Sep 7, 2024 03:26:13 AM by Maria T
Is it my fault or has the forum font become thinner?
Because if they have changed it, it is very difficult to read.
Solved! Go to Solution.
Sep 10, 2024 09:23:02 AM by Stan S
Anyone want to confirm it looks better now to *read it* and it only has been changed in the *Freelancers* forum. We changed the font to 16px and weight to 450.
*Note* There will still be an issue with italics, and the font size will still be smaller when you write a post / in various other spots. For our engineering friends out there, I am very literally putting in an override to change the font in a few spots right now.
Sep 7, 2024 04:41:40 AM by Sophie A
It is not your fault, it is someone else's! Very bad experience...
Sep 7, 2024 04:48:08 AM Edited Sep 7, 2024 05:18:42 AM by Radia L
Italics don't work in Chrome?
In Edge as well.
Sep 7, 2024 10:38:15 AM Edited Sep 8, 2024 11:13:57 AM by Jeanne H
Not you, it's an Upwork improvement!
If you make changes on a site, you have to ensure nothing else is changed. Apparently, this is an unknown concept or the difficulties are intentional. Either way, it's telling, because other platforms don't have or create these issues.
Sep 7, 2024 06:03:10 AM by Clark S
It's not you, Maria. Upwork has apparently chosen a thinner, less readable font for forum posts, and I fail to see any benefit in that change.
Sep 7, 2024 06:22:08 AM by Maria T
No benefit! I can see very well up close, but my eyes are already watering right now.
Sep 7, 2024 10:36:01 AM by Jeanne H
Upwork seems to take the standard acessibility standards and reverse them. This is like the bizarre "dark" mode that looks like high--contrast on LSD.
Maybe they don't want people reading the comments.
Sep 7, 2024 07:04:02 AM by Bilal M
Thank you! I was wondering what the issue is with my monitor display, and why the text looked thinner/grayish.
Sep 7, 2024 10:34:13 AM by Jeanne H
I think this is an "improvement" just like the wretched "dark" mode. They have been busy editing comments, and the tool bar doesn't work, in addition to breking every rule on accessibility.
I'm sure Upwork has some decent IT people. I wish they would let them work.
Sep 7, 2024 03:30:15 PM Edited Sep 7, 2024 03:30:50 PM by Ravindra B
I could barely read what I had written; I had to copy the text to a Word file to check it.
Sep 8, 2024 11:10:43 AM Edited Sep 8, 2024 11:11:37 AM by Jeanne H
Upwork/moderators - Are the changes made to the forum regarding font, tools, etc. permanent or a screw-up by the IT team? We need to know. The current state is not acceptable by any website standard, and violates a number of accessibility standards. I looked at some of the back end stuff and it appears you are using "AI" to do something. It might be you are using it to try and catch spam or scams, but there are not that many posts. I have looked at the numbers for all forums and it isn't as though there are hundreds of new posts daily.
The "AI" is still using predictive language to identify spam and scams, nothing scientific or intelligent about it. How do you manage to mess up the font and tools and other problems at the same time? If you are changing the font, etc. does no one look at it? Not only is this important for the forum users, it also explains a great deal about why search engines and other aspects of the platform do not work as they should.
Can we have a reponse?
Sep 8, 2024 05:11:37 PM by StanG S
What do you think AI is doing or what all of the sudden changed for accessibility? It was only a font change. What numbers are off?
FYI our IT team has nothing to do with this, nor do we really work with the core platform team. Community is built on top of a third party platform called Khoros. We have 1.5 engineers who handle everything between Community and Academy.
Sep 8, 2024 11:58:48 PM by Maria T
"Just a font change"
Does that seem like too little?
Tell any of the "1.5 engineers" to change it back.
Sep 9, 2024 11:22:38 AM Edited Sep 9, 2024 11:23:05 AM by Ravindra B
wrote:"Just a font change"
Does that seem like too little?
Tell any of the "1.5 engineers" to change it back.
What is half an engineer, I wonder?
What can that person do? Half the damage? 😎
Sep 9, 2024 02:32:49 AM by Christine A
{"StanG":"Stan G" wrote:It was only a font change.
It was "only" a font change to a thinner weight that's barely legible. Why do your web designers keep "fixing" things that don't need fixing, meanwhile I get bugs and error messages every day that never get fixed?
Sep 9, 2024 04:03:21 AM Edited Sep 9, 2024 04:07:54 AM by Radia L
The font weight is set to 300, which is a bit 'unusual' for normal. Variable weight works with the font, 400 looks better, but I still can't get it to display in italics in both Chrome and Edge. Not sure how you set it up but currently it's not okay
Sep 9, 2024 07:00:46 PM Edited Sep 10, 2024 12:22:15 AM by Radia L
I made the word 'italics' above in italics, bold, and underline, but I don't see the italics effect on Chrome and Edge at least.
In Firefox, the italics appear, and the font weight looked bolder as well:
--
--
Browsers have become more standardized recently, aiming to display content consistently. That’s why I mentioned I'm not sure how the fonts are configured to cause this issue, but one thing for sure; the font weight is being overridden to 300, by their own doing in their own complicated/messy CSS structure, which by standards is not the weight for "normal" text.
And I have no idea why I can't make the font into italics, even if I override it in my Chrome.
Sep 9, 2024 10:37:29 AM Edited Sep 9, 2024 11:58:02 AM by Jeanne H
Sep 9, 2024 12:05:06 PM by Clark S
I don't want to answer for Stan, but he mentions below that they're planning to roll back the font change. This is good news.
I believe what Stan meant is that the font change was part of a larger design update by Upwork corporate, and the small Community platform team just hadn't implemented it yet--until a few days ago.
I knew the Community support team was small, but it seems to have gotten even smaller recently!!
Sep 9, 2024 01:39:52 PM by StanG S
Re: Team size, I oversee our Community team which currently consists of a engagement manager and ~6 engagement specialists (Moderators), 2 folks overseeing Groups and Programs, technology manager and 2 engineers, and a product analysit (analytic). My greater team includes the 3 folks who oversee our AI initiatives within Customer Support (Our chatbot primarily). For those who have been participating in Community for awhile, you've definitely seen some of the changes and programs we've had to unfortunately sunset over the years. *Our Academy team is separate from our team, we work closely together though. (Figure may as well continue the transparency as some folks seem interested).
Sep 9, 2024 03:38:00 PM by Clark S
I think it’s important for people to realize how small the team actually is. Many assume that Upwork—a multi-million dollar company—would have a 50-person team managing a Community with millions of users.
I'm sure millions of users are not actively using the Community, but the context is helpful, especially when people are highly critical of moderators and community managers, not realizing there are only a few of you.
It's almost as if Upwork corporate leaves the Community team out on a island, and occasionally sends over a rickety raft with a few resources, instructions and hopefully, food!