I've been thinking about this for some time now. The recent surge of gear swap related posts in the forums has become quite distracting and frustrating when trying to concentrate on other posts when opening up on the Recent Threads page each day (I switched from Recent Posts to Recent Threads because the gear swap posts were getting way out of hand on the Recent Posts page). I've been trying to think of a way to organize it better for readers so they don't have to wade through so many personal advertisements.

Two things I think could help greatly with this, while at the same time allowing those who want to sell gear to still be visible and part of the community. How about listing posts on both the Recent Posts and Recent Threads pages within separated categories, using the same names as those in the forum index? So, for instance, a "Gear" section, a "Chaff" section, and a "Gear Swap" section, each shown as a running section with a certain number of visible posts listed on the Recent Posts and Recent Threads pages. This way people can check up on BPL forums from here as a starting point and choose what they want to see without the frustration of constantly having to be subjected to posts they are not interested in, most especially gear swap posts and chaff posts.

An added functionality could be to make each thread within these categories visibly threaded, perhaps by a drop down view of the thread, so that a reader doesn't have to dig through each link to get to the point in the thread to which they've not read yet. This would be especially useful for very long threads like the Carbon War thread, which is very difficult to navigate through at the moment.

What do you think? Any chance something like this could be implemented?

Sounds like a great idea, but I suspect it will have to wait for new software. It would be nice to include it in the upgrade that BPL staff has hinted is going to happen. BPL staff have already pointed out that new programming with the current software ain't gonna happen.

My big complaint about the situation you've described is that if I go somewhere for a week, there is absolutely no way I can catch up on what's happening in the forums. There's just too much of it, and there's no way to separate the sheep from the goats!

Edited by hikinggranny on 12/23/2011 18:12:20 MST.

Hi Miguel!
Unfortunately, I'm doubtful we can make that sort of categorization happen any time soon. It's beyond my coding capability, which isn't hard, and I have no idea if our platform would support it. I'm sorry I can't be more specific, and I'm sorry that all the fuss is making it hard to keep tabs on things you care about.

Nice and vague. I hate vague communication like this, because I'm so bad at it!
Addie

That's what I thought, Addie!

Miguel, I'm going to try reverting to the method I used before the "Recent Post" feature was implemented. That is to go into the forum list, pick the areas in which I'm interested, and look at the new posts (which show up with a number in parentheses). I just tried it and it seems a bit faster! At least we don't have to wade through Gear Swap and Chaff that way!

Edited by hikinggranny on 01/03/2012 15:57:12 MST.