For Stockopedia to succeed, it is important that it is as easy to use and as attractive as possible for new users but without compromising important functionality.
I have created this thread as a place to make and discuss suggestions to improve usability thus helping to achieve that goal.
I am a full-time private investor... with a little trading on the side (generally small-scale arbitrage in specialist niches). Previously, I spent 24 years in the IT industry, 13 of those running my own IT services firm. I invested as a "hobby" for 20 years before turning it into a full-time occupation in 2004. I really enjoy the "research" side of investing, finding out about varied businesses and industries and learning what makes them tick. Since going "full-time" I have learnt an awful lot from some very erudite investors & professionals who are kind enough to share their expertise in electronc forums such as this. I can now count a number of them as my friends, having had the opportunity to meet them in the real world, as well as this virtual one! I try to pay back the debt I owe by sharing what I've learnt and I always value constructive criticism to correct my errors and misapprehensions! I am a Director of ShareSoc, the UK organisation for individual shareholders. See below for details. more »
When viewing a thread, the browser window title shows (for example) "Meta Discussions Forum #19274 at Stockopedia". Rather than displaying the (meaningless) thread id (#19274) it should show the thread title ("Usability").
How about "Meta Discussions : Usability thread at Stockopedia"?
Cheers,
Mark
In reply to marben100 (post #4)
On S'pedia ... there are only threads.
I can certainly see why people think this is the case - though after using this site for a few weeks, I'm not sure it's correct. In some ways the S'pedia model can be used either as a TMF-style board or an ADVN-style discussion thread.
Having said that, I think a couple of things create a tendence towards the ADVFN-style:
Interestingly, however, the S'pedia people ave said elsewhere that they would like to see more and shorter threads, which would sugest something more like the approach we've been accustomed to on TMF.
One of the things I really like about TMF is the ability to see a simple list of all posts together with the poster's name (e.g. if i look at the O&G board) - i can then simply pick out the posts by people i regard as 'signal' and ignore the 90% that are likely to be 'noise'.
I have a lot of sympathy for this view - it's the way I tend to navigate through TMF myself. I think that S'pedia have made progress on this in the last couple of weeks with the Show/Hide options. This allows that sort of approach to take place, although the limitation is that it only allows what would be called the 'Threaded' view on TMF - you can't have the 'interleaving' I described above, which is a downside to S'pedia IMO.
SW10
When viewing a thread, the browser window title shows (for example) "Meta Discussions Forum #19274 at Stockopedia". Rather than displaying the (meaningless) thread id (#19274) it should show the thread title ("Usability").
Agreed in theory, but don't most people used tabbed browsing these days so in practice they see little of this title?
db
Re #8: in I.E. I see the partial title both on the tab and on the overall browser window title bar, when that tab has focus.
Re #7: in broad agreement - but as you said, before there is a true "Board" model, it needs to be possible to view threads in an interleaved manner, just viewing posts relating to a stock in time order, irrespective of their thread. Dunno whether this is planned & how difficult it would be (considering that the user may wish to ignore certain threads).
Concerning the length of threads - that rather depends on the topic. Some topics, like AGM writeups & subsequent discussion lend themselves to short threads. Others like "whither the Soco share price?" are likely to become rather lengthy. ;0)
IMHO, the "board" model is well suited to longer posts and the thread model to shorter ones - which explains a lot about the difference between the TMF style and the ADVFN style IMHO. By starting new threads for the longer posts with the meat in the thread header you get the best of both worlds.
Best,
Mark
There appears to be a usability issue with the "thumbs up"/"thumbs down" feature. I have noticed on a couple of occassions on The Extract Complex thread that people have apologised for inadvertently voting "down" posts they had intended to vote "up". I think we're normally expecting rather more posts to be voted "up" than "down".
Couple of suggestions. Firstly, I suspect that part of the reason for this happening is that there is a tendency to click the first icon (reading from the left) - so it may be better to reverse the order of the icons (BUT this could cause even more trouble for users familiar with the current order when first implemented!). Secondly, maybe it would be useful to introduce a "confirm" message box when voting down (not when voting up). Given that voting down is (probably!) an unusual action, such a confirmation may be effective, if people DON'T get it when doing the more usual "up" vote.
Regards,
Mark
I dunno, the colour change looks pretty effective to me. Perhaps just a slightly bigger gap between them?
db
But the colours only change once there has been a vote, otherwise both are grey (see above right now). Perhaps always have the colours, even in a no-vote-yet state?
In reply to people commenting on the thumbs thing (posts 10,11,12,13)
I have to say, the thumbs seem pretty intuitive and logical to me: down then up; red and blue.
Having them the other round seems wrong to me. Obviously S'pedia want them in neutral colours before a vote is added, and I wonder if the solution may be to have a grey thumb with red outline for the 'down' thumb and a blue outline for the 'up' thumb?
SW10
people have apologised for inadvertently voting "down" posts they had intended to vote "up"
I guess we need to know if they tried to click on the right (up) button but accidently clicked on the left (down) button. Or if they deliberately clicked on the left button thinking that it was Up.
If the former, then either a bigger gap between the thumbs or keep it visually as it is but change the clickable parts so that the "wrist" bits can't be clicked on, would solve the problem.
If the latter, then they are unlikely to make this mistake again, I would have thought, but SW10's suggestion of different colour outlines may help other newbies, at a small cost of making the page more busy..
db
Maybe putting the plus/minus counters between the thumbs would seperate them enough to avoid accidentally voting in the wrong direction.
Alternatively, puttng a seesaw between the thumbs could seperate them sufficiently. It could move up, horizontally balanced, or down depending on the count.
I have twice voted incorrectly and I think my error was caused by not being familiar with the voting system.
I simply scanned across the page, saw a couple of thumbs and clicked on the first one that I reached. I think fordtin's idea of separating the two thumbs with the counters is quite good as it would create more of a zone of separation.
In any event having made the mistake twice - I think I have finally learned how the system works and I am therefore unlikely to be a repeat offender M'Lud.
In reply to sander4709 (post #19)
I have twice voted incorrectly and I think my error was caused by not being familiar with the voting system. .....
In any event having made the mistake twice - I think I have finally learned how the system works and I am therefore unlikely to be a repeat offender M'Lud.
Quite so. I'd make no changes at all to the way it works.
It is my observation that there are quite a few down votes attached to some posts, especially posts by people who are well-known from posting elsewhere., My usual assumption is that such down votes have been registered by people bored by interminable navel-gazing discussions elsewhere and are merely voting down in the mistaken impression that people here actually care about such things, whereas in fact they are merely revealing their own small-mindedness. Yes there will be the occasional vote (in either direction) in error.....but so what?
If someone makes persistent down votes then they are simply just encouraging the adminstrators to investigate their bona fides and potentially inviting a ban.
I understand that such matters continue to pre-occupy the kids in other playgrounds elsewhere, but I'd rather the focus here was on addressing any actual problems in navigation. As far as I can see, the claims being made over poor navigation (now that various improvements have been made over the last few months) are largely down to a simple lack of understanding or a lack of interest. It seems to me that various people are claiming difficulty with navigation when the reality is, in fact, that they can't be bothered to contribute to more than one site - and simply prefer to stay somewhere where their egos are boosted by luvvies.....which is absolutely fine, IMO.
I've no doubt that those who are genuinely interested in discussion on stocks and markets will continue to gravitate to the place that offers such discussion with the least noise......so it would be good if such navel-gazing discussions as are needed for a beta site could concentrate on things that are actually important (the facts of navigation) rather than the things that people on other sites appear to think are important (eg the minutiae of voting processes).
cheers
ee
In reply to rpcroft (post #18)
Thanks for pointing out the issue with the Red Feedback button. Its disappearance was unintentional. We were testing out something else and, unfortunately, the poor old friendly red button got snared up in the process. It is now back and awaits with pleasure your votes and bug reports.
Incidentally, this is just to confirm that we are following with interest the debate re: recs/thumbs. The dev team is tied up on the new overall site redesign for the time being (ETA currently mid August, about two weeks later than initially expected, assuming no hiccups) but we can certainly make changes to the voting once that is live (or even potentially as part of that deployment). The only issue for us is whether this is more a "getting used to the site" issue that will be resolved over time, or something that definitely needs a redesign, so it might be worth seeing how voting behaviour evolves for a while longer before making changes.
The web page formatting seems to go wrong if you change the content font size. I have high res monitor and have to use a font size of 22 to make text readable. The BBC website shows how its done.
In reply to emptyend (post #20)
Hi ee,
Whilst there is some truth in what you say, it is also clear to me that it is too easy for new users to make mistakes in voting. Sanders has confirmed my suspicion that the thumbs down being the first button that one comes to (reading from the left), is a reason why it may be pressed accidentally (I think I've even done so myself on one occasion). However, now that S'pedia users have got used to the layout, I can understand the objections to changing it.
Nevertheless, if S'pedia succeeeds and attracts more new users, as we all hope, this will become more of an issue (if the voting system is to have any meaning at all). Considering the responses, perhaps having the warning dialogue I suggested maybe an answer, perhaps combined with making the thumbs down icon less prominent (maybe make it smaller compared to the thumbs up one?). I agree with M that resolving this can wait until the new release and is not desperately urgent.
Regards,
Mark
________________
Portfolio Application
________________
Encouraged by the very attractive presentation of the Fund competition (albeit not my own performance in it) I started to enter my personal portfolio details onto the stockopedia application but did not get far for two reasons:
1) The security code of an instrument I had traded 18 months ago was not recognised, and
2) There is not cash ledger account.
To make the utility useable may I suggest:
1) A utility is introduced to allow a user to define his own code. Clearly the price will also have to be maintained by the user, but in some cases this is all that is required; for exemple if the position has already been closed. In most cases it is likely better to ask you to add the code but it may be that the underlying no longer exists, or would be expensive to add for one user.
2) A GBP cash book is introduced. This would allow the effect of all transactions to be recorded and will be very handy at tax return time to recall dividends, redemptions and all sorts of other things. It can be quite simple and show:
Date
Narrative
One spare free format field
Value (in GBP)
Running total (in GBP)
The current total of the cash account could optionally be shown as part of the portfolio valuation.
A 'nice to have' extra would be to have the net cost of purchases and sales 'posted' to this account automatically.
Finally, one day, should the utility become widely used, introduce an FX capability - but definitely not now.
Cheers,
