Results: Forum Feedback Survey 2016

r3naissanc3r

Honoured Citizen
Citizen
Many thanks to everyone who has taken the survey. We have had 34 responses, and the feedback has been very useful.

The survey is now linked as "Feedback" in the forum footer, same as with the previous survey. Members who haven't taken it are welcome to do it from there.

I thought our users would be interested in seeing some of the results. I won't share the textual responses, as some of those contain private information. But below is a summary the responses to all multiple-choice questions.


It is somewhat surprising how dominant Chrome is in comparison to Firefox. As far as I know, this is not reflected in worldwide use statistics.


It looks like about 1 out of every 10 of our users disable JavaScript. In a community of our size, this is a significant number of users. My interpretation of this figure is that we should continue making judicious use of JavaScript to add new features, while at the same time making sure there is appropriate fallback code for those who disable it.


I suppose the biggest surprise here is that there do exist some members who don't check the forum more than once per day.


Here, I should have added a "never" option. As this is, we can't tell which part of the green option are users who never check the forum from a cell phone. But even with that, it looks like the majority of our users do come here from their cells quite often. Though see the responses to the next question as well.


Despite the fact that more and more of us use our cell phones for browsing, the majority of visits still come from, for lack of a better term, regular computers.


In the battle of the forum skins, Classic and Bright are now tied (in the last survey, Bright was ahead). This could be attributed to two factors: 1) Since the last survey, a large number of changes have been made to the Classic skin, to make it more similar to Bright (same fonts and font-sizes, same URL styling), while keeping its distinguishing features that many appreciate (blue background, lower contrast backgrounds). 2) The Dark skin was created, and most of its users migrated from the Bright skin.

It is also noteworthy that the Dark skin now claims almost a quarter of our users.


Moving on to a series of questions about the forum header. A large majority of our users either prefer the new header design, or are ambivalent/indifferent. So it looks like we'll be sticking with the new design.



An overwhelming majority of users also prefers the new click-based header menus to their old, hover-based versions. That's assuming, of course, that they have JavaScript enabled (see previous question on this issue).


Last one about the header, it seems that our users are much more divided on the issue of what articles should show up in the "News" drop-down menu. Still, a majority says it should be limited to one article per newspaper.


The admin team likes to agonize about the size of the forum index. But the great majority of users think it's about the right size.


Finally, 9 out of 10 users think our forum compares favorably to other NS forums, with the remaining 1 out of 10 thinking they're all about the same. There's obviously a good amount of bias there, but it's always good to see our members are generally satisfied with what we have.


The above and the textual responses indicate that there is great demand for a mobile-friendly skin. There is one under development currently, though it's progressing very slowly. The admin team will try to prioritize that.
 
Euro Dark works pretty well for me on mobile. /shrug
 
I know I moved back to EuroClassic because of the header. Also ha, the index is apparently the right size. Silly peasants don't know better.
 
I don't want to fill out the survey again, but after talking with newcomer Vorhollah, would it be possible to add a link to the Newcomer's Handbook to the header? Not that it needs to happen because I say so; however, I think I put "add nothing" on my survey response, so just pretend I suggested that instead. :p
 
There already is a link to the newcomers Handbook in the header, where it says "Handbook."
 
Malashaan said:
There already is a link to the newcomers Handbook in the header, where it says "Handbook."
As discussed on Discord, that's my bad for totally missing it. (And also looking in the light-blue section and not the colored section.) I'll repeat the suggestion I made there, though: Perhaps having it say "Newcomer's Handbook" would be better, if only to make it more clear that while anyone can read it, it's geared towards that population?
 
I think that would be hard to fit in, but we'll discuss it. I shouldn't really be necessary though - handbooks are by definition of more value to newcomers who don;t already know what is in it.
 
Newcomer Handbook is 2 characters longer than Republican Navy. It's probably implied, but there's arguably enough newcomers that don't read the Handbook that being explicit seems useful.
 
Mousebumples said:
It's probably implied, but there's arguably enough newcomers that don't read the Handbook that being explicit seems useful.
I just want to echo Mouse's sentiment. I completely missed the handbook until it was directly mentioned to me.
 
Mousebumples said:
Newcomer Handbook is 2 characters longer than Republican Navy. It's probably implied, but there's arguably enough newcomers that don't read the Handbook that being explicit seems useful.
Newcomer Handbook works. Newcomer's Handbook doesn't, as it means in the narrowest permissible width of the forum, the ad bar gets folded to two lines.

I've added Newcomer Handbook.
 
I removed "Newcomer" because a few members have reported that it causes the colored link bar of the header break into two rows.

I agree that it's better if it's included there, but right now it's just too big to fit. If someone can come up with an alternative, shorter label for it, I'd be glad to add it.
 
Just want to comment on something from the survey. I love this forum. It is very aesthetically pleasing and user friendly. Thanks for all your hard work, r3n & co.
 
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