By the way, as an aside, I’ve been an active member of Metafilter, which I assume most of you have heard of (perhaps erroneously), closely watched it evolve for about 10 years now, and think of it as one of the best, smartest, most well-run semi-open communities on the web, and I believe a lot of lessons about how to keep things as simple and clear as possible (some say too simple, but I tend to disagree) while offering as much functionality as possible can be learned from the decisions Matt Haughey has made there.
It may be old-school, but looking only or even primarily to Facebook and Twitter and the like for inspiration can be a mistake, I think.
I’d like to second the points @gregfielding made. Besides that, I think overall it’s a pretty good design but might be somewhat confusing and overwhelming for newbies.
Not sure if it’s been mentioned yet, but pagination at the bottom of the plugins page (https://buddypress.org/extend/plugins/) would be useful (right now it’s only at the top).
Are “Groups” forums or groups and what is “Community” … is “Community” a forum or a group of groups (whatever they are)?
I am utterly confused.
Why cannot I reply to an individual reply above, as per quoting, or perhaps – dare I add to the confusing – have threaded discussion!?!
@Bowe
Yes, I feel lost and it all feels “wrong” too.
Yes, sorry to say it, Buddypress badly needs the input of an experience interface designer.
Shit … there is still no preview before post or basic formatting either … what is this IRC made more complex?
@nonegiven – Watch your language; I can understand your frustrations but this is not the place to vent steam.
/Community/ is just a page under which I assume Andy wanted the BuddyPress pages on this site.
Forums are contained within Groups. That particular question is off-topic for this thread and would be better of in its own.
You can’t reply to an another reply as this is something bbPress doesn’t support. Right now, we’re in a forum – this isn’t “comments” in the WordPress sense of the word (which of course does support nesting).
I’m having to echo all of the sentiments that were very well expressed by stwc a few posts up.
I’m especially worried by the activity stream now as I find it confusing and am not sure of it’s true worth?
Earlier in the thread (yes I refer to this as a thread in the classical sense) there was mention of lack of UI focus, it brought to mind the thread started by I think Mr Mazz? requesting feedback on API design, this thread was and is extremely arcane and esoteric and even makes the point of requesting that all but real programmers steer clear, and for acceptable reasons; however it prompts my feeling that emphatically BP and the project as a whole is simply far far too mid tier heavy, so far it feels that it’s all about the logic and less about the top tier or presentation layer (Frontend in web app terms) I think in order to determine best how BP does indeed work at a user level it is going to be essential to open real dialogue with people who have UI architecture experience who’s focus is on that presentation layer. I would vote for a companion thread to run alongside the API one dealing specifically with UI and user experience, better I would love to see the project balance out it’s developers and bring on board people to work on this aspect. It must be seen as an extremely critical aspect, you can develop the API ad infinitum but it means little if communities simply don’t jell due to users finding things too confusing.
Back to the site design or functionality are we going to have basic formatting for posts, or rather what is the formatting available, why can we not blockquote how do we add code formating? How have these aspects just managed to vanish?!
I have reported forum post tags not closing as a bug and attached a patch — https://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/2359
@hnla start a thread then for UI, it’s a great idea!
Ah ok hadn’t realised that was the issue with post formatting.
I would be happy to start the thread and will do when I have moment to write an introduction/prologue to qualify the purpose of the thread but equally would be more than happy and not upset if one of the older hands with BP decided to run with it and start things off.
@Paul Gibbs, the problem is beyond UI. Buddypress/Automattic needs to make some real architectural choices, stop piling on functionality on existing functionality that partly overlaps, looks all very similar to the end user, but isn’t synchronized/streamlined. Your explanation of the differences between groups, forums, comments etc. in #post-51655 is irrelevant to the end user.
Mixing old-fashioned forums + WordPress classic blogs/comments + newer forms of social networking/activity wires is a recipe for disaster imho. Unless perhaps if you rethink and restructure the whole thing from the bottom up, but if Automattic is not doing that it is not going to happen and will only get worse.
Mr Maz (?) API discussion was a definite step in the right direction!
But isn’t that worthy of discussing in a dedicated thread? I hear what you’re saying, is this not too some degree UI though? the API questions raised were indeed sounding like steps in the right direction especially where they touch on easing life for the presentation layer frontend developer but redefining The API doesn’t necessarily clear up ( or does it?)some of the concerns some have in regards how conceptually the whole ‘thing’ works and how the end user (frankly the only person that actually matters) finds it to use.
@hnla, yes, absolutely worthy discussing UI in a dedicated thread. My point was that it is not just UI.
This topic is purely about capturing errors and broken things with the relaunch of this website. Discussions about general BuddyPress UI enhancements need to go in its own thread.
@apeatling gutsy move to do the redesign and upgrade live when you know how some would react to the changes and some glitches. As it is, I could see the new BP functions that will be available so I can envision how I can use those to improve my sites. As for the current UI, I hope to see constructive and collaborative comments rather than negative and venomous ones.
edit – sorry @djpaul, posted this before I saw your post 
@DJPaul Your vigilant moderation prompted me to go back and look at post #1 where you, in fact, state that this is for problems associate with the new BP design. I would suggest tweaking the Topic title to reflect as much as it can cause a bit of confusion as to the real nature of the topic (I confess to thinking it was about the actual “design” of the site as per the title)
This might already be listed in this very long thread. When visiting a group clicking on the members tab does not show the members. Also, as a Group Admin, clicking the “Manage Members” tab simply brings up a message that states “This group has no members.” But I know that it does as the Members tab shows “8”.
@Modemlooper @apeatling what if this forums activity situation could be fixed by not allowing one to post to their activity unless it is to only update there status profile only if that feature is enabled on the site. In this situation the activity stream could show everything i does not but would not confuse someone in thinking they are making a blog post or even a forum post. Each activity entry that is plugin enabled could have it’sown preset links to go to the group page for viewing or posting. I really like the idea of groups having all the options that buddypress has but I agree that it is confusing using groups with forums with the activity stream. Though this solution would alow the activity stream to be a real time site update page for all plugins/pages with in the wp/buddyress site that would also show data for all subsites with in mu or 3.0
I am one of the developers for wowroster.net and I have been following buddypress for sometime now as I would like to use it for our main site. When we started back in 04 we used phpbb2, then when to DragonflyCMS after we suffered a magor data loss due to an outage, and now we currently use phpbb3. We know we have limitations with phpbb3 and after I have been using WP along with buddpress I can really see the potential our site can have with our community. Though most of our community is accustom to forums rather than cms or now all that including a social networking layer….. I have peronally been able to weed though the nuances with the way buddypress deals with forums, blogs, and activity, though I feel if one would not be able to add content to the activity stream directly from the page it would ease the understanding on where one should be posting information. I personally see the activity stream being just that showing what is going on through out the whole site. If one wants to post they do it from the forums, if one wants to update a status they do it from thier profile and or group page they are an admin or mod too. and then anything that happens with in the site and update to profile, group, blog, and or any plugin should show in the activity stream for real time(with refreshes) viewing.
While this is not entirely a ‘problem’ with the new site i would suggest that allowing group creation is perhaps not the best idea or at least might need some further consideration? However having said that I realise that it’s part of the core aspect of BP. Reason mentioned is the recent creation of a group for the sole purpose of making what amounts to a post asking for help that really should have gone in an appropriate pre-existing group forum such as ‘Help and Trouble Shooting’ It tends to highlight the confusion that can exist for a self confessed buddypress newbie in using the site? It also means that unchecked groups could grow at an alarming rate and responding to the forum post or update means joining an ever increasing list of groups.
Possible bug?: When on a displayed user’s profile page the “personal” tab shows all mentions of the user NOT just that user’s activity, this can be verified by clicking @username mentions a few links to the right.
bp-default does not duplicate this issue so I am guessing it found its way in via bp.org customization
Within a plugin group, the Reviews tab does not display that proper ranking. See my plugin group for an example. It states, “Based on 1 rating” but then shows two reviews below: https://buddypress.org/community/groups/wordpress-hook-sniffer/reviews/
more of general feedback – i think the new site is great and all the hard work that goes into something like this (especially pulling in the plugins to groups)
but i find myself a little distracted – i can’t put my finger on it (maybe since i’ve tweaked my own stuff to bring things more inline) but something with the disparity between sections (activity). i hate being vague though so I realize this is not helping 
One weird bug – after sending a private message: my adminbar shows a new notification but obviously nothing is there as i sent one instead of receiving.
@jeffsayre – the bp.org reviews are separate from the wp.org plugin reviews; not sure if this is the original intention
Our forum thread favorites are still there and accessible from the old site (https://buddypress.org/forums/profile/stwc/favorites for example) (and public for all users, which I just realized). Pleasecan we have a return of an ‘Add to Favorites’ button for forum threads?
Oh, and also boldface please a permalink to the latest comment made inthread from the forums directory view, preferably on the ‘2 minutes ago’ (or whatever it is) timestamp?
@stwc I’ve been keeping that old favorite link open in a tab in a separate browser i don’t use much so I don’t loose those, lol.
