I have turned on the nested Replies feature please let me know if you prefer it over the filtered view by vioting below
- Nested Replies
- Filtered replies
0
voters
1 Like
What does this do or whatās the difference?
I noticed something different about thread display today, and there was one topic with an indented reply. If thatās the nesting then I have my finger already hovering on the āNopeā button. 
Filtered was what it was before? What does the filtering refer to?
1 Like
nested looks like this
filtered was what it was doing so it hiod other posts and showed you the replies in a flat format ( though its closer to a 3d approach) w
My vote would be to remove the whole reply mechanics altogether, people can @ each other or quote so people know what theyāre replying to. It feels wonky no matter what IMO.
If reply chains were toggled by default, and collapsable that might be kinda nice, but where it gets odd is if you collapse a reply chain or hide replies, those replies exist elsewhere anyway, so it doesnāt truly make the topic more easily navigated. Thatās how I believe this functions anyhow.
1 Like
So just for example Iām replying here to Branchās post above.
It would be cool if we could collapse this reply chain and move on to other posts that arenāt dedicated to this ātangentā, but iām pretty sure that after collapsing, this reply will still be visiible, and this gets really confusing and it bloats the conversation. Whatās the point of reply chains if the comments exist elsewhere and muddy up the conversation there?
Another source of confusion is that the reply on posts and reply on the thread both say reply and have the same arrow which makes it look like theyāre going to have the same basic functionality.
And another major issue to understanding all this, is that reply sub discussions seem to be off by default, meaning we have to click them on to even see them, so itās kinda wonky to even find them in the first place.
These are compounding factors. This would be more usable and easily navigated if reply threads automatically were shown, and the subsequent posts that duplicate them later in the thread were not exposed.
Thatās what I worry the most. Replies will not be used consistently, and Iāve seen this happen in other places where most people just stop by when they have an issue.
I prefer a flat list to scroll through but the āfilteredā part I have not encountered yet - what gets filtered and why? I donāt think Iāve seen a topic with filtered replies.
2 Likes
What filtered did was hide all other posts bar the replies. thats what was happening before iImade the change. so it looked like this when you clicked reply
so the other replies to the thread are hidden
1 Like
Unfortunatly that functionality isnāt here, I am responding to multiple requests to try this way of viewing replies.
Your second point is one i will raise with our designer good idea
1 Like
Short of the duplicate reply being hidden outside of these isolated reply chains, these threads become really confusing and bloated. And in this case it would be a better and more streamlined posting experience if the ability to reply to posts in sub reply threads was removed entirely and defaulted to just replies below that automatically included a quote by default.
This is my key worry with this new Discussions forum, it feels like you guys are chasing these imperfect features that donāt have a feasible, intuitive end state unless key issues are able to be resolved and it sounds like thatās not entirely possible at least in regards to these replies. In the above vote both optioins are flawed and lead to a bloated thread leading to user confusion.
The confusion of finding forums, the confusion of being able to post in the right place, of reply features, thereās just so many elements up in the air and it doesnāt feel like itās going to be resolved anytime soon.
Iām rooting for you guys to succeed and many elements of this forum are nice, but at the same time I worry that the plan doesnāt end with truly usable forums that retains and fosters great conversations. Faith and hard work can only go so far if the core foundation is inherently flawed.
Are you guys confident that the issues above are going to be rectified and weāll more easily be able to find forums and make posts and for this forum to become better? Or is the thought that users are going to become more accustomed to how things currently work?
Thereās a lot of noise with all these suggestions and fast replies. Just curious if you guys are confident that things will become a bit more usable and intuitive in the future.
1 Like
Removing replies isnāt an option at the moment.
There was lots of feedback that the filtered replies was not working for some users so we trying the other option.
The poll is a simple way to gather some feedback.
1 Like
Ok, fair enough. Well you guys have a ton of feedback, I donāt envy your guysā positions as itās impossible to make everyone happy. Iāll ease up on the feedback, iāve kinda unloaded on you guys pretty hard with critique and suggestions and I think i got it all out there. Really hoping you guys pull this off and as is, itās still a cool forum experience.
I prefer nested replies over the filtered ones, as it often happened to me that filtered replies messed the scroll position once you unfilter them.
Also, I very much like this button:
which can quickly show you the original post without messing the scrolling.
All in all, I start to love the new discussions very much.
Old forum isā¦ old after all 
3 Likes
Nested replies is good, that gets my voteā¦ if the post was interesting and you can see the number of replies expanding it to see all those who replied to that post is fine, albeit if you scroll past those nested replies or collapse it youāll come across those replies again further down scrolling laterā¦ so to me itās just like before but with an additional extra if you want to use it best of both.
1 Like
To absolutely beat a dead horse: this is something the forums did much better. If I wanted to see what something was a reply to, the fact that the reply button defaulted to quoting the user being replied to made conversation flow much easier to follow. Itās almost like an answers site isnāt a proper replacement for community forums.
Thing is quoting is there still, in some ways better in that you can drag/select the text of a post and you get a quote popup for that selection, while using the āReplyā button and then the first icon which is āQuote whole postāā¦ in the reply box will give you the quote much like it was in xenforoā¦so functionally itās all thereā¦ I made userscript to just provide quote button next to the reply button that does exactly that action sequenceā¦
As I agree quoting the post youāre replying too, is just easier for everyone else to follow on and directly see who you are responding to along with what they said originallyā¦ without anyone needing to look at nested replies or scroll aroundā¦personally think its bad ux, shouldnāt have to do these hacks to get buttons that are more obvious and quicker shortcuts that people are familiar with, but discourse seem to have some funky ideas on how things should work for a community board.
Personally I am happy with nested replies to be there and think people will just have to remember to use to quoting, which hasnāt gone away.
Select some text. Popup appears with Quote. At least it does for me both on Windows, Mac (both Chrome) and iPad (Safari).
Heās reffering to this button in the screenshot, and I havenāt seen this button either:
This whole forum situation is frustrating. I love how open Unity in general and Branch_Unity are being, and heās taking all this feedback in stride and working his butt off even as everyone showers him with frustrations, and there isnāt much of a safety net and the pressure is barreling down as a multi billion dollar company relies on him to wrangle this forum together on a crazed schedule. But this also looks like it could be a bit of a growing āsituationā because there are so many far reaching elements that arenāt working as a cohesive whole and weāre simultaneously finding ourselves lost in a forest, and high up in a tree in terms of micro and macro problems.
Bleh. Itās like, great job guys, youāre working your butts off, and youāre taking feedback and this is what we wanted from you, but at the same time, we need a working forum that does the base things of allowing us to post where we want to, and find forums we want to find, and encourages people to post in the right place.
In the short term it feels good to tell people things are going well. But we have an obligation to tell it as it is as well if this is a long standing project that the company is dependent on to go smoothly. Itās gut wrenching but I canāt say I feel as though this forum is cutting it right now or going in the right direction in terms of focus and trimming the fat so polish and feedback changes can be permanent.
I keep saying I wonāt keep giving feedback, but this is important moment for this forum where itās going to sink or swim and an important milestone in terms of how people are going to view if things are going well or not:
We need those key forums like General, Unity 6, Code, Asset Store, Animation, etc. staring us in the face when we open this website, they shouldnāt be collapsible, they should be on the left, so we donāt get lost, thatās issue #1. Too much bloat and features and stuff just getting in the way of us finding a decent place to find a discussion.
Beyond that we need to be able to easily post in the forum we are currently reading in.
I understand getting tunnel vision and getting lost in the sea of things we are working on, and I can relate so much to what I see going on in these forums and I just want to help them to see that theyāre taking on way too much. Branch itās like you guys are polishing the windows while a boat is sinking the way things are being prioritized.
At the risk of looking like a know it all and saying all this crap again and again. The site just has too much logic, too many menus, too many links, to many places to add tags, find recent posts, top posts, bookmarks. Itās like every single thing that I donāt want to see is staring me in the face when Iām just wanting to click the forum āgeneral discussionsā and when I do finally find it, no one is making any posts because everyone else is confused and posting posts in the wrong forums because itās all a bit of a mess.
Maybe this post makes me a bit of an asshole but iām just calling it like I see it. I want you guys to succeed, I want you guys to get this together and start working on changes that will snowball into actual progress and not work on secondary features of secondary features that are getting in the way of this site being inviting and functional. Iād like to think this is a bit of ātough loveā.
If i were seeing more positive feedback, if I saw more posts being made and in the right areas and I felt like I was out of place here I would hold back and let everyone have their fun. But I kinda feel as if this needs to be said.
You guys gotta scale things back, whittle things down to something manageable. Maybe ditch the tags, the categories, or whatever it is thatās below the level of forums, because itās just become such a mess in so many ways I canāt even remember them all and it feels like you guys are going down rabbit holes that are going to doom this forum from coming together.
Itās painful to post this because I know this has been a work in progress for many years, and you guys are pouring your hearts out on here, and you see all these fun elements and you see the passion and determination to make this awesome. I truly hope this feedback is either wrong, and this forum becomes amazing with all these features and i just have egg on my face. But development isnāt always fair, sometimes itās simplicity that ends up being the best product even if we bust our buts and spend years spending excruciating effort to make a platform more and more advanced with more and more features in the hope it will be the best thing ever.
Anyhow. Sorry for the long arse appeal that maybe a little cringe/ emotional for a thread about forums. But we all have a lot riding on this company getting it together, and it would be nice to have a little place to come together and discuss HOPEFULLY things getting better!
1 Like
Neither do I. Perhaps it is an old screenshot from before the re-launch of Discussions?