Quote:
Originally Posted by
MetroStyles 
The problem with these types of threads is that it is difficult to distinguish between the noise (of all the minor requests) and the really big issues that all members can agree on. One way to get around this would be to make a big list of issues people list, put them in a poll, and ask posters to vote for the ones they most want to see amended. That way precious mod/programmer/Huddle time would not be wasted on tweaks that only irk one or two posters.
By far, the largest issue on the new forum compared to the old is the wasted vertical space. This has been mentioned many times. The best way (and so easy, btw) is to just remove the "last post preview" or shorten it to half the maximum characters it is now. This message preview, which is relatively useless, always adds an extra line per thread listing on a forum page. If this could be changed, and the page numbers gray boxes be moved up slightly, 33% space could be saved. This would mean an easier user experience when it comes to reading each forums topics, and would be visually more similar to the superior thread layout of VBulletin.
Thanks.
We are actually working on this. There are more issues than it seems (for example, taking away the previews decreases SEO traffic, which is the lifeblood of the community to bring in new guys who are actually interested in clothes), but there should be some interesting developments in the next release, and a couple subsequent, that implement ideas similar to yours.
As for prioritization, Jeremy and I are doing that. There will be no polls. As a professional poll-maker of sorts, I know that they are remarkably difficult to do well (i.e. get accurate results from them.) This type of format is actually much better, especially in this setting.
Cheers,
Fok.