The new amalgamated philosophy forum.

Well on that subject, there's forum search on the home page now.

I apologize if my remarks offended you Robert.

I'm still not at all pleased with how the transition was handled, and I know this place can't "replace" the old philosophyforum. But, I'm actually warming up to able2know, and I do think that you have quite a nice community here. It's actually nice to have a forum that includes philosophy, but where serious philosophy discussion isn't the main focus. I'll be sticking around for now, if you don't mind...

My only main issue with this forum is just with the color scheme. It's too white/bright. I hope that more color options could be made available, because this one gives me a headache. Also, font sizes could be bigger. But I like the discussion and the members here, so with that as a starting point, I think the other kinks can be worked out...

Of course I don't mind. :-)



I'm willing to do that, I just can't commit to doing so in immediate future. Our current roadmap is Groups > Read Tracking > Blogs and at that point we would reassess the road map and see where a new template can fit in the schedule.

This is a fantastic priority set. Thank you

yo yo yo, we could black it up a bit if you axed us

Hi Pangloss,
Me too. I'm wearing sunglasses regularly now, seems to help.
Glad you're back, by the way.
Mark...

Glad you are sticking around!

i am really glad to hear you say that. it is looking better to me every day, and i checked out philosophychatforum and it was a bit empty...

i usually complain bitterly about whiteness, cant stand the stuff. i am definitely a woman of color (sigh, remembering the complaints about my blog and had to change the color scheme). but i probably have so little current coming into the house that my monitor doesnt light up full blast.

for anybody who hasnt noticed, there is a great thread called 'introductions about someone else' and a good way to get to know a lot of people here from their own descriptions.

I KNOW!!!

on the old forum, the most relevant were the most aardvarcky!

i guess the number one gripe to me as of now is having to have my email open to see where i stopped in a conversation.

if there was either a new list of threads i am subscribed to that have been posted to since i logged off or a way of highlighting the existing list of email subscriptions with 'new post' that would do it.

as you say, this place is so big that recent posts are literally pages of posts, whereas on the old forum recent posts were ...how many guys, about 20?...and the entire time i was logged into the computer i could get from there any new action i might be looking for without it going away. of course my work time is mostly down time for everybody else, but there are just so many postings going on here all the time most recent is non sequitor.

the second issue is actually seeing what the forums are and i havent even got into trying to find any enough that i could compose a comment, except that if it were alphabetical i would find things. i dont really want to search for things...i want to look at everything (because i dont remember the things i should be searching for) and spot them and then off i go...

josh said it better...

I think read tracking (to then show you what is new) is what you are asking for, and that is currently very high on our priority list.

that was my next question...what is read tracking?
so far so good...

It would track the time you last visited a thread, and then it would be able to do things like only show topics with newer posts to you on the new posts page, as well as give you a direct link to the first "unread" post in a thread.

Oh, hey that reminds me.

This is probably not the right place to ask this, but us old folk need to shoot questions before they leave our heads.

If I want to see my posts, I go to "My Posts". There, for each topic, I can go the "First Post" or the "Last Post" but not My Post unless i want to page through all replies.

Is there something I'm missin here?

Thanks

click on your name and that will take you to your profile. At the bottom of your profile is a listing of all your posts sorted by most recent to oldest. There's a slight shading difference (light blue vs med blue) if you've read that thread.... recently? since you posted? since you've logged in? I'm not really sure how long the shading changes to light blue before reverted back to unread status.

The new layout makes me uncomfortable. But I'll try to adjust.

What I'd really like to see come back is the ability to subscribe to a thread (er, sorry, "discussion"). It was very convenient receiving email notifications of when a reply has been posted in certain "discussions."

You can do that.

Select "get email updates" at the top of the page under the thread title.

You have that ability now. Take a look at the very top of this page under the title of the thread. You'll see a row of links with one of them being "Get email updates." Click on it to subscribe to the thread. You'll find those links on every page in a thread.

In case you haven't yet seen it, there is a tutorial I put together a few days ago to help the PhilForm folks adjust more easily to the layout and navigation here.

Here are the links to various topics in the tutorial so that when needed, you can navigate directly to the information you seek rather than having to scan the entire thread for the info.

Index of the new A2K site tutorial:

The Registration and Login Screens

Anatomy of the homepage

How to use the Filter/Sort Topics Tabs

Anatomy of the Profile and Preferences Screens

How to initiate a new topic thread

How to send a private message to a member, Anatomy of a topic thread, Anatomy of the post composition screen

How to use the Reply and Quote Buttons in a topic thread

Anatomy of a member's profile page

Hey I don't know if anyone has suggested this, or if it is technically do-able, but with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) it is possible to enable users to pick their own color scheme by selecting a CSS template.