Forum Discussion
The New Forum Sucks
Hey KenFlieger, Noele Flowers here, I'm the Director of Community here at Articulate which means I'm responsible for changes & improvements to our forum experience, including the platform we use.
I've been here for about a year and the move to this platform pre-dates me, but I can speak a little bit to the "why" behind it: we used to host ELH on a home-grown platform, meaning it was built and maintained by our own in-house engineers. This was great in that it gave us a ton of control over the way the forum worked and made it feel incredibly tailor-made to our community (because it was!), but not-so-great in that it meant that our in-house engineering team had to devote time to developing, updating, and maintaining the stability of the community "product" in addition to the actual product we are focussed on here, which is to say Articulate :)
So, the decision to move was really about getting our community onto a third-party, community-specific platform (in this case, we use a tool called Khoros) that would allow us to rely on the stability and continued growth of our community technology while putting our own engineering team's focus where it really needs to be, which is on our products.
I can really hear that the move was frustrating for some, especially if you really loved and were used to the old forum. It sounds like some of your main frustrations are around the ease of finding information. Like Judy mentioned below, some of that, while it is laid out differently than the previous forum, can be improved with bookmarking and using tags. However, "ease of finding stuff" is a common feedback point I hear from members, so I think there's still a long way to go in terms of making sure the forum is easy to navigate and speaks to the things that feel most important to our members.
If you ever want to chat more about your thoughts on the community and how it can be improved, I'm always happy to make note of specific pain points if you want to share them here, or to hop on a call sometime. I like having virtual coffees with community members especially if you use our community regularly and have strong opinions about what we can do to improve it.
So, tl;dr we're not planning to revert back to the old forum, but we are always open to feedback on how we can improve this one.
Hope you have a lovely long weekend!
I would start with this list of topics, which, paradoxically, doesn't cover ALL of the topics, including Accessibility, Javascript, Exchange Best Practices, Announcements, and Localization, among others:
Oops, no, wait, "Localization" IS in this list, as well as in the list of Discussion Groups
If your Venn diagram of any 2 topics (e.g., General E-Learning and E-Learning Development) is greater than 51% overlap, you have one topic too many.
If people are tagging their posts to as many discussion topics as possible, hoping for the widest-possible audience, then you haven't done a good job identifying what belongs where.
"Advice?" "Community?" "Other?" "Catch-all" by any other name, where questions go to die.
This conversation is a shining example of uncertainty where it should be housed. Is it confined to Storyline 360? No, it applies to the entire forum. But where is that topic?
I'd say this discussion belongs in "Community," because I think that tag refers to this site. And there is an "Accessibility" tag.
From what I've seen, many folks do add a lot of tags to their post. Yeah, they probably think that'll help it get noticed. Unfortunately, there's no way to force users to select appropriate tags. Perhaps limit the number of tags per post? (Don't know if that's possible or not.)
Others use sub-optimal tags, like "Articulate 360" for a question about Rise 360. Again, that isn't controlled by Articulate.
Some tags, like "General E-Learning" were added when the new site was launched—and there was no "Exchange Best Practices" section. I agree that those more generic tags aren't helpful, especially now that this section is supposed to be focused on product-related questions.
As I said before, for me, filtering isn't worth the effort. I just scroll through the list when I'm here to answer questions. Sometimes, I click the "No Replies Yet" tab if I'm looking for folks who haven't gotten help yet, since that's one filter method that actually works.
When searching for help (or when looking for a post I vaguely recall), I start by entering search terms. I might filter the results list. To me, the biggest opportunity for improvement is the search function.
I know that Noele_Flowers is open to suggestions and even chatting with folks about ways to improve the site. (She & I had a chat not too long after she started with Articulate.) There are some limits based on what the third-party vendor can provide. And, of course, it's impossible to please everyone. For example, I preferred the initial launch with only one Discussion area, because folks don't always pay attention to where they should post their question (as evidenced by previous site and by the number of Storyline & Rise questions in "Exchange Best Practices."). But I remember Noelle telling me that some folks asked to divide posts into sections, hoping they'd have an easier time finding stuff.
You're absolutely right JudyNollet I am always very open to chatting with folks who have ideas for improvement. I love a virtual coffee, and I enjoyed ours :)
