I've been wondering about this and thought I'd ask the forum on how to.
The long threads I refer to are usually the threads of the products of Idealabs. I've always wanted to read all of the threads of his products, but it gets to be overwhelming when I get into just one thread, and find that the pages are so many. Like today, I'm reading the MitoLipin thread. I'd like to just read about its effects on the reports by users, as well as the answers to questions posted to haidut. But I've spent 2 hours and I'm just at page 6. At the rate I'm going, I would need at least 8 hours, and I would have to take notes to remember what I had read in the first pages. And I'm not even into reading the links posted.
And I'm just reading on one product.
Yet I feel that this is the best way still to know of the products without having to post a question that has already been asked.
I am hoping that as I go through a thread, I could be aided by something like a like button that a user would click to signify that the post is very useful. The more likes (maybe not "like" but "useful and relevant") the post has, the more I will be able to read it and skip those that have no likes. No offense to posters, but we do post many questions, and while all of them are relevant and useful to each poster, it may bot be as useful for most of the rest of the forum members. If many would agree that it is useful, the many likes to the post would help direct the reader to that post.
For long time users of this forum who have grown up with the forum, this feature may not be as important as to the newer members. Newer members can easily be overwhelmed by the volume of information here, and doing a good search would help, but it's still not going to do everything.
The forum has been very helpful, but as its pages grows over time, it faces the danger of Curezone syndrome (my term), where users can get turned off by noise and chatter and finding difficulty in getting useful information without tremendous effort. No, it won't get that bad and I'm exaggerating things a bit lol.
I gave one suggestion not knowing how practical it is. But given that this is what we have now, I again pose the question of how you deal with getting useful information when the thread has grown to so many pages.
Thanks.
The long threads I refer to are usually the threads of the products of Idealabs. I've always wanted to read all of the threads of his products, but it gets to be overwhelming when I get into just one thread, and find that the pages are so many. Like today, I'm reading the MitoLipin thread. I'd like to just read about its effects on the reports by users, as well as the answers to questions posted to haidut. But I've spent 2 hours and I'm just at page 6. At the rate I'm going, I would need at least 8 hours, and I would have to take notes to remember what I had read in the first pages. And I'm not even into reading the links posted.
And I'm just reading on one product.
Yet I feel that this is the best way still to know of the products without having to post a question that has already been asked.
I am hoping that as I go through a thread, I could be aided by something like a like button that a user would click to signify that the post is very useful. The more likes (maybe not "like" but "useful and relevant") the post has, the more I will be able to read it and skip those that have no likes. No offense to posters, but we do post many questions, and while all of them are relevant and useful to each poster, it may bot be as useful for most of the rest of the forum members. If many would agree that it is useful, the many likes to the post would help direct the reader to that post.
For long time users of this forum who have grown up with the forum, this feature may not be as important as to the newer members. Newer members can easily be overwhelmed by the volume of information here, and doing a good search would help, but it's still not going to do everything.
The forum has been very helpful, but as its pages grows over time, it faces the danger of Curezone syndrome (my term), where users can get turned off by noise and chatter and finding difficulty in getting useful information without tremendous effort. No, it won't get that bad and I'm exaggerating things a bit lol.
I gave one suggestion not knowing how practical it is. But given that this is what we have now, I again pose the question of how you deal with getting useful information when the thread has grown to so many pages.
Thanks.