Sustain NEW thread Board Flagging

[Colin Molloy]

From this thread -> support.proboards.com/thread/456024/continued-feature-request-sustain-board

1) Currently, if a member views the home page of the board and there one or more new threads within a board since his/her last visit, the board is flagged NEW to indicate that there is at least one new thread in that board.

2) Now, the member navigates to that board and there are (let's say) three new threads.

3) Some members will read/respond to all the new threads whilst within that board - fine.

4) BUT, if a member exits the board (for whatever reason), having only opened one of the new threads, and navigates back to the main forum page, or returns to the forum and no FURTHER threads have been posted in the respective Board, then the Board, notwithstanding it still has (from that Member's perspective) two new threads, will no longer have the NEW flag.

5) Yes, the presence and use of the View the <number set> most recent (posts or threads <as set>) of this forum in the Info Center (if not turned off or otherwise modified so as not to show this attribute) is acknowledged - but, IMHO, sustaining a NEW thread flag at the superordinate Board level would be better.





 

[Ryan Roos]

I completely understand what you are requesting and why. But that being said I can tell you this won't be changing.

The biggest reasons are based on logic and tradition. First, what I'm about to explain has been done this way for 13+ years and not just on ProBoards. I'm sure you already partially understand, the logic is that when there's a new icon outside of the object it indicates that their are new things inside of it since the last time you saw it. Pretty straight forward. Here's some examples.

When a board has the new folder icon >> there is a new thread or new latest post in the board itself.
When a thread has a NEW icon >> there is a new post in the thread.
When a conversation gets a NEW ion >> there is another reply.
When your participated button gets a NEW icon >> there is a new post in a thread you participated in.

If you load the new page and compare it to the old one something is different, something has changed, something is new that wasn't there before. This is expected behavior from people who have been using forums for years.

NEW means that something inside of this is different from the last time you viewed it.

Now let's look at the behavior you're requesting. The idea is a good one in concept, but I'll try to show why it creates confusion and inconsistency.

Yours definiton is this:

New means that their are unread things inside of this.

So there are 3 new threads in a board.
You read one of them.
There are 2 new new threads in a board.
You aren't interested in them right now.
You go back to the homepage and start using the rest of the forum.
Your new icon is still lit. Because you still have those 2 unread threads.

At this point I like your idea. Because it's actually a 'you have unread threads indicator' which is cool. But it's about to go wrong.

Now someone creates a new thread in that board.
The NEW indicator doesn't change, it's already lit.
But you continue elsewhere. You know those 2 threads are there, even though there are 3 now. But you don't know that.
Someone replies in both of those 2 threads you know about.
You have no idea.
4 more threads get created and 10 more replies and the NEW icon stays on.

or

No one posts or creates threads at all and the NEW icon stays on.

In either scenario you have no idea if there is new content or not. You could argue that because of the 2 threads you haven't read yet there that there is always new content. But I hope you see how you have no way of knowing if there is "new" content since you viewed the board.

For both established behavior and because of our definition of what NEW means we won't be changing this. Sorry.

I didn't go into it, but the other issue with your system has to do with the fact that for boards you would be using one definition (yours) but for threads you would be using the current definition (ours). That would make NEW mean two different things. People get confused when things don't behave consistently.

New means something has changed. Regardless of if you read everything or not. Something is different than before.

Your way would also be much harder to track internally (reason#3). But because we already aren't doing this because of the above reasons I won't spend time explaining why that is. Changing our system now would be difficult as well (reason#4).

I'm sorry that your idea won't be implemented. And off the top of my head I can't think of a way to do this with a plugin. But this is a very core concept that was established long ago.

Thank you for taking the time to ask about it though.

[Colin Molloy]

Hi  Ryan

Firstly, thank you VERY much for such a considered and in depth response - it's greatly appreciated and you raise some very valid points. 

It's 06:19 am in Western Australia and I've had one-half of a coffee  , so I believe my morning befuddled brain has digested your very generous rebuttle. 


The biggest reasons are based on logic and tradition. First, what I'm about to explain has been done this way for 13+ years and not just on ProBoards.
Yup, I know that - but the only time I stand on tradition is escorting a lady in and out of a car or when at a restaurant etc , I don't think it has any weight in sustaining anything, otherwise we wouldn't have V5 on the horizon  .

You are absolutely correct in your observations and conclusions on where my idea could cause confusion and inconsistency - nice insight (I nearly typed that as incite  ).

And, you've hit the nail on the head! What we REALLY need is an Unread Posts/Threads feature as some BB code based forums have - to act as a "sweeper" if you like to display all the stuff you haven't read - very handy if you have a very busy forum with lots of posts and/or you've been away for a while.

I notice support.proboards.com/thread/70177/code-index-848 has two references to unread posts - but I couldn't see anything about viewing unread posts/threads via a list.

Is THAT possible?

Oh, and an absolute pleasure on the question, especially when I receive such a well thought out and fantastic response! 

[Ryan Roos]

I went ahead and added the idea for the unread indicator or at least the variables available for plugins to be done. That's on our list of future ideas. That means it could be a while. Like I said there may just be limitations with how things work. But we will come back to this at some point and do what we can then.

Thank you again.

[Colin Molloy]

Hi  Ryan

Thank you for both getting back to me and doing that - moderating in other forums based on software that has that, it's a very handy feature, and again, you are very welcome.