Where are the regulars?

[Lindal Kidd]

OK, I just noticed that out of the 14 sub-forums in Answers, my icon shows up as the latest responder in 7 of them.

The rest of you better get busy or I am going to become the undisputed Empress of Answers.

[Nalates Urriah]

1 hour ago, Syo Emerald said:

My contribution to the answer section dropped, because the new forum design makes it harder to find new, unanswered questions and the down and up voting system makes it more difficult to understand whats going on in questions that have already a few replies to them.

With finding... use the button that appears in the Answers subsection e.g., Everything Else for this thread, to mark all as read. It is just left of the 'Ask a Question' button. This mostly solves the problem. New posts then standout. Subsections with unread posts are bolded.

[Ethan Paslong]

5 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

With finding... use the button that appears in the Answers subsection e.g., Everything Else for this thread, to mark all as read. It is just left of the 'Ask a Question' button. This mostly solves the problem. New posts then standout. Subsections with unread posts are bolded.

bad thing on this is it puts whole forums on "as read" , be sure only hit that button if you don't plan to go back to read the other sections 

[Nalates Urriah]

Just now, Ethan Paslong said:

bad thing on this is it puts whole forums on "as read" , be sure only hit that button if you don't plan to go back to read the other sections 

No... that is one section to high. There are a couple of 'mark as read' buttons. One is just under the forum banner image labeled 'Mark Site Read'. That is not the one I meant. The other is just above the list of threads. The second one will mark only the current section as read. If you are reading this post, the button does not show. You have to return to 'Go to questions listing' (near bottom of page opposite 'next unread') to see it. If you go up another section, e.g., Answers, the button hides again.

 

You can use the 'Unread Content' just under the banner image to bring up a list of all the posts/threads you have not read.

[LittleMe Jewell]

9 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I can't help with the first, and I agree with the second, but there is a workaround.  On the right, just below the original post, are two buttons, "sort by date" and "sort by votes".  Sadly, votes is the default, but one click puts the thread back in chron order.

It is such a pain to have to sort the thing every time though.  A few times, a thread in Answers has gone on for many pages and to have to first sort it and then scroll through the pages to figure out where I last read is such a pain.

I'm assuming the software just isn't capable of letting us set a preference for that section, because many of us have asked for it.  If I can't set my own preference I'd still vote for just changing the default sort.  It will still show the up/down voting of each post so any newbie should be able to tell which posts are likely not helpful.

[Madelaine McMasters]

I just noticed "Answers" in the navigation bar at the top of the page. Feel free to tell me it was always there, and that my excuse for not participating here as I once did, the difficulty of finding the "Answers" forum is bollocks. Now that I got that out of the way, is there a way to get a list of the most recent questions on one page?

Note to @LittleMe Jewell: This is not a post in which I remind anyone of my intelligence.

Edited October 16, 2018 by Madelaine McMasters

[LittleMe Jewell]

6 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I just noticed "Answers" in the navigation bar at the top of the page.

If I ever noticed it there before, I never actually 'took note' of it being there.  I've also scrolled down the main forum page for it.  Though I do also have the section in my Default Stream.

Edited October 16, 2018 by LittleMe Jewell

[Madelaine McMasters]

6 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

If I ever noticed it there before, I never actually 'took note' of it being there.  I've also scrolled down the main forum page for it.  Though I do also have the section in my Default Stream.

Is there a way to get just new questions? It's a hassle to dig for them section by section.

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

Just now, Madelaine McMasters said:

Is there a way to get just new questions? It's a hassle to dig for them section by section.

   I’ve found that finding unanswered questions is kind of like playing a gacha. 

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Is there a way to get just new questions?

Sections with unanswered questions are bolded.  Click the one that's named at the right side of the section's name.  That's the most recent unanswered one.  Or simply open the section itself and look at the bolded ones.  Most recent ones are at the top.

 

[Lindal Kidd]

As far as I know, the quick link to Answers has always been there in the top menu bar of the Community/Blogs page.  At least, that's the path I have always used to navigate here.  I use Rolig's method of finding the boldfaced posts to find new activity/unanswered questions, section by section.

It'd be great to have one top level "new/unanswered/unsolved" questions page.

[Nalates Urriah]

Finding unanswered questions is easy as that is most of the posts in ANSWERS. But, I understand what you mean. The problem is the OP seldom marks a question as answered. So, searches for JUST unanswered questions is pointless and any forum features for that work poorly. I think the designers expected that because there are few if any features  specifically for users to work with answered vs unanswered.

Instead I am looking for posts I have not yet read. Those shown to me in bold. I find the HOME page almost useless, but it has a tiny bit of interesting stuff. It gives no indication of what I have or have not read. Some of the FORUM, KB, BLOGS, ANSWERS, GRID STATUS, and ACTIVITY  pages do provide indication of what is unread via bold or plain text titles. Others do not, like Blogs and KB. Within those read vs unread is not indicated nor does the idea of read vs unread make much sense.

Other sections like FORUM use the bold text for unread content within. Here I have to keep up with marking sections read if I want the 'unread bold' to mean anything of value as I will not read most of the posts.

ACTIVITY (top menu) may be the most useful for many of any sections. It has four subsections;

• All Activity
• My Activity 
  • Unread Content
  • Content I Started
  • Content I Follow
  • Members I Follow
  • Content I posted In
• Unread Content
• Content I Follow

All Activity sorts by default as most recent first. At the bottom of each item (expanded view) is the time since posted. The section updates in near real time. I find Unread Content is almost the same. Content I Follow has stuff about where you have posted, sort of assuming you'll follow yourself, I guess, and whatever you add. You can follow people.

To make these more useful I mark subsections as read. Then the activity section are less crowded. I think that also helps me avoid being show 5 year old posts I haven't read, which in ANSWERS is a good thing.

Unread Content has a whole thing of sorting options at the top. Supposedly the designers thought this section so useful the put a link to it on every page of the forum, rightish side just under the image banner.

Finding questions you haven't read shouldn't be hard, UNLESS there are no such questions, which is often the case.

Following Linden members provides interesting information.