New GL board

[KS (Fester)]

Will <Nabble> wrote

KS,

I haven't heard back from you, so I did some googling to find how this feature is done in CBS board. I found this feature in the AWT board http://boards.cbs.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?listMode=-1&nav=messages&webtag=cbsawtmb

So I tried it, but the feature doesn't work. Here is my simple test. I clicked a few top threads, then changed the "show discussions" dropdown to "All", then changed it back to "Unread Msgs", I would expect the "read" topics will be filtered out, but nothing happened. Can you try and let me know if I did anything wrong?

The worst part is that the link color doesn't change after I click it. So, I don't even know which link I have already clicked. How do you track which topics you have already visited? In Nabble, you can see which ones have been clicked because the link color changes.

As for "Today", and "2 days back" dropdown, I really don't quite understand. The threads are sorted by the last post, so when you browse the board, you are naturally looking at the Today's post, flip to the next page, you naturally get into posts from 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 days ago. It just seems really unnecessary to have the "today" and "2 days back" options.

So, with regard to the unread, is the change of link color good enough for your need?

Also, I saw some discussion in your board about the font-size. There several ways to make the font bigger.

1. The easiest is to just hold ctrl and type +, this will increase the font size in your browser. Ctrl and - will make it smaller.

2. Go to Your Account->Personal Settings->Advanced Settings, there you will see the "Font size" box, that's the default. You can set it a bigger number. This way, all Nabble forums will appear with a larger font to you. The default is 13.4667px, you can increase it gradually, save, until you are happy.

3. As the forum owner, you can use CSS style sheet to control what font size your forum should be. The options is under your forum->Options->Change forum appearance. It's a bit of an advanced feature because you need to know html and some CSS stuff. If you don't know those, just let me know and I can help you with it. We will make this easier to use soon.

http://boards.cbs.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&webtag=cbsglmb   This the link to the board that CBS is doing away with.  Please see at the top where it says, "Show discussions"?  Look to the right of that and there is a drop down arrow.  You may have to register to get it to work.  Anyway, it shows you unread messages, All, unread messages to me, etc.

[Will <Nabble>]

KS (Fester) wrote

Stupid will always be the biggest thread. At our other board that they are getting ready to pull the plug on, Stupid is at 1073 pages, 10692 posts and 221203 views.  

This is very interesting. The "Stupid" thread is actually a forum in itself. Why don't you create a subforum for it? Within a subforum, you don't have to always hit the same thread again and again. You can start new thread, and let old threads be pushed down by newer ones. Please note that I don't mean to change your behavior. We will support large thread no matter what. But I just to want to understand the reason behind large thread.

[KS (Fester)]

Will <Nabble> wrote

KS (Fester) wrote

Stupid will always be the biggest thread. At our other board that they are getting ready to pull the plug on, Stupid is at 1073 pages, 10692 posts and 221203 views.  

This is very interesting. The "Stupid" thread is actually a forum in itself. Why don't you create a subforum for it? Within a subforum, you don't have to always hit the same thread again and again. You can start new thread, and let old threads be pushed down by newer ones. Please note that I don't mean to change your behavior. We will support large thread no matter what. But I just to want to understand the reason behind large thread.

Hello Will- I'm going to have to do something because Stupid Part-2 is froze up again.  Can you un-stick it please?  How do I create a sub forum for Stupid?  I just went and looked and am not sure how to do it.

[Will <Nabble>]

Go to: http://n2.nabble.com/Guiding-Light-f529340.html
Click Options, then in the dropdown you will see "Create new sub-forum". Once a new subforum is created, it will show up in your forum page. Users can click to go into it to post.

The main thing is that instead of hitting one thread again and again, you and your users can just start new topics. This will avoid having very large thread which slows you down when you try to access the new posts.

Also, with lots of topics, it makes your forum more accessible. Compare, if you have one large thread with different topics in it, users can't see them because they are all hidden in that thread. But if you have those topics shown as independent topics, each with their own subject titles, then users can scan topics and select where to click into.

I hope this helps.

[KS (Fester)]

Will <Nabble> wrote

Go to: http://n2.nabble.com/Guiding-Light-f529340.html
Click Options, then in the dropdown you will see "Create new sub-forum". Once a new subforum is created, it will show up in your forum page. Users can click to go into it to post.

The main thing is that instead of hitting one thread again and again, you and your users can just start new topics. This will avoid having very large thread which slows you down when you try to access the new posts.

Also, with lots of topics, it makes your forum more accessible. Compare, if you have one large thread with different topics in it, users can't see them because they are all hidden in that thread. But if you have those topics shown as independent topics, each with their own subject titles, then users can scan topics and select where to click into.

I hope this helps.

Thanks!  How to I block certain posters from this forum?

[Will <Nabble>]

If you don't like a certain poster, just go to a post by this poster, click the "More" dropdown, there you will find a "Ban author" command, this will ban the author from your forum.

Note that your forum currently allows anonymous poster. This is the default setting. It allows people to post without having to register. The has the benefit of making it easy for people to just start posting, but the downside is also obvious. If you find bad posts, you can simply use "Remove" command in the same "More" dropdown. Also, you can go to your forum, use "Options->Control Anonymous users" to forbid anonymous user posts.

I hope this helps.

[KS (Fester)]

Will <Nabble> wrote

If you don't like a certain poster, just go to a post by this poster, click the "More" dropdown, there you will find a "Ban author" command, this will ban the author from your forum.

Note that your forum currently allows anonymous poster. This is the default setting. It allows people to post without having to register. The has the benefit of making it easy for people to just start posting, but the downside is also obvious. If you find bad posts, you can simply use "Remove" command in the same "More" dropdown. Also, you can go to your forum, use "Options->Control Anonymous users" to forbid anonymous user posts.

I hope this helps.

As always thank you!  You're the best!

[KS (Fester)]

Morning Will- I am soooo sorry to keep bothering you but I am a newbie at this stuff.  When you are on the main page of our board.  The "last post" reply column is sticking. Can you fix it?

[Will <Nabble>]

KS, please, always feel free to ask questions, also to complain for things you don't like. Your questions and complaints are the most valuable feedback to us.

KS (Fester) wrote

When you are on the main page of our board.  The "last post" reply column is sticking. Can you fix it?

I just tried to visit your board and everything looks okey to me. The "Last post" column loads up pretty fast, so, I didn't see any slowness (I assume by "sticking" you mean it's slow). My internet connection isn't very fast, so if I can see it loading up okey, most users shouldn't have a problem.

Maybe you can try to visit some other well-known sites and see if they are also slow when you find Nabble slow. I sometimes complain that the site is not working but only find out that it's my internet connection is slow at the time. Also, you have a very active user base which you can ask, see if they see the same slowness. Please do let us know if you find things slow, we take it very seriously. A slow site sucks no matter what it has.

[KS (Fester)]

Will <Nabble> wrote

KS, please, always feel free to ask questions, also to complain for things you don't like. Your questions and complaints are the most valuable feedback to us.

KS (Fester) wrote

When you are on the main page of our board.  The "last post" reply column is sticking. Can you fix it?

I just tried to visit your board and everything looks okey to me. The "Last post" column loads up pretty fast, so, I didn't see any slowness (I assume by "sticking" you mean it's slow). My internet connection isn't very fast, so if I can see it loading up okey, most users shouldn't have a problem.

Maybe you can try to visit some other well-known sites and see if they are also slow when you find Nabble slow. I sometimes complain that the site is not working but only find out that it's my internet connection is slow at the time. Also, you have a very active user base which you can ask, see if they see the same slowness. Please do let us know if you find things slow, we take it very seriously. A slow site sucks no matter what it has.

Hey Will -  sorry but the Last Post is stuck again today.  IE, there are posts showing at 9:39am and there have been many more made since then, but the time and the avatars are not changing.

[Will <Nabble>]

I checked and everything just look normal to me.

On 10:28 AM, here is what I saw:



The last post is 10:24 AM.

If you think there is a problem, just create a thread and try post to it and refresh the board and see if you get those new ones shown. You can always delete that test thread later.

Let me know what you find.

[KS (Fester)]

Morning Will!  Rumor has it that CBS is going to pull the plug on our old board Aug. 4th.  If that happens, our Nabble site will get VERY busy!  Any progress on the post count for each individual?

[Will <Nabble>]

Thanks for the update. We are still working on the post count feature. Right now, you can click a user's avatar or name link to go to the user's profile page, and there you can see the post count. There is a bit of a performance issue if we just show the count in all places, but we are going to resolve that. I expect it to be done in a 2 weeks.

[a_priori]

Will <Nabble> wrote

So, for now, with very large thread, please stick with "List" view or "Classical" view, those will work.

So, as I understand there should be no problems with a thread that has several hundred posts in it, as long as it is viewed in Classical or List view. Is that correct?

On our forum users are not as worried about post counts being displayed, the bigger issue is having a way to jump to the first unread/new post on a thread. So, let me second that request.

[Will <Nabble>]

a_priori wrote

So, as I understand there should be no problems with a thread that has several hundred posts in it, as long as it is viewed in Classical or List view. Is that correct?

Yes.

a_priori wrote

On our forum users are not as worried about post counts being displayed, the bigger issue is having a way to jump to the first unread/new post on a thread. So, let me second that request.

If you use thread view or list view, the unread posts are easy to scan, right? With classical view, it's difficult, can you point us to a good forum that nicely handles unread vs read?

[KS (Fester)]

As always, Thanks, Will!

[a_priori]

Will <Nabble> wrote

If you use thread view or list view, the unread posts are easy to scan, right? With classical view, it's difficult, can you point us to a good forum that nicely handles unread vs read?

The list view is helpful in this regard, but that's definitely a bit more involved than most of our users are used to.

For an example, you can still access the old CBS forum here.
http://pod08.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?listMode=-1&nav=messages&webtag=cbsawtmb
Though without an account, the way it works may not be obvious.

Basically, it seems they have a two part approach to unread messages. For the first part,(which is very nice, but less important) there is a dropbox that's at the top of the forum that lets you filter the threads displayed by all, unread and threads that you've posted in or flagged. (See image)


I guess this would be similar to how flagged threads/messages on Nabble operate, in that they can be filtered the way they are on our profile pages.

The next (more important) part is completely seamless to the user, as long as they are signed in. It also operates regardless of the status of the dropdown filter. Basically, every time a user visits a thread that they have already read, they are sent automatically to the first unread post in that thread. This is especially useful for large threads, which we often have.

We realize that this type of system may not be something that is feasible for Nabble to implement, but we do thank you Will for taking time to listen to and consider our suggestions.

P.S. It would definitely be nice to have a visual indicator of new/unread posts in a thread. (See sample below with green flags)

[Will <Nabble>]

Thanks for this very thoughtful post.

I did play with the CBS board. I registered an account to try the unread feature because KS mentioned it. See this post http://n2.nabble.com/New-GL-board-tp532919p573753.html 

The dropdown for the unread threads doesn't work. I did a few tests at different times, i.e. clicking a few top threads, and  then use the dropdown to filter, and it just doesn't work. I didn't particularly try the 2nd part to go directly to unread posts within a thread, but I don't remember seeing such a nice thing. I would have been surprised if I saw it. If it's hard to track unread threads, then it will even be harder to track unread posts within a thread.

The reason I ask this is that it's difficult do brute-force track all the posts that a user clicked. We just rely on the natural browser way, which is to change link color after you have clicked it. What really bothers me in the CBS board is that they disabled this natural mechanism, so I cannot tell what has been clicked.

P.S. It would definitely be nice to have a visual indicator of new/unread posts in a thread.

When you see a thread in the your forum, there are 2 links. One is the subject link that goes to the first post, the other the link in the "Last Post" column. If the "subject" link is unclicked, then it's definitely a new thread. If the "subject" link is clicked, and the "last post" link is unclicked, then it means it's a thread that you have visited before but now has some new posts in it. If both are clicked, then it means you have seen everything there. So, I can derive 3 states by looking at link color. I like this better because I don't need any special knowledge to know what's going on. Versus if I see a green flag or a blue icon, I have to guess what it means.

Because of embedding, we try to keep all UI elements as few as possible. So, we try to avoid adding anything unless it's absolutely needed.

[Nalicter]

KS (Fester) wrote

… Is that you can't see unread messages easily.  If there is a way, when you log in and go to a particular thread, that it defaults to the first message YOU HAVEN"T READ, you wouldn't have to read all to see where you left off.

You might want to try the subscribe to forum feature. That way, the forum can act like a mailing list, and of course, in your email, messages are marked read/unread (and you can delete ones you don't care for).

Now, I don't think it's been implemented, but if Nabble ever adds the newsgroup feature, you can have the same thing with a threaded view of the whole forum (though from some Newsgroup software, rather than from your web browser—but it should work a lot faster than on a web browser). I think Nabble has been toying with the idea of adding this for quite some time. If it interests you, feel free to let them know.

If you have child forums, though, they probably won't show up as separate entities on a newsgroup, unless you add them separately.

[KS (Fester)]

Thank you for the information!  I personally don't want all those emails, however, some of the posters might.

 

-------------- Original message --------------
From: Cordilow <[hidden email]>

KS (Fester) wrote:

… Is that you can't see unread messages easily.  If there is a way, when you log in and go to a particular thread, that it defaults to the first message YOU HAVEN"T READ, you wouldn't have to read all to see where you left off.

You might want to try the subscribe to forum feature. That way, the forum can act like a mailing list, and of course, in your email, messages are marked read/unread.

Now, I don't think it's been implemented, but if Nabble ever adds the newsgroup feature, you can have the same thing with a threaded view of the whole forum (though from some Newsgroup software, rather than from your web browser—but it should work a lot faster than on a web browser). I think Nabble has been toying with the idea of adding this for quite some time. If it interests you, feel free to let them know.

---

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