Forum operation request

[Lord Chaos]

At first, tracking topics and finding new threads here wasn't all that hard. A scan would take only a minute or two.

 

Now... there's a lot more activity. Threads have gotten long, and there are morre of them. Other fora that I use have a "find new posts" facility: click the button and you find everything new, and can scan the list quickly. Also, the list of forum topics shows which ones have new content, and if you click on the "new" button it takes you to the first unread post in the thread, no matter which page it's on.

 

This forum lacks both, to my knowledge anyway, and with the increasing activity it's very had to keep track of what I've read and what I should look at. It's easy enough to find threads with new content, but then I have to manually hunt for the page I last read. Is there any way to implement such facilities here? I don't know what might be available for this forum software; the others I use are either Invision Power Board or PHPBB, both of which have similar feature sets.

 

Forum threads can be a very strong resource, if searches lead quickly to the posts with the wanted info.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi L.C. - Thank you very much for the request. With every decision there are always pros and cons. I selected the Drupal software platform for many reasons one of which was the look of the forums and the wide open architecture. That said there are some trade-offs that I wish we had here and nobody has written a module yet to enable the desired functionality. However, one way you might get to what you want is to enter the forums and look for the number of new posts next to each different topic. If you click on the number of new posts such as "35 New" this will only show you the new threads in each topic. Then you view only the new thread which also shows you the number of new responses for example "10 New." Clicking on this shows you only the new responses in each thread.

 

Sometimes my browser doesn't cooperate with this feature and I'm researching why this happens.

 

[PeterSt]

Chris, I don't think anyone has the time really to do as you suggest. You may (officially) have nothing else to do, but "we" have. Just compare : the five last active topics at the right could show what's happening, and it generally gives a good idea of whether I'm interested in it or not. How long does it take to investigate ? 4 seconds at most.

Now your way ... How many times longer ?

 

Of course, if I dive into a topic those 4 seconds get lost in the time of reading the thread etc. But 99 out of 100 times there is nothing to read (for me), so it stays at 4 seconds only.

 

Extend the list at the right to 20 or so, anf for now we'll be okay. This, of course, lasts until the topmost thread drops to 21 within my frequency of looking.

 

I'm sure this can be adjusted easily, and I'm rather confident this even may be a parameter setting.

 

Thanks,

Peter

 

[PeterSt]

Hi Chris,

 

Can you please (let) do something about it ? as how it is right now it doesn't work anymore.

Btw, it is perfectly allright I think when the additional thread titles show under the commercial (banner) at the right.

 

Thanks,

Peter

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I want to revive this topic because I am working on improvements right now and would like input from everyone. Please let me know what you want so I can make it happen!

 

[BobH]

For me :

 

1. A way to mark all posts as read

2. A way to bring up all new posts - those posted since the last time I marked the forum as read.

3. If possible, include ALL of the site posts in the above - i.e. to make the posts from all areas of the site available (linked) from one page.

 

That way each individual can easily keep abreast of everything that has happened since the last visit. If this could be made a 'server-side' function, rather than via a locally stored cookie, it would make it easy to keep abreast of things both at work (during lunchtime, you understand ;)and at home.

 

Many thanks, Chris, and good luck with it!!

 

[PeterSt]

I agree with Bob on all topics (explicitly).

 

Additionally :

 

- Find back your own posts.

 

- Anyone's posts.

 

- Minor : Fix the "problem" of the necessity to login each x days (it is a week or so).

 

- Fix the problem of sudden questions about insecure items to display (which 90% of cases and up in a page which won't display). I don't know what this is about, but this afternoon this was about the standard avatar pictures everybody has.

 

- Show the avatar of the post of the OP. And note that at Preview the OP's name is nowhere at all.

 

- Fix the dreaded "italics" thing. Obvious of course. But annoying evenso.

 

- Perhaps a more nice/convenient "quoting" mechanism.

 

- Minor : Some consistency in appointing badges. Or explanation how they work. Hahaha

 

- If possible show the "Article" posts as changed topics just the same.

 

- Smileys. This may look stupid, but harsness can be put into contexts.

 

Allow me to put forward more when I think of it.

Keep up the good work.

Peter

 

 

 

[markr]

I like and I haven't really had any problem using this board, but it has become more difficult than it was in late 2007 - 8^) - more folks here means longer search times ( bigger db of past posts) the topic list under the forum hyperlink is getting prohibitively huge, the "active forum topics" link which has those easy to get to topic hyperlinks rolls over rather quickly now so that if you cannot remember where (or under what discussion title) you were speaking to someone, you might not be able to (easily) find that discussion again.

 

All in all, I don't have a problem with CA's s/w - It is MUCH better looking than any of the other boards out there. I really don't like the look of most boards. What are there, about 5 different ones (software)? They all look pretty much the same to me. Most have the look of Craig's list albeit with better search capabilities and the ability to put up pics.

 

I think that would be the key to satisfying the naysayers here: (1)lengthen the 'active forum topics' list up to the right there, and (2) maybe make "Forums" look more like the other boards (an indexed spreadsheet) when you click on it. Just have things look - and work - like they do NOW when you get back to the discussion. Don't know if that would be good enough for the folks who have a problem with the way things are now though. There might be other things bothering folks. - getting your daily info fix is a highly personalized thing in this day and age.

 

- markr

 

[PeterSt]

The Code tag doesn't work as should;

Atlhough the font used is okay (not proprotional) more than one space in a row is not respected. The result of it is quite nasty at occasions. Here is one I just bumped into :

 

Take one character as a sample, and this might be the result

Takk oneecharrcterras ssampll, ann thhs miggt bb theeresslt

 

where two spaces are behind oneecharrcterras, but because the second is ignored, things get out of line (which coincidentally was quite important here -> http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/1612#comment-13474 )

 

But of course for normal "code" useage it wouldn't work either and all indenting (hence outlining) is lost.

 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi PeterSt - I'm using filtered HTML for readers comments so many things don't work by design. It's to risky to allow all kinds of stuff to work when we really just need the words :~)