FSM Staff
I know that in the last few hours you have received (or are about to - when you come into work) a lot of feedback about the new format to the forum. Now that I have had the chance to use the new forum for a couple hours and to become somewhat familiar with it, I wanted to give you my feedback:
In general, I'd say the new forum looks nice. I do agree that the right hand side of the page is poorly used. There is a lot of info there that I either don't need or that is too large and takes up too much space. However, the biggest criticism I have so far is about the complexity of navigation. It seems like that on the new site it takes 3 or 4 steps to do what took one or two on the old. For example, when I finish this and post it, instead of being taken directly back into the thread, I'll get a message that asks me if I want to go there and requiring me to click the affirmative. But since there is only one option ('Return to the thread>>') then why is that step even required?? It is just..... dumb... (Insert SMILIE SMACKING HIS HEAD INTO THE WALL here 
)
As another example, say I am in a thread in the 'Odds and Ends' forum. Now I want to navigate out to the main forum page to see what is 'going on'. As far as I can tell, I actually have to LEAVE the forum and come back in again. What I mean is, at the top left of the page, above the thread title, I see 'Home>>General Discussion>>Odds and Ends>>Thread Title'. So from here, the best I can do is to back out to 'General Discussion', but if I want to go see what new threads might have been posted that I have not responded to, I have to click on 'Home', which takes me out to some personal page that has my Private Messages (ooops, they are Conversations now) at the top. I have to scroll about half way down to where I see 'Forum Discussions' and then click on 'View Forums'. Now I can see a list of recent topics. But here is the kicker - it tells me the title of the topic thread, it tells me who wrote the latest post, but it does not tell me what FORUM the thread can be found in. So if there are five I am interested in, I have no idea if two are in aircraft and three in armor, which would impact what order I read them in. 
And, as has already come up in a couple of other places, I still don't get why it is important for me to know that the top ten contributors of all time to the FSM forum are.... To me, knowing who has written a bunch in the last 24 hours is far more useful, particularly if I am involved in several threads or forums with that person.
Like I said, I don't hate the new forums, but I do find their navigation to be overly cumbersome and counter-intuitive....
I, like many others, will get used to it.... but that does not mean I will be happy about it....
One final thing - a question. Hopefully an easy one: as I look through the forums, I see the titles of threads I have not read are dark green, the ones I have read are light green. What are the grey ones?