[Coco] [Color Computer] CoCoList and the Web, was Re: CoCoList Survey on email but no web browser

[James Diffendaffer]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 09:37:24PM -0400, jdaggett at gate.net wrote:

>> On 24 Apr 2009 at 17:30, shadow at shadowgard.com wrote:
>
>>
>
>> > The problem with forums is that it's often hard to find new posts
>
>> > among the old ones. And that the mebus vary.
>
>>
>
>> I guess you don't use web boards very often. Decent web boards always
>
>> put the most recent reply to a thread at the top. Also they use some icon to
>
>> denote whena category has new posts or new replies.
>
>
>A: Because it puts the conversation out of order.
>
>Q: Why is putting the most recent post at the top a bad idea?

John, Yahoo groups put messages out of order (eeewwww), most boards do not.
Forums normally place the *topics* in order of most recent post first but the actual conversation IS in order and you can go straight to the most recent posts.

Atariage.com's forums are a very good example, CoCo3.com's forums are good but not quite up to Atariage (I get read topics showing up as unread every now and then).  
The worldofdragon.org forums are an example of a board that needs some work (in case Dragon people are listening).  The read/unread flagging seems to have major issues and I have to look at the dates on the threads.