Originally posted by Adam I find it interesting to see so many people saying that.
If you compare our site to stock vBulletin forums, you'll see a significant difference.
I think you already did a very good job and I know it's not that easy to optimize a forum like this. But there are a couple of things that could still be improved IM(V)HO
- The logo at the top takes a bit too much place I think
- Some sections should be merged, why have a Pentax DSLR AND a Samsung DSLR subsection for example. There is many other examples but I think it confuses the new user (where do I have to post? - and you see the moderators constantly moving the threads) and difficult for the regular user to get the information: I have to browse 4 or 5 sections or even more. And I never go to some sections that maybe would interest me but I don't know because I'm too lazy to browse them all.
That's maybe because I'm a software developer and it's a bit a second nature to pay attention to usability. The more features you put and the more transparent they should be. Optimize the number of clicks a user has to do to execute a task. Etc.
I think Gmail is a great example of good usability and woud be applicable to a forum. An ideal forum in my view would remove all sections and put everything into only one section. But people would be able to filter the messages that belong to a theme (=old section) or by keywords. That way the user could create a personalized way to display the forum with the relevant information to him in a fast way. I know this is probably not applicable to vBulletin but I think the kind of forum I describe would have a great success.
- The social groups are a great idea but for some reasons it doesn't work exactly like the rest of the forums for messages. And you cannot put more than one manager for the group.