Font changed?

[#1]

Is it my fault or has the forum font become thinner?
Because if they have changed it, it is very difficult to read.

[#2]

It is not your fault, it is someone else's! Very bad experience...

[#3]

I wish I could say a couple of things to that person.

[#4]

Italics don't work in Chrome?

In Edge as well.

[#5]

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.

[#6]

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.

[#7]

No benefit! I can see very well up close, but my eyes are already watering right now.

[#8]

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.

[#9]

😂

[#10]

Thank you! I was wondering what the issue is with my monitor display, and why the text looked thinner/grayish.

[#11]

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.

[#12]

I could barely read what I had written; I had to copy the text to a Word file to check it.

[#13]

I have to put my screen at 150%!

[#14]

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?

[#15]

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. 

[#16]

"Just a font change"
Does that seem like too little?
Tell any of the "1.5 engineers" to change it back.

[#17]

---

 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? 😎

[#18]

---

{"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?

[#19]

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

[#20]

ITALIC? Wouldn't it be BOLD?

[#21]

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.

[#22]

I appreciate your response.

"What do you think AI is doing or what all of the sudden changed for accessibility?"

 

 

It was a lot more than a "font change" when people are unable to read it.

 

 

I believe the so-called "AI" is being used to detect spam/scams. As with all of these programs, they make errors. Big errors. All you have to do is look, even I can see it without doing anything unethical. There are many clues, as you know. On the other hand, I have seen some bizzaro world stuff when tiny changes are made. There was no way of knowing if the changes were intentional or another side effect from improvements.

 

 

I did not say the numbers were off. I said there were not that many posts. That means you could actually employ a real human to look for scams and spam, that would work 100% of the time. Yes, I have added numbers, and no, there are not enough forum posts daily to have even a part-time job. I did not say or want to add that to your duties.

 

 

"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." 

 

 

Well, this is interesting. So the "team" is 1.5 people? And that is for the comminuty, alone? Now that's news that we should have had a long time ago. So, Khoros controls what is changed, and not the IT people (you)? That you have no control? I'm not trying to be a pain, but Stan, this kind of information is crucial. We should have been told this years ago, instead of being told the "IT team is making changes" the IT team is working on it" etc. when it was an outside entity?  I would have been saying find a new program and investigating why they can't make a change without messing up five other things or if it is intentional.

 

 

I sincerely, want to know how the forum works, and where the awful stuff comes from. However, whoever is doing it, the recent changes are not even up to basic website standards, as you well know. In addition, it throws accessibility standards right out the proverbial window. 

 

So, to be clear, you didn't make any changes and it was all Khoros? But, you can fix it? 

 

I genuinely appreciate you responding and answering questions. I'm not trying to be a pain in your posterior, but we need to know what is happening and why. 

 

(I highlighted the text and used the paragraph settings to make the writing darker.)

 

[#23]

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!! 

[#24]

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).

[#25]

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!