Replies to post #167844 on The Question and Answer Board (IHUB)

[LexTrader]

Takes forever to load.

[jwez]

there is a big difference between a blog and a forum.... if it's about creating room for add space so more money can be made, then i would prefer to just pay more $ a month to keep the same format...

[MikeDDKing]

iHub and Seeking Alpha are apples and oranges. iHub is a message board whereas Seeking Alpha hosts financial articles. The two sites are used differently so what works on one site doesn't necessarily work on the other site.

Most Seeking Alpha articles are read because someone found the title of the article to be interesting. Most often they will be coming from another site such as yahoo with the intent of reading the article. I think typically a user focuses on reading an article and perhaps will also look at information about the author.

When using iHub most of us are rapidly scanning messages as some content is more interesting than others. Many times knowing who posted the message is important because there are certain users whose opinion I'm more interested in than others. With the new format the information about the poster and the post are in separate areas. That makes it more time consuming to read. Also, I don't like that the post # being replied to is separate from the message. That is important to know because it provides the context under which one should read the post. I find myself looking at the poster information, then the message, and then the prior post number/poster for each message which isn't very convenient and takes more time. Perhaps iHub should consider moving the "Re" and prior post# information out of the box about the poster and back in the message box. I think that might flow a little better than the current format. Ideally, the poster would be in the message area too. Perhaps placing the poster name in both the message and in the message box might make sense even though it is a bit redundant.

So far almost every link in the "Related Discussion" area is not even relevant to the message and just clutters up the screen.

[SoxFan]

I don't mind three column sites but take a page out of the mobile environment and set up the ability to close that column much like a menu bar in mobile open and closes a menu. Plus it would be far more efficient and easy on my peripheral vision if I just had to look at one document to show whose the idiot who actually responded to a post of mine rather than having to move my eyes left.

[originalnewt]

Ihub had the best layout up until this change. I have wandered through many other message boards and found none more convenient and easy to use/navigate through than the Oct. 09 2013 version of ihub. Not an impressive change, IMO. Ihub may loose this paying customer when renew time comes.

[Zorax]

Shelly, I realize that at this point, since I'm still trying to read all 3 thousand rants about the change that someone may have already noted what I'm going to post.

The link you gave lead to a page format more like a news issue or yahoo wide open ad strangled site.
I also noticed that the message reader needed to click another hyper for NEXT page in story. Is that where Ihub is going? Members would now have to click open more tabs or pages to read messages? It obviously creates 2 or 3 more pages for ads per message if they are long. This appears to be Advfns goal.

Ihub has had the comfy navigational feeling of staying within a message thread without all the confusing thread links back and forth, or going onto a total next page.

Your link opened my eyes because I think you just showed where Ihub is going. I now have rethought my comment to Janice that this would cause a loss of members. If Ihub mutates into that format, you may lose a large part of the older crowd. No one likes to hop to whole new pages to read a message. That site sets it up that way FOR the ads, no other reason. Please don't go there.