What percentage of Postcrossing Members have ever visited this (the “New”) Forum?
What percentage of Postcrossing Members regularly visit this Forum (let’s say unique visitors per month)?
I’m wondering about this because several Postcrossing friends have recently told me that they never visit the Forum for a variety of reasons:
(1) they simply didn’t know about it;
(2) they had no reason to visit; and,
(3) in spite of the presence of a number of Language Sections in the Forum, the vast majority of Topics and Posts are in English beyond their basic language capabilities and they don’t want to go through the trouble of extracting and translating text using something like translate.google.com.
Do you know any other reasons why people are not visiting the Forum?
Do you have any ideas about how to increase participation in the Forum?
I visit the Forum every day. While I am slowly getting accustomed to moving around in the New Forum, I don’t find it as user-friendly as the old Forum. Some of the sites in the Forum that I regularly visited did not make it over to the transition to the new Forum. The ones that I found here…many many days go by without any input.
Perhaps the biggest drawback to the new Forum is that the U2U message system was left behind. Not having a self-contained module like before is cumbersome. So, and maybe I am stating the obvious here, perhaps having to learn a whole new setup may just be too time-consuming for some.
About the transfer. I also suffered for the first year or two, translating every message, every topic, it took a lot of time. But then I found out that you can just translate a website into your own language. And now the site and forum I have completely in Russian. I think everyone can make sure that the forum will be in their native language
I feel like the forum is quite complicated and hard to understand for people who are not very much used to using the Internet. I showed the forum to my mum, for instance, and while she can easily use the main site, she was confused by the different categories and because she didn’t know where to click. Especially when it came to messaging someone, I realised it would be much easier for her to message someone via the main homepage than here. The main homepage is easier to explain because there’s just less going on there in terms of buttons to click etc.
I´m quite new on postcrossing.
It took some time for me to find my way around in the forum.
Other forums have for sample on the bottom of a topic pages 1/2/3 and you can jump to the last page here. It took me some time to understand how to easily and quickly jump to the end or the latest post of a topic.
And it might be a little hurdle to write the first posts as a newbie.
But I have made the beginning today
It’s interesting how differently this is perceived. When I started postcrossing, mere 6 months ago, the old forum was still active and I found it quite cumbersome to use and so sometimes read a few posts but never really participated. That changed completely with the new forum. I’m now active every day and in multiple talks, games, lotteries swaps, RRs and tags.
It may be because I’m using the forum on my phone. To me the new one is absolutely amazing!
I’ve been wondering if this forum has been tested for accessibility. Not just language but also disability. Is there an accessible mode? How about a darker mode for us migraineurs?
I find it very hard to separate posts because the lines in the middle are so faint. It also doesn’t look like a traditional forum so many things are not as you would expect.
//EDIT I have just tried darker mode and it is both very ugly and so low contrast it is very much migraine triggering. I would not consider this forum to be accessible at all which could very well put me off using it.
I am a (too) regular visitor of the New Forum and I love it. I didn’t know the forum existed before the transition to the New one. However, using the Old one for the few things I did, I find the New much easier, cleaner looking, and filled with lots of features that are slowly being discovered.
As for lack of visit, not knowing about it is a BIG reason. Maybe having an announcement for it on the home page for a while could get other users using it.
Not everyone wants to use it either.
This could be a great time to poll the populous of the official page, ask if people know about the forum and if so, if they use it, if not, why not?
I’m not sure the difference between this DM system and the U2U. Is U2U like texting? A chat?
u2u is the personal message system on the old forum, which basically everyone seems to prefer. people post their addresses a lot because they think they’re sending a message when they’re just replying to a topic.
i think the one on this forum is fine, i just miss the folders. and the easy deleting. like if i delete myself from a pm does the other person notice? does the message also delete on their page? i just want a bin. and folders to create.
also. when i’m on my phone i can’t see who the sender is. which is not easy when you have several swaps with the same topic titel.
Yes - the other person doesn’t get a notification but if they check the thread, there is an additional message from “the system” - “XXX has removed themselves from the conversation”.
No, the other person still sees the entire conversation. Even if both people remove themselves, the message still stays in the archives of the forum.
According to the Community guidelines we have to write in English (unless we post in the #communities or #meetups sections.
Quote: “English is the official language of the forum, and this language should be used throughout the forum — except on the Language and Geographical communities, and on the Meetups sections.”
firstly, thank you for seriously answering, i had no idea. secondly. this makes me kinda feel guilty for removing myself from pms. which i only do because i can’t put them in folders. i always delete the ones where the cards have arrived, it’s my system of keeping track of swaps and all (so nothing personal, anyone).
I felt guilty at first, too, but a fair few members do it and only one person has ever asked me about it. Mostly because I left a couple of RR message threads that I’d already send the cards and they were being a good RR host to make sure I was okay.
