A couple questions

[Jim.ME]

Just a couple thoughts.

First on Conversations. An alert shows up if you have a new conversation waiting to be viewed. Is there a way to see if a conversation you sent has been open/read by the intended recipient? Some sites have an outbox they set in until opened. If there is I am missing it.

Next on Similar Threads. They don't bother me and I can see they can be useful in some cases. Would it help get people's attention that they have scrolled into that area if the heading was more of a banner box? Larger contrasting color heading, etc. It is easy to see how they blend into the current posts especially when they have the "New" showing after the thread title.

Thanks for your work on the upgrade, it was long overdue.

 

[cpratt]

The first question will require some research. I would bet the answer is no since I could see where most would consider that a privacy incursion, but I'll check. Because of conversations, I think this will be more important in the future where an expert keeps getting time wasting conversation requests to answer questions outside the public boards. The best response for that is to ignore it and force the new person to ask their question to the group. This is a problem I've seen in the past where new people come in and only want to ask one person a question without having to post because they saw a post from that person that seemed to apply to their need. When people would do that, I've politely told them that YT isn't a phone directory to contact specific people, that they need to post their question openly. If YTers can't feel comfortable just ignoring the conversation, it's bad for the long time user.

On the second question, we are looking at the same thing with stickies. It's clear that there is no obvious visual change between stickies and real threads. We are implementing that today. I think a similar change could be done with Similar Threads to show them as not part of the active content you are interested in.

The biggest problem is Similar Threads is just a waste of screen space on off-topic threads. There is no way a search is going to do a good job on threads that have no real meat to grab onto. On the other hand, it works fairly well on on-topic since a words like Farmall and Carburetor, Won't start, are all easy to get something relevant up to the top returns. In that context, it works pretty well to have the person about to ask a question stop and check if it hasn't already been answered. But showing a difference in the background color would set it apart from the real posts in the thread list which is really where it is less useful.

Another comments on this. If we could turn off Similar Threads for Tractor Tales, and simultaneously get people to post OT threads in Tales, it would help make the Similar Threads meaningful.

 

[kpratt]

The first question will require some research. I would bet the answer is no since I could see where most would consider that a privacy incursion, but I'll check. Because of conversations, I think this will be more important in the future where an expert keeps getting time wasting conversation requests to answer questions outside the public boards. The best response for that is to ignore it and force the new person to ask their question to the group. This is a problem I've seen in the past where new people come in and only want to ask one person a question without having to post because they saw a post from that person that seemed to apply to their need. When people would do that, I've politely told them that YT isn't a phone directory to contact specific people, that they need to post their question openly. If YTers can't feel comfortable just ignoring the conversation, it's bad for the long time user.

On the second question, we are looking at the same thing with stickies. It's clear that there is no obvious visual change between stickies and real threads. We are implementing that today. I think a similar change could be done with Similar Threads to show them as not part of the active content you are interested in.

The biggest problem is Similar Threads is just a waste of screen space on off-topic threads. There is no way a search is going to do a good job on threads that have no real meat to grab onto. On the other hand, it works fairly well on on-topic since a words like Farmall and Carburetor, Won't start, are all easy to get something relevant up to the top returns. In that context, it works pretty well to have the person about to ask a question stop and check if it hasn't already been answered. But showing a difference in the background color would set it apart from the real posts in the thread list which is really where it is less useful.

Another comments on this. If we could turn off Similar Threads for Tractor Tales, and simultaneously get people to post OT threads in Tales, it would help make the Similar Threads meaningful.

I wanted to say something about having better separation between the Similar Threads area and the actual thread (as Jim suggested, I believe). Once we have the bottom breadcrumbs moved to their proper place, which is between the main thread and the Similar Threads area, this might make it easier to discern that the main thread has ended. Just a thought.