Community building...

[Tom M]

One of the oft-voiced complaints seems to be the "lack of community" with the new format. While I think the new organization does make sense, would the majority prefer to have the Babblers Central forums collapsed down to a single forum + the Archives with Miscellaneous Ramblings moved to Miscellaneous? The remaining forums would stay as-is.

[Kevin C. (Saratoga, CA)]

I think that splitting the discussion into multiple forums is undesireable, but may be necessary when the volume of posts is very high. We definitely don't have enough volume to require this.

Another question - Can the new software change the color of the titles of posts which have been read, similar to the way the old software did?

[Tom M]

Another question - Can the new software change the color of the titles of posts which have been read, similar to the way the old software did?

Since it's software almost anything is possible :D

Q. Is this as opposed to new messages? That is, if you could have read a message before, but chose not to, would you want that indicated?

As an aside, WebBBS didn't actually handle that, it was the browser indicating which links had been visited. Since vBulletin is mysql-based that same capability isn't readily available.

[Kevin C. (Saratoga, CA)]

Yes. I really liked being able to immediately see which messages were new and which messages were unread. I have to admit that on the new board I am still not sure how to tell which messages in a thread are the new ones without looking at the timestamps.

Kevin

[Tom M]

Yes. I really liked being able to immediately see which messages were new and which messages were unread. I have to admit that on the new board I am still not sure how to tell which messages in a thread are the new ones without looking at the timestamps.

Kevin

The answer is... It depends. :D

Linear mode
If you click the "go to first new post" indicator 'http://www.babblers.org/forums/images/professional/buttons/firstnew.gif' or 'http://www.babblers.org/forums/images/buttons/firstnew.gif' to the left of the thread title then everything from there on down will be new posts.

Hybrid and Threaded modes
New posts are indicated by the the color of the indicator to the left of the thread/post title. A blue icon 'http://www.babblers.org/forums/images/professional/statusicon/post_old.gif' indicates an old post while a white icon 'http://www.babblers.org/forums/images/professional/statusicon/post_new.gif' indicates a post made since your last visit.