for many of the old-school user the website might not be such a problem but I hope studio guys have considered the need of re-design it, we are still running on a obsolete, 10+ (if not 15) yo old design and interface.
Website is not responsive and the navigability is kinda confusing.
In short it's necessary to work on the UI and UX in order to make the community more appealing to the new and potential users.
Think also about implementing a "like/dislike" button for post in the forum.

As far as I know it's being worked on

like/dislike has been done before, and everyone who was a part of it agrees it was trash (not that I was).

darn, you mean it's a forum?

like/dislike wouldn't change anything, only thing similar we've had is reputation. which, as said above, sucked

well... I was not here when they added the reputation system but the fact that it did not work it's already the proof that the feature was not thought and implemented effectively.

Do not get me wrong, a like and dislike option would not make a great difference at the moment... there are far bigger problems that should be focused on to "rescue" the community. Design appeal, navigability n shit....
But there are positive aspects of having a like/dislike system: they could be used to empowering the community users by having different way to interact with each others and what they are reading, the dislike feature could be used to pinpoint the "bad" posts and express disagreement without having to have to post a response that might not be seen as constructive (aka eventually decreasing the useless posting by the community users).

This is two cent from me.

Even after the explanation on why you think like/dislike will give positive value, i still think it won't be like that. The thing you talk is close to idealistic thinking while we need to accept the reality, not all of the member are mature enough to actually "like"/"dislike" a post with a prominent reason, most of the time some people perhaps will only dislike something along this line; "I'll just dislike this.Why? Dunno, i don't like this guy" or "like cause i can, i don't read it though.".

So yeah, that will be pointless.


I assume this case would be more effective if it is in S&I Board, but the basic foundation of S&I is not the amount of it got agreed upon by the community as a whole but how the suggestion will bring benefit to it and the possibilities of that can be implemented.
(I don't see other cases that fit with that scenario)


As for the UI/UX of this forum. Perhaps because i am keen to simplistic, this forum is already as simple as it can get in my opinion without reducing the functionality that a user need.
I am curious though, where exactly that the UI/UX can be improved upon and the place where the responsive and navigability is confusing as you mentioned. If you mentioned that, you probably can tell us a bit right?

I agree it is kind of stupid to change everything now.. I like it the way it is and I am sure many other people do to.

people that have been using the forum for long time and now are accustomed with it's style and they had their fair share of time to wrap their mind around the navigability of the website.
the community activity dropped dramatically in the last years. The focus should be centered on the new and potential users to facilitate the access to all the tools that the forum have to offer and the navigability of it...

Contrasts of elements are badly thought, there is no intuitiveness, when you use the forum you have to open a ton of tabs because navigation through the page is a pain.
I my self remember I had to ask someone to explain to me how to access the "sent message" section in my profile because it's so fucking stupid the path you have to go though to access that.

you can talk how much you want, but this is a 15 years old design and it lacks on many aspects. You might not see the problem because you don't work with UI and UX and you are not a new user that have to go through the Calvary of learning how to use this forum.

Imagine a scenario of a fresh user that do not know shit about this forum, toribash or else, he just subscribed and have some issues regarding his account:
I can imagine the first thing he will do would be to access toribash.com through a whatever browser.
1st huge problem: what if he access through his phone?
Page is not responsive, adding that to the bad structure of the navigability of the website the user have to zoom in and out and scroll on all directions on the small screen to read shit and find stuff. (increasing level of frustration of the user)
First thing he will probably do is to try to find a contact or mail to get support. - prob by clicking "contact" on the main nav bar.
It open a page that suggest to use the support Forum or the IRC chat, chat that is not being even checked anymore.
I JUST TESTED IT....
Then he would try to access the forum...
He would have to figure out that the red button is the one that allow you to post a new thread... he would have to write one and wait for an answer. Oh, and he will have to keep refreshing the page to see if there is an answer.
TESTED THAT TOO with positive results answer was quick enough.
Buuuut then you have to consider that the new user maybe did not give enough information for the case to be solved right away and there could be an average of 2-3 messages that you will have to write.
Those were way to many passages, too much shit to read. to much time. to much frustration. In many cases that would mean a loss of a potential user and therefore a loss of an additional member to the community.
ALSO..... I am not formatting the text to be more easy to read because it's stupid that I should do it when the page could do it for me(and because I am an asshole). it's frustrating to read shit that is so badly laid down right?

Furthermore you could change the link in the contact page to the support chat in the way that it would redirect to discord but that would put up another wall for the poor new user, not everyone have discord and it would mean to go through even more passages to get shit solved.

Mind blown, are you attempting to argue that forums are dead or that the newer generations do not understand how to use a forum?

http://areforumsdead.com/

The point is not about them understanding but it's about make it easier to understand so that people wont get annoyed by the flaws and give up on forum before starting to get into it.
I am saying that the website can be redesigned and restructured to be more inviting to potential new members and to make it easier to new.
if you fail to see or understand that.. I guess it's because you do not work with front end development, communication, media or design.

about the activity of the forum I wish I could see a graph about the new users engagement in forum activity of the last 10 years.
Maybe it's my impression but 5-7 years ago it seemed quite more lively around here.

You can argue as much you can, but please, don't try to sell me or anyone else this crap of "everything is perfect as it is" just because you fail to see the flaws here.