Frustrations for a new user

[John_Weiss]

i had this experience on Onboarding Problems on mobile - Meta - Kirby

i visited the forum on my phone. First screen I see is attached. I cannot figure out where to click because your message telling me to click is in the way, taking up the whole screen. I see a list behind your pop-up, but I can’t get to it. That looks like bad design, or bad mobile view. Very frustrating and confusing.

I understand now on careful examination that it’s referring to the icon on the upper right. That’s not obvious. Your pop-up should highlight the icon in some way.

On closer inspection I see you DO highlight the icon, but your highlight is hidden behind the page header. Your Z order is wrong.

This was partially the fault of my old eyes. Your choice of colors for your highlight is hard for me to see. Maybe you could highlight better. Or make the background blacker. The background isn’t dark enough, so it’s hard to differentiate the background from the foreground.

Next, I tried to create a post. I clicked on category. I see a bunch of tiny light gray text at the top of the page. It goes off the top of the page, so the top sentence is sliced in half horizontally. That looks like a bug, or rendering problem.

Next I clicked the category field to pick a category for this post. But I cannot see your full list of categories because my keyboard is in the way. If I tap my close-keyboard button on the phone, then you navigate me back, away from the page. Very frustrating user experience.

Next, I opened my profile menu. I clicked dismiss. Now I want to close the profile menu. On my medium screen there’s not enough room on the left to tap the page. I wouldn’t want to close the menu by tapping the page as a way to close the menu, because that might activate whatever I tapped. I want a close menu button. It could be an X, or could be the same icon I tapped to open the menu-- either would intuitively make sense. I intuitively tapped my phone back button, which is a standard way to close a menu. Instead of closing the menu, it navigates the whole page backwards.

thx

[John_Weiss]

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

Thanks for creating an account to post this feedback, this is useful!

@John_Weiss

Next, I tried to create a post. I clicked on category. I see a bunch of tiny light gray text at the top of the page. It goes off the top of the page, so the top sentence is sliced in half horizontally. That looks like a bug, or rendering problem.

Can you share a screenshot for this one? I’m not entirely sure what’s being referenced.

@John_Weiss

I wouldn’t want to close the menu by tapping the page as a way to close the menu, because that might activate whatever I tapped.

Would making the overlay darker assuage this fear? so it’s clearer that the content below isn’t tappable? or would you never tap there to close it?

@John_Weiss

I intuitively tapped my phone back button, which is a standard way to close a menu

Is this typical? are there other sites that have this menu behavior? I don’t recall seeing it before, but that’s likely because I haven’t tried using the back button this way.

[John_Weiss]

Hi

New issue: i could not figure out a convenient way to quote to your comment here. When i click “reply” , i don’t get your comments in a quote block. How come? That seems very atypical. I had to highlight your entire comment, then click the little ‘quote’ popup, and then manually delete all my comments which were pulled into your comment. Very laborious.

Sorry for the messed up quote-formatting here. Frustrating system.

@awesomerobot

Can you share a screenshot for this one? I’m not entirely sure what’s being referenced.[/quote]
Sorry, i didn’t grab. Haven’t been able to duplicate.

Would making the overlay darker assuage this fear? so it’s clearer that the content below isn’t tappable? or would you never tap there to close it?

Yep, as i mentioned above “make the background blacker. The background isn’t dark enough, so it’s hard to differentiate the background from the foreground.”

[quote][quote=“John_Weiss, post:1, topic:204166”]
I intuitively tapped my phone back button, which is a standard way to close a menu

Is this typical? are there other sites that have this menu behavior?
[/quote]
Always.

You’re a robot?

[merefield (Robert)]

To quote, without starting a new post initiate it by selecting text within post that you wish to quote and in doing so a quote button will appear above the selected text. Hit “Quote” and it will generate a new draft post with the text already quoted.

Reply will not quote a post by default in order not to waste space. It will also suppress quotes of entire posts for the same reason.

I highly recommend you read this:

Discourse New User Guide

Welcome! As a new user of Discourse, we hope you will find this site intuitive and clearly structured, but here is some guidance to get you started: Basic Terms Used by Discourse (Nomenclature) Here are some very basic terms that will be helpful to keep in mind as you use Discourse or read this guide: Topic: The collection of messages grouped together in a meaningful conversation, with a title, listed in a category, beginning with an Original Post, and including all replies in chronologic…

Quoting is covered there too.

[lucasbasquerotto]

You can quote the whole post you are replying to by clicking the first button (the comment/bubble button) in the composer (at the left of bold, italic, etc…) that shows up when you click the reply button.

That said, in most cases you shouldn’t need to quote the whole post, only the part you are replying to (anyone can expand the quote to see the whole quoted post, if they want to, by clicking the expand/collapsing icon at the top-right corner of the quote).

[supermathie (Michael Brown)]

@John_Weiss

Frustrating system.

Have you gone through the new user tutorial? You can trigger it by sending a PM to Discobot.

For example, this quoting behaviour:

is covered by the tutorial and the whole thing only takes a few minutes to complete.

@lucasbasquerotto

in most cases you shouldn’t need to quote the whole post

Yes; we specifically do not want entire posts being quoted, and they’ll be removed if found by a system job. It’s far more effective to only quote enough for necessary context which can be expanded if necessary.

@John_Weiss

You’re a robot?

@awesomerobot is the handle of one of our awesome designers.

[Dan_Eastwood]

I just had a new user with a similar frustration, hopefully it’s OK to piggyback here - or I can start a new thread.

The problem is that a new TL1 user was writing a post, but could not submit the post until he added a topic tag. As you can see from the image there is no option for his to add a topic tag, and no explanation why.

I resolved the problem by bumping him to TL2, but maybe it can be added to the list of things that need adjusting?

Thanks.

[JimPas]

It appears the user is already in the edit to Create a new Topic.

Once the user has given the topic a title, using the category drop down menu on the right he/she can either keep the topic in the selected category or change categories using that drop down. If it’s already at the category they wish then there’s nothing left to do but to enter some text as the first post and hit the + Create Topic button at the bottom left.

Using your example above, the topic title is Question About Vaccines and Viruses. All that was remained to do was to simply click the +Create Topic button.

[supermathie (Michael Brown)]

@Dan_Eastwood

could not submit the post until he added a topic

What error did he get?

Did you mean “added a category”?

Taking a guess, I’m guessing that you’ve turned on settings on your site that prevent uncategorised topics and also renamed the Uncategorised category. But without knowing the error or how your site is set up, it’s just a guess.

[JimPas]

I’m being to think what he meant by “added a topic” was “added a title”?

There is a some confusion as to the difference between creating a new post/reply and creating a new topic and possibly changing the category where the new topic is to go.

It may be useful for them to review the docs on posting, replying, creating new topics and placing them in different categories.

[Dan_Eastwood]

My bad, I wrote Topic, but meant Tag.

The message from the new user below:

I am trying to create a new topic and it tells me I need to add a tag in order to do so. However, I see no button or drop down with tags. Is there something I am missing?

[Dan_Eastwood]

@supermathie is helping to track this down. Thanks for all the comments.