Discussion

Amazing work, you guys! I stumbled on bonfire because I was trying to figure out how I might be able to create a closed, private social network. Been following the development for several months now—so excited to see how far it's come, and can't wait to see it grow in the future!

Just some general notes from my exploration of the Playground today. Hope some of them may be useful:

*General UI/UX issues:

1. I clicked on someone's post, then when I tried to open the sidebar, it expanded under the background of the theme. Trying to upload a screenshot to this post, but when I try to attach something I get no indication of whether my upload succeeded or failed, so I have no idea whether it's working or not.
2. Tried to make a circle for just myself, and had a hard time figuring out how to do that. Wasn't sure what the difference between boundaries and circles is, and was a little confused when I could make a boundary while posting, but not a circle. When I made a boundary from the posting window, I wasn't able to add individual users. I made a circle from the Boundaries and Circles tab, and was able to add myself to the same circle twice, once by username and once from the "Suggested Users" tab, and then could not delete either one from the circle (error: "Could not remove from circle"). Further, when I added myself by username, an "undefined" field remained in the box where I input my username.
3. General confusion as to how things work. I'm not a super technical user and have limited experience with the Fediverse in general, so maybe this is my problem, but I feel like the average person would have the same issues that I did. The icons on the left hand side for the different extensions didn't really make sense (e.g. why is a Japanese arch the icon for "Topics"?) and I had to expand the menu to navigate more easily. All the options to control groups in my Boundaries are a little overwhelming, especially since I have to mouse over each one to see what it does.
4. I wasn't sure if Topics functioned like a forum topic, or if they were more like a hashtag that grouped related posts. Still not totally sure, to be honest. It felt strange that the list of topics and recent posts were split into two even columns—I wasn't sure which was supposed to be the main content of the page, and what I should be looking at. I also wish each Topic told me things like number of comments/sub-topics and when the last post in it was, so that I could see which Topics are active without having to open each one. Also odd that on the front page, Trending Topics lists topics that start with hashtags and ones that do not (e.g. "#humour" alongside "bonfire") which adds to my confusion of how they work and what they are. I wanted to reply to one topic, but when I hit "Reply" it said I was creating a "sub-topic" (with fields for "category" name and description) and prompted me for a title, so I wasn't sure if I was creating a comment thread/chain, or if it would create a separate sub-topic within the main topic, or how things work at in general.
5. Topics in general feel really weird to me. The reverse-chronological order is really off-putting, as is the lack of clarity of how replies go together. I tried replying to someone and it seemed to create an entirely different topic. It looks like these subtopics have threaded replies within them. None of this makes much sense to me at all. I did see some of the team's discussions on Matrix or something about trying to come up with a better way of having discussions, which I think is a great and admirable goal, but this current implementation is far less clear to me than any forum or comment page I've ever visited before. When I replied to someone's topic, I just ended up creating a series of sub-topics, which I then had no way of deleting.
6. Tried to reply to a topic, got the error "A condition didn't receive data that matched a format it could recognise." Refreshed and tried again, and it worked.
7. I chose the "Floating" option for composing posts, and I noticed immediately that the contents of my draft is not saved when navigating from page to page or even tab to tab within the same page. This feels like it should definitely be implemented, since even now I have to constantly copy the contents of my textbox as I navigate around the Playground to make sure I don't lose my writing.
8. I have an "Untitled task" that I can't open or delete. Opening it brings me to a page reading "An error occurred" while deleting it allows me to hit "Delete this intent" but then the page reloads and it's still there. It's also always at the top of my Feed and can't be removed from there either. It wasn't there at first, I think it appeared after I played with the tasks feature.
9. Opening the "Remote" tab under the Feeds page results in a page that just reloads endlessly and seems very glitchy, though the bonfire animation is very cool indeed 🙂
10. Minor UI issue: the "Follow" button on a topic page is right up against the bottom of the top box containing the topic title and description. Also a minor design inconsistency where most of the buttons I see are rounded rectangles, but the "Follow" button inside of a topic itself has fully rounded/semicircular ends.
11. I found the "Read Discussion" popup bar annoying on the Feed page. Every time I mouse over a post it pops up, and I wish it was just there to begin with, or that more of the discussion was instantly visible without having to navigate to the individual discussion page.
12. Things feel split up in a non-intuitive way that I'm still struggling to figure out. It looks like Topics are more of a forum-type discussion where people can post about a specific subject, and the main feed is where you're meant to post about anything you want (like a Twitter or Facebook profile). However, I'm not sure how they connect, or if they do, or which one is the "main" one. Maybe that's up to the admin of the individual instance. But at this point I remain somewhat confused. Little things like my Feed and the homepage having a box for "Trending topics" when the Topics page doesn't are minor details that lead to me feeling a little lost.
13. I also find it a little weird how sometimes I'm making a "Post" and sometimes it's a "Sub-topic" — I get that it just depends on whether or nor I'm in the Topics page, but I wish there was a clearer visual differentiation. For instance, a floating textbox whenever I make a post, and a nested textbox within topics (and maybe it floats when scrolling through a topic, but maintains the width/position of the topic column so that it feels more integrated).

I realize those are very rambling and disorganized notes, but I figured it might be helpful to get reactions from a "regular" user, so I tried to be thorough! I also know that this is a beta and work-in-progress, and that a lot of the hiccups are due to things changing and some features not being quite finished. Overall, SUPER impressed with your work and how far it's come in such a short time. Can't wait to see where it goes next!

@BonfireBuilders #bonfire_feedback