1. Threaded or Individual Messages? Communitiy Input Wanted.
- Posted by jeremy (admin) Aug 13, 2009
- 1141 views
It's clear that some people like the individual subject listing. I am wondering which should be the default. The existing method Topic List shows topics, not individual message subjects. Here is a quick demo of what the individual subject list would look like:
| Subject | Author | When |
|---|---|---|
| Re: 4.0 Beta 1 - DOS error | someone_else | 5 minutes ago |
| Re: New Website | jeremy | 2 hours ago |
| Re: New Website | DerekParnell | 2 hours ago |
| 4.0 Beta 1 - DOS error | someone | 3 hours ago |
| New Website | jeremy | 3 hours ago |
Then, when clicking on one of those, it will display that single message. You can choose to go to Previous Message or Next Message from the individual message view. So, if you were on "New Website", there is no previous message (in this example). Clicking on the "Next Message" link would take you to "4.0 Beta 1 - DOS error", etc...
Jeremy
2. Re: Threaded or Individual Messages? Communitiy Input Wanted.
- Posted by euphoric (admin) Aug 13, 2009
- 1097 views
It's clear that some people like the individual subject listing. I am wondering which should be the default.
I don't care what default is, so long as I can set it to show me what I want when I login or return to the site.
You can choose to go to Previous Message or Next Message from the individual message view. So, if you were on "New Website", there is no previous message (in this example). Clicking on the "Next Message" link would take you to "4.0 Beta 1 - DOS error", etc...
Yes, please. 
3. Re: Threaded or Individual Messages? Communitiy Input Wanted.
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) Aug 13, 2009
- 1013 views
In my day, this was all one big mailing list. We only had one view: e-mail, and there were messages as far as the eye could see. We'd never even heard of spam. We had to walk to the server uphill both ways in two feet of snow to check our e-mail. We were thankful for it and we liked it, dag nabbed. /old
Although personally, I like the threaded view. It's more forum-ey, and I spend a lot of my time on a handful of web forums. 
-Greg
4. Re: Threaded or Individual Messages? Communitiy Input Wanted.
- Posted by mattlewis (admin) Aug 13, 2009
- 1061 views
It's clear that some people like the individual subject listing. I am wondering which should be the default.
As euphoric said, the default doesn't bother me, though I would like to be able to somehow persist my preference, and have the ability to see either view. In particular, I liked the easy ability, when reading a single message, to get the entire thread.
But most of the time, I don't need to see all of that, and it just makes it more difficult to read, since I have to figure out where I am in the thread.
Matt
5. Re: Threaded or Individual Messages? Communitiy Input Wanted.
- Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Aug 14, 2009
- 1027 views
It's clear that some people like the individual subject listing. I am wondering which should be the default. The existing method Topic List shows topics, not individual message subjects. Here is a quick demo of what the individual subject list would look like:
| Subject | Author | When |
|---|---|---|
| Re: 4.0 Beta 1 - DOS error | someone_else | 5 minutes ago |
| Re: New Website | jeremy | 2 hours ago |
| Re: New Website | DerekParnell | 2 hours ago |
| 4.0 Beta 1 - DOS error | someone | 3 hours ago |
| New Website | jeremy | 3 hours ago |
Just to clarify, I see this as a message list and not a subject list. That is, it is a list of messages (in time order) rather than a list of subjects (otherwise known as topics). The current view to me is a subject list, because it shows a list of subjects (topics) which need to be clicked to expand into a list of messages, (headers and body) within a subject. Your use of "subject", to me, is really "message header".
Then, when clicking on one of those, it will display that single message. You can choose to go to Previous Message or Next Message from the individual message view. So, if you were on "New Website", there is no previous message (in this example). Clicking on the "Next Message" link would take you to "4.0 Beta 1 - DOS error", etc...
I don't care what is the initial default, so long as I can record my preference in my profile and the forum will respect my profile setting each time I come to the forum.
6. Re: Threaded or Individual Messages? Communitiy Input Wanted.
- Posted by m_sabal Aug 14, 2009
- 964 views
Ditto what Matt said.
7. Re: Threaded or Individual Messages? Communitiy Input Wanted.
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) Aug 14, 2009
- 922 views
Just to clarify, I see this as a message list and not a subject list. That is, it is a list of messages (in time order) rather than a list of subjects (otherwise known as topics). The current view to me is a subject list, because it shows a list of subjects (topics) which need to be clicked to expand into a list of messages, (headers and body) within a subject. Your use of "subject", to me, is really "message header".
I agree with Derek on this. It may only be a matter of semantics, but this sounds correct.
-Greg
