I was told last week that the new forums would have "Post Bumping", where a reply to a thread moved that thread to the top of the list. The other day I saw in another thread where someone said that there is not going to be any "post bumping". Can someone from Renderosity please give an official word on the status of "Post Bumping"? Is it coming, or were we misinformed? As it stands now these forums are no longer very friendly to read. I can't be bothered to look through 10 pages of threads to see if there are any "new" messages posted. And I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I'm sorry to say that unless you eliminate having to comb through pages and pages of threads to find new posts, either through "Post Bumping", or a way to only view "new posts", that you are going to be losing a number of readers/posters. Me being one of them. This is a critical issue and should be one that is dealt with ASAP.

They are dealing with it as we speak.... Hmmm..I dont know if it was there before..but I just saw something pretty cool... At the top of this 'topic/thread..there is a place to click 'mark all read' and then another place to click that says 'mark all read before xx:xx time'....seems pretty neat...will check and see how that works...

no way I hate that LOL, oh well I'll learn to accept it.

You can now choose between sorthing threads by their post date or by the newest thread / reply (post bumping) by clicking the "sort by xxx" link at the top and bottom of the thread list in a forum. You can also now choose how "mark all read" works. Just clicking "mark all read" works the same way it did yesterday and the same way it did in the old Rendo forums. However, "mark all before xx:xx read" marks the forum read since before you last entered it. That is, anything posted between the time you first showed up and the time you marked the forum read will still be unread.

Thanks Williamsn!

"sort by last post" -- YAY!!! thank you thank you thank you!! "mark all before xx:xx read" -- not so fabu...... if each thread can't automagically be marked as read by reading it, could we maybe have a link at the bottom of each thread that says, "mark this thread as read"?

Thats a cool function, nice to know we can have it a couple of different ways :)

Quote - ""sort by last post" -- YAY!!! thank you thank you thank you!! "mark all before xx:xx read" -- not so fabu...... if each thread can't automagically be marked as read by reading it, could we maybe have a link at the bottom of each thread that says, "mark this thread as read"? "

I'm sorry to inform you that we cannot mark individual threads as read. If we could, we'd be doing it automatically. However, you have to keep something in mind. There are over 450,000 members on Renderosity, and over 350,000 threads at present. Do the math. If we marked every thread read for every user, we'd be in trouble. The database size would be enormous. We had a meeting today to discuss the best way around this. We talked for over an hour about the best ways to approach the problem. But we simply cannot put that much data into the database. The only way to mark reads efficiently and practically is on the forum level. So we came up with this method hoping it will make everyone happier and still keep our database reasonable.

Thank you :)

thanks. the 'sort by last reply' helps a lot. I appreciate the problem w/ database space. but I know I personally don't read every forum - not by a long-shot! and I'd guess that most users, like me, probably also only read a handful of forums.... so what I'm wondering is -- would it be possible for it to automagically mark threads as read in, say, 5 forums of each user's choice, and the rest of them, you just have to deal with the options as they are now? that'd be more than enough for me...

Good job on this one. I like the either/or option a lot. There are times when it's helpful to view threads in chronological order: and there are times when it's useful to browse by the latest reply. Thanks.

From williamsn: "I'm sorry to inform you that we cannot mark individual threads as read. If we could, we'd be doing it automatically. However, you have to keep something in mind. There are over 450,000 members on Renderosity, and over 350,000 threads at present. Do the math. If we marked every thread read for every user, we'd be in trouble. The database size would be enormous." Thank you:-) That clears something up for me (I think).. What you do is, for each member, for each forum, record the time at which they last "marked all read"? Would it be possible to use this same info to supress the display of any threads that haven't been "refreshed" (by a new post)? Thus getting rid of 100's (if not 1,000's) of "Already read and no new posts" threads being sent to us? Doing so would not only speed up the response for us (far fewer threads being sent) but also reduce the load on your servers. We could always get old ones back via the "make all visible" (I think - never used it, so not sure). That should, of course, only apply within individual forums (Bryce, Poser etc). It should NOT apply at the forum top-level (where I want to see all the forums I want to see, as set up by my personal options). Cheers, Diolma And when can I set my personal "Do NOT notify me when someone replies" as default...:-)) (Hey - c'mon, it's only 1 extra bit, and you've probably got quite a few to spare in various fields..) :biggrin:

calyxa, why not just hide the forums you dont visit? thats what I do..then I dont see all that clutter that Im not interested in and only have to mark the ones off that I vist all the time :)

I DO hide the forums I don't visit. the forums aren't the problem - the threads are. the original problem with why threads can't individually marked as read when you read them is "storage space in the database." my suggestion is that they don't need to allocate as much storage space as the initial calcuation suggests, because it's likely that most users don't need this functionality in all forums. ... 450,000 members on Renderosity, and over 350,000 threads... the space required to store the info of individually read threads falls off quite a bit if you figure that each member is probably only interested in following perhaps 10 percent of those threads at the most....

What you say is true that they are only interested in ten percent. But then they would forever see yellow stars on threads they don't read. And if someone clicked "mark all read", it would mark every thread ever written read for that user. Even if someone said they only wanted to be able to mark threads in the Poser forum read, you are still talking about thousands (if not tens of thousands) of threads for each user who selects that forum. Additionally, you are adding a higher level of complexity. When someone marks something read, it first has to check if that forum is in the list of forums he/she is allowed to mark read, then mark it read if it is and display an error if it isn't. Which still leaves us with the problem: what do you do with all the forums that still have yellow stars. (And, for the record, I didn't design the stars. I had a different set of icons designed and the site admins used the ability to create custom icons for the Bondware Forums. :rolleyes:) I'm still, of course, open to suggestions. I'm not shuttin y'all down. Just respond do your ideas with the facts. sNw

And if someone clicked "mark all read", it would mark every thread ever written read for that user. that's exactly what I'd expect, and the behavior I'd want. I'm sure you picked the Poser forum as your example because it is the one with the most threads. it also happens to be one that I don't read (though it's not so low on my radar that I've hidden it). I may or may not be a typical Renderosity user, so I couldn't guess at what percentage of members here do read the Poser forum regularly. what I'm imagining is that on my "my stats" page, I'd be able to pick a small number of forums in which to enable "auto-marking." when reading those forums only, threads would just automagically mark themselves as read when I read them. at any time, I could choose to 'mark all read' and it'd just mark everything in that forum as read, just as it does now. for any other forum that I haven't selected as one of my few "auto-mark" options, it'd have the same behavior as now. in any case, the 'sort by last reply' option is a huge help in thread management. it's just frustrating about threads not autmatically marking themselves as read, because it's a feature that I (and apparently many other users) have gotten accustomed to in other similarly structured forums.

Having an option between the two methods is a good thing, because I've seen some other forums (such as Scratch Made Cars) where interesting threads get locked up to die by mods because they pass some arbitrary expiration date. The usual gripe is that bumped posts might keep new ones from being seen. I disagree with that thinking, but can't do much about it... Ah well... The option to choose either new threads or new replies (bumps) strikes a balance that should make the forums here great. No reason to kill off ongoing discussions, and if you're interested in the new stuff it doesn't get buried either.

As a boomer approaching the Medicare prescription dilemma in a few more years, I think I now have a much better understanding on what my elders are saying about the 'new' and 'improved' prescription drug benefit program, "KISS - Keep It simple Stupid". LOL. Ah, ''progress''. Ain't it grand? SMILE. PEACE. T.P.

SO... are you saying that the automagically marking of threads read (and the colour of the stars) is NEVER going to be fixed?! Because of... database limitations? Then how does other sites handle this? And PLEASE don't give me the 115000 members bs, we all know that only around 2000 are ever in the forums at the same time. And I doubt the number of ACTIVE users are more than 6-10000.

Actually on the day we revealed the new forums, 2100 members were IN the forums at the same time. And we currently have over 30,000 active member records in the forums. Those are straight statistics from the DB. Dunno what to tell you. :mellow:

Quote - "SO... are you saying that the automagically marking of threads read (and the colour of the stars) is NEVER going to be fixed?! Because of... database limitations? Then how does other sites handle this? And PLEASE don't give me the 115000 members bs, we all know that only around 2000 are ever in the forums at the same time. And I doubt the number of ACTIVE users are more than 6-10000. "