I was wondering if it made better sense to sort posts by reverse chronological order (newest post first, original post last). That would save a step in getting to the new posts, which is what most people want to read anyway. For example, the discussion “What’s in Your Nose? #12” has 2367 pages (!) … if the latest posts showed first, you wouldn’t have to click on the “2367” link to see the latest posts because you’d already be where you want to be. Just an idea.
I think the setup that is currently in place is, once you’ve seen a post, you’ll thenceforth be taken only to the next post that you haven’t seen, and can move on from there. This was more efficient in the older Snuffhouse.org forum, when there were like/agree/insightful/quote buttons and a point system. If the admins can bring that back, the site will make a lot more sense again.
I admin’d a Vanilla message board in the past, and without significant coding changes, I don’t believe they can arrange the message board in reverse order, with new posts first…and older posts last. But there is a pretty simple fix to what you are running into.
If you click “Mark All Viewed” at the top of the page, it will mark everything on the message board as “read” by you.
Then, only discussions with new posts will be highlighted when you come to the message board. When you click on these highlighted discussions, it will automatically bring you to the new posts. You can choose to go back and read older posts if you want. But, it brings you right to the new posts.
If you haven’t clicked the “Mark All Viewed” yet, the message board thinks every post is “new” to you…even the ones that are 9 years old. And that’s why it is taking you to ancient posts, rather than the new ones every time you go into a discussion.
Hope that helps. :-)
Mark
Thanks, Mark, I’ll give that a try. Yeah, there’s no way I could go through all these great threads that have gone on for so long!
Yes, I find automatically being taken to the most recent posts in a thread that I am following, perfectly functional. But I do think it’s a shame that the website lacks the “like/agree/insightful/quote buttons and a point system” found on most other community websites. These missing functions would help to put comments into context, and boost positive factors such as comaraderie, trustworthiness and morale.
1 Like
Losing the like/agree/insightful buttons was the price we paid to safely migrate our old forum back without compromising structure with myriads of broken links and misdirections. Sometimes I miss it. I remember when we were at the old .org site I was one click away from my 100th insightful, but even that highlights a wrong mentality that disappeared with the old point system, like alot of us were passively, maybe even subconsciously competing for status. Still, sometimes I miss it. But then I think forward to when we were at the .net temporary forum, starting over and grappling with the possability that all of that history had been lost. So now, at the new .com location, I’m not sore about it. Sacrifices for the better of the tribe at large.
It is incredible what you can learn by searching this message board for information. If you can conceive the question about snuff, someone has already asked it and answered it here. Its crazy the depth of information that’s archived here.
Mark
@markstinson, Would you know if there’s any problems with searching? I’ve been using the search function only to have it tell me there was nothing to be found. Here’s the error message, "DO Statement failed to prepare|Gdn_Database|Query|The used table type doesn’t support FULLTEXT indexes
I haven’t tried other browsers yet to see if that’s the problem.
Thanks for your help.
Never mind. I just read the thread about searches. I was under the impression you, Mark were the new admin or owner for Snuffhouse. 
Sorry if I was wrong.
No worries. I’m just a guest. :-)
Mark