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This topic has moved here: Subject: Ideas of how to improve the usability of the forums.
  • Subject: Ideas of how to improve the usability of the forums.
Subject: Ideas of how to improve the usability of the forums.
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  • last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT

Time and time again I have read the same phrases over and over again. “use the search feature” or “search the forums.” I have read these phrases in both threads by moderators and by members of the community. However, have the people that throw out this phrase actually tried to use the search feature? If you have then you will discover that compared to most forum search features the one on Bungie.net is very weak. It has no advanced search. The only form of “advanced search” on these forums is to use archaic keywords like “AND” and “NOT.” Though these keywords are helpful at times but it is sad that Bungie has yet not implemented a better, more modern approach.

As an example Halo3Forums Search features an advanced search feature, or “search options” as they call it, that clearly increases the usability and helps member find what they want easier. A clone of the Halo3Forums would be great but there is no reason to stop there. The nature of the Bungie forums still has search options that we can exploit. Many times I want to know the final word from a moderator about a particular subject. For instance right now it would be nice to see what the mods are saying about “EXP boosting” for example. I search “EXP boosting” and get 300 results yet I still have no idea which threads contain a post from a mod. Perhaps this can be an option to search for threads that contain mod posts or perhaps their can be a thread in each forum that automatically includes the latest “final word” type of moderator posts. In other words when the moderators post something give them the option to automatically add it to this special thread. Luke mentioned something along these lines in one of his latest threads Subject: Forum Banhammer Ramp Up
telling people to look at his previous posts for final words on certain issues.

Also to enhance usability I think that having some sort options on the forum pages would help too. By default the threads with the most recent update are displayed first so older threads get pushed to the back and pretty much die. If their was a way to reorder the threads lets say by number of replies, number of views, or maybe commented on by moderator check box.

I hope that some, if not all, of my ideas are at least noticed and maybe even implemented. I believe they would greatly improve the forums and may even deter or help control repeated or spam threads. It would nice to have a forum where the phrase “use the search feature” actually meant something.


[Edited on 10.24.2007 10:31 AM PDT]

  • 10.24.2007 10:29 AM PDT

For the amount of information that's on this website, there should definitely be a powerful and easy-to-use search tools that we can employ to dig through all of the meaningless or unrelated stuff and find the information we're looking for, I agree. Last I checked, bungie.net was around 1,600th place in the "most traffic of any website" category, with about 1,700 sites linking in, so that's a pretty lot of people that are coming here to participate in and find out more about our community - and all those people will want to be able to find what they want to see quickly and easily.

Our current search feature is notorious around these parts for not really being able to do that as effectively as the search features on other websites. Granted, it did improve with the latest mini-update a few weeks ago, but it still doesn't really nail down the essence of what a good search feature will do: it doesn't have the ability to narrow your results down to just a few items, which would be an important need for a place with so much information.

It isn't totally archaic or out-of-date, because you can usually minimize the amount of sifting around that you have to do, but I agree that there is room for improvement.

I'm sure that the web team realizes how important it is for people to be able to find what they need effeciently, but maybe there isn't really time now to do it now, or they're thinking of ways to make it the easiest and most powerful tool possible. Or maybe it simply isn't that far up on the "to do" list.

  • 10.24.2007 12:32 PM PDT