Suggestion for a different presentation of our posts on TVF

[Brunolem]

In the present structure of the forum, our posts are shown one after the other, in chronological order.

 

This means that, if a member decides to quote a post on page 1, to make a comment or give an answer, this member's own post may show only on page 3...then the original poster may want to reply and his post may show only on page 5...and so on.

 

Things become even more "confused" when multiple members are involved in a discussion/debate within a thread.

 

Now, in websites or blogs getting a lot of comments from their members, things are generally organized differently.

 

A post including a quote from a previous post appears directly below the quoted post, never mind if it was posted hours later...and so on with all the subsequent posts related, via a succession of quotes, to the original post.

 

To make things clearer, all the subsequent posts are presented with an extra margin on the left side of the screen, so that members who are not interested in reading them can simply scroll down until they hit the next post with the regular margin.

 

From my experience as a reader, such a "thematic" presentation is much easier to navigate than the actual "chronological" presentation.

 

Let's now move to the "quotes" issue.

 

As things stand now, many members click on the "quote" button, but don't bother to select the part of the text they are commenting about.

 

This leads to having many posts showing a quote half a page long, often followed by only a couple of words of comment below!

 

A lot of space for little added value...

 

Quotes should be automatically limited in length...either the member would himself select a short passage in the quoted post, or the system would reproduct the first line or two lines of the quoted post, but not the whole post.

 

Thank you for taking these suggestions into consideration...

[Ron19]

Two troll posts have been removed.

The OP has merit and warrants constructive discussion not trolls.

[Kwasaki]

There's notifications, a following thingy, you can cut paste, read through the thread or parts, I don't see what your problem is.

[Jai Dee]

1 hour ago, Brunolem said:

As things stand now, many members click on the "quote" button, but don't bother to select the part of the text they are commenting about.

I would suggest that that is a result of the person not knowing that it is possible to do that as below:

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Brunolem said:

In the present structure of the forum, our posts are shown one after the other, in chronological order.

I think you will find that this is typical of most types of Forum software.

 

Other forms of social media organise replies and quotes slightly differently as you have indicated, but I have only seen chronologically ordered posts with discussion forums.

[Brunolem]

9 minutes ago, Jai Dee said:

 

Other forms of social media organise replies and quotes slightly differently as you have indicated, but I have only seen chronologically ordered posts with discussion forums.

That is possible, but my point is only to bring a suggestion.

If members like it as it is, then keep it as it is.

 

Yet, regarding the length of the quotes, I really find it a major inconvenient to have the whole text reproduced when the member doesn't select a part of the text.

 

In some threads, I have seen very long posts reproduced as quotes again and again, sometimes in 2 or 3 successive posts!

 

So you get something like 30 quoted lines, followed by "I agree", then the same 30 quoted lines, followed by "555"...and so on...it gives a "messy" look to the ongoing discussion.

 

Why not automatically show only the first 2 or 3 lines of the quoted post?

Members are not going to read the quoted post in full again and again anyway...

[maxpower]

Threaded forums look like train wrecks and the advantage of keeping context quickly fades into the visual mess even if you limit the view with fancy scripts. The topic has been discussed to death right back to when threaded bulletin boards developed into forums.

 

Below is the reply from Invision Community when asked about threaded format and nested style commenting.

 

https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/330822-threaded-mode/?do=findComment&comment=2665722

[lamyai3]

On 9/11/2018 at 11:10 AM, Brunolem said:

So you get something like 30 quoted lines, followed by "I agree", then the same 30 quoted lines, followed by "555"...and so on...it gives a "messy" look to the ongoing discussion.

 

Why not automatically show only the first 2 or 3 lines of the quoted post?

Members are not going to read the quoted post in full again and again anyway...

 

I think the current situation is better than the one a few years ago, where accumulated conversations were quoted, right now it's limited to the previous reply only. However, this is a valid point, many people do quote something in it's entirety, often several paragraphs long just to answer with a short reply. 

 

A modified version of your suggestion if it could be done, is to limit the quoted section to the first few lines where someone quotes the whole post in a reply, but to allow unlimited quote length (subject to reasonable limits) where quotes have been specifically selected. 

[CharlieH]

That could be achieved by not using the "quote" function at all, just use the link to the post as I have here.....