Deep Sinking

[Crypto]

Hey all,

When Yahoo Deep_Sinking went under and later resurfaced, I was not overly thrilled about the new Deep_Sining BB format. There were several things that I was going to miss or didn't want to live without under the Yahoo Group that this forum didn't provide.

I have pretty much adjusted to the new format and options (especially since the Yahoo Group is pretty much dead) except for 1 issue. I am still having difficulty adjusting to finding what posts (entire threads or new posts within threads) that I have not yet read.

I have come to realize how much better this forum's "board" format is as compared to Yahoo's board, though I still miss the email option. With the email option, I can see the new posts as they are posted, save them, mark them as unread, not read all of them at once, etc.. And that's the issue I'm still struggling with: not having to read them all in one session.

I know that new posts since the last log-in are highlighted. However, if you don't read them all and log-out, they are no longer highlighted as "unread" when you log back in. I've even had it where I step away for a while (when real life calls) and come back to find that my session has timed-out... thus, resetting all of the unread posts to "read" status when I log back in.

I know the Topics can be sorted newest to oldest, but does anyone have any suggestions on how to more easily deal with this kind of thing, rather than trying to remember on what date and time you last read a post?

Jiminy, are there any settings or options that can be altered to change this behavior (without increasing any costs)?

Any input is appreciated.


P.S. I do appreciate the efforts of time and money that has gone into creating and maintaining this forum. It is not my intent to belittle it or shoot it down... or even sink it.

[Jiminy Thicket]

You might want to try the RSS feature. It's the closest thing to email delivery that we've got right now. All you need is an RSS client, and it will download all the messages for you (sans attachments) and should give you a link back to the actual message on the board if you want to reply or see an attachment.

I use Mozilla Thunderbird to read my email, and it has support for RSS that is so tight, you really can't tell that it's not just another folder of email messages. That way, I get all of the info you're wanting... notification of new messages, a persistent way to keep track of what messages I've read or not, and so forth.

It is tough for the board to keep precise track of what everyone has read, because the volume of that gets ugly fast. There are 1282 registered members and something like 7100 posts. To keep track of who read what means tracking 9,000,000 pieces of information, and that number is growing fast. That's a bit of a problem.

I would like to add a way to view the posts "unthreaded" in date order, but I'm not sure if I can do it, and I haven't had as much time to work on this stuff as I had hoped. And, of course, I still want it to have email support, but that proved to be way more of a hassle than I expected.

[Crypto]

Thanks, I'll check into that option.