I already subscribe to all forums I'm interested. I only go to the forums page to get to some other forum that I don't normally visit. So this trending thing isn't what I"m looking for. I just want the forum list.

I've turned it off.

Add me to the chorus who saw this and thought it was a horrible change. Thank you for providing for instructions on how to undo it, was driving me crazy (opted out the second I saw the instructions).

My main objection is that I largely could care less about most of the trending topics. They don't appear curated in any way based on my viewing or posting habits so the majority are not relevant to me which means that 75% of the page is taken up by irrelevant posts.

That and it looks horrible.

I also hate it and am turning it off. I don't follow trends, so that "feature" is a waste.

Another person who turned it off immediately. I don't really care about what some algorithm thinks is popular today.
If it were a collapsible list at the top (like a wiki post) with the rest of the layout the way it was before, I'd have left it on to see if it grew on me, but having the forum list squashed to a 2 inch column on the left makes it a non-starter.

I am disabling it because I need "last post" column.

The trending threads are not interesting at all to me.

Why not just add a button on top next to the New Posts..."Trending Posts"?

This - totally. Adjust the size/layout. If you can't do it side by side, perhaps at the top or the bottom.

Thanks - disabled for now. Suggest putting this in the announcement post/thread about the new trending topics layout.

What's the algorithm or logic to determine which threads are trending?

The fact that it's the top 25 threads also means that there is a LOT of white space at the bottom of the page because the sidebar with the various forums goes on. See screen cap below.


And if you only see subscribed threads, it's like 2-3 threads, which means the front page is practically all white space. I get that it will change throughout the day as the Americans come online and start filling up the AA/DL/UA forums (while earlier this morning, a majority of the threads are from time zones further ahead), but I can't see that the list would become relevant until midday, at least, and then how much movement will we really see? It'll be a "view it once or twice and then it gets old/annoying" kind of a thing, I think.

Agree that the formatting is wrong. If trending threads section could be narrower and forum directory wider, may alleviate some of the issues.

That's a great suggestion. It would be even better if there could be a collapsible section at the top of the board for Trending Threads which one can expand/collapse to get a quick view of it. As it is now, we can expand/collapse the sections for Travel & Dining, Community, etc., so why not with Trending Threads? In the screen cap above, see the arrows next to Destinations and Community. Make Trending Threads a section, but at the top of the page in the original page layout, and expandable/collapsible.

Here is a very bad mockup. Theoretically, click the little arrow at the right of the section to expand or collapse, and of course, more than just 5 threads in the section. If you could make this work (and retain the "subscribed threads" feature), I'd be happy with it.

This! ^ (and yes, I disabled it )

I hate it and am disabling it. It makes it harder to get to forums I want. I don't find it useful. Move them off to the side instead of making them take up the whole page, or make a section on the bottom of the page.

Not possible to log in through Facebook

If keeping the trending forums is a must (with the opportunity to opt out retained), I think gobluetwo's mockup is a logical, reasonable place to go with this

This x1000. The layout is backwards. The forums should be the main part of the screen, and possibly a few trending topics on the sidebar. One website that managed to pull this off is https://slickdeals.net - check out their "popular" and "trending" deals sections on the right side of the homepage.

Also, as others have noted, guests or people who select only subscribed forums get almost all white space. No thanks. More poor design.

And, of course, the "trending" threads are of zero interest to me. FT is too big a community, with too varied interests, to think what's trending will often, if ever, be interesting to a majority of the users.

I don't think anyone read every forum on here, so trending threads across all categories would be pretty useless to most people. If you want to add trending threads, why not do the top 2 or 3 on each category? Nobody read the description of the category, so you don't need 70% of the page width to display "Hotel Deals". And nobody care about the total thread or post count for each category.. hide them? That way you will have plenty of space left on the table to display top 2 trending threads for each category.

Yeesh. Glad I was able to find the instructions to opt out. This new layout was awful!

I don't actually care which topics are trending; I just want to find the links to the forums I'm looking for and be able to navigate between them quickly.