An update on the forums.

The new EA forums soft launch has been active for 5 weeks now and we’ve had a massive amount of feedback. We want to say thank you to everyone for your posts, reports, comments and examples. It’s early days for the forum and we’re a long way from our final form, and all of this feedback is invaluable in getting to where we want to be.

To that end, we wanted to drop an update on the various issues you’ve been reporting. There’s a good amount of stuff here, but the list isn’t exhaustive. If you feel something critical has been missed, please feel free to ask in the replies

Core reported issues

• Site Performance: In recent weeks we’ve seen site performance is not consistently at the level it should be. Sometimes pages wouldn’t load, errors like “community not found” and “internal server error” would appear, or folks couldn’t log in.
  We’ve been working behind the scenes to identify what’s been happening, and we believe one of the main causes of this has been found and addressed this week.
  As ever, if you are encountering such issues, please let us know.
  
  
• Random Redirects / Misdirection: A notable number of folks are encountering an issue where you try to go to a post, only to be redirected to a random post. We are still investigating at priority. As it's related to caching, we want to highlight a workaround. You can fix any currently corrupted links by clearing your browser cache.
  We have detailed steps for doing so here. 🙏/praying that the link works.
  
  
• Logouts: We know folks are getting logged out at inopportune times. This is not our intention, an active user should not be getting logged out. It’s being worked on, we know how frustrating it can be to prepare a post only to lose it. If this does happen, in most cases you should be able to return to the same place and try to compose the post again, and the draft should be saved.
  
  
• Posts & edits failing: We know that in some cases posts or edits will fail to process for unclear reasons. We’ve identified a number of issues related to this, and are working to fix them. In the meantime if you see this, please post about it here, we’ll work to identify the issue and find a way to get your post/edit up. 
  
  
• Reply sorting and navigating large threads: Many of you have been very clear that the current default of sorting by likes is not ok, and we agree. We have plans to expand defaults and allow more customization of your default thread view. We also agree with the sentiment that too few posts load at a time, requiring frequently clicking “Show More” which makes large threads difficult to navigate.
  As this will require code changes, addressing this will take a while, but we want to reiterate that this has a very high priority for us.
  
  If you’re interested, you can read a little more of our thoughts in these threads: Thread Display,  Seeing Replies

Other requests and updates.

• Pages: We know many of you have asked about pagination for  improved navigation. Both for viewing larger threads but also for browsing the list of threads in boards. We wanted to acknowledge this.
  While we don't have any updates on thread view yet, we wanted to highlight something for the board view. When you click on the “posts” counter under a board title, it’ll bring you to a version of a paged forum layout. It doesn’t have “jump to page X” functionality, but it could be helpful for folks who prefer to navigate this way. You can also filter this view by tags if you want to focus on specifics.

• Dark mode: We know you guys want a dark mode, and we want one too.  It’s an important roadmap item for the future, though we don’t have a set date. 
  
  
• Inconsistency with first posts and replies: We know that replies don’t have the same suite of tools that the main posts have, and we’re looking to expand what replies can do. We have no specifics today, but hopefully will have an update soon on tool expansion.
  
  
• Tag search on mobile: Mobile users, we know that the +tag button is giving unexpected (and potentially unpleasant) behavior, we’re working to get this fixed ASAP.
  
  
• Show threads you’ve read: Flagging already-read posts has been requested and we agree, it’s on our wish list/roadmap. 
  
  
• Jump to unread: Similarly, the behavior to interact with unread posts needs to be improved. Once again particularly important for navigating larger threads.
  
  
• Avatars: Many of you are asking for more Avatar customisation options. We hear you, and we do have concrete plans here. In the meantime we’ve added a bunch more avatars to the selection, with a focus on Sims.
  
  
• New tags and forums: We have already implemented some of the requested tags and tweaks. You will for example see a lot more tags in most of the Sims forums. We also have added several additional forums in line with your feedback.
  Please keep it coming. We might not be able to implement everything, but we welcome all of the feedback and requests.
  
  
• Side content display: We’ve had feedback on what’s displayed in the side content, keep it coming. As with other new features, we are experimenting here and will keep making changes. As an example, we recently added the new “Found a bug? Check if it’s new” widget!
  If you see a bug, you can enter a keyword to find similar bug reports that were posted already.
  
  
  
• Post rate limiter: Some folks found themselves temporarily locked down from posting because the system determined they had posted too frequently or recently. The rate at which real humans encountered this was way too frequent. We have eased the parameters on this, and folks shouldn’t feel the sting of this as much. 
  
  
• Spam filter: Some folks also found posts disappearing due to our spam filter thinking their perfectly benign post was naughty. We made some tweaks as this is a bit less strict now, while still catching bots and bad actors.
  If you still get caught, it’s most likely due to an external link. We review these auto-moderation actions frequently and will release your post ASAP. 
  
  
• Inserting YouTube videos: Some folks couldn’t use the tools to add YouTube videos to their posts. We identified what was going wrong here and everyone should be able to post now. Thanks for flagging that to us!

Thanks for reading this, and again for your feedback for the past few weeks. There’s still a long way to go in this Soft Launch journey, and we want to thank everyone for bearing with us as we work through these teething problems.

As a reminder, the list isn’t exhaustive, but if there’s anything you want to add that has already been reported, please do so in the comments. If it's something new, please open a new thread here.