I love it when the forum info just lies
Summary: fabrics24 expresses frustration with inaccurate comment counts in a forum, leading to confusion and missed updates. participatrophy and others agree, discussing the inefficiencies and approval delays that hinder user experience. dhbookds offers a different perspective, suggesting the unread feature is somewhat useful, though flawed. Participants, including mr_lincoln, call for improvements, noting issues with post visibility and notification clarity. Overall, a desire for better functionality and user-friendly design is clear.
This has been a bit of an issue for a while, but today it's especially noticeable because of the giant UNREAD you get everywhere.
It is not uncommon where I will see a post that says the thread has 2 comments when there are 3, or 5 when there are 4. It throws me off, and if it's on an issue that I'm curious about or trying to learn from, it can mean not getting notified of comments that are actually there, or checking for comments that aren't and wasting my time.
I hate how much complaining I do on the new forums lately D'X
mr_lincoln
·1 week ago · Edited@devon@ebay @elizabeth@ebay @kyle@ebay
Another instance where the Reply count is OFF from the actual replies from members. Please have the Platform Provider look into this.
dhbookds
·1 week ago@mr_lincoln I noticed something today.....and let it go before I got a screen shot....
Had a note of 6 replies, up top.......could only find 2, but on the right of one post there was a long blue line with a a circle at the end of it. I reread the 2 posts to the left of it and realized, just below those was a "view more replies"......clicked on that and there were more......took me to a "new" page or at least did not show the "other replies" on the same page......
Could that be a reason the counts are not "adding up"....?????
mr_lincoln
·1 week ago@dhbookds I have seen the "View more replies" on longer threads but on threads with no replies there can be a "1" showing. Just learned that if a post is archived (for whatever reason) the count records the activity of the post but does not display those posts because they have been hidden.
It is certainly not optimal and members should be able see a count that reflects public facing reply counts and ignore the archived count record ... my view is if I can't see it I don't need to know anything about it.
fern*wood
·1 week agoSame here, I'm sick of complaining about this board, but I really want to like and understand it. I just don't. The unread replies doesn't help me much other than to send me on a wild goose chase trying to find them. Am I doing something wrong? Is it supposed to jump me to those replies? I miss the threads starting where I left off and I hate the jumbled replies/comments or whatever this is.
dhbookds
·1 week ago · Edited@fern*wood after you click into an unread thread.......look up top and it will tell you how many replies you haven't read.....click on that it will take you to the first one......and all the rest are highlighted.
I am adding a snip shot of what you will see.......so this post may be delayed.
fern*wood
·1 week agoThanks for trying to help me. I have hovered & clicked on the blue buttons but nothing is happening. I guess I just don't get it. I've never had so much trouble understanding how to do something that should not be difficult.
toomuchstuffagain35
·1 week ago@dhbookds But that doesn't help you find UNread replies (ie new ones) on a thread you HAVE read.
steve_stuff
·1 week agoThe new improvement that I 'love' [sarcasm] -
I come here and the 'bell number' has increased - We have a 'replied to your comment' - click on it and all it shows me is the 'reply', which is "I agree" .... doesn't tell me to which of the five, six comments/replies that I made in that discussion it applies to. Doesn't have a number so I can find it when I click on the see all comments link. So now I have to manually look for 'I agree' to find out to what.
kandf_vintage_finds
·1 week agoI find these blue thing's unnecessary, irritating and I hate it when my mouse get too close to them!
dhbookds
·1 week agoFrankly, I like the designations on the general board as to unread........I refuse to look at the the Bell info.....destroys the flow....... clicking on the unread within the post is helpful to me........
I do believe there are lags both in showing some posts.....and in the # of unread shown...... not fun, but better than having to reread every thread to find out if there is anything new.......
fabrics24
OP1 week agoI don't mind the unread so much; I think it's better than the bell (especially since there is a delay with the bell) but the number here in yellow is just wrong a lot of the time:
jonathanbrightlight
·1 week agoYeah, adding the unread tag was nice, it just would be nicer if it worked better.
fabrics24
OP1 week agoAgreed; sometimes it just doesn't register even though I've sat and stared at the "unread" for several minutes.
I love the concept; I'm with you wishing in wishing it just worked better
fabrics24
OP1 week agowould you believe me if I told you it's treating your comment as unread still?
jonathanbrightlight
·1 week agoOf course I would believe you.
fabrics24
OP1 week agoIf this is because comments are waiting to be approved I'm going to go insane.
participatrophy
·1 week agoThis remains the least intuitive forum I've ever used. The post approval thing is just icing on the cake. Can't stand it.
fabrics24
OP1 week agoI despise the "approval" thing. If you need to send a warning, do that, but a putting a post up on a shelf because someone might've used a bad word or something is just weird. I feel like I'm in preschool.
participatrophy
·1 week agoIncluding links or images (aka oftentimes the most direct and/or illuminating way to help people here) seems to do it every time for me. And I do mean every. single. time. Adding to that, this one is no better than the previous forum about inexplicable post removals, and the navigation is horrendous. For all the talk of wanting to build a vibrant eBay community or whatever, you gotta wonder why so much is being done to discourage users from even bothering to post.
mam98031
·1 week agoApprovals only apply to posts in the regular forums like Selling, Buying, etc. if the poster is posting a link or picture in the post. Those are the posts that require approval to make sure the links are appropriate and/or the pics.
fabrics24
OP1 week agoI just saw this happen again in Toy's & Hobbies; says there's 2 comments, but only shows 1.
If it's not approval, I'm at a loss for why it's doing this.
mam98031
·1 week agoThe approval process happens when a post has a link or picture in the post.
gurlcat
·1 week agoAnd apparently there's nobody to approve posts with images overnight. I started one about 3:45 AM this morning, and it was hours before it got approved ... BUT rather than make the approval time the 'start' time, it had the original time from when I posted it, so it was born under a pile of posts with more recent comments, in fact if there was one more it would have started on page 2. 🙄
jonathanbrightlight
·1 week agoI bet it's a combination of that and maybe if comments are removed, but it's still treating them as unread comments.