Pagination vs. "More v" control -- V2 was much better in this aspect than V3.

This has been bugging me for a long time, and I am pretty sure I sent a Usersnap or two on this topic, but now I got triggered to complain in public, after joining this very Chess.com V2 club and attempting to take a look at what has been already discussed in the notes.

The "More v" control at the bottom of clubs' notes is nothing short of ridiculous - loading five extra notes at a time. Come on -- in active clubs it may take several clicks to get to the notes from the previous day.

The Chess.com V2 club's notes count is a bit shy of 500 - so it would take about 100 clicks to see the beginning. It was much easier in V2, even though a "last page" link to load the oldest available page (which is a common and expected feature on just about any GUI that does pagination) was sorely missing in V2.

This is how I got to the first notes posted in this club:

* click https://www.chess.com/groups/notes/chess-com-v2

* click the number eleven to be taken to https://www.chess.com/groups/notes/chess-com-v2?page=11

* replace the 11 in the URL with 40 (just a wild guess), and go to https://www.chess.com/groups/notes/chess-com-v2?page=40

* since on page 40 the notes are 5 months old, I know I am close to the beginning. Click on 44

* Bingo! I see that page 49 is the last one. Click that one, and I am where I wanted.

Took me less time to write this up while doing it (5 clicks and 3 keystrokes), than it would take me to do the equivalent in V3.

The same annoying "More v" control was used in earlier V3 versions to navigate game archives. This one got replaced with pagination (which also has the "Last" button to go to the page with the oldest archived games in one click). On the other hand, in the game archives, that control loaded extra 50 games and was useful in other respect: it facilitated downloading all games on the page in one shot. So one could click more 3 times, scroll back to the top of the page, and download them all -- much nicer than having to download 3 separate pages and having to combine them manually later.

How about this idea: have BOTH types of control available simultaneously? An also:

* In the button that displays "Last", replace that text with the number of the last page

* Add an entry to type in the desired page number to go there in one shot (rather than having to hack the URL, which many people might not even think about).

For comparison, here's how to get to the oldest notes in V3:

1. Click "More v"
2. Scroll down
3. Click "More v"
4. Scroll down
5. Click "More v"
6. Scroll down
7. Click "More v"
8. Scroll down
9. Click "More v"
10. Scroll down
11. Click "More v"
12. Scroll down
13. Click "More v"
14. Scroll down
15. Click "More v"
16. Scroll down
17. Click "More v"
18. Scroll down
19. Click "More v"
20. Scroll down
21. Click "More v"
22. Scroll down
23. Click "More v"
24. Scroll down
25. Click "More v"
26. Scroll down
27. Click "More v"
28. Scroll down
29. Click "More v"
30. Scroll down
31. Click "More v"
32. Scroll down
33. Click "More v"
34. Scroll down
35. Click "More v"
36. Scroll down
37. Click "More v"
38. Scroll down
39. Click "More v"
40. Scroll down
41. Click "More v"
42. Scroll down
43. Click "More v"
44. Scroll down
45. Click "More v"
46. Scroll down
47. Click "More v"
48. Scroll down
49. Click "More v"
50. Scroll down
51. Click "More v"
52. Scroll down
53. Click "More v"
54. Scroll down
55. Click "More v"
56. Scroll down
57. Click "More v"
58. Scroll down
59. Click "More v"
60. Scroll down
61. Click "More v"
62. Scroll down
63. Click "More v"
64. Scroll down
65. Click "More v"
66. Scroll down
67. Click "More v"
68. Scroll down
69. Click "More v"
70. Scroll down
71. Click "More v"
72. Scroll down
73. Click "More v"
74. Scroll down
75. Click "More v"
76. Scroll down
77. Click "More v"
78. Scroll down
79. Click "More v"
80. Scroll down
81. Click "More v"
82. Scroll down
83. Click "More v"
84. Scroll down
85. Click "More v"
86. Scroll down
87. Click "More v"
88. Scroll down
89. Click "More v"
90. Scroll down
91. Click "More v"
92. Scroll down
93. Click "More v"
94. Scroll down
95. Click "More v"
96. Scroll down
97. Click "More v"
98. Scroll down
99. Click "More v"
100. Scroll down
101. Click "More v"
102. Scroll down
103. Click "More v"
104. Scroll down
105. Click "More v"
106. Scroll down
107. Click "More v"
108. Scroll down
109. Click "More v"
110. Scroll down
111. Click "More v"
112. Scroll down
113. Click "More v"
114. Scroll down
115. Click "More v"
116. Scroll down
117. Click "More v"
118. Scroll down
119. Click "More v"
120. Scroll down
121. Click "More v"
122. Scroll down
123. Click "More v"
124. Scroll down
125. Click "More v"
126. Scroll down
127. Click "More v"
128. Scroll down
129. Click "More v"
130. Scroll down
131. Click "More v"
132. Scroll down
133. Click "More v"
134. Scroll down
135. Click "More v"
136. Scroll down
137. Click "More v"
138. Scroll down
139. Click "More v"
140. Scroll down
141. Click "More v"
142. Scroll down
143. Click "More v"
144. Scroll down
145. Click "More v"
146. Scroll down
147. Click "More v"
148. Scroll down
149. Click "More v"
150. Scroll down
151. Click "More v"
152. Scroll down
153. Click "More v"
154. Scroll down
155. Click "More v"
156. Scroll down
157. Click "More v"
158. Scroll down
159. Click "More v"
160. Scroll down
161. Click "More v"
162. Scroll down
163. Click "More v"
164. Scroll down
165. Click "More v"
166. Scroll down
167. Click "More v"
168. Scroll down
169. Click "More v"
170. Scroll down
171. Click "More v"
172. Scroll down
173. Click "More v"
174. Scroll down
175. Click "More v"
176. Scroll down
177. Click "More v"
178. Scroll down
179. Click "More v"
180. Scroll down
181. Click "More v"
182. Scroll down
183. Click "More v"
184. Scroll down
185. Click "More v"
186. Scroll down
187. Click "More v"
188. Scroll down
189. Click "More v"
190. Scroll down
191. Click "More v"
192. Scroll down
193. Click "More v"
194. Scroll down
195. Click "More v"
196. Scroll down
197. Click "More v"
198. Bingo

I think I got this about right, but might have missed one scroll/click .

At least this is what most people would have to do, and be close to developing a severe case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome by they time they were done.

Since I use a Mac, I cobbled together an Automator script that can do the above without adding to my (already severe) CTS...

I made a list of cases months ago which affect tasks i regularly carry out on the site, listing the areas where all these extra clicks and scrolls and posted it in the forum topic which got locked last week.

I'm sure it pointed out similar points to the ones you make here, but unfortunately it's ironically so much harder to find in v3, and i can't be arsed switching to v2, so forgive me for not looking it out.

The upshot was that changes were not made, leaving all the extra clicks and scrolls in place. I can only presume Erik is entirely happy with that...

Hey. I read and hear this. I agree that in most cases pagination makes more sense. I'm going to re-look at this. That said, sometimes some of these use cases are extremely rare. And, pagination is much heavier on the database. But noted. Are there other areas outside of group notes currently?

Yeah, @gambit-man has posted this thread: pagination...

BTW, having written many thousands lines of PHP/SQL, I am having hard time buying the (somewhat valid) argument about database loading as a justification for the current design.

Note that the current behavior in the notes is already equivalent to pagination by 5 items at a time.

Another place where the current control is useless, and pagination is sorely needed:

https://www.chess.com/leaderboard/daily

Also needs ability to select players by the rating range.

Hat tip to @wallyjack who pointed it out in the https://www.chess.com/blog/QuantumChessLord/petition-to-keep-oldchesscom-alive blog.

i've been complaining about that for months...

I asked @erik the other night to take up the challenge - go to the blitz leader board and find out who is ranked 1500th on that list. Do it in both v2 and v3, note the difference...

A further problem, say you scroll down and click 10 times over, then click through to one of the players listed there, when you go back (either by browser or mouse button), you only then have the first page on display, not the list as it was when you clicked through...

But bells and whistles are more important than fixing problems such as these...

3 check, get to the top of the hill, play with 3 other people, what fun!

This is a chess site, is it not?

I have to agree. I don't complain about much but it is so slow going to the notes when it is being used a lot. I have to use that go back button 4 ever. That would be a great improvement.