New forum 'parousia' is upon us! (software version) (page 3)

rebel8

woo-hoo!

I am so appreciative of your work.

does the new forum have an "active" button? The only reason i ask is because i went to the web address you noted and saw the forum but i didnt see an active button. I know its small and petty but that button is really my life here. I click it, see what people are talking about and go from there..

breakfast of champions

Excellent! Thank you so much Simon!

steve2

Thanks so much Simon for your hard work. Looking forward to the changes!

Apognophos

does the new forum have an "active" button?

It would be better if it didn't. Most forums require you to view each subforum one at a time, keeping things nice and organized. The Active Topics view is a weird animal because it shows all subforums mixed together, and you can't make a new thread in it because it's not a forum, which is confusing to new users.

I'd like to second Terry's request for the ability to subscribe to threads, and email notification of PMs would be great too.

Simon

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you referring to my examples of editing old posts? Updating the first post in a thread is very common practice for threads that are used for:

Well, ultimately it's a configurable thing so could be set to work that way. I think for this forum I'm going to stick with the edit limits otherwise it adds too much moderation effort (hard enough keeping up with posts in general, let alone potentially going back ~14 years). We'll see how it goes though - hard to predict behavior and how things will sork out when things change. I think allowing any post in the last 14 years to be changed would be a risk though.

Will there be a notification feature such as an e-mail prompt or iPhone Message indicating a response/post on a discussion topic I've started?

I don't have any direct plans for notifications but I would like to create a dashboard where you'll easily be able to see topics that you have participated in or are just interested in that have recently been updated.

does the new forum have an "active" button? The only reason i ask is because i went to the web address you noted and saw the forum but i didnt see an active button. I know its small and petty but that button is really my life here. I click it, see what people are talking about and go from there..

It does, right at the top there is an Active button (things may move round but that seems to be a major link to have). It really just redirects to the list of all forum topics sorted by last updated:

www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum?sort=updated

It would be better if it didn't. Most forums require you to view each subforum one at a time, keeping things nice and organized. The Active Topics view is a weird animal because it shows all subforums mixed together, and you can't make a new thread in it because it's not a forum, which is confusing to new users.

You have the option of viewing all topics or zooming into a subject area that interests you. You will be able to start a new topic from anywhere because the subject area becomes a drop-down for the new-topic form. Once you see it I hope it will make sense.

I'd like to second Terry's request for the ability to subscribe to threads, and email notification of PMs would be great too.

I can't remember where I read it (maybe codinghorror) but I recall an article reasoning why email subscriptions were the best way to kill a forum / community and I tend to agree.

I'm not opposed to a digest summary but the forum is meant to be a forum and not a mailing list. I think email subs encourage the post-and-run more than a true community discussion.

I'll try to make it easy to see new content that is relevant and where possible will use notifications such as browser taskbar alerts but generally email is a lot of hasstle to run and maintain so isn't likely to feature strongly I'm afraid.

Kudos to all of you

smiddy

Heartofaboy

Thank you for all the work it takes to keep this forum up & running Simon.

Hoab

New forum 'parousia' is upon us! (software version)