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"howdy, Y'all" Continued


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To scout for new posts all you have to do is click...

 

True enough. What I find difficult is locating the old posts... or more significantly, threads. Those things I wanted to postpone responding to until I had time to give them more serious thought.

 

Even if I do remember enough key words to locate a particular post, then if I want the context I need to search the Forum it was posted in. And if I'm lucky there aren't too many unrelated posts in between the ones forming the thread that interests me, because threads as such don't exist in the new design.

 

Of course, if I've overlooked some nifty feature that *will* give me what I want, I'd love to hear about it.

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Sandy Winters said:

It doesn't serve me, the user, as well as the old one.

 

An interesting point, which should be elaborated. I feel the same way, BUT there are other users who feel that the new Forum serves them better. One problem is that "the" user is not homogeneous in needs, desires, or habits.

 

There are at least several different kinds of users, and maybe Paul actually prefers the sort of interaction that the new Forum favors. Whether or not, he gets to make the choices.

 

And I certainly prefer the current setup to no Forum at all.

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To scout for new posts all you have to do is click...

 

True enough. What I find difficult is locating the old posts... or more significantly, threads. Those things I wanted to postpone responding to until I had time to give them more serious thought.

 

[snip]

 

Of course, if I've overlooked some nifty feature that *will* give me what I want, I'd love to hear about it.

If you can remember who posted the post you want to respond to, you can click on their name (in another post) and find all the posts by that person (which is fine unless it's Jim Lucas, with over 100 posts to his name :P ). These seem to be listed most recent first ... will that help?

Samantha

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Even if I do remember enough key words to locate a particular post, then if I want the context I need to search the Forum it was posted in. And if I'm lucky there aren't too many unrelated posts in between the ones forming the thread that interests me, because threads as such don't exist in the new design.

 

Of course, if I've overlooked some nifty feature that *will* give me what I want, I'd love to hear about it.

Reading your post, it's a little ambiguous as to whether you already realize this, but here's my answer to what I think you might be asking:

 

Once you have found a particular post by searching on keywords or user name, the number of the post (ie, 1 to 1000+ as of this week) will appear as a link below. If you click it, you will see the post in the context in which it originally appeared.

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Once you have found a particular post by searching on keywords or user name, the number of the post (ie, 1 to 1000+ as of this week) will appear as a link below. If you click it, you will see the post in the context in which it originally appeared.

You've lost me there, David. when I do a search, I get a list of topics that include the word I want ... ??? :blink:

Samantha

Edited by Samantha
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You've lost me there, David. when I do a search, I get a list of topics that include the word I want ... ??? :blink:

Samantha

Apparently it depends on how you do the search. The image I had in mind when I wrote the above was what you get if you search for a user's posts by going through their info panel (click on their name). If you search on a keyword through your "assistant," you're right: all you get is a list of relevant topics. But if you hit the search button just under the "CONCERTINA.net" header and enter a keyword, you get a list of individual posts and clicking on the title of any brings up the context page.

 

See if that does what you want.

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Unfortunately, searching just doesn't seem to work right. Selecting Discussion Forums as the area to search:

 

If I search for Morris I seem to get the same posts as when I search for "Morris", though displayed differently. But searching for "Morris dance" turned up no matches, though I had seen at least one in the first search. Searching on +Morris +dance also gave no matches, as did searching on +English +Irish. We know better.

 

Furthermore, when I ran the same search through My Assistant it turned up 3 matches for +Morris +dance. That can't be right, either. A search for Morris from the My Assistant starting point gave Topic list, rather than posts, yet the first Topic I selected (Jim's duet) was short enough to do a ctl-F search on all the included posts, and the word Morris wasn't found!

 

These how-to-get-there-from-here hints are helpful, and I didn't know all of them, but they're only helpful if I can get to "here". Frustration continues apace.

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What I find difficult is locating the old posts... or more significantly, threads.  Those things I wanted to postpone responding to until I had time to give them more serious thought.

 

Even if I do remember enough key words to locate a particular post, then if I want the context I need to search the Forum it was posted in.  And if I'm lucky there aren't too many unrelated posts in between the ones forming the thread that interests me, because threads as such don't exist in the new design.

 

Of course, if I've overlooked some nifty feature that *will* give me what I want, I'd love to hear about it.

Jim,

 

To remind yourself of threads to which you want to return later, you could try "tracking this topic." That will send you an email about new posts in the thread of interest. I'm thinking that having such notes in your in-box could serve as reminders.

 

Below (between the rows of asterisks) is an example of a topic-tracking email:

 

**************************

 

AlexCJones has just posted a reply to a topic that you have subscribed to titled "Instrument Survey".

 

The topic can be found here:

http://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php...view=getnewpost

 

There may be more replies to this topic, but only 1 email is sent per board visit for each subscribed topic. This is

to limit the amount of mail that is sent to your inbox.

 

Unsubscribing:

--------------

 

You can unsubscribe at any time by logging into your control panel and clicking on the "View Subscriptions" link.

 

*************************

 

You can engage topic-tracking from a link on the top right of each page of messages (just below the topic title), or by clicking a peculiar icon on the bottom left of each page.

 

I would argue that this is more functionality that the old board ... there was no way to remind yourself of threads to return to, especially when they got pushed far down the page and off to the right.

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Tracking may be good for new posts, but how does it help find old ones?

 

As for finding things in the old Forum, I could do quite well with scrolling. Since the relative positions of subjects didn't keep jumping around, I could often remember the relative positions and even the shapes of various discussions. But ctl-F searching of the page for specific dates or names, as well as subject words, was even more useful. Missing some of the features that are here, but on balance I found it better.

 

When the total number of posts here gets huge, the search facility is going to be *really* helpful. It will tip the balance if I want to look for something from months back. IF IT WORKS. Note my other post here, about that annoyance.

 

But in the end, a Topic is neither a tree nor a thread, and that connectedness is what I miss most.

Edited by JimLucas
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