UPDATE FROM MNHQ - New OP view

Software developers sometimes like to do things for the challenge / because they are interesting to code. The art of management is to only let them do the things that will be useful / wanted by the customer.

No, the Art is tell them to stop fiddling with something which is working.

It's baffling to continually read how MN walk themselves into problems which they then have to cumbersomely fix.

I'd love to know what % still have 'similar threads' shown, and what proportion of those actually realise you can turn them off.

Software developers sometimes like to do things for the challenge / because they are interesting to code. The art of management is to only let them do the things that will be useful / wanted by the customer.

I really don't like it. Takes much longer to scroll through the lists.

It's baffling to continually read how MN walk themselves into problems which they then have to cumbersomely fix.

I agree it's baffling. They introduce new features that no-one wants and which never seem to have any testing prior to being implemened. Then they spend months / years tweaking them until they eventually give up and move onto another feature users have never asked for.

MN users are very clear about what they like about the site. The majority dislike change, and would like exisiting features to actually work before pointless new additions are added.

And nothing , absolutely nothing , works on the android app anyway

😱😱

This 👆

I’ve just come across this on The Doghouse and it’s awful , I also cannot see the point , it takes a matter of seconds to click on a thread and read the OP . I would be happy to see this removed very quickly .

It's baffling to continually read how MN walk themselves into problems which they then have to cumbersomely fix.

I don't know if posters have an issue with the thread list refreshing - it's not something I've seen raised - but imagine creating a superficial feature like 'OP view' and then deciding new tabs were needed as a workaround to the display issue. It's crackers.

Does no-one ever do a proper project plan in MNHQ? And the endless blaming on the problematic platform ...

Not a fan. If people write a title with enough info in it, you have all you need. This requires more scrolling and more reading before you find something you want to read/ engage with.

Dreadful
I came straight to Site Stuff from Telly Addicts assuming there was a fault. I was trying to quickly scroll through to find a specific thread. I gave up. I hope it’s not a permanent feature.

It's very reminiscent of using my Windows XP PC, firing up Freeserve and going on AOL. Just without the speed, ease of use or being able to scan quickly through the posts to see one I might be interested in reading.

I don't like it - sorry!

I agree with a PP that if people have sensible titles, it's easy to know if they are worth clicking on or not

Seconded.

Awful
Just awful
So given previous experience it'll be here to stay

Oh goody, something else that nobody asked for, but MNHQ insists it's something we want.

It's horrible and I'm glad I have already worked out how to turn it off!

When will you implement anything people have actually asked for, like replacing the pointless "reply" button under every post with the "quote" one??

@LilyMumsnet

Do you listen to user feedback? It's clear the vast majority of users don't like this change, so why not accept this is a mistake and revert back to the old version?

I know you can toggle this new feature on / off but many users still have no idea the edit / quote exist, let alone where to look to disable this new feature.

Well firstly - this isn't a huge issue on topic pages, is it? What topic page apart from maybe AIBU has so many fast moving topics that folks are bothered about the page staying static when they go back to it?

I agree that it's annoying when you're on Active, click into a thread and then try to go back to Active and the list has updated.

But to further my point about this being an annoying thing copied from more "social media-y" type sites, rather than a forum feature, isn't this constantly refreshing display ALSO the point, aka a feature, not a bug, of the social media feed, rather than a conversation LIST?

It seems to me these are simply different things.

Social media site centred around mainly images and links with some text posts = lots of change, users typically want lots of new things to see, not the same old things again and again (I don't, personally, want this, but appreciate that in general people find it engaging, and if you're aiming for mostly images that people can consume without engaging deeper then it DOES make sense to have a constantly refreshing list). Honestly, not what I come to MN for.

Whereas forum = organised (ish) space for discussion, predominantly text based and subject and/or time organised, so the list is supposed to stay static. Typical user behaviour is to scan down the list of titles for something interesting, earmark 3-4 and then pick one of these, click through to it, engage with the thread if they want to, then return to the list with the intention of finding the next one that they had earmarked and open that, in the process perhaps noticing another 1-2 threads, and repeat.

To me, MN is a discussion forum, not an image and link based sharing site. And the major problem I see with going in this direction is that if you want this kind of thing then you need pages that are going to churn out loads and loads of content so that people can "follow" them so that their constantly-refreshing feed makes sense and doesn't run out of content. But well firstly who even wants that on MN, surely the point is that you interact with real people, not a load of vacuous influencers building a brand, and secondly who is going to make a profile for people to follow them on MN when they can already do that on various larger, more international, more popular websites like tiktok, facebook, instagram, tumblr, X etc.

I know that discussion forums are considered old fashioned, but I like them. And more to the point, so do most people here, or we wouldn't be here in the first place!

I don’t like it either. I use mobile site on safari on iPhone.

I looked at tv addicts and I have to do much more scrolling to see which threads to read.

it’s faster / more efficient to have the compact view to check out the titles

@mnhq I'm still thinking about how rubbish this is - MN is pretty text based and in many ways that is its USP, if you move away from that to what is more of a scrolling/pictures experience I suspect that you will lose many of us who stick around here because we can't be arsed with instagram and the like (if you are going to force us to move in that direction we may as well move over to insta).

@LilyMumsnet I quite like the option to toggle, thanks.

Also, as someone said upthread, there are already far too many of those really annoying thread titles that go something like “what do we think about…..”, this will only encourage them.

I’m not particularly keen. That’s polite for ‘its shite’

Don’t want a new tab.

are you trying to drive your users away?

It’s not too bad on desktop (which is how I use MN on an ipad) but no real benefit either. But it’s useless on my phone (safari on iphone) for all the reasons others have said. I don’t want lots of tabs opening either, I’m happy for the list to have updated when I go back to it (I virtually never go to to topic lists anyway, mostly just use Active and TIO). Please don’t roll it out to Most Active.

I don’t use the app because it’s shit and the mobile version is pretty good and I’m just used to it having been on here longer than the app has existed. But I do think you ought to be focussing on the app more, it is how people expect to access things now.

@Hedgesgalore aww no need to go away, I think you can revert to the Gardening thread conventional view if you want - that's what I have done, but it obviously depends which device you're using. I'm on an iPad .