To put it plainly, forums in their current state aren't great. I'm sure there are already suggestions floating around about things I want to mention but I don't know if there is one list for them all. I apologize if this is a redundant post.
I want to list out everything that bothers me about how forums currently work and solutions for how they can be improved. I don't know what the current plans for the forums are so if these issues have already been addressed then I apologize.
- Copy and pasting text from other sources. If I copy and paste someone's username from their bio to ping them, for example, or if I copy text from discord or some other website, it wont display the same as the default forum text. It will be a different size/font/color, basically copying it exactly from its source. I'd greatly prefer if the words just formatted to the default text. I'm not sure if it actually displays like that when you post it but its still confusing. If someone reading this wants to clarify how it works I'd appreciate it.
- You can't edit titles. I don't know why, people make mistakes with titles all the time or need to change relevant information. I can't really think of any downside to being able to do this.
- The “View My Posts” button underneath the forum search bar. I'd be willing to bet some people didn't even notice it was there, it took me forever to find it the first time. It's very pale green and I struggle to see it to the point that it blends in (I don't play with dark mode though). I've seen other people say that they “can't delete threads” so I'm certain others haven't found it. Also, its misleading. I feel it is mostly there to delete threads because you can just as easily see which forums you posted in on your profile page. Also, it doesn't even show you your specific posts. If you click the links it still just takes you to the top of the thread and not your specific comment. Maybe rename it to “Delete Threads” and make it black instead of green (and white for dark mode). Clicking posts from there or from your profile could also ideally take you to your exact comment. Imagine if you were trying to find where you or someone else said something in a thread with 50+ pages.
- You can't post wolf images directly from the site…. Why? I assume there are plans to change this at some point, there must be. It feels very discouraging to play forum games involving the main appeal of the site, the wolves, when you have to host images off-site to even post them. There needs to be a built in way to display wolves.
- You cannot “follow” threads. So if you want to be aware of people responding, you have to trust that everyone will ping you or otherwise just check the thread periodically. There should be a way to receive pings for every post in the thread if that's what you want.
- If you add a link to a ping, the ping doesn't go through. This seems like an odd oversite. When you @ someone, it would ideally link to their profile. This is the problem people are trying to circumvent, but it is breaking the ping.
- Links aren't even links unless you attach them to words or images. I feel like using the “link” feature and just having the plain link should still function.
- Page numbers only display on the bottom. So if you want to go to a specific page in a large thread, you have to keep going back to the top of the page and back down repeatedly. Page numbers would ideally be on both the top and bottom. It would also just be nice to just jump to the final page quicker, specifically because of my next point.
- You have to go to the most recent post to reply. The reply button should probably just be at the top/bottom/wherever of any page. It is just a little clunky that you have to go to the most recent post in a thread to reply, especially since you are often replying to the original post and not the most recent comment.
- Editing 5/25 to add that even though you can delete threads that you make, for some reason you can't delete your own posts in someone else's thread. It just tells you that you can't delete a thread that isn't yours. Yet the post is in your own post history. So obviously, you're trying to delete your own post and not the thread…. I don't understand the logic here. This should be changed to deleting your individual post, which you should be allowed to do.