Is there a nested thread view?

[professorking]

Forum URL: 316fa2014.freeforums.net


 New to this product/service, but I just noticed, to my horror, that all of my students' posts are fully lined up, flush left, making it impossible to see which student is responding to which post, and making it further impossible to have a true "discussion." I am hoping there is a way to adjust the layout so that reply-posts are nested (slightly off to the right, but underneath) under their OPs, instead of merely listed top-to-bottom in chronological order. Please and thank you!

[Chris]

Proboards uses a flat system instead of a threaded system. If one wishes to respond to a specific post by a specific user they quote that post then give their response to the quoted content otherwise all replies are considered in response to the last post or the initial post unless stated otherwise [delete: all responses are to the initial post]. The system is less concerned at promoting a confrontational debating style and more to lending organization and adherence to a specific topic. In the event of topic fragmentation which is almost always caused by responding to a single post and going off-topic, the option to fork that to a new topic of its very own also exists.

[professorking]

Hmmmm.... "Confrontational" isn't exactly what I would call it. I want my students to discuss/debate topics in the assigned reading of our course texts, which is hard to do with the "flat" posting structure you describe. That is disappointing, since the product seems to have contingencies for everything else - it seems to be otherwise a very comprehensive platform. Nesting would provide "visual clarity" so that the students may better locate responses to their own posts; it promotes true interactivity, which the flat system seems to discourage. Unlike most public boards, to which many people might respond, mine is a closed discussion, with only myself (Admin) and seven student members, and all of our posts are to each other, and there are to be, each week, numerous posts by each member, many being specific targeted responses. You can imagine how chaotic that will get, even within a single thread, and very quickly! Is there no way to jury-rig nesting, even tinkering with the coding? Some kind of if-then trigger (if user hits "reply" button then phase response box x number of pixels to the right, etc...)? Thanks!

[Brian]

The maximum amount of posts that can be loaded per page by the software at this time is 30, and it can only load posts chronologically and in the order of their submission, so a threaded layout wouldn't be possible. Sorry.