Show or hide node descriptions?

You're probably familiar with it due to it being the default setting, but XenForo has the option to hide node (forum) descriptions on your forum homepage. You also have the option to show them upon hovering the forum title, if you wish.

On your own XF forum, which setup will/do you run? Personally, I like them to be shown regularly instead of hiding them/showing them on hover. I don't think I have even seen an XF powered forum that shows them, yet, so I guess I'm in the minority.

 

Instinctively, I'm not fond of the idea of hiding the descriptions (even with a hover-over appearance). But after considering it for a while, I actually like the idea of hiding them unless hovered over.

The reason being that descriptions rarely offer more insight as to the forum's topic than the title itself does. I can't count how many times I have found myself trying to think up a description for a forum just to have one... not because I needed to further describe the subject of that forum, but because I didn't want to leave it empty.

 

Very, very true. I have been doing exactly this forever. However, there is something visually appealing to me about having (most) descriptions filled out with a sentence or short paragraph. Just about every XF powered forum I have been to so far has them hidden and it actually makes them look pretty similar to each other/bland.

 

I choose to show forum descriptions (at least on vb, I guess I would do the same with XF) purely for the search engine factor alone.
In vB the forum descriptions help tremendously in the SERP's.

From a user standpoint, I could care less if the descriptions are showing, you can usually figure out what the sections are for by the titles.

 

Well that is the good thing about XF if you have them in the tooltip solution and doesn't show it directly to the users it still gets into the search engines like it would if it was shown.

 

what's the "tooltip solution"?

is the description viewable to spiders but not guest?

I don't know much about XF

 

Well like it is now on XF forums where the description is not shown unless you put your mouse over the title.

 

I don't see why turning them off would be a good thing. Most search engines can't 'see' ajax, but can read the description if it's in the page itself.

 

Actually, I think the devs said the spiders could read them...

 

I don't see how, if they're ajax based, but ok.

 

I think it was addressed in this thread, but may be wrong...

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/semantic-html.892/

*Via my HTC EvO 4G*

 

looks like they can

Search Engine Spider Simulator

but I don't like the popups either way, so I guess I would enable them like non XF forums are setup