Now any thread with new posts gets bolded, so once again it is possible to see where there are new unread posts, even in threads you’ve already read. Guess it was tied to the index, because it appeared to start working at the same time the badges showed up.
Like most forums that use badges or stars or ranks, they build up pretty quickly and top out way too low, for a highly active forum with long-term participants. Guess it discourages wastefulpostings just to get the post counts up, but now it seems like anyone who’s been here a while has already hit max badges, ie, I appear to have the same as Jeffrey and I know he’s several thousand posts ahead of me.
I have the same number and color of badges as you, and I am several thousand behind you {but I don’t count them, really}. It is just an interesting thing to see who visits often and is verbose.
I don’t think it has to do with an acurate exact number, it just means you have reached whatever Apex they have created to denote “a lot of posts”. SO any beyond that means little, it just means you posted A LOT.
I like that is back, I was one who grumbled about it, but as I said I no longer regard them much.
Them’s what hates 'em, can just ignore 'em all together!
From the help page (link “Help” right in the box with your user profile in the right margin):
Less than 25 posts — No badges
25 - 74 posts — 1 badge
75 - 249 posts — 2 badges
250 - 499 posts — 3 badges
500 - 999 posts — 4 badges
1000 - 2999 posts — 5 badges
More than 3000 posts — 5 orange badges
If you move the marker over the badges it gives you an exact count. The number of posts really only tells you how active someone is - not whether he or she mostly give sensible advice, or whether he or she mainly is being social or whatever. For that one has to read posts and evaluate their contents
To see the posts someone has made, click on the badges.
One thing that I have noticed about post count is that it is not immediately updated with each new post or reply. Under the old format, the post count was updated immediately.
That’s too bad. In this advanced age of technology, there must be a way for the software to distinguish between “sensible advice” and “frivilous comment”. Maybe the moderators in their infiinite wisdom could add an icon after each forum member’s screen name indicating whether the member’s posts are generally helpful or frivilous. [(-D]
Hey, we could discipline ourselves by adding that icon after our screen name. Fellow forum members, I ask you. Which icon would you choose for yourself? [^o)]
I guess I am one of the VERY FEW who likes the way the new forum works. I do, not because it is new and different, or flashy, or pithy, or anything else. On the other hand, I put in 28 years in the computer/automation field before I took early retirement. that means I developed and programmed systems for a major player in the banking and finance field, I held training classes for new employees and taught old employees as we added new features and so forth. But my college work was in the thological field, so I also remained an active pastor and did not retire from that until a few years ago.
With my background I have had to adapt to new technology as well as new theological trends and I have been able to master them. Personally I think I like the new forum, it was not difficult for me to learn and I keep finding new features as I work with it. So I guess I will give a vote of confidence to the new system and forget the old one.
Something I have noticed is it looks like the number of posting per page has increased. I just counted 20 that show per page. While I did not count how many showed when they first started with this format, seemed like it was only around 12.
I wasn’t complainign,a ctually. In fact, my ONLY complaint was the lack of telling which threads had new posts since my last vist, since I don;t read every single one (I do have to work, atleast part of the day, to support my MRR habit).
Now that that’s fixed, I don’t mind the new look as much. I haven’t tried it from my phone to see how it works on a mobile browser, but I do know that it works MUCH MUCH better on a slow connection (I never had an issue at home, I have a very fast connection, but getting on and posting here from a slow conenction was painful - I don’t know how anyoen could work at ALL if they only had dialup - by slow conenction I mean around 1Mb DSL - it was painful. No more.)
After I posted I did notice if you point at the badges it gives the actual number. At least, in IE9 I just point, I don’t have to click. As for incrementing the count, ont he old board it always seemed 1 post behind until you quit and came back. Likse say I was at 100, made 5 posts, my count would show 104 until my next vist. Seems pretty much the same.
Help? Who clicks on Help unless you actually have a problem? [(-D]
I don’t have much of a problem with how it works. I had it figured out rather quickly. I do have a problem with the colors. The colors used for the reply box and border, the light shade for quotable text and a few other places are right in the range of colors in which I’m colorblind and the resulting eye strain isn’t pleasant.
Where is the EDIT option hidden here ?. I am not offered the option to edit my own post, be it new or old. This is now one weird forum to post to so far, having been gone for some time.
( … EDIT ) Ah!.. found it !. .that pencil thing. Too bad I can not delete the post now.
Kinda surprised they don’t allow changing the color scheme at all, but if they do, I haven’t found it in any of the settings. On other forum software that allows it, you CAN be dumb and pick things liek white text on a white background, so it could be a tech support issue to allow that.
In IE, and I presume other browsers as well, you can override the site’s colors and use your own scheme, that would be a workaround.
If you click on your screen name to bring up your profile/recent action screen, the posts there all have DELETE next to them. I haven’t tried that to see if it will work.
One thing I would like is access to the SEARCH function from all the screens, not just the main indices. Frequently, one question’s answer raises more questions - which you can’t ask if there’s no SEARCH block. (I’d also like SEARCH to come up with some limiters, as it used to. I doubt that I’ll find what I want in the Toy Trains or Classic Trains fora - or, if that’s what I want to search, the present-day Trains Magazine set.)
Chuck (Inquiring mind modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I really hate to ask the obvious, but if there is a calculation - which I am assuming is adding one to the current total of posts - and this calculation is used to provide the badges, why not just show the total and forget the entire badge thing altogether?
