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by Dolimiter 4452 days ago
Agree completely. For long threads, Discourse is a usability disaster. phpBB is awful software, but everyone in the world can click on page 20 and know where they are. Jumping 2/3rds into a long topic using Discourse is essentially impossible for the average user.

But I love Discourse for at least trying something new and different - thats how progress is made. But some of their UI/stack decisions seem to have been made with no thought for normal people/web admins.

1 comments

Question: Why do you need to jump to page 20?

In a long topic, what value does it give you?

We have found that the vast majority of users either link to a single post or scroll downwards. For mega topics, we have a summarize option that shows the "best of."

"We have found that the vast majority of users either link to a single post or scroll downwards."

Well they don't have any choice do they :D

I think that the summary tool of discourse is fantastic. So are the membership management tools/spam tools. A generation above phpBB. Just to balance out the criticism.

But the infinite scrolling is a deal-breaker (for me).

> Question: Why do you need to jump to page 20?

Question: why do you assume that an end user's lack of ability to articulate a need negates it?