New Topic Grids

I think this was the usecase Rob was talking about earlier... allowing for filtering noise, but only the noise that you choose to be filtered.

It's more of a recommendation list than a filter list right now. It will change further but right now it takes the your forums (added by vote totals automatically, so if you participate they tend to add, if you vote down then tend to remove, but also can be added/removed manually) and shows you those topics. It takes a "what to add" more than a "what to remove" approach right now.

Anyway, we are going to make more changes to this. It was initially intended to be a "my forums" filter, but that signal alone isn't good enough in all usecases, so now we are going for a general "noise filter". It will get better but the intended usecase isn't going to be those who want to view all, it is for those who can't keep up with the firehose and want a curated stream.

So right now I think an idea would be to have the all topics view collapse the removed forums (giving you the all-but control) and continue to iterate the noise filter to make it more useful (but still a bit of a black box as it's not going to be a straightforward algorithm).

Any possibility of giving us a choice of starting default option in Preferences?

For instance, if they generally read/participate in most forums, their starting default would be to include all forums in the My Forums list and then they'd manually remove the few they don't have an interest in.

Another starting default option would be for those who only read/participate in a small number of forums. Their starting default option would be to have no forums in the My Forums list and they'd manually add the handful they wish to monitor.

The option to select all forums or the filtered list is supposed to stick permanently to whatever you set it to, it seems to reset now though, so we'll fix it.

We'll also provide an option to disable the unread posts sorting to the top, so after those two tweaks users will be able to have all grids keep the exact order and content that they had prior to the changes.

Works for me. Thanks!

Wait...

I thought that the "remember me" option at login kept me logged in until I log out. It seems that if I leave for a few minutes and then come back I'm still logged in but a large number of posts flip from new to read and my filter noise or all topics toggle reverts to filter noise. Perhaps this isn't new (not being really logged in for the duration with "remember me" checked, but now it's having an impact in the sort order and in the filter selection.

ok.

Having a bunch of threads flip to read from new isn't really an issue for me because I would have read them at the time if I was really interested. It actually gives me a way to have new threads pop up to the top above those that I'd already scrolled past.

That is also something I am working on. Right now read tracking is resets with logout, which is typical for lots of forum software but we are looking at making it permanent. Thing is, many use that as a kind of "read all" so we may need to implement ability to mark as read if we opt for permanent read tracking.

"The topics below have not received a reply since you logged out or read the topic."

But it seems that the topics above this notice (those still marked as NEW) now go back to early yesterday morning. I've definitely logged out and back in since then.

Yeah, that's not working right yet (logging out doesn't reset). Code fix is on dev site and will push live soon.

Good thread, but i don't know about grids live.