So I’ve added a bunch of boards – oops, categories – to my sidebar. Works OK. But it provides a link to just the threads (oops again, topics) with recent activity. I’m not even sure it’s strictly unread, just recent posts that haven’t been read. And that indication of unread threads is sketchy at best. But that’s a topic for a different Topic.
I’d like those category links in the sidebar to have the option to simply go to the category with no filtering. I can find unread threads easily enough by myself. First off, they’re going to be at the top of the list. Secondly, the thread title - Topic Subject - will be grey if I’ve read it and black if there are unread posts on the thread.
But most importantly, sometimes I want to go to the category just to see what’s happening. I want to pick and choose what to read, mixing in old and new threads. It also mimics the way new posts were made in the old board system. Go to the board first, then start a new posts. Yes, here we can just start a new post from pretty much anywhere and select where to post it. But if I go to the category first, I might find that someone else has already posted on that topic, particularly for very current events. Posting blindly without looking at the current activity is a recipe for duplicate threads and lots of work for the board administrator merging threads together.
Replying to myself, I just discovered that when looking at the list of unread posts in a category, you just need to click on the “latest” button at the top of the screen to see all posts. And that’s what I was looking for.
It still would be nice to have a bit of control over how the categories you have selected to appear in your sidebar behave when you click on them. And considering the unreliability of the unread post count there, I’d kind of like to be able to simply see all posts topics rather than an unreliable list of “new” posts.
But at least I can get what I’m looking for with just one extra click. Considering all of the other debugging work you’re doing at the moment, that will have to do for now.
I had it one my bookmarks to circle back to this but it’s been a day. And I’ve got hurricane prep to do on top of all this (SC resident)
I have uncovered a few things…when you see Unread with a number, that seems to be replies to topics you’ve seen at least part of, if you clear all of those out, it will frequently then say new and those are new topics that you haven’t seen (that may already have replies). I think that’s part of why the numbers seem wacky.
At any rate, there is a long thread going on the developers site about making what you see user configurable. But that will probably be a while.
Thanks for that. If nothing else, it helps me know I’m not going crazy (other indications of that state notwithstanding).
And it’s nice to know that suggestions for improvements are actually being considered again. Never got much of that on the old boards. (For pretty good reason, of course.)
And yes, hurricane prep gets priority. You’ve had a long weekend. Tell your overlords to stuff it, get yourself home and stay safe! (Even if getting home means shutting the door to the home office and putting the phone on silent for a while.)
–Peter <== safely ensconced a couple thousand miles away from Ian.