. If it appeals to you, cool, but I seriously doubt most people would be happy with a change like this. I sure wouldn't be. I think it's a tad selfish tbh. I stay away from forums with the style you like. I hang around other big sites with a whole lot of white space and they run justttt fineeee.

I never said the way it is now is right. It is fit for the way the forums function, thats all.

I shouldnt rant. :P

@Goodbox: to be fair, Toribash is far from a slow, idle board. a big problem ive faced is with how fast clan discussion is, and keeping up with clan threads can be exhausting. also my solution doesn't have to be taken to the extreme in the way that I took it. i just feel that there is far too much empty space for the board to be efficiently browsed. when i have 40 posts per page, it can take ages to load the whole thing.

@Link: if you don't think that "your" way is better, than why are you so adamantly opposed to mine? also, yes the fallacy I linked is correct in the context you used it.


>>'The appeal takes the form of "this is right because we've always done it this way."'

who the fuck said anything about slavery?

Im opposed to your way out of selfishness. I regret what I said. The slavery thing was not the smartest thing ive said, but you started the thing by saying this way is "fucking stupid". I dont know why, but when something I like is approached like that, I have an urge to retaliate. I love the way things are now.

I still think majority of people really dont want this and I dont want someone getting the wrong idea and implementing it. I guess you can say I was an idiot there. >.>

Also, all this forum shit is "opinion".

at the very most it is click bait. nobody's going to open a thread with a boring title

I like the free space between posts.
When it's clogged up it just looks messy, and avatars would be awfully scaled.

But that's my opinion.
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