Testing a new feature - Threaded replies

[rebecca@ebay]

Starting today and on this board only, we are testing threaded replies.

A few notes:

It is set to 3 layers of nesting, and will be tested that way here for a week or so, but we are considering one level. We'd like your feedback about whether three layers feels comfortable or feels like too many.

• It will get some design changes, just small ones to help the replies look a little more "grouped" visually. 
• It will not be suddenly rolled out to the whole community and can be turned on board-by-board. The most likely place to see it tested next is in next week's Weekly Chat.
• It will definitely be in use in some areas of the community - threading is the way of the future. The question here isn't yes or no, but how to make the yes feel as comfortable as possible. 
• If you reply to the OP, it'll be the first level of replies. If you reply to a reply the nesting will start, up to three levels.
• It is retroactive to past threads, so you'll see it on older content here in Platform Feedback starting now. 

Please bang around on it and share your thoughts. I appreciate your feedback and partnership on it! 

[jen@selling]

Congratulations, team! #win 

Looking forward to rolling this out en mass. This is going to be great for the guided chats!

[jen@selling]

tyler@ebay Good call out. Thanks! 

[brian_burke@ebay]

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tyler@ebay wrote:

I'm excited to see this finally happen! I know that we've worked to get it rolled out for a while, so good to see it making a debut!

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I agree! I'm also excited to see this - it's a bit back to the future for me...

[coffeebean832]

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tyler@ebay wrote:

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brian@ebay wrote:

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rebecca@ebay wrote:

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tyler@ebay wrote:

I'm excited to see this finally happen! I know that we've worked to get it rolled out for a while, so good to see it making a debut!

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I am too! I find it so much easier to follow conversations with threading. I'm really looking forward to feedback about the 3 levels vs 1 level of nesting. 

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A comment just to show another level of nesting

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Does anyone know what the criteria for that fun 'expand to see full quote' is? I really like it, but not sure if it's length of the quoted replies or the number of levels that are being quoted?

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tyler@ebay- there is no criteria other than to hit the quote button. Personally I hate it. It was a test run on this forum only by Doug and Alan a while back and wasn't well received which is why it wasn't expanded to other forums. Unfortunately they never turned it off on this forum.

This was the main discussion about the test-

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Community-Platform-Feedback/Posts-with-multiple-quotes-feature-testing...

This was a post of mine that demonstrates how it can completely confuse someone's post-

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Community-Platform-Feedback/Testing-Integrated-Videos/m-p/29037082#M79...

As for this new nesting, I think 3 layers is too much. It makes the text boxes too skinny and cramped.

Now, if we had the option to expand/collapse all the stuff on the right of the screen, therefore making the post boxes much wider  when the right column is collapsed- then I think 3 layers would be fine.

And even if you stick with 1 layer of nesting, I would still love to see that right column able to expand/collapse which would widen the post boxes at a user's discretion.

[rebecca@ebay]

Thanks this is helpful feedback. I agree about the excess whitespace on the right of the page. One thing at a time but that's something we'll be looking at, at some point. Also thanks for the background of the "click to see", very helpful! 

[coffeebean832]

One thing I see becoming incredibly confusing with nesting is figuring out which posts are new, and which you already read. It's going to involve a lot of scrolling and re-reading.

Clicking on the discussion will jump to the first unread post, but if that post is nested- yet there are additional new posts further down within another nest- that will make it confusing... especially with some of those monster 100-400 post discussions the Selling board sees.

Since you're moving forward with nesting there needs to be a way to designate unread posts within a discussion thread. Maybe they can be highlighted with a colored border the way eBay employee posts used to be (the reason you guys are referred to as "Blues")?

[dtexley3]

This wasn't received well the first time around. 

It messes with reading just the new posts in long threads.  I don't want to see the new reply on page 1 and then have to figure out where the next new post/reply is with 10+ pages (or even 3+ pages) of content. 

It's already hard enough to get people to read the backposts before adding comments, now they are no longer in order!  Really not a good concept for this type of forum.

[nobody*s_perfect]

That was the general consensus when Jeff Terrell convened a focus group of active board users back in 2013 in preparing for the switch to Lithium hosting the boards. Even the group members who expected to like threading at first were rapidly persuaded otherwise after being shown a thread in both formats.

[brian@ebay]

Testing something

[coffeebean832]

Additional feedback rebecca@ebay -

For the chat you'll need 2 layers of nesting- and you'll also need to revise the OP to say chat is open instead of the standard reply post. Some people respond to that first reply saying chat is open and others respond to the OP so it would mess up the nesting goal if you add a reply to say the chat is open instead of revising the OP. If you take all of that into consideration then I think that's the one (possibly only) board where nesting will make it easier to follow the discussion.

For all other boards I still think 1 layer of nesting is better for reasons mentioned above.

I think this could work for boards with less traffic and fewer replies- like buying, shipping, etc- but for the selling board I think nesting will be a complete nightmare. It will be nearly impossible to follow a discussion once new replies are added after you first read it.

And even if you read it after all replies are in- the sort order being nested instead of chronological makes reading replies further down very, very confusing. If your goal is to make following discussions easier I think nesting will achieve the opposite on the Selling board.

I know you really want nesting to happen across the community- will you at least consider a profile setting where users can choose a chronological sort for their own viewing? Please? 😁

[pburn]

rebecca@ebay 

brian@ebay 

@scene.of.the.crop 

jen@selling 

brian_burke@ebay 

tyler@ebay 

Judging from the posts on this thread, the eBay employees seem to be the only ones supportive of this threaded-replies approach. No mystery there, since several of those employees are extremely infrequent posters, and judging from some of the comments, have been encouraged to reply favorably to this announcement. Several of them are pretty transparent . . .

You'll note the long-time board users who have posted in this thread seem to have a longer corporate memory than the Community Team and do not seem to share the enthusiasm of eBay employees.

Here's a thread that's a hot mess because of the new nesting protocol. Good luck making heads or tails of it. I can't, and I've been participating in it . . .

Notification Bell 

[comics-scifi-collectibles]

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rebecca@ebay wrote:

Starting today and on this board only, we are testing threaded replies.

A few notes:

It is set to 3 layers of nesting, and will be tested that way here for a week or so, but we are considering one level. We'd like your feedback about whether three layers feels comfortable or feels like too many.

• It will get some design changes, just small ones to help the replies look a little more "grouped" visually. 
• It will not be suddenly rolled out to the whole community and can be turned on board-by-board. The most likely place to see it tested next is in next week's Weekly Chat.
• It will definitely be in use in some areas of the community - threading is the way of the future. The question here isn't yes or no, but how to make the yes feel as comfortable as possible. 
• If you reply to the OP, it'll be the first level of replies. If you reply to a reply the nesting will start, up to three levels.
• It is retroactive to past threads, so you'll see it on older content here in Platform Feedback starting now. 

Please bang around on it and share your thoughts. I appreciate your feedback and partnership on it! 

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Adding my voice to this threaded mess.   It is very difficult to EASILY see where a NEW answer is.  The community members that spend HOURS a day on the boards should have some say in the "tools"  we use to do our "jobs"  

[lacemaker3]

@pburn, I second that.

I posted on that thread, and not being aware of the different format on this board, I was taken aback (and yes, confused) but the unexpected format. I am replying to your post now, fully aware that this will be nested under your reply like a comment generally does. So at least I know what to expect.

I noticed on that thread that it does not always display ALL of the posts, by default. THAT is horrible and needs to be changed. No discussion on that point.

There are still some formatting issues on this board that are not performing as expected. For example, this board is displaying posts backward, from newest to oldest. That is illogical and makes no sense. I took a quick look through the format settings, and there's an option there to change the display order, but it's already set to be displayed from oldest to newest, it just isn't doing it. 

Why do you have options like that, if you're going to ignore them? There are a lot of such examples on this board. Please don't pretend to give us options if they aren't going to work.

These are just petty annoyances to most people, but they can cause great difficulties to others. Obviously, once I notice that the posts are displaying backwards, I can scroll down and read them from bottom up. It's inconvenient and annoying, but I can do it if I have to.  However, for someone who may be ADHD, this could easily be a deal breaker. While I can deal with this illogical format, it is difficult and stressful, and why should I have to deal with that?

You're not paying my salary,  rebecca@ebay, and I don't have to deal with this because you say so. If you make this too difficult and stressful then I'm outta here. The illogical post order is a big part of the reason why I avoid boards in the Knowledge Base. It used to be where I felt most comfortable, but now it's very uncomfortable trying to read and post here.

[tev4all]

Time to end the test. 

I may have been a bit over hopeful in the idea, over a month ago.

 Sometimes ideas are good,  sometimes bad. 

This appears to have been a bad one. 

Back to the drawing board, or cocktail napkins with this one.

[pburn]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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I have wanted threaded replies for soooooooooooo long!

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 . . . said no one ever.