We've been working on a new feature for the forum—and we wanted MAL Supporters to be the first members to try it out!
Conversation View allows multiple conversations to happen within the same forum topic at the same time. By collapsing all of the replies to one post, it becomes easier to interact with the posts you want to (while ignoring the ones you don't). In the future, it'll also make it easier for us to put the posts you care about most at the top of the topic; for example, posts your friends make ( •̀ᴗ•́ )✧
Beta Testing is available for MAL Supporters only for 2~3 weeks. You'll receive a private message on MAL with a link to where you can report any issues you encounter during testing.
We hope everyone will look forward to using this new feature!
FAQ / Known Issues
Do I have to use the new Conversation view?
Nope! You can continue using Classic view if you prefer.
Why does Classic view look a bit different?
There are a few changes which allow us to support both Classic and Conversation views at the same time.
The "Quote" button on posts has been replaced with "Reply" which mentions the user instead of quoting them.
This allows replies made in Classic view to be seen as replies in Conversation view.
If you would like to quote a user, please highlight the portion of text you wish to quote and click "Quote Reply".
As such, double-posting in Classic view will no longer be frowned upon.
Please see below about this topic.
The "New reply" button on the first page is moved below the opening post.
Where is my forum signature?
Conversation view offers a more compact design than Classic view, so signatures will be hidden into cards which appear when you hover over the username or avatar of the poster. This will fill the light blue space that you see on the forum card now. Think of the Discord profile cards you see, with a cover photo and some custom text area.
Why aren't replies nested for older topics?
Replies made before the release will not be nested on Conversation view. These topics will appear like Classic view, with a different layout. Since the existing forum culture was to quote multiple posts in one reply, it was not easy to relate all posts back to their original parent post. Conversation view will be more useful for future topics.
Sorting posts on Conversation view
Right now, there are two sorts available: Oldest and Newest. In the future, we plan to additional sorts such as Friends first, or Most replies. We also plan to add the option to pin important replies to the top of the thread (such as moderator messages).
June 1 Update
Thank you for your feedback regarding the quote to reply button change. We have reverted the reply button on Classic view back to the original quote button until we can resolve the main issue.
During the beta testing, there will still be some discomfort between Classic and Conversation view since:
Posts made in Conversation view will appear as mentions only in both views.
Posts made in Classic View will appear as quotes only in both views.
How did this happen?
The Conversation view project has been an ongoing for quite some time. Our goal from the beginning of the project was to maintain the Classic view for long-standing members of the forum, while also creating a new interface that is closer to what many new members are familiar with.
There are many, many details that go into a project like this. I had many discussions with the moderator team and dev team about how the feature should look and behave, including how to make posts created on Classic view or Conversation view appear as if they were created on the other view.
Quotes in the original forum code are not associated with the post they come from. They are text with BBcode and a link inserted into the post. If the user edits their post after you quote it, your quote of the post will not be updated to reflect it. If the post is deleted, your quote of their post will remain. There is no relationship in the code between these posts, and so these kinds of relationships needed to be created for Conversation view.
The biggest issues that arose when trying to create these relationships on the existing forum data was, 1. the aforementioned plain-text quoting system, and 2. the existing forum culture of not double-posting when replying to multiple different posts. Where should a post that has multiple, separate quotes go to? Do we relate it to the first post that is quoted? Do we leave it at the first/parent level, but relate single-quoted posts back to their parents? There are pros and cons to every option.
The non-perfect solution we decided on was to:
a. have the quote/reply button on Classic view create a relationship between the reply and the parent when pressed
b. discourage multi-quote replies by moving the reply box to below the post you are responding to, rather than the end of the thread
c. change the full-post quote to a mention, preventing plain-text quote chains from appearing in Conversation view
d. add the highlight quote feature to easily quote one section of a post that the member wants to reply to (where before, one would quote the entire post and edit out the parts they didn't want)
e. display the post that was replied to in Classic view, while not displaying it in Conversation view
Sometime between this decision and implementation, e. was missed. And since a significant amount of time had passed between this decision and our internal testing, I didn't realize it was missing. It was my oversight that this element was missed, and I'm very sorry that it happened this way.
Since it will take a bit more time to develop the code to display the quoted post without embedding it as plain text in the message itself, we decided to temporarily revert Classic View to restore functionality to most members.
Please understand that this is a temporary reversion. When we have solved the issue of displaying which post was replied to in Classic view, the quote button will be restored to the reply button, and the reply box will appear below the post again. Quoting multiple posts in one reply will be discouraged. Quote chains of entire posts will not be automatically created anymore. If a member on Classic view wants to see the whole conversation chain instead of only the last post, we are discussing adding a link which will optionally display this.
As someone who has always been a stickler for not double-posting (and often adding 3 or more replies to one post), I know how wrong it feels to see other members respond with multiple posts in a row—each one a single response to one other post. With each passing year, I've also seen how more and more new members tend to treat the quote button like a reply button. Because this is what they are used to on other websites.
To encourage new members to engage with the forum, we need to make changes. I hope you'll believe me when I say we are doing our very best to keep the original behaviour of the forum on Classic view as close as what you are used to. Because we know many of you will not want to switch to Conversation view. There has never been any intention from our side to force you to change views. Just like we have been maintaining the Classic List for the last 7 years.
I hope this update explains the situation better. I apologize again for the confusion.
Will there be rules restricting multiple conversations in the forums game threads? Because that could make things confusing if someone replies to a post instead of making a new post in the threads.
@Kikugi
I am testing this new feature, don't even bother with me.
Sorry to bother you eheh
*edit, the reply box opens below your post, but does not stay below your post, it just goes all the way to the bottom like always on the classic forum...
Also, all signatures are still in the exact same place too.
The only change I noticed is that quoting is impossible now... What sucks a bit if you want to edit some text someone sent previously without having to copy it
I am not even paying for MAL supporter, why I am already able to use this feature?
So is this like how you can reply and also collapse forum replies for each comment on Reddit? If so, then it would make things so much easier to navigate if 20 people reply to just one single comment.
Hopefully we can collapse other conversations that branch off in the same replies, like 1 reply can lead to 6 random discussions and you only want to view one, just like Reddit if you know what I'm on about.
_cjessop19_May 30, 2023 9:34 PM
So I've been banned from MAL-Badges, after spending nearly two years of my time and dedication to helping out, being the club's spokesperson, and planning for the revamp, it all goes down the fucking drain. What a joke the club has become. I advise everyone to stop using the feature and stop showing their support for the site and the club. We were promised that we will see changes come to the site, and nothing's been done for the past year. I doubt the site will be touched for the foreseeable future. If you're angry and annoyed about the lack of development, then good, you should be.
Wow major downgrade to the site. The more corporate bullshit MAL does the more I suddenly want to leave for good and never return and make sure to never recomend the site to anyone and get it blacklisted as much places as possible and this will be the tipping point. Replacing quote with reply is bad user interface for a few reasons. It causes confusion to who you are replying to as to what post you are actually reply to them about and causes them to have to read through their own posts again just to find what was being replied to. Loss of quote function makes it so you can not reply to multiple users in any reasonable way. This is literally forcing a feature on people by this terrible implementation while falsely claiming it's optional.. This is just a bug in denial.
Just leave it as quote like it was and make quote pyramids convertable to reply trees. Though something that might MIGHT work if actually programmed right is to have both quote AND reply but only have reply be just a shortcut to a user mention only and skip the whole reply below box but if you must still insist on ignoring users it would work better to have the box designed like this
-click reply on user1
-message box appears below post with @user1
-scroll down
-floating box follows you down page
-click reply on user2
-box has @user1@user2
-scroll down
-click quote user3
-box has @user1@user2 [quote=user3]
-reach bottom of page
-stationary message box at bottom of page with all your quotes and replies collected as duplicate of the floating box as it's primary.
There is absolutely NO reason whatsoever that the site has to be broken for a view type feature no one asked for. Here is how you do it without breaking the site because apparentlly random amatures know better than MAL devs. Just take quotes and turn that into the reply tree simple as that they all have reference numbers to the posts so there is no reason that wouldnt work and not destroy the site in attempting something different like what this shit is right now. Any user mention @ can be disregarded as not be part of the so called reply tree if it doesnt also include a quote, instead of trying to make it a "reply" to a post. Then the site can function as normal for anyone who doesnt want this feature instead of breaking the site and making it pure horseshit
@Hacker09 @Kineta already explained it. The MAL devs decided to break the site and call it a feature. You arent on the beta this is what they want the site to be now for so called classic view. Classic view is now just a buggier version of MAL where it's completely user hostile.
Not a huge fan honestly. There are some benefits, but having tried the Anilist forums that use the same style it is just much less conducive to proper forum-style conversations. Not to mention it makes the classic view almost unreadable with the lack of quotes. What makes it work on Reddit, other than an interface that is made for it, is the best-first/Q&A style of every thread. But that isn't what I come to MAL for. I come to MAL for chronological, straight-forward discussions. Sadly that seems to be a dying content type.
Also, after switching to the new post style it removes the double-arrow »» "last post" button on the homepage. Bring this back, seriously. I use that button almost literally every day, not just for watched topics but for any topic on the forum I am coming back to. Thinking of the wasted time is mind numbing already. I know you can sort by newest but make the button auto-sort to that and scroll to it or something.
Edited again: You actually CAN'T "just use the newest first sort". That reply in the screenshot? It's a reply to someone else.But I can't find it in the new view because there is no button to find it and I am not scrolling through and loading 1500 posts to try. I can see it in classic view but can't see what it's replying to. Incredibly frustrating! In the course of 5 minutes since I made this post I went from neutral to disliking this immensely.
@Valerio_Lyndon
It's not just unreadable it's nearly completely unusable. You cant just quote multiple people or reply to multiple people in a single post oh no you have to do one for every single fucking post you want to reply to so if you are replying to one person who has multiple posts you have to reply to several of them all separately instead of just all collected into one post for their convenience.
Only difference I've noticed is that the watched topic feature doesn't seem to be working as I'm not getting notifications when watched topic threads are updated (only started a week or so ago).
@traed The more I use it the more I hate it. I am currently posting in threads "replying" to people in the classic view where I can't see what the hell they are talking about, meanwhile if I swap to the new view I have to scroll through and load 1100 other posts in an infinite-scrolling hellscape, which takes several minutes, just to be able to CTRL+F to find MY OWN POST and figure out what the hell is going on.
It took me 10 minutes to realise this feature is unusable in its current state, how did it get this far out the door????
How does it get worse with every passing second I use it. I just realised the damn replies are only one level deep anyway, so the moment you get into reply subsets it's literally just the same flat chronological style we've always had. So all we've really done is create sub-threads inside of threads for no reason other than making the site unusable.
@Valerio_Lyndon As you can see it just makes the forum endless spam if anyone replies to multiple people. Hello 20 posts in a row of the same users over and over again ...
Valerio_Lyndon said: How does it get worse with every passing second I use it. I just realised the damn replies are only one level deep anyway, so the moment you get into reply subsets it's literally just the same flat chronological style we've always had. So all we've really done is create sub-threads inside of threads for no reason other than making the site unusable
Funny enough you can still quote users but they make you have to highlight the post to do it which proves there is no reason to remove the quote function. They just dont know what they are doing.
This new feature seems unnecessary and barely brings anything worthwhile imo. I guess it could be slightly useful in a discussion about anime or games where you want to focus on one conversation started by a single user's reply within a topic. Or with a help topic, you find the question you have there and view the discussion on it. But you could already do that by sifting through the quotes and replies, and now there will be multiple convos all over. It's easy to miss good posts unless you open every convo.. or just use classic lol and the conversation mode becomes pointless and more of a hassle. Being able to ping someone without a quote is nice, could we get that on the other parts of MAL, its been requested since pinging dropped.
It is also completely useless (and actually makes things worse) on a really big topic with many replies from before today (see second part of video). The topic becomes an endless void of posts and the pages are not sorted by 50 posts at a time anymore. And what if a user doesnt know how to switch the modes? Then going to a older topic might become really confusing for them. Going to an old thread with many posts gets chaotic quickly. Many users have trouble with almost everything and the switch between convo and classic isnt very noticable- just like the switch between dark and light mode (that switch should be on the header somewhere, wtf?).
The little double arrow link that brings you to the end is gone too in convo mode. Now you have to use latest replies, but then it creates a chronologically backwards series of posts below the OP.
Sigs hidden within usernames (WTF!) REALLY sucks in the convo mode.
Just speculating but I would think all those forum game threads will be completely fucked in this mode. As I showed in the video, a thread with many posts becomes a huge void of endless loading. I guess those users will have to stay in classic to participate properly in a forum game.
I also wonder what if someone edits or deletes the post a bunch of ppl replied to? Could lead to some confusing convos and reading later if they didn't using quoting. Ah, this is what happens when the original post reply is deleted. At least the other replies stay. https://imgur.com/AQZctwA
And add on all the other complaints users made, they are all valid.
Also in classic view, the page links should be on the upper right of the first page in a thread again.
Weren't there unfinished club updates and multiple errors reported in Support regarding pasting and the new dark mode? O_o Maybe those should be taken care of first.
traed said: the more I suddenly want to leave for good and never return
Well the only reason I come to MAL is to use the forum, so if they fuck up the forum then there is no reason for me to come here. I guess it all depends on if people ignore their attempts to phase out quoting and quote posts manually, if people decide to use the quick reply instead then the forum is as good as dead since none of the threads will make sense.
Hey you fixed the youtube issue on mobile, thanks.
But the reply text boxes don't resize anymore which makes editing big posts a huge pain...
And clicking on a quote makes a popup appear with the option to add that person as a friend instead of being a link to the quoted post... That's inconvenient.
Kineta said: The "Quote" button on posts has been replaced with "Reply" which mentions the user instead of quoting them.
This allows replies made in Classic view to be seen as replies in Conversation view.
If you would like to quote a user, please highlight the portion of text you wish to quote and click "Quote Reply".
@Narmy
Prepare for endless spam posts. I dont even spam and its even encouraging me to make as little effort as possible in my posts content since all effort is wasted just trying to make the post appear.
Why? Who asked for this? You have a million good ideas waiting in the suggestion board for years and you add something that nobody fucking asked for? Why fix something that worked perfectly fine?
And what are you talking about a testing phase? You will force this on us anyway or when did you ever listen to your userbase? The dumb review update that nobody wanted is still not fixed a year after release. You are so out of touch with this community @Kineta
@ateks
I appreciate it. Especially when reading up on a thread in the old way, it's so hard to keep track of replies. It's a massive ball of mixed up quote trees all going through each other. At least this way it's clear.
That's only if you have the source view on can anything get mixed up. That would be an easy fix by simply having it so the quote tree is in a spoiler when writing a reply like it is in a post. Or you could just use a userscript to hide it entirely.
looks like absolute trash, forums can't function like this, it's hilarious how the only ones who agree with this shit are people who don't use the forums and kineta's minion ardanaz
anyways, I'm expecting this to be implemented because no one cares about the users' opinions
you literally have to be insane to accept this
@Ardanaz
You should switch back to classic view and look at what a mess this thread is. Your two replies just now to different posts on conversation view is a double post on classic view as is most posts in this thread of many users. Likewise a post that is a double post on conversation view might not be a double post on classic view.
Just found what seems to be a bug in the design. On second page now there is no "reply" button in the first post of the page only "new reply" at top of page. So second page first post gets treated like it's the thread creator.
@Ardanaz
(Had to manually type this not sure how it would appear on conversation view)
If it used quotes as the reply with ability to multi quote in a single post instead of single post user mentions that would fix it (unless im missing something) though I am unsure how it should treat user mentions but logically they should just be part of the main thread not be their own tree otherwise if they were their own tree that would cause a lot of crossover between posts that could get messy when multiple users are mentioned at once. Im fine with this conversation view feature if it didnt have any negative effect on anyone who doesnt want it like it currently is doing.
I am glad the classic view stays. I really enjoy looking at the signatures and sets! Still am not sure about the new placements for new replys, hopefully i get used to it.