Notice anything about our forum that seems broken or suboptimal?

This forum runs on an open source project called Discourse, and we can modify it and extend its functionality.

If you see anything here that seems broken or suboptimal, you can create a GitHub issue here: https://github.com/FreeCodeCamp/discourse/issues

Thanks for taking the time to help us improve our forum!

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Not a bug or broken, sub categories are showing under hamburger view, it would be neater to just have the parent categories only

-I’m not posting on github as its a suggestion

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I don’t see a way to turn on/off threaded views. I’ve hit the “Reply to this post” button after several posts, but instead of getting an indented reply directly under that particular post, my reply goes at the end of the list, as if I replied to the whole thread. I may be doing it wrong but I don’t know how to fix it.

Not 100% sure that this is the place to post this but I noticed that the “Open Source Society University” category’s about post hasn’t been edited from the guideline of what to include in an about post.

Hi, I’m from the Discourse team :wave:

For better or worse, Discourse doesn’t do threaded comments. You’ll notice that my reply to you has a little indicator in the top right of my post because I’m replying specifically to your post. Keep in mind that this indicator won’t show if I’m replying to the OP, or if I’m replying to the post immediately above mine.

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Thanks @erlend_sh for the definitive answer.

This seems like a really poor design choice for Discourse. Not having threaded comments makes the conversation seem cluttered and unorganized.

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Threaded conversations are terrible. Each thread spins off into tangents and loses more and more context from the original. Replies that quote the relevant context when it becomes necessary are far less messy. If you need a new topic because a tangent is starting to distract from the original, just start a new topic and link it.

I would rather the conversations be more StackOverflow (also not threaded) and less Reddit. SO does have one level of “threading” in allowing everyone to attach one short reply to each post, which I think is a nice compromise, but I’d rather not simulate that with full threads. SO also has single-post limitations that destroy it as a forum for extended conversation, but that’s also by design – just not one I’d want to replicate here.

I thought I’d also mention something about the software as it is and not the philosophy of threads vs not. But this one’s a compliment: the quoting feature is the best I’ve ever seen. Hilight text and hit reply, and it includes that quote. You even get a reply widget right next to a selection. But the best part is, when you click the quote, it shows it in context, hilighted in the full text of the parent post.

I’ve never seen anything else do this. Very nice.

And one gripe: the badges are excessive. First like. First edit. First reply. First use of a URL on its own line (I am not kidding, that’s a real badge). Am I in kindergarten, needing a gold star for everything?

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I would rather the conversations be more StackOverflow (also not threaded) and less Reddit.

Please no.

Stack Overflow is built to be a forum where there’s a Question and an Answer - and allows for little room for discussion. Considering this is a forum, that I’m sure given the nature of FCC, will be more directed towards beginning developers - I’d hope that discussion based conversation would be encouraged instead of the strict Q&A elitist circle-jerk that is SO.

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  1. I actually like this forum, but I agree with said: those badges are a bit too much.

  2. Perhaps showing post count or like count under picture would be a nice addition (something countable, like karma on some other forums).

  3. Also those show 1 reply buttons, they are just a distraction. If this is meant as forum, I would prefer to have it more forum like (like ubuntu forums for example), where there are threads, and posts. No fancy 2 replies to this comment buttons. What’s the point of having that button, when the post actually appears few comments below?

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It woukd be nice to be notified when a thread is deleted. I wasted minutes searching for a thread I replied to only to find it had vanished…

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My request: have any external links (to non-forum.freecodecamp.com domains) open in a new tab by default.

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Great suggestion. I’ve toggled the setting here in Discourse. It doesn’t seem to be working yet - maybe it has to propagate? Anyway, I’ll try to get this working soon :slight_smile:

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I don’t think this is possible within Discourse unfortunately. If you find a way to configure this, let me know :slight_smile:

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Would you and @chuckadams be interested in helping us come up with a more sane list of badges? Perhaps rename the badges in a camp theme, such as “tenderfoot”, “pathfinder” or “tent pitcher”?

Here’s a thread of great badge ideas that includes some posts from none other than @erlend_sh.

Here are our current badges:

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Seems like external links are still opening in the same window :confused:

Also, can we style links to make them a little more obvious? Their dark green colour makes them blend into the surrounding text.

I find the events category interesting and hope to see more events added, but there seems to be no order to the city listing. Would be nice to be alphabetical or some other order

Hi Stewart,

Yes - I’ll try to change their style. Also, thanks for your patience. I’m not sure why these aren’t opening in a new window yet. I’ll try again.

1 Like