On 18 Jun 2008, at 12:45, Ewan Marshall wrote: > ... > Also how do you get unread message notification on forums? > ... forums only do whole threads, not individual post in thread.
I've started using a new forum recently, there being no mailing-lists I can find for this particular subject, and am reminded how damned irritating this is. The forum software shows which threads have new messages, but when I click on them I'm shown the whole page of upto 40 messages. I scroll through them and find something interesting, only to realise that I already read that message yesterday. I then have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to work out which messages within the thread are new. If the thread is a long one I have to then go to the next page & do the same thing again. This is the fundamental failing of forums, IMO, but the lack of automatic quoting is also a considerable hindrance. As the thread drifts away from the original topic you can't tell who is replying to whom. It is impossible to know what someone is referring to when they make a short post such as "I have that one too, and it's great" - is it the original device described in the message topic, or the alternative suggested by Dave a few posts in? I wanted to vent my dislike of forums when Leonti posted his first message over a week ago, but refrained because I knew I could easily spend an hour detailing all forums' shortcomings and because I knew that many others would contribute and save me the bother. These two points are a good summary of what pisses me off most about forums, though. Stroller. _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
