Hi all,

I checked, as best I can tell when I "View New Posts" there is no way to ignore certain forums. For instance, Chatter. I don't believe that is a benefit of membership, either. If I'm wrong, please explain how it works! I'm used to netnews where I can view only 'forums' that I'm interested in, and even have a 'kill file' where I can dump (never to be seen by me again) certain discussions. This site has enough traffic that management tools would be welcome.

I also would want certain defaults kept, like "Enable emoticons" OFF when I post. Thoughts about that?

Hi,

There have been quite a few discussions on te topics you mention, so a simple search would have provided you with the answers you need. I will expand a bit on yoru questions, however. See below.

Well, there is no such option on FPN. What you can do, is just browse in normal Forum View. You can still see where there are new posts, because such topics are marked, for each user individually, for messages up to a week old. So, from the forum view you can then read whatever new posts are availbale in topics marked as having new posts. Whenever you have read a message, and go back to the topic or forum view, IOW, when the browser window is refreshed, the read status of messages/topics i supdated. When you're done readin what you want to read, in Forum View you have the option to mark all messages as read, and you're done.

This, BTW, is what I do, and it does work for me.


If you click in My Controls (top right of the page, left option), you'll get the "Your Control Panel" page. On th eleft hand side there is a pane with a bunch of options, under "Options" you'll find "Board Settings". Clicking on "Board Settings" will allow you to switch a bunch of things on or off, but emoticons is unfortunately not one of them.

HTH, warm regards, Wim

I was sure there had been discussions, so I did search, but I didn't find anything. I also checked the site help.


I'm sure that does work for you, but it is rather cumbersome for an ordinary user.

What I suspect ordinary users do is read a lot initially upon joining, searching for things that interest them and things they stumble upon. After awhile I suspect they become more focused. For instance I don't need to read about Cross pens, but I am interested in Pilot. However I'm interested in more than just 1 forum, I'd like to see what is new in forums 3 4 5 8 12 21 22 32 34 35 36 41 91 101, it is cumbersome to visit each and search manually for new topics. The getnew search is nice but it would nicer to have it allow only getting new for those forums (I tried feeding it &f= but it didn't work :-). I note that visiting a forum (e.g. Chatter) and marking it as read doesn't affect what getnew finds (not surprising as it isn't getnewunread).

I appreciate your confirming what I suspected, the next time y'all enhance the code please consider it a feature request for users to be able to select which forums they wish to track. Or perhaps even getnewunread but that would probably be more difficult to optimi[s|z]e. Your board is growing and could stand to have more management tools for users. Yes, I plan to make a contribution :-) I'm just waiting to see if we're ordering ink so we can piggyback the contribution.

All you have to do is skip it. How hard is that?

That is what i do.

d

That's an opinion, not a fact.
Again, opinion, not fact, IMO.Ah, now you state what you really mean: you use the I-word . You are the one interested in doing so. Unfortunately, the IPB software we use, works in a certain way, and we are not very likely to convert to other board software, as it is too cumbersome to do so. As mentioned, there is no such option, you will have to go through the forums to read only new posts in specific forums, by actually clicking on those that are marked as new. Topics with unread posts are marked as such, and topics with unread posts automatically migrate to the top, depending on the date/timestamp of the last post in a topic.
As mentioned, you need to go through the forums in that case. And that is easy, IMO. Has nothing to do with being ordinary users or not, if you ask me. When I am reading posts, I am an ordinary user....

Well, unfortunately we use standard IPB software, so other than a few enhancements for layout and logo, we don't maintain or enhance the code ourselves. We did fix a few bugs ourselves, but that is as far as it goes.

This means that we will only have options available that are put in place by Invision, and maybe a few enhancements like the extra bars at the bottom etc. We do not plan on doing any other maintenance work on the software itself, because we don't have the resources, knowledge or inclination to do so. It's complex enough the way it is, and any custom change made will have to be redone with every software upgrade or patch. Adding a skin or two will happen some time in the future, but certainly not before the next server move.

Regarding marking posts as read: you need to stay in forum mode, not go back to the View New Posts option.

HTH, warm regards, Wim

Not for nothing, but presumably you chose to use expensive commercial closed-source software instead of one of the zillion excellent free open-source packages for a reason. The only reason I can think of would be to be able to pester the developers of the software to provide the features you and your users want.

I'm not saying it's bad to buy closed-source software. I'm saying there are pros and cons and one of the benefits is that you are a paying customer who can demand features (even if the rest of us aren't and can't). There's no reason for a paying customer to put up with shortcomings in software.

I'd love to see the feature the OP asked for. Free BBS software had exactly the described feature 20 or more years ago, so I don't see why modern developers would find it to be a challenge. But then, developers of Web-based BBSes could generally learn a lot from the dial-up BBSes of yesteryear.

No, there are many reasons why to chose commercial software over free software, and that isn't the reason. BTW, it wasn't I who chose it, the admins did. And FYI, here are a few of the reasons, if you're interested:
1. Original software for the board was the freeware version of IPB, which made the upgrade to a newer, commercial versions easy.
2. Support. Cheap, and easily available, unlike with free software, including the old version.
3. Used for the largest forums around.
4. Very stable (and no, our problems are not software problems, but server sizing problems).
5. Best of breed after comparing many packages, including free software.
6. Easy and relatively painless, because all admins and moderators knew the old software and interface, and the new resembled it.
7. Time, of which we only have limited amounts .

Shortcomings are relative. This is not so much a shortcoming as a nice-to-have.

You can't compare 20 year old BBS software, whether free or not (and BTW, decent BBS forum readers were not free in those days...) with modern day forum board software, with its feature and object rich interface. I should know, I think; I have been using BBS and Boards since my 300 baud modem days about 24 years ago.

Personally, I would not want that feature, because it potentially could mean you miss a lot. Why not just read the forums of interest? What is wrong with that? Just wondering...

BTW, you can collapse a complete category if you so like, so if you don't want to read an entire category, you never have to, just click on the little minus sign on the right hand side of the Category name bar. and it collapses, and it will stay that way if you don't expand it again, as long as you log in at least once a week.

I think switching forums on and off for reading would serve a useful purpose if this was a forum like CompuServe used to be twenty years ago. You don't want to read all and sundry about any subject you could possibly think off, and twenty forums of each. The way I see it, this is a pen board, which means it is just a single subject of interest. Yes, it is divided up into several categories and forums, but that makes it easier to read and find specialized items, just like CompuServe did in the past too. Just skip the forums you don't want to read. I'd honestly like to suggest you give it a try.

BTW, the main reason for being able to switch things off in the days of slow modems and expensive telephone connections was because reading everything was not an option for most of us. Bandwidth and telephone costs were incredibly expensive. I do remember the time that I was invited to speak at a conference about a specific topic, and the research I did for that somewhat eclectic topic in programming did set me back more than a whole month worth of salary, purely in online and telephone costs to get online, and I managed to burn that doe in much less than a month....

So times have gotten better and easier, and so has board software, IMO .

Rambled enough for now I guess .

Certainly reminded me of the good old pioneering days of early 8088 PCs running at an amzing 4.77 MHz , and pre-internet and early internet and dial-up BBS days . Yeah, good memories, it was fun .

Warm regards, Wim

Ahem.

Again, I'm not saying the choice was the wrong one. I'm saying that you paid to get support. That means that they will at least read your email when you submit a feature request. Which changes this from a "can't" question to a "don't want to" question, which is pretty much what you say below. Since it's a feature you don't think you'd find useful...



Yes, I started on a 300 baud modem, too, although I never ran a whole board until I had a 14400 baud modem.

Telegard, TAG, WWIV, and Maximus were all free, IIRC. WWIV might have been commercial, but it sucked, so it doesn't matter. Searchlight was commercial and only OK, certainly not as powerful as Maximus.

Anyway, I don't understand how graphical advancements justify usability setbacks.



Ah well here I was thinking I was being a jerk for continuing to argue this, but since you asked.... well, I'm probably still being a jerk. Anyway.

There are 29 forums, not including subforums. If I'd like to see what's new on the board but I don't have any interest in buying or selling or cookie recipes, I'd have to click on 27 forums to find out what's new in each of the ones I'm interested in, read what's new and go back to the home in between each one. If there were a "show what's new in my favorite forums" I could read those the same way I read "View New Posts" but without Chatter or Marketplace.

OK, going back and starting over 27 times isn't the disaster scenario you painted with your Compuserve example, but still, what a PITA just to try to read what's new that I'm interested in. Right now it's far easier to just hit "View New Posts" and wade through everything.

We could use "Advanced Search" for this (since that's how the "View New Posts" works anyway) except that we have to enter a keyword that's greater than three letters in order to submit a search. If it weren't for that restriction (which had to be consciously added by the developers and hamstrings anyone looking for info about the Parker 51), the feature requested would already exist, though it would take a little cleverness to create the URL to bookmark.

This is a no-brainer easy feature for IPC to add. You or I could write the code for it in 20 minutes. It would allow for a substantial reduction in server load, as it might cause the queries to go faster (depending on how the post and thread tables are indexed) and would certainly force a fewer number of pages to be generated. The day's posts might take up one or two screens instead of seven or eight.

Sounds like Firefox with the appropriate Greasemonkey script might do the trick. You could write the script to blast the results from certain forums off of the New Posts page. Maybe I'll throw a script together if I get motivated.

That's a good idea--for the New Posts page, a Greasemonkey script to strip out the threads/rows from forum sectons that are blacklisted.

The sticky part might come from the fact that, from what I can tell, some of the pages are built using javascripts running on the browser. From what little poking around I've done, it seems that the server is not generating anywhere near all of the html that paints the page. I'm not sure how this impacts Greasemonkey. I use a bunch of Greasemonkey scripts on Flickr but Flickr publishes their whole API.

I'd be curious to know what you find if you get a chance to look into it.

It's not perfect, but subscription to forums might help. Topics related to Pilot pens are mostly in Pens from the Land of the Rising Sun form. I have subscribed to PftLotRS, and am getting one or two notifications a day at the most, and that's not overwhelming or anything. The notification e-mail includes the original post, so I can tell whether that's something I might be interested in reading or not. If someone posts a thread about Pilot of other Japanese pen topic to other forums such as Writing Instrument, usually that get moved to PftLotRS. I get notification when it's moved, even if it was around in another forum for a while. Again, I know this is not what you want but it's currently available and a convenient feature.

I'm in agreement with the both of you. It ain't that hard to pick and choose as one sees fit.

John

FWIW,

I may be a newbie to this board, but I am no stranger to forums. I enjoy reading pen & ink reviews, but I do not like the clutter from every subforum when I click on "View new posts." I also wish that I could set options for the boards that I want to see on a regular basis.

There's so much going on on these boards, it's overwhelming at times, and it could possibly intimidate newbies that want to stretch their legs and take a look around.

That would be a great suggestion, but unfortunately, in my experience, I don't receive notification for all the new threads in a forum I've subscribed to. I don't think the board software is working the way it says it should.

At least Wim helped me before [telling me that it works fine for him and therefore isn't broken and I should suck it up].


In my opinion.

[edited to expand 2 inflamatory words :-]

Just so no one thinks (read: finds out) I'm a bitter, cranky, old guy, I have seen a lot of good in this thread:

Splicer and Biffybeans expand and back up what I say better than I could say it.

Taki offers a helpful suggestion, although Dr.Grace says it may not be working correctly.

fuddmain, captnemo may be able to provide a solution.

And to wimg's credit, he provided a long answer even though he thought it was FAQ, that's much to his credit.

Excarnate,
As I understand it, these forums are set up and made possible for everyone's benefit. That also means that the setup may not suit another reader's preference. Everyone has to work together to enjoy this forum,which means that personal preferences may not always come first. It is a matter of enjoying the forum as it is and helping out others with what particular talent one may have. BTW, I don't think that anyone of the three of us that wrote those short posts were being snotty. We were stating the simple fact that all you have to do is pick what you want and read it and reply to it if you choose.

John

I like this forum's software, especially considering the number of topics it has etc. I don't know if this is helpful, but this is pretty much what I do:

I use Safari (the browser, not the pen) which will open a new page in a tab if you hold Command down at the same time. So I don't even go to "View New Posts" first. The first thing I do is eyeball the main page and as I scroll down I Command-click the topics I like. Pen and ink reviews, writing instruments, etc. I'm a big fan of the Penmanship forum. If the last post in Chatter is interesting, I might click that, but everytime I post something there I get myself in trouble so I usually skip it.

Then I Command-W to close the main page and the next page pops up. I scan down the subjects and Command-click the interesting new ones. Then I Command-W which gets me the next topic and do the same thing. After a bit of that, all that's left are the threads I've opened and I can sit back and do some reading (and replying). It's kind of like husking a coconut, a little bit of work, then just sit back and enjoy. When I finish one thread I just close it, and the next selected one pops up.

At the end of this process and when I'm at the last pane, I might do a "View New Posts" to see if I want to catch the latest barrage of insults in Chatter before a moderator locks or disappears it.

Sometimes I click on a particular member and do a "view posts" or "view topics" to see what he/she has been up to. I have to catch everything that caliken posts!

Okay, this sounds like a technique for someone who spends too much time here, but... well... uh... what's wrong with that?

Doug

huh?

d

I have to watch more closely but so far I am getting notification for all the threads. Is it possible some ISPs are filtering out the notice? I use gmail for FPN.

I switched to Gmail because I wasn't getting ANY notifications. Now I get one notification per subscribed forum until I visit FPN, and then I can get another one, etc.

Don

I have a suggestion:

Bookmark the subfora you enjoy reading. Wouldn't that skip the whole tedious process of reading through the stuff you aren't interested in?

And, correct me if I'm wrong, you could set the "remember me" option (it's a default anyway, right?) so you wouldn't have to log in each time.



Problem solved.

I think the problem is simply an embarassment of riches on FPN. The membership is growing rapidly, and there's a corresponding increase in the number of interesting threads. I find that lately I have to spend a lot more time finding the threads that are most interesting to me. It will become increasingly important to discover more efficient ways of filtering the forum.

The forum bookmarking idea works, and so does the idea of simply scanning the new posts. But because of the growth of FPN, each of these approaches will require more and more time. So I am very much in favor of a way to exclude forums from the new posts search.

As a moderator, my focus is perhaps a bit different from most. I have two goals: 1) Not miss any posts at all in a certain few sections. 2) Not miss any posts at all on the whole board during the time I am "on watch". My method for using FPN might be of some use to others.

I have two methods I use. The first method is used when I first log on. For a certain few sections I go to the index for each of those sections and scan down to the time-stamp corresponding to when I last logged off and then scan backwards up the list looking at each thread title and examining threads of interest to me.

Once I have done the above for those certain sections, I go to View New Posts and I keep a browser window parked on the View New Posts page all day long. Every 10 to 30 minutes I go to the View New Posts page, note the time-stamp of the topmost post, and refresh the page. Then I scan visually down the right side to the first time-stamp newer than the time I noted and then scan upwards, looking for anything that might be of interest, and since I'm a moderator, looking for trouble, hot threads, misplaced posts, unanswered questions, spam, etc. If nothing needs attention the process is very quick and only takes a few seconds.

Again, the issue is that he WANTS to miss a lot. Several people in this thread have stated that they want to miss a lot. Filtering is the issue.

The Admins mention, frequently, the growing number of members and the exploding number of posts- at some point, it would be nice to help users to filter content. Right now, it seems that someone who is only interested in viewing new posts in 6 sub-forums can either 1) go and check each and every one of those 6 different sub-forums or 2) View All New Posts and wade through content that they consider "noise" while trying to find "signal". The OP and several others are looking for a more efficient way to find content they are interested in without having to deal with content they're not interested in- not a new theme, and one that will only get more and more useful and not just "nice-to-have".


That's an opinion, not a fact.


He doesn't want to turn forums on and off- he wants a "View New Posts" filter- big difference. The people who have requested a filter HAVE given it a try- and have found it annoying and inefficient enough to ask for a better way. Too many new posts was the given reason for the Marketplace split- if it was necessary for Marketplace, why not the whole Board?


Amen. Amen, amen, amen amen. Better yet, a list of saved filters.

These aren't changes being asked for by a lone nut- there are more than a few people who would love to see streamlined browsing. I understand that the Admins don't want to or can't make changes like this- but which one is it? If it's a matter of "don't want to", aren't there enough talented people with serious message-board and web skeelz around here to help out?

Andy

Yes, and current options to do so were indicated.

All new posts are at the top of the forums, and marked as such. Regardless of what you seem to think, it actually is easy to go through just those, and then mark all posts as read to reset the remainder. This is something you can do for each forum individually, or for the whole board.

See remarks above.

Note the highlighted remarks in my quoted text, in red. No need to repeat something I already said twice myself.


First of all, we can't provide what isn't there already, not easily anyway.
Furthermore, I am well aware you didn't like the split, Andy, so why do you want even more now?

Do you really think I will answer a question put forward in this way? Let me answer you before you ask: no, I won't answer that.


I think I did mention somewhere in this topic that we don't want to modify the software too much ourselves, because it is a pain to keep on changing it again and again after upgrades, and not necessarily easy to do. Furthermore, those changes will need to be implemented with each new skin as well, and we still want to add a few some time this year.

If Invision adds an option for a selective View New Posts to the software, we'll have it as soon as we can upgrade the software. Till then we'll just have to make do with the options available, and quite a few different possibilities were mentioned already. If anybody wants to create a filter or script to help those who want more, and wants to share that, that's fine, nobody is stopping anybody to do just that. And if anybody is willing to write an easy installable, working fix or add-on for the Invison board software, that's also fine. Provided it is proven and doesn't break the forum, we're happy to try that.

Regards, Wim

P.S.: I am not going to post any further replies in this thread. Anybody who has questions, remarks, requests, or special offers regarding this topic, can direct them to me backchannel, preferably via PM.

I don't think it's that easy. As I mentioned, I'm sure I could make the necessary modifications in about 20 minutes---was a bit of hyperbole, it would take an hour or two of familiarizing myself with the database structures, especially for users, before I could start that 20 minutes. But as I understand it, IP.Board does not provide readable PHP source but instead encoded PHP to keep people from "stealing" their code, which means the lowly customers don't get to make their own modifications.

So it's really not up to the admins here to add this feature. About all they can do, if they decide it's worth it to shut us up, is file a feature request with IPS. You and I can do that too, but IPS is less likely to listen to us since we've never signed a check with their name on it. Then when the next revision comes around if IPS has added the feature, then the admins will have the option to buy the upgrade.

I'd be happy to chip in or pay all of such an upgrade, but there are an awful lot of 'if' statements in the above paragraph.

BTW, it's absolutely not a "lone nut" issue. Go to almost any IP.Board-based site and you'll see exactly this same thread. A little googling shows hundreds of similar threads on other boards. So maybe the filter is in the queue.

Allowing "Advanced Search" without a keyword would go a long way towards this end for me, but again, I don't think that's the call of anyone associated with FPN. Have to take that up with IPS.

I reject this assertion. First of all, *why* should I check the 12 or so different (sub)forums independently? I don't even check that many websites a day. Believe it or not, even if some of us do get obsessed with fountain pens, that doesn't mean we lose ourselves (completely) in FPN :-) If checking 12 different forums, (following all the instructions) is the answer, then perhaps I need to reconsider my question. I am checking (via getnew) all forums, but here is a short list of subject lines I could have lived my life better without ever having seen (sorry folks):
<span style="font-size: 80%;"><table summary="Chatter topics that annoy just by reading them" border="1" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1">
<tr>
<td>Drinking water -- ewww!</td>
<td>Yikes! If you are not to pay $4.00 gas,</td>
<td>What's your dog breed?</td>
<td>Seeking Advice from Pipe Smokers</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Word Game for Everyone <i>(all 57 pages)</i></td>
<td>Would you marry me?</td>
<td>For my fellow bubble car fans ...</td>
<td>Any Formula 1 Fans onboard?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Maine Coon or Norweigan Forest Cat</td>
<td>The three trillion dollar war</td>
<td>Gun Crazy</td>
<td>Sick of drink drivers and boy racers.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Beijing's shocking death camp for cats</td>
<td>Poll: Should it be legal to kill in self-defense?</td>
<td>Women Drivers on Mars ...</td>
<td>Stuff White People Like</td>
</tr>
</table></span><br>

OK, let's make this simple. Reading through individual forums is Not An Answer. It is a poor work-around though I appreciate the suggestion, and I accept that the software used for the board doesn't make it practical to make changes. I feel that it would be, um, short-sighted not to make a request to the board software vendor for at least better user tools for managing increased traffic, or better yet, requesting specific enhancements such as I want and others have outlined effectively.
<br><br>
I'm new here but I'm used to handling a lot of traffic (heck, I used to read all of USENET) and I know what a big difference good tools can make. Contrawise, 7 years with [insert name of my current company] has demonstrated repeatedly how much extra work poor tools can make. At some point the pain doesn't exceed the payoff (although this <b>is</B> a very nice community). <i>*shrug*</i> It (a sub-optimal, poorly scaling, etc. interface) can be a means to manage growth, a sort of self-limiter, but I believe there are better ways. I'm not saying it is there yet, but everyone has a different level of pain and apparently this site has an increasing number of new posts per day (right?).
<br><br>

<br>Thank you.<br><br>

Brian "not a lone nut" Excarnate

Currently, it IS the answer- it may not be a satisfying answer, but: given the software limitations, you have the option of Viewing New Posts -or- checking all of your forums of interest. I don't like it either, but, as has been pointed out 1) the Software doesn't provide options to do it 2) it would be time-consuming, difficult, and possibly futile (could become useless after a software update) to hack a work around 3) it's not worth it to find a completely new software package and migrate the Board just to get this function..

Wim has 1) stated the Admins would offer it if they could and 2) welcomed anyone to offer their l33t haxor skeelz to figure out how to offer it. I hope that this thread does generate feedback from the Admins to the software company re: future upgrades, but at this point, it seems the horse is dead, and any further beatings would probably border on abusing the Admins, which, oddly enough, they don't seem to like.

So- not ideal, but it is what it is, and while we may not like it, hopefully we can learn to live with it. I can live with it, which is probably a good thing, coz dying for a message board feature is a pretty dumb way to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Andy

With a thousand posts or more in a day View New Posts is unwieldy and absolutely impossible if I miss a couple of days. The only way I have found to manage my limited interests (five forums) is to subscribe to my favorite forums and then access just those few from My Controls/View Forums rather than view the entire board from the homepage. Then I just click each one and scan for interesting threads. I definitely miss some good stuff this way but I can also completely avoid Chatter and other forums in which I have no interest. It isn't perfect but for now it's workable.

Ah, the flu makes fools of us all. Or at least me. I meant to communicate "Not A Good Answer" and should have said that.

I think I'll do what Wim did and drop out, because I don't know if I have anything (useful) left to say and the flu is making it hard to say anything coherent. But I'll keep reading!

I really like viewing much of what's in this forum and I appreciate the good work of the admins. And, I even contribute to the fun. Nevertheless, I agree with what excarnate and Splicer have said. Meanwhile, until the forum is enhanced to please us all, I'll just have to slog through the chatter and sales.

I'd have to agree with Margana's suggestion. Though I'm a frequent visitor, on days or weeks when I know I won't be able to log on, and do not want to go through a slew of several pages of "New Posts" (that may not interest me) when I do finally log on, I simply subscribe to the ones that I'm interested in.

That's one way to use an existing feature to one's advantage, rather than waiting for an upgrade or workaround. The feature works quite nicely in fact; it sends me a message with replies to a certain thread (or forum) that I've subscribed to, and I never even have to log on to FPN unless I want to contribute to the thread. Hope that helps.

Don,

By any chance is your notification set as "delayed" instead of "immediate" ? I've been monitoring the new threads on I'm subscribed to, and the system seems to be working for me

No, unfortunately it's not that simple. I've had it set to "immediate". But you're right, it seems to be acting as if it's on "delayed".

Too late.

Dr. Grace - "embarrassment of riches" - perfect expression for the root of the problem.

Wim, you hit the nail on the head when you said, "this is a pen board, which means it is just a single subject of interest." I think the basic complaint that started this thread is that people don't like reading the NON-PEN-RELATED topics. For most of us, it isn't a case of wanting to read 15 of 29 forums and not the other 14. It is a case of wanting to read 28 of the 29 forums but not the 1 forum (Chatter) devoted to NON-PEN-RELATED topics. We're hoping that there is a way to do that without having to scroll through 28 forums one at a time.

I used to frequent a board that nearly melted down due to the pervasiveness and general distaste for threads of the 'when and why to shoot people and with what' and 'doesn't politician ____ really suck' and 'i am smart and right and you are stupid and wrong about _____' ilk. A fix that helped some there was to eliminate the Chatter type threads from appearing in the 'new posts' listing. It actually helped in that the rabid still knew where to go and first time visitors weren't overwhelmed by volume or put off by vitriol. It does seem to me though, that if I settle into my recliner after work and go to FPN to peruse it, as is my wont, after last visiting the previous evening, hit 'view new posts' and get a return of 21 pages, the function isn't much use at all.

I thought that this was an inane thread until I read the whole crazy thing.

I too would like to see the Chatter threads gone from my New Posts query.

24 hours without logging on to FPN.

14 pages worth of new posts.

(roughly) 140 of those 350 posts were either Marketplace posts or Chatter. Yeah, it still would have been 9 pages to slog through, but still, it would have been 9 pages that I would have been 40% happier looking at.

Strange - I don't have any problem flipping through New Posts, even when they run to a large number of pages. It's a question of focus, I think; it only takes me a micro-second to determine whether a topic is likely to be of interest. At the same time, my eyes are flicking over to the Forum column and discounting many on that basis; and at the risk of sounding negative, I'm sometimes mentally filtering by topic-starter too.

Perhaps we've all become too dependent on software to help us parse information. Don't be daunted by those new posts - attack them!

Yikes! I've tried the attack mode, and all that serves to do is to escalate the rhetoric on both sides. Better for me (and for the whole board) to stick to pen-related topics!

I don't follow - I'm only talking about getting stuck into the list of new posts, not responding to them.


In pen-related forums, yes; but judging by the amount of traffic, Chatter has always been a popular forum, so the demand is obviously there. I expect the idea is for members to get to know each other a little better, and although I don't spend much time there myself, I can see that has value.

I'm with Wim on this one - I don't see that it's a major problem to skip Chatter topics in New Posts. And since a software solution is currently unavailable, I for one think the deceased horse has well and truly succumbed to corporal punishment.

I'm probably being a bit thick here, but I just save my favourite fora as bookmarks (For Sale, The Home Page and Chatter) and then go in and look for what I want. The new posts just appear as they have been added to chronologically.

But you missed my point. Many of us like to read 28 of the 29 fora, omitting only Chatter, because it is not about fountain pens. Clicking through 28 separate fora is a pain in the butt, whereas "View New Posts" allows us to click once and quickly scroll through. We'd like to be able to do that in such a way that we don't have to scroll through chatter topics.

Well, hopefully the software guys at IP.Board are working on it. I would certainly use the feature. For me, all of the Marketplace related sections are clutter. And there are times during the day where I just want to monitor the latest posts in about 4 sections and that's it. so yeah, I'd use it a lot.

We just have to wait and see when the feature comes along.

Thanks captnemo!

Work is busy, I go away for a week and
Click to view attachment

43 pages?! Unfortunately the only practical thing to do is click the "Mark all forums as read and return to index" link. Or just give up on it all.

Amazingly, I was reading all of USENET (net news) for awhile when I started on the Internet. No I'm not Kibo, but even when it got *really* busy I could still manage reading and keeping up with a lot of groups by using nn. Note the FAQ hasn't been updated in over a decade. I don't even know when it was developed, but it isn't like the methods to handle *a lot* of traffic aren't understood.

I know that doesn't solve the immediate problem, but perhaps it could be pointed out to the developers of the software used by FPN that there are ways to handle a lot of traffic efficiently.

Just saying.