Chat thread – Wednesday 15th December

[Richie]

Please stop moaning. It’s probably being fixed, so be patient.

[Lady London]

Has anyone ever had their entertainment / TV system not work at their seat on Qatar?

Just been talking to someone that landed same seat same plane all the way to Australia and back on Qatar. Seat TV not working.

On BA I know we hear about this relatively often, but never heard of seat entertainment not working on Qatar.

Anyone else had experience of this on QR?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Lady London.

[Rhys]

Chris wrote:

I guess creating the chat thread is still not automated.

cinereus wrote:

Apparently not (second!). Very trivial to do though.

If we decide to keep the chat thread long term we will automate it!

[Travel Strong]

Easyjet is schedule release is a farce. Have only released an extra couple of months instead of 2022.

Means that BA is open for December bookings now and Easyjet is not.

I expect they are hoping that it will stop people deferring existing plans (through not opening future availability).

[Bill]

Is that a half-term peak travel day?

yes, so i am travelling back via an alternative route. i’m not paying 300 per person !

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Bill.

[Rhys]

kinnimod wrote:

Sorry Rob/Rhys this doesn’t work for me at all as daily chat thread was easy to navigate and follow with up to date and largely interesting and entertaining reading. Now it is a mess with many fewer posts and very difficult to follow replies to posts. The alternative is laboriously looking at and trawling through disparate forum topics which just takes too much time and unattractive. You used to have about 500 posts a day on the daily chat – why try to fix something which wasn’t broken (at least for your readers)? I appreciate the hard work and effort that has obviously gone into this, but it just doesn’t work at least for me. If it stays like this I’m going to cancel my (non)-subscription(!)

Have you tried the ‘recent topics’ page linked in the forum menu? It gives you an overview for all recent posts across the entire forum, so it’s an easy way of keeping up with what’s happening.

[Travel Strong]

Richie wrote:

Please stop moaning. It’s probably being fixed, so be patient.

So long as the feedback is wanted, it seems reasonable to say something – if no one did, they would have no feedback.

[kinnimod]

It’s not a moan. For me it’s a fundamental objection to the principle of the change. I might well be a minority of one but I won’t be deterred from giving my honest feedback!

[dst87]

kinnimod wrote:

The alternative is laboriously looking at and trawling through disparate forum topics which just takes too much time and unattractive.

I recommend navigating to the Recent Forum Topics page. This will list all new and recently replied to topics, listed from newest to oldest. It makes it much easier to find the topics you’re interested in, and skip the ones you aren’t interested in.

kinnimod wrote:

You used to have about 500 posts a day on the daily chat – why try to fix something which wasn’t broken (at least for your readers)?

It’ll take time for people to get used to the new format, but I’ll add my voice as someone who found the daily chat threads incredibly frustrating. It was impossible to keep up, as new comments were added to previous pages so you’d have to go back through 8-10 pages to see if any new replies came in, or try to remember which page an interesting conversation happened on (and that occasionally changes as topics were pushed on to subsequent pages).

Add to that the fact that every. single. day. someone would hit the wrong button and add their reply out of sequence, then (due to lack of edit) added a follow-up post explaining what happened and who their message was directed at.

A forum solves so many of those problems. This forum is a little barebones at the moment, but sets the foundation for a much more useful place to chat. There are some features I’d love to see added to make it better:

• Remove reply button; use only quote (already in the works, I believe)
• Add thread subscription and (optional) email notifications for new replies to subscribed threads
• Email notifications when someone mentions you

Remember that the forum has been used only since last week. Rob and Rhys have already made changes based on feedback, but these these things take time.

kinnimod wrote:

It’s not a moan. For me it’s a fundamental objection to the principle of the change. I might well be a minority of one but I won’t be deterred from giving my honest feedback!

Feedback is helpful, but it’s more useful to explain the specific issues you’re having so that workarounds can be suggested and fixes implemented. Saying “I don’t like it” isn’t constructive. (I know you did include specific feedback in your original post so that’s not targeted at you, but an important thing for others to bear in mind when writing their feedback.)

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by dst87.

[Rui N.]

Hear hear dst87. The daily chats were a lot of fun, but a forum should be able to get the best of them plus much more (and that’s why a lot of people have been asking for HfP forums).

(I also think this format for a daily chat in a forum doesn’t work very well, but maybe it will get better as people realise that a lot of stuff in here should be put in separate threads)

EDIT: looking at your edit, it shows your full name instead of your nickname. Maybe something to consider changing @Rhys?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Rui N..

[Lady London]

Kinnimod it was flaws in WordPress software (it loses its cache too quickly) that got replies positioned out of sequence. Not user error

[Richie]

Travel Strong wrote:

Richie wrote:

Please stop moaning. It’s probably being fixed, so be patient.

So long as the feedback is wanted, it seems reasonable to say something – if no one did, they would have no feedback.

The feedback has already been given. Repetition is just moaning.

[Rhys]

Rui N. wrote:

EDIT: looking at your edit, it shows your full name instead of your nickname. Maybe something to consider changing @Rhys?

Noted – have added to our list.

By the sounds of it not many people know about the ‘recent topics’ page, which is probably the easiest way to keep up with conversations across the board. Would it make more sense for the forum home page to have this versus the overall category view?

[kinnimod]

In my view yes, that’s a great suggestion Rhys

[dst87]

Rhys Jones wrote:

Noted – have added to our list.

By the sounds of it not many people know about the ‘recent topics’ page, which is probably the easiest way to keep up with conversations across the board. Would it make more sense for the forum home page to have this versus the overall category view?

I think education is the missing factor here. I think forums may be quite new to many folks here, so perhaps a pinned topic introducing people to the forum, where to find certain things (annotated with screenshots), how to format their messages / add links / add images would be useful?

I’d gladly volunteer to do this myself over the weekend if there’s demand for it.

[Barraclough]

Good idea to have a topic on how to use forums.

My first port of call is to go to Recent topics and I find it works reasonably well. I also agree with the earlier point that feedback is helpful but it’s more useful to explain the specific issues so workarounds can be suggested and fixes implemented. Saying “I don’t like it” isn’t constructive.

[Rhys]

dst87 wrote:

Rhys Jones wrote:

Noted – have added to our list.

By the sounds of it not many people know about the ‘recent topics’ page, which is probably the easiest way to keep up with conversations across the board. Would it make more sense for the forum home page to have this versus the overall category view?

I think education is the missing factor here. I think forums may be quite new to many folks here, so perhaps a pinned topic introducing people to the forum, where to find certain things (annotated with screenshots), how to format their messages / add links / add images would be useful?

I’d gladly volunteer to do this myself over the weekend if there’s demand for it.

This is definitely on our list, especially how to set avatars etc. Feel free to draft something if you like and we can copy it into a topic.

Rob and I have also been brainstorming and have come up with an idea to have the forum home page tabbed so you can easily switch between the board view and recent topics view without reloading. This should also make ‘recent topics’ easier to see on mobile.

[Sandgrounder]

Worked for me a couple of days ago, I had to apply for a Rewards Barclaycard (which I had been considering) to do it, after the first purchase with it as the only card on file offer was available the next day.

[Sandgrounder]

That was a reply to the Amazon question on page 2

[Rhys]

Sandgrounder wrote:

That was a reply to the Amazon question on page 2

If you want to reply to something specific you need to ‘quote’ not ‘reply’ (we are fixing this, though)

[JerrySignfield]

kinnimod wrote:

Sorry Rob/Rhys this doesn’t work for me at all as daily chat thread was easy to navigate and follow with up to date and largely interesting and entertaining reading. Now it is a mess with many fewer posts and very difficult to follow replies to posts. The alternative is laboriously looking at and trawling through disparate forum topics which just takes too much time and unattractive. You used to have about 500 posts a day on the daily chat – why try to fix something which wasn’t broken (at least for your readers)? I appreciate the hard work and effort that has obviously gone into this, but it just doesn’t work at least for me. If it stays like this I’m going to cancel my (non)-subscription(!)

I agree, this daily chat thing isn’t going to work now that people have the ability to setup a relevant thread to their topic.

There could be a daily chat section where topics are posted which would make more sense but 1 thread for 50+ topics makes no sense

[JerrySignfield]

Rhys Jones wrote:

Rob and I have also been brainstorming and have come up with an idea to have the forum home page tabbed so you can easily switch between the board view and recent topics view without reloading. This should also make ‘recent topics’ easier to see on mobile.

Once the forum is properly integrated into the site I could see the forum aspects being very popular.

[Rui N.]

Rhys Jones wrote:

Sandgrounder wrote:

That was a reply to the Amazon question on page 2

If you want to reply to something specific you need to ‘quote’ not ‘reply’ (we are fixing this, though)

This is also the kind of stuff that should have it’s own thread 🙂

[BuildBackBetter]

If we decide to keep the chat thread long term we will automate it!

Please don’t! (I mean don’t keep the chat thread)

[To dare is to do]

kinnimod wrote:

It’s not a moan. For me it’s a fundamental objection to the principle of the change. I might well be a minority of one but I won’t be deterred from giving my honest feedback!

You’re not in a minority I don’t like the new format either.