I love this drop-down proposal!
In our case, since the "reply as linked topic’ link was dropped, it has strongly been the latter, but not just. Frustratingly for me (the moderator), new posts have decreased tremendously too. People just don’t feel like starting new threads now.
Continuing the discussion from "Reply as new topic" button next to reply button:
The lack of use of a feature doesn’t necessarily indicate a lack of importance. Think post import on Medium or InMail in the early days of LinkedIn. That small amount of usage drove far-reaching behaviours overall. From this data-driven angle, is there data that shows how droping this link has affected broader behaviours? Like:
- change to average length / replies of topics
- change to number of new topics per user
- change to hunting and searching behaviour
- even overall time spent
I’ve seen these change significantly for the worse on my forum. Particularly the last point, where people can’t find the message they want anymore. I hear, “stuff just gets lost on the forum” now that the thread length is growing and topics are generally off-topic and meandering. People are getting lost and giving up - so just hitting reply to whatever thread was last.
It’s like a tipping point in messiness. Since the few people who used this feature kept things roughly organised, the others could too. But now, its like when the dishes pile up in the sink, and nobody wants to start cleaning up. They just add to the pile.
This flexiblity between self-organising and structure was one of the key features that lead to me to choose Discourse, but it’s currently lost .
At this stage, I’d love it any of the suggestions here were implemented. The marginal difference in wording or UI placement is small compared to the fact without any way to remind my users to keep things on-topic, my forum is turning into a few, long, mixed up threads.
You guys are good at shipping and evolving quickly. So, you can always ship the drop-down and fix the wording or placement later right? 