I've asked tech to:

• Fix Blue Dot
• Fix Thread Population (I think this may be a result of the threads updating/refreshing. Seems to self-fix when reloading the page)
• Make Threads rows shorter to fit more content on-screen

When you relay the make thread rows shorter to fit more content on-screen issue to tech, please draw their attention to the current trending threads page, shown below. By putting the sub-forum a trending thread is contained in within its own column, sub-forums with very long titles now cause rows to expand to nearly double their size.


Compared to the previous version, which had the sub-forum containing the thread in the same column as the thread itself, so that even if one was excessively long, it would only add one single line to the page, not 3:


The design of the new trending threads page makes zero sense. It is not intuitive, it doesn't work, it looks ridiculous and provides no new features which begs the question, why was this done? Is this what the rest of the forum is going to look like in the future? If so, I hope you're ready for a sharp decline in your daily visitors. If not, why would you implement a page with a completely different design than every other page on the forum? Even if this page becomes functional, that doesn't change the fact that it breaks every rule of UI design that exists.

At the very, very least, please encourage the tech team to replace the blue/white dots with the airplane/globe logo system (shown below) that the rest of the forum uses to show new/no new content. The logo represents the theme of the forum perfectly, it is clear and intuitive and it looks good. It would also help fill a completely black and white space with some color, which would help a lot.

(New)
(No New)

I assure you it would be appreciated.

I discussed the former issue with tech today personally and we are looking at options to make all rows consistent in height. The latter is being looked at in terms of feasibility (although likely it would not use those icons).

While I'm not a fan of the new format, I can't change it. So FYI - trending threads are not updating for me since Friday. Thank you.

Hi Steph, looks like the trending threads are now updating. If they still don't appear that way for you, please clear your cookies.

As long as it has the previous functionality of showing new/no new posts within a sub-forum, it can be icons of any kind. That is the functionality the page had previously and it appears it is the functionality the page is supposed to have now, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't be feasible. It is what the page did before. I would very highly recommend an icon bigger than those dots though.

As I understand it, the code of the page has changed considerably, so it's not just shifting things around cosmetically. So the older icons may or may not be compatible now.

"New Post Alerts" for Trending seem to be working, now.

No, they aren't. The dots are just reversed now, they're all blue instead of all white. They do not represent anything, nor do they change if all the posts in a sub-forum are read. Just to test I went through 5 different sub-forums, marked them all as read and refreshed... no change. It just shows a blue dot now instead of a white one.

EDIT: I think I may have narrowed down the problem. Tell the tech team to look at the trending functions part of the code for this page and then look at the // login status layout changes part of the script. When a user is NOT logged in, the functionality of the new post/no new post icons works exactly like it should. When I log back in, it no longer works. I verified it across three different browsers with and without adblockers on just to make sure an adblocker wasn't the root cause.

I'm guessing there is a piece of code missing within the "if #isLoggedIn " part of the script telling the page to display class="fa fa-circle" when there is a new post and class="fa fa-circle-o" when there is not. It could also be something wrong with the script immediately above those lines of code.

Just tell them that the new posts/no new posts functionality is working properly when a user is logged out, but when a user is logged in, the functionality no longer works. They should be able to isolate the problem from there. Hopefully that helps.

Re-opened tech ticket

Looks like this is fixed and the new/no new post functionality is back while logged in. Glad it got ironed out, look forward to hearing what the issue was. I'm still having a few issues with the trending threads page itself not populating with threads or occasionally having missing threads (shown below, possibly threads that have been moved/deleted?) but as long as the new/no new post functionality is there I'm happy.

What's up with the trending page? I always enjoy reading this page at lunch time, but recently strings stay up for days and there are strings that are simply blank. Hopefully the FT programmers can fix this!

This question is more appropriate for the Tech Support forum, which has an existing thread on the topic. I'll move over there and ask the moderators to merge.

chgoeditor
co-mod, Info Desk

The algorithm that chooses trending threads is designed to take into account thread new-ness, number of posts, and posting rate. Nothing should stay up there longer than a week, however.

Not sure what happened but the blue/clear dots on the trending threads page signifying new/no new threads within a sub-forum are once again not working. They're all clear dots despite new threads in nearly all of the forums.

EDIT: Looks like I fixed it just by logging out and logging back in. Carry on.