default forum settings

[1psaonly]

Hello! If you are like me and are often on the forums, you may have noticed that many people have their own style on the forums! Such as font, colour, size, justify, etc etc!!! This is why I am suggesting that there should be a default forum setting for people to edit in their forum profile! I feel that being able to express ourselves is a great part of the Potterworld community, similar to skins on the server! The suggestion is in forum settings, you should be able to set what your text looks like by default, so you do not have to go and change it by hand every time! This convenience factor I feel like will definitely improve my gameplay experience and immersion by super duper a lot on the website! Thank you for reading this! ​

 

[Pankakes]

I disagree.

I feel that being able to express ourselves is a great part of the Potterworld community, similar to skins on the server!

People can already express themselves with messy signatures - tons of text, random colours, fonts, images and flashy GIFs. Or they can express themselves with words in their comments.

This convenience factor I feel like will definitely improve my gameplay experience and immersion

The primary focus on forums should be readability which drops down a lot when people don't know what looks good. The default settings are great, if someone wants to make it harder for others to read messages then I say let those who want it struggle.

If those things were up to me, I'd allow only a few colours, light grey, lighter grey, white and gold for links and when it comes to signatures - character limit and pixel height limit for images/gifs.

 

[Nyn]

messy signatures

EXCUSE ME?

Also I like this idea <3

 

[1psaonly]

while i understand your point, i do not believe that this is a bad idea. many people already change their text consistently, such as always using white or a particular font. if you are quite active on the forums, it is quite annoying to change your font or colours every time! ive noticed that many people usually do change their text in the forums, and this is just a convience factor!​

​

The primary focus on forums should be readability which drops down a lot when people don't know what looks good. The default settings are great, if someone wants to make it harder for others to read messages then I say let those who want it struggle.

​

​

all the text in the forums are readable, the only thing that would change is formatting! for example, many times when staff are replying to suggestions, they use a custom colour or something! i think it would be cool if they didn't have to change it manually, which would sure remove a step from what they have to do! also, usually people that care enough to change their defaults would be people that use the forums a lot! so many people will still use the default format, but the people that use the forums enough that changing every formatting could be bothersome, this would help them the most! there are many ways to express ones self on the server, and i think that this would be another cool way for people to express themselves!​

 

[Pankakes]

if you are quite active on the forums, it is quite annoying to change your font or colours every time!

I am quite active on the forums and while it's not annoying having to format my messages, it is annoying to read a text in a bright colour on a dark background, especially late at night. There is a reason why white isn't the default text colour - to reduce eye strain. There is a reason why when there's a lot of text, it is recommended to use sans-serif fonts. There is a reason, why fancy handwritten fonts aren't used in text. It's not just "more ways to express myself"

all the text in the forums are readable

Just because something is readable doesn't it's easy to read. Readability drops without proper spacing and legibility drops with weird fonts. Google russian cursive for example, or...

Here I'll show you something else, let's take a warm color family with a standard font with unnecessarily bigger font size:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. This is a sample text written in various colours. Ut laoreet, tellus vitae tempor tincidunt, sem est condimentum risus, in facilisis nisl lacus eget mauris. Maecenas leo elit, suscipit eu mi vitae, sodales aliquet ante. Here I'd like to show emphasis by changing the colour. Maecenas imperdiet tincidunt velit, quis tristique neque pretium id. Here I'm once again putting emphasis on the text until the end of the paragraph. Aenean sapien urna, feugiat dictum ultricies vitae, vehicula quis tellus. Curabitur quis nunc id massa ullamcorper porta. Etiam fringilla orci dui, sed ornare lectus molestie quis. Etiam luctus ante enim, eu aliquam tellus bibendum id.

Seems normal, doesn't it ? But here is the same text with Protanopia - Color blindness to red

Edit:

many people already change their text consistently

I am aware of this, here's Head Staff using a different font color:

Here's staff using golden colour for their text, however, the link uses a very similar colour, making it hidden in the text.

Dark green on a dark background:

Another one:

Another one:

These were mostly about low contrast and low color difference, what about too high of a contrast with colours that burn your eyes at night... ?

Here's a discussion regarding white text on dark background:
https://graphicdesign.stackexchange...er-on-the-eyes-dark-on-light-or-light-on-dark
And a blog that's linked there:
http://blog.tatham.oddie.com.au/2008/10/13/why-light-text-on-dark-background-is-a-bad-idea/

And here are some quotes from both of them:

However, most studies have shown that dark characters on a light background are superior to light characters on a dark background (when the refresh rate is fairly high). For example, Bauer and Cavonius (1980) found that participants were 26% more accurate in reading text when they read it with dark characters on a light background.

People with astigmatism (aproximately 50% of the population) find it harder to read white text on black than black text on white. Part of this has to do with light levels: with a bright display (white background) the iris closes a bit more, decreasing the effect of the "deformed" lens; with a dark display (black background) the iris opens to receive more light and the deformation of the lens creates a much fuzzier focus at the eye.

And here are the results for default text colour and default background:

Looking back at all the images I provided, It's funny seeing most of them are from staff, especially after they stand by their "professionalism" so much in other posts.

 

[Salmandingo]

Your response doesn't actually solve the problem you are experiencing with the colors, because people will set the colors to whatever they like regardless. You seem to have a concern with the way people use the colors, not particularly one with psa's suggestion.

I have colorblindness as well and although I struggle to differentiate between certain colors sometimes, I wouldn't advocate for people to struggle in selecting their favorite colors as you did.

The default settings are great, if someone wants to make it harder for others to read messages then I say let those who want it struggle.

I use colors that contrast a lot from each other, it's a habit of being colorblind. For example, it's much easier for yellow and blue to contrast compared to blue and pink for example.

I definitely support the idea of @1psaonly 's suggestion and making it harder for people to color their text and adjust it definitely won't solve the problem of contrast. The system we have now is still pretty convenient for use.

Looking back at all the images I provided, It's funny seeing most of them are from staff, especially after they stand by their "professionalism" so much in other posts.

Also this has nothing to do with professionalism. Since when did picking colors available to both staff and regular players become unprofessional?

 

[Pankakes]

Your response doesn't actually solve the problem you are experiencing with the colors

I don't have a problem with experiencing the colors.

I use colors that contrast a lot from each other, it's a habit of being colorblind.

You see, (no pun intended), I usually lean towards less clashing colors, instead of white on black, due to the fact that I do have astigmatism and want to avoid halation for me and for others. Also the fact that I'm a graphic designer and it's my job to make things accessible and look good.

For example, it's much easier for yellow and blue to contrast

Yes, they are called complementary colors. However, everything should be used in moderation, here's how it should usually not look like

Since when did picking colors available to both staff and regular players become unprofessional?

Don't ask me, I'm not the one saying certain things aren't "professional"

Edit:
I was just pointing out that people usually don't know what formatting and colours work and what don't which leads to messy threads where everyone wants their own style + combined with signatures taking more space than the messages they post, leading to harder separation between the comment, signature and someone else's comment (even though, profile pic next to each message helps)

 

[Honey_Dwarf1]

The forums aren't designed to just look 'good'. They are a place to have fun and mess around. Why shouldn't people be able to have some fun with how they format their text? What doesn't look good to you might look good to other people, you can't just assume that everybody else likes the boring colours too.
Besides, like Salmandingo said, having a default setting wouldn't change people using the colours. If you think formatting shouldn't be allowed, create your own thread (but it probably won't get much support because there is no problem with formatting.)

 

[Joshios]

Hey @Pankakes, after reading the thread, I think you are misunderstanding this suggestion. The suggestion only states having default settings for text, color, size, etc. You can already style your posts on the forums, and so this is more of a QOL suggestion, making it easier to style your forum posts. I do understand some of your points that you are making about formatting itself, but since this is really just a QOL suggestion, I agree with it!

 

[Pankakes]

The forums agent designed to just look 'good'.

The primary reason is legibility and readability. If it's not that, then they're not really forums but something else. Also, if it were true, the whole website would be done in HTML and JavaScript only.

They are a place to have fun and mess around.

I thought they are places for civil discussion, exchanging ideas and having fun.

What doesn't look good to you might look good to other people, you can't just assume that everybody else likes the boring colours too.

I provided images from these forums and put those colours into contrast checker, which follows Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, it's not "What doesn't look good to you", it's not subjective like you think. You can read about it here:
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

The suggestion only states having default settings for text, color, size, etc. You can already style your posts on the forums, and so this is more of a QOL suggestion, making it easier to style your forum posts.

Yeah, I guess this isn't the place to ask for such things

 

[nathan1e]

I thought they are places for civil discussion, exchanging ideas and having fun.

I agree with the first 2, but I don't know if the third one really applies to this specific server.

If I make a joke on the forums about the way that threads are classified as "duplicates", I immediately get a lecture from a HS about how the forums work.

If I want to make some feedback regarding events on the server a bit lighter to read by including a joke, in this case referring to the Revelius update as "the Ravioli update", I get discredited for being "too disrespectful". Fun fact, that same joke was made on multiple occasions by (ex-)staff members.

So yeah, all in all I think it's safe to say this forum is not a place for "fun".

 

[Aviforma]

how do you type in colors i can't figure it out

 

[Aviforma]

how dare you refer to it as the ravioli update, i put a lot of work into this update

 

[Grace]

Hello!

Thank you so much for your suggestion regarding the forums. This is definitely a fun and convenient idea so I'll be bringing it up with the rest of the Poltergeist team to see what they think about it. After we have discussed it and brought it up with the leadership team I'll let you know what our decision is! Thank you again and have an amazing day!

 

[Grace]

Hello!

First of all, so sorry for the delay on the response for this thread! We have brought your idea up with the leadership team and unfortunately we are going to have to decline it. We really did feel like this idea would provide a lot more convenience for players, but allowing players to set their default font/color here on forums is not possible. We are also unsure if this is a possibility at all given the forums we use and therefore will probably not be able to implement it in the future.

Nonetheless, thank you so much for your suggestion! We greatly appreciate new ideas that can help improve the player experience or conveniency and would love to hear any future suggestions you have. I hope you have a fantastic day!

 

[1psaonly]

I see!! thank you so much for the reply and the consideration of my suggestion!!! i love how transparent you are with this process, thank you so much!!! it gives me hope every day that i can make the potterworld community a better place, even if my attempts fail!! for each failure is jsut another step forward! thank you so much, i am honoured of the consideration of my suggestion!!