A huge step backward--what are you guys thinking?

I found one functional benefit - one can post a problem here with a diagnostic number and get Sonos to look at it for troubleshooting actions.

I found one functional benefit - one can post a problem here with a diagnostic number and get Sonos to look at it for troubleshooting actions.
As one has always been able to do via the Send an email link off the main support page.

With the old forums, I would usually stop by once a day, not because I needed help, but because I just enjoyed reading many of the conversations. These new forms are not enjoyable. I am now another who will probably only visit the forums when I need help on a specific issue.

The other thing I dislike here is that you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page before you can page forward. Also no ability to go to a specific post number or page. User interface is very poor.

Looks like you can go to a specific page in a thread by machoing the URL. Right now I'm on page 5. This is the URL: https://en.community.sonos.com/new-community-feedback-229090/a-huge-step-backward-what-are-you-guys-thinking-6730677/index5.html

If I want to go to page 4, I can change it to this: https://en.community.sonos.com/new-community-feedback-229090/a-huge-step-backward-what-are-you-guys-thinking-6730677/index4.html

But that's only in a thread.

There doesn't seem to be a way to do this from an index page.

Is there any benefit from this platform compared to the one forum was on? Not counting the avatar/likes and other bells and whistles. There has got to be at least one substantive way how this platform serves the target user better than the old one - which is that? It can't be all negative surely - more than one would be nice of course.

One of the largest benefits of this platform over the forums is single sign-on. On this site, you login with the same account you use to sign in to Sonos.com. It probably wasn't a big issue for most of you, but people don't expect to have to create separate accounts for the Sonos website and the forums. It was confusing, clunky, and Sonos staff dealt with password recovery and account management problems from the forums for years.

A single account is simple, seamless, and opens up some intriguing possibilities in the future, like possibly tying into system registration or beta participation. It was an overdue and necessary improvement.

I'd also keep in mind that we've migrated to a single, unified platform which combines all the content from both ask and the forums. That was our number one priority, and migrating the content remains our focus even a week after the launch. Having two separate spaces was not ideal, and each site had it's own strengths which we believe have been combined to create the best of both worlds (forum style layout with clearly marked question and answer capability).

In addition to that, there was no mobile version of the forums. I know the mobile version has some issues now, but issues can be identified and corrected. I never found reading the forums on my smartphone to be a great experience. I managed with a lot of scrolling and pinching. There's been a huge shift since the forums were first founded and having a true mobile version is now a fundamental requirement of any site.

Thanks John. Do you have any ability to reduce the amount of white space that the forum pages use? Additionally, while there's a mobile version, the "full web" version isn't responsive, so on my 13" Macbook Air, I have to have my browser just about full screen to be able to read the content. And only about a 3rd of the page is content. Also, who chooses the quotes that appear after people's posts. Is there an option to turn them off?

You're welcome reddot and thanks for sharing a bit more about what your experience on the site is like. What's your monitor resolution? I'd expect you to see more than 1/3 of the page as being content. For example, I'm on 1680x1050 and in a browser window which is about 2/3 of my desktop, I see 2/3 of the page as text.

To answer your question, changing the forum layout is likely possible, but I don't want to say it would be easy. I'm very much not a design expert, but we did take a look at the Docker forum buzz mentioned earlier in the thread since it's being compared often. They're using 70% of the space in a window and we're using 62%, so I don't think the difference quite as pronounced as I've read in some of the comments. I'm sure it's more than just percentages used though, so if anyone has some additional comment on it, please do share.

Oh, I almost forgot. The quotes after people's posts are how signatures appear.