eBay

happy_pigeon · ‎01-09-2018

Hi all,

Welcome to the newest version of your Community platform. I see that some of you are already posting away, and to those who may have experienced some hiccups earlier during the rollout process, thanks for your patience.

Let's use this discussion thread as a hub for constructive feedback and questions about the upgrade. Most of your day-to-day functions should remain the same, but if you can't find or feature, or want to know how to use some of the new ones, we'll help you out as best we can.

happy_pigeon · ‎01-10-2018

@mrdutch1001 wrote:

I no longer visit the .com boards because of their confusing format and the difficulty to find the relevant subject matter needed. I doubt I will visit the .ca boards much anymore now---too difficult to find anything and and simply not so user friendly. Change for the sake of change is not necessary. Keep it simple!

I'm sorry to hear that. If there is anything specific that you would ever like me to help you find or navigate, let me know or shoot me a PM.

lady.stark · ‎01-10-2018

Well... half of these "improvements" were already accessible on the old format, so they are not really improvements. And... "cleaner design" for the new format and "it looked old" for the old format are the same thing in my book. Just a different way to say it.

With that said, I agree that having the announcements at the same place is a good point. Maybe the only one real improvement.

However... why does a post takes so much space? All your longer posts could have been half of that lenght. Is there a way to enlarge the size of the posts? Instead of using about 2/5 of the screen, why not increase to 2/3? Or better... 4/5?

I used to come here a lot (almost every day sometimes). And I really, really enjoyed helping others when I could. I also got wonderful advices from other members here. More than I can count. But with this new board.... that's it! I'm not saying I will completely leave, but I will definitely be here less often. It's been great while it lasted... 😞

happy_pigeon · ‎01-10-2018

@lady.stark wrote:

Well... half of these "improvements" were already accessible on the old format, so they are not really improvements. And... "cleaner design" for the new format and "it looked old" for the old format are the same thing in my book. Just a different way to say it.

With that said, I agree that having the announcements at the same place is a good point. Maybe the only one real improvement.

However... why does a post takes so much space? All your longer posts could have been half of that lenght. Is there a way to enlarge the size of the posts? Instead of using about 2/5 of the screen, why not increase to 2/3? Or better... 4/5?

I used to come here a lot (almost every day sometimes). And I really, really enjoyed helping others when I could. I also got wonderful advices from other members here. More than I can count. But with this new board.... that's it! I'm not saying I will completely leave, but I will definitely be here less often. It's been great while it lasted... 😞

If you truly enjoy posting here (and I'm sure others enjoy your participation as well!), there is no need to let the new design stop you, if that is the main sticking point.

To everyone, again, if there is some aspect of the new version that actively makes it harder for you to post, please let me know here, and I will address them. There are always growing pains. That said: all of the old topics and threads are still here; the Post button is still here; with respect to reading, posting, and replying, the functionality remains exactly the same. We made sure of that in the testing process.

But if someone chooses to stop posting because they don't like the way the discussion boards look, or because you don't see why it needed to be done, there's not much we can do to appease you. We don't want to alienate or lose our members--this is an active and colourful community, and you're all an important part of that. Unfortunately, however, we can't risk the health of the community - that is, its continued stability and security from a technological standpoint - for fear of change.

I hope that you and any others who share your feelings will give it a chance, because the community does need you.

thestuffofchris · ‎01-10-2018

I haven't been active on the boards in a few months (because life), and I've only been browsing this new format for a few minutes, so I don't really have much input right now. There is one thing that jumped out at me, though...

To put it bluntly, the banner at the top of the page is ugly and unreadable. The background colour is a purplish-brown, with purple/blue text on top. I honestly don't have any qualms about the rest of the way the new boards look, but these banners are just...blegh. I don't know if this is how it's supposed to be, but this is what I see:

momcqueen · ‎01-10-2018

@happy_pigeon wrote:
@mjwl2006momcqueen wrote:
It seems like autocorrect of text doesn't work, though, so expect to see a LOT more spelling errors on my end.

Can you tell me more about this? It won't autocorrect the way, say, an iPhone does, but if you hit the spellcheck button after writing a post, it should underline any mispelled words. You can then click on any word with a red underline, and a drop-down menu should appear with alternate spellings to choose from.

Okay. Let me try that. The way it used to work is that the incorrectly spelled word would underline itself as it was typed and I guess it was my Mac that handled the auto-correct because I never did. I've typed this with my standard poor typing and will hit the Spellcheck button which I must confess I've never noticed before. Let's see what happens.

Okay. I see many, many underlined segments of text. Will fix and post. I see we DO have spellcheck but this isn't the way it worked for me in the past with the old board. But that's fine, it's simply something else I suppose we'll get used to doing. Either that, or everyone will soon realize how badly a job I do at hunting and pecking for the right letters on the keyboard.

momcqueen · ‎01-10-2018

@thestuffofchris wrote:
I haven't been active on the boards in a few months (because life), and I've only been browsing this new format for a few minutes, so I don't really have much input right now. There is one thing that jumped out at me, though...

To put it bluntly, the banner at the top of the page is ugly and unreadable. The background colour is a purplish-brown, with purple/blue text on top. I honestly don't have any qualms about the rest of the way the new boards look, but these banners are just...blegh. I don't know if this is how it's supposed to be, but this is what I see:

I strongly suspect this is an error or temporary glitch. No graphic designer does this. On purpose.

happy_pigeon · ‎01-10-2018

@thestuffofchris wrote:

I haven't been active on the boards in a few months (because life), and I've only been browsing this new format for a few minutes, so I don't really have much input right now. There is one thing that jumped out at me, though...

To put it bluntly, the banner at the top of the page is ugly and unreadable. The background colour is a purplish-brown, with purple/blue text on top. I honestly don't have any qualms about the rest of the way the new boards look, but these banners are just...blegh. I don't know if this is how it's supposed to be, but this is what I see:

Good feedback, thank you. It's not the most readable combination of shades, is it...

happy_pigeon · ‎01-10-2018

@mjwl2006momcqueen wrote:

...everyone will soon realize how badly a job I do at hunting and pecking for the right letters on the keyboard.

To be fair, since the advent of autocorrect, I think we're all a little less used to watching our spelling! I know I am!

happy_pigeon · ‎01-10-2018

This should be a better colour combo... it's not as colourful, but it also won't make your eyes bleed!

thestuffofchris · ‎01-10-2018

That looks much better. Thank you for taking my feedback and responding to it so quickly.

lady.stark · ‎01-10-2018

@happy_pigeon wrote:
To everyone, again, if there is some aspect of the new version that actively makes it harder for you to post, please let me know here, and I will address them.

I'll repost my question again:

Is there a way to enlarge the size of the posts? Instead of using about 2/5 of the screen, why not increase to 2/3? Or better... 4/5? I would consider coming back more often if this could be changed.

Regarding the spellchecker, when I wrote "litlte" instead of "little", the word corrected itself without having to do anything. Now it doesn't seem to work.

femmefan1946 · ‎01-10-2018

I've got the opposite problem with font size. I think the Boards are showing up at around 24 point. Maybe bigger.

So I'm looking for a way to make them a bit smaller. Not much, I'm old, but a bit.

I do like that the window fits the text, which was not always true on the old Boards.

Still no infantilizing badges. Good.

I dohave a couple of suggestions that might help us when we are giving advice.

One is the number of transactions the member has successfully completed. (And yes, I know about posting IDs)

And the other is the location of the member. We had an Australian drop in with a problem today, and we constantly set lost Americans back on their path home, with a double-double and a nanaimo bar to comfort them.

weaversofspeech · ‎01-10-2018

I do not post on the boards very often now but have been a member on them since 2000

First time they switched the format of the boards they wiped out the majority of times I have posted on them and now with this change they have changed the dates I started on them

not a biggie but if they are going to rate folk about participation on the boards be nice if they got it right

weavers

vintagenorth · ‎01-10-2018

@femmefan1946 wrote:
I've got the opposite problem with font size. I think the Boards are showing up at around 24 point. Maybe bigger.
So I'm looking for a way to make them a bit smaller. Not much, I'm old, but a bit.
I do like that the window fits the text, which was not always true on the old Boards.
Still no infantilizing badges. Good.
I dohave a couple of suggestions that might help us when we are giving advice.
One is the number of transactions the member has successfully completed. (And yes, I know about posting IDs)
And the other is the location of the member. We had an Australian drop in with a problem today, and we constantly set lost Americans back on their path home, with a double-double and a nanaimo bar to comfort them.

Femme, I think the font size depends on the device. I use my 7” iPad to read the boards and the font size is quite small (on the boards). I don’t need reading glasses but I do have to enlarge the font here to read comfortably.

I do agree with you that the number of transactions and location of the member would be very helpful when trying to help posters.

femmefan1946 · ‎01-11-2018

Hi, weavers! Nice to hear from you again!

pocomocomputing · ‎01-11-2018

@happy_pigeon wrote:
@mjwl2006momcqueen wrote:
It seems like autocorrect of text doesn't work, though, so expect to see a LOT more spelling errors on my end.

Can you tell me more about this? It won't autocorrect the way, say, an iPhone does, but if you hit the spellcheck button after writing a post, it should underline any mispelled words. You can then click on any word with a red underline, and a drop-down menu should appear with alternate spellings to choose from.

@happy_pigeon

Spellcheck. Sigh. I have been complaining about spellcheck in these forums on eBay.ca before Lithium took over and on eBay.com USA since 2013!

What most members are complaining about is the built in browser spellcheck that automatically underlines text that may be incorrect. Not the Lithium spellcheck that has to be clicked on to work. The browser spellcheck allows you to add words too and it is site independent since it is built into the browser. So a browser spellcheck with custom words added will work on eBay.com or eBay.ca or any site. That is any web site that allows browser spellcheck to be turned on.

Browsers read a site variable that is set to allow a browser spellcheck can be used or not. Lithium does not allow it. Nor did the previous forum software.

The issue started in 2013 when browsers began enforcing the web site setting if the browser spellcheck could be used or not. I noticed it with Firefox version 24 because that is when Firefox began enforcing the web site setting. Before that the browser setting by the user overrode the web site setting. All browser began enforcing the web site setting back then.

Now members are going to say it was working in the eBay.ca forums until this change. True because eBay.ca Canada had the web site setting set to allow browser spellcheck to be used. Not on eBay.com though. Since we inherited the new Lithium forums design based on the USA forums, we got spellcheck turned off.

Now the implementation of the web site (eBay) setting for browser spellcheck is (as usual) very inconsistent in what data entry areas has browser spellcheck is allowed. For example, it is turned off in the main body of a post. But it is turned on in the Subject field. If you go to the Options and Report Content, the report data entry field has spellcheck turned on! You can tell if spellcheck is turned on by right clicking in the data entry field and if on, you will es a check mark beside Check Spelling in the drop down list. If it does not appear, then it is turned off and is not a visible option.

I could go dig up my years old posts in the eBay.ca forums from years ago but it is pointless since the eBay.ca Canada staff never thought it was important mainly because there was an option by Lithium for spellcheck. A horrible slow spellcheck with no way to add to the dictionary.

I tried to get the eBay.com USA forums to fix the issue when they changed their forums in 2016 and eBay Alan was new and in charge promising they would listen to forum members. It just got ignored. Here is a link to that topic I started.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Community-Platform-Feedback/FireFox-browser-spellcheck-please-allow-us...

I think any attempts to get this fixed on eBay.ca will be ignored since eBay.com is in control of the way the Lithium forums work.

Go ahead and try. I have for 5+ years.

lady.stark · ‎01-11-2018

@femmefan1946 wrote:
I've got the opposite problem with font size. I think the Boards are showing up at around 24 point. Maybe bigger.
So I'm looking for a way to make them a bit smaller. Not much, I'm old, but a bit.

I'm sorry, I think I did not explain myself clearly. It's not the font size I have a problem with. It's the fact that everything is cramped on just one side of the screen. Cleaner design? Absolutely not!

Also, it's very hard to find each section of the boards. We have to open a drop down menu to get there and we don't even see if there are new posts in each section! We have to click on it to see. More clicks, clicks, clicks... that seems to be eBay's moto these days.

It is also very hard to see the difference between threads where all the messages have been read and those that are completely new/have new posts.

happy_pigeon · ‎01-11-2018

@lady.stark wrote:

@happy_pigeon wrote:

To everyone, again, if there is some aspect of the new version that actively makes it harder for you to post, please let me know here, and I will address them.

I'll repost my question again:

Is there a way to enlarge the size of the posts? Instead of using about 2/5 of the screen, why not increase to 2/3? Or better... 4/5? I would consider coming back more often if this could be changed.

Thank you for reminding me. If you'd like to adjust the size of the posts, hold down Ctrl on your keyboard and tap the '+' button until you reach the desired size. You can also hold Ctrl and tap '-' to decrease the size. Depending on your browser, the new font and post size should be saved, even if you navigate away to different pages and come back later.

happy_pigeon · ‎01-11-2018

@femmefan1946 wrote:

I've got the opposite problem with font size. I think the Boards are showing up at around 24 point. Maybe bigger.

So I'm looking for a way to make them a bit smaller. Not much, I'm old, but a bit.

I do like that the window fits the text, which was not always true on the old Boards.

Still no infantilizing badges. Good.

I dohave a couple of suggestions that might help us when we are giving advice.

One is the number of transactions the member has successfully completed. (And yes, I know about posting IDs)

And the other is the location of the member. We had an Australian drop in with a problem today, and we constantly set lost Americans back on their path home, with a double-double and a nanaimo bar to comfort them.

If you give them Nanaimo bars, they'll never leave!

The tip I mentioned to lady.stark should also help you decrease the size of your font, if you want to.

Feedback is displayed when you click on a member's username, as well as a link to the listings, but admittedly not the number of transactions one has participated in. I'm not sure if that is a metric we can pull -- I don't recall this being on the previous version of the boards, but correct me if I'm wrong!

Location is not a bad idea at all; of course it's visible within their eBay profile but I realize that's several clicks away from the post itself. Do you think it would be most helpful as a point of curiosity, or because some members get confused and stumble into the wrong forum..?

happy_pigeon · ‎01-11-2018

@pocomocomputing wrote:

Spellcheck. Sigh. I have been complaining about spellcheck in these forums on eBay.ca before Lithium took over and on eBay.com USA since 2013!

VERY interesting post, pocomo, thank you. So just to clarify my understanding based on this and your post over on .com, it would be your preference to turn off the Lithium-based spellcheck in favour of whatever browser-based spellchecking system the member might have in place?