Always View Latest 15 Posts On Last Page Of A Thread

I would hate this.

I read the posts starting from the last one I read. Hitting the next page and seeing a handful of posts I just read would be beyond annoying.

CelticKnot > I can somewhat relate to your view but perhaps other ways of rectifying the problem might be more beneficial to all .

Perhaps a simple but effective workaround is to bold a page number that has unread posts.

I.e.

Always View Latest 15 posts...
1 2 3 4

After opening page 4:

Always View Latest 15 posts...
1 2 3 4

Shows a missed/unread post on page 3.

This should be an effective, non-distractive indicator of unread posts. However, implementing it may or may not be feasible, I dunno

Possible problem is that the numbers seem to be bold already...

Like I said, this was kind of a half-baked idea anyway. Perhaps instead of:

Page 1: 1-15
Page 2: 16-30
Page 3: 31-45
Page 4: 35-49

It could be:

Page 1: 1-15 (or even 1-3 if you don't want to be annoyed with repeated posts)
Page 2: 4-18
Page 3: 19-33
Page 4: 34-49

Something like that may not be feasible code-wise anyway. I just feel that many people don't take the time to go back to a previous page.



If our most prolific poster and heavy-duty user doesn't think it's a good idea, I'll shut up about it. Not every idea is a good one.

@JBuck:


That's inevitably true, and since some threads contain hundreds of pages and thousands of posts, it becomes much more resource intensive than "Last Post Read" + "Unread Topics" mechanics which are currently used. I missed that when making the suggestion

Still, a good discussion IMHO

Then the first page looks short and some people will not notice the other pages.

I use the browser to tell me what pages I have been on (link colour changes).

I do not like the "jump to last post" arrow because using it will cause the problem you wish to avoid. Ideally that arrow should go to your last read post, but being a per-user variable it needs more coding.

I visit this site from at least three devices every day (my work machine, my home desktop and my home Chromebook). The different colors for visited links don't work for me because each machine knows about only the links clicked on itself).

I totally sympathize with the idea that posts on the bottom of each page may not get the visits they deserve if we routinely go to the last page. (On my "1915 Pan Pac ... How did I do?" thread, I purposely "wasted" the last post on page 1 so that the in-hand pictures would be at the top of page 2.) However, I don't think showing the last 15 posts on the last page as a matter of course is the right idea. Besides the special work involved, it might mess up the search engines and bring visitors to the wrong page because the contents aren't static.

A "new posts since your last visit" would require technical work to keep track of this data. It wouldn't work keeping that data on my side because each machine I use would have different data. Storing it on the server side would require database tables and would likely be more trouble than it's worth. Even with this feature, I might miss a thread on one visit, so it wouldn't necessarily be highlighted when I come back.

When I visit the site, I go directly to "Active Topics" for the time range just longer than my last visit. For the threads of interest, I look at the time of the last post to see if there's anything new. Sometimes the name of the poster will remind me. When in doubt, I do some quick math to see how far down the last page the most recent post is. (I wish the posts-per-page were a rounder number to do math with.) Sometimes I'll just click to view the next-to-last page to refresh my memory and go from there.

I wish I had a solution here because I feel CelticKnot's pain. But any change will require work and probably not provide sufficient overall return.