Hi OSTexo,

> One thing I think that would be good is the ability to
> tag and follow posts and have those show up at the
> top in case I want to follow a thread to its conclusion.

Actually that is already supported. To use it, you need to edit the options for a thread, you can do that either by clicking on the little icon to the left of the thread title in the threads list, or there is an "Edit thread options" link at the bottom of the thread's message list.

There you can mark a particular thread as "interested" or "subscribed", and in the View dropdown at the top of the threads list you can pick to show only High interest (marked as interested) or Subscribed threads to filter the threads list.

I think that when you post inside of a thread it will automatically get marked as high interest, there is an option for disabling that under Options > Forum options > Display > "Automatically mark threads I post in as High Interest" .

- Michael

Hi vodkamartini,

> I'm not sure a tagging system would be a better idea for
> this type of forum, though. It works well for stackoverflow.com
> because of the extensive range of languages, frameworks,
> utilities, and so on.

Well, stackoverflow.com is just one example - often times blogs will have a similar tagging system even when there are not a huge range of tags like in stackoverflow.

The part that's good about a tag system is that it allows a main UI that is a linear stream of content, but then gives some organization / filtering available as an option when you want to search and browse older stuff.

That's instead of trying to rigidly separate and impose categories on the discussion from the very top level.


> Many of your replies to mundane questions/problems are so
> perfectly detailed and illustrated that it's a real shame for them
> to go unreferenced.

Yeah, I should do a better job of linking things on the wiki.

Sometimes though an answer may be very particularly tailored for the specific project that the person is asking about.

- Michael

What I envisioned with those categories probably fits in with how you see the tags working. Right now you have a "View" dropdown at the top of the threadlist pane that filters threads based on how old they are (and if you're logged in, whether they have unread posts) and so on. I was thinking along the lines of having a "Category" dropdown above that, which would filter the threadlist by category as well. The default value for the dropdown would be "All Categories", so the forum would still work the way it does now, but people would have the option to browse with a more narrow focus..

So I guess the only real difference would be the one to many relationships (ie. A thread could have many tags, but only belong to one category). My argument against tags was simply that I couldn't see enough overlap in content to warrant needing the tag system. I know you've given the example of a "can't get this working" thread turning into a "feature request" thread, which I realize suggests a tag system would be more beneficial. At the same, however, I can't see people wanting to browse on a great deal of tags. Topics like "bugs", "feature requests", and "beta announcements" are typically the ones I would want to narrow my focus on, and for the most part they are mutually exclusive. In cases like the one you presented, I would personally prefer if the thread was moved to wherever it fit best (perhaps renaming the topic or making it more descriptive).

In all honesty though, I'm pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. I'm just tossing ideas out. Either method is useful in the end.

Hi vodkamartini, yeah what you are describing with a category dropdown is pretty much the same kind of thing that I was referring to as tags.

> My argument against tags was simply that I couldn't
> see enough overlap in content to warrant needing the
> tag system.

I was thinking along the lines of someone posts a WIP of a robot model, that could have 2 tags: "WIP", and "Robots".

Maybe stuff like "Architecture", "Jewelry", "Vehicles", as tags would work. So for example you could target architecture and get everything related to that including WIPs, bug reports, feature requests, whatever.


But another way that is kind of similar in some aspects is to just have a convention that some kinds of threads should start with a keyword, like WIP threads start with WIP: in the title text, then make it possible for the search to search by titles only.


Maybe having tags / categories would be a bit better to integrate with search instead of elevating it to a prominent dropdown like you were describing though. It's more of a searching kind of a thing rather than a daily reading activity kind of thing.


Probably just getting a title only search working would get a lot done in this area though, searching just titles for WIP for example would probably do a lot.

- Michael

The only thing that erks me about this forum at times is the pagination.

For example if there's say 14 posts and then I reply at the end. When I finish, I'll only see my post and the links at the bottom will say 1-14, 15 with mine being the 15th on the page by itself.

I've set the forum to display 30 posts but it still paginates with the 1 odd page left at times.

I really wish I could set it to display all and not paginate at all. I don't mind scrolling down for 20 minutes to read everything. Scrolling horizontally is usually the annoying one.


I do like the idea of Tags, Michael, that would allow me to easily find threads that I consider informative; the animated GIFs are always great for learning how to accomplish things, and at times I'm too lazy to copy the posts or page links into my organizer program.


-Will

PS - Even just now, after posting this, the pagination was 1-10, 11-40 and mine was the 41st all by itself - just give me ALL the posts without pagination!

Hi Will, I've set the max number of posts per page to 100 now, so you can increase that option under Options > Forum options > Style > Posts per page.

When you're doing regular browsing that should make most threads fit all in one page now.

As you noticed, when you post a message you get a different pagination on where you land immediately after the post.

The way that works is if you've replied to a specific message, it sets up a page with the first post in the page being that replied to message, which will probably be a different pagination than one from regular browsing which starts at post #1 and then breaks from there.

When you do a "reply to all" instead of replying to one specific message, that's when you'll land on the page with just your new message in it, with messages being clustered into pages going backwards from there.


The way it works when there is a "reply to" message I think is kind of good actually, I think it has helped sometimes to see posts that may have been added in at the same time you were composing your message.

Probably the "reply to all" one would be better having it broken into pages starting from #1 but navigated to your new message in that list. That may be a bit tricky to set up though.

- Michael

Subforums cause missing of Q & A that can be valuable for advancement even if it does not pertain to active interests. For example, my prime interest is with archviz stills and, due to time constraints and habit, I would probably only visit relevant subforums. With a continuous list of threads, it may include an animation or materials or lighting thread which occasionally I will check into to develop skills. The idea the user is given the choice to sort as either a continuous list or by subforums is a good one.

I believe the comments are valid regarding pagination and a second window in order to respond to a post. Otherwise, this spartan forum is the appropriate companion to the app which is like a tool box containing quality tools for the job arranged in a simple but very accessible way.

Cheers.

Leonard