Silly question : how best to read forum messages

[WealdDomains]

OK, I've been on here for several months and I've been using internet forums and similar sites (eg Cix and, long ago, Compuserve) for almost two decades, but I still haven't got my head around the best way to read new messages here and I would appreciate your help.

On my PC, I can see green acorns and I can see red threads, and on Google Reader on my Android phone I can see totally new threads, and I saw the thread recently about getting up a page listing today's posts, but I'm ashamed to say I still haven't worked out how best to read everything on my PC, let alone integrating that with my Android phone.

In summary, as someone who uses a PC and a smartphone and has worked in IT for nearly three decades, I would be very grateful for any suggestions on how best to sequentially read all unread messages across all subforums at Acorn, ideally using terminology like "select option abc and then hit key x to mark the current message as read and automatically navigate to next unread message anywhere in the forum (or possibly sequentially through the subforums or threads)".

I'm sure it must be ridiculously simple, but I just don't get it yet !

Many thanks,
David

[grantw]

If you click 'new posts' up at the top of the page it will show all new threads and existing threads with new posts I think. Not sure if that's what you're after?

Grant

[grantw]

Tapatalk for Android will also give you the same view I think.

Grant

[invincible]

Originally Posted by grantw

If you click 'new posts' up at the top of the page it will show all new threads and existing threads with new posts I think. Not sure if that's what you're after?

He wants to sequentially be able to read new posts, almost by post order. I suspect every post on this forum has an ID number and each additional post added to the forum database could have an ID number sequentially increased by 1 from the previous. I don't believe it is possible, at least from this vBulletin user interface, to access posts solely by any kind of post ID. If it were I could easily find out the very first post made and work through the forum by post ID (which I assume would correspond to timestamps from the beginning until now), I imagine. Humans wouldn't ordinarily wish to do that because one would be constantly jumping between posts in different threads so nothing would be read in context.

His other suggestion was to do it by sub forum or even by thread. Again, not sure it can be done. However what intrigued me the most was his mentioning of "select option abc and then hit key x to mark the current message as read and automatically navigate to next unread message anywhere in the forum" Why anyone would want to navigate in that style with a mouse/tap/pointer/touch is beyond me. When I read the forum, I use either the "New posts" or "Todays posts" (i.e. a predefined search query) and read what appears after I select what I am interested in from the results using some kind of pointing device, depending on what I am asking the forum with (e.g. phone, PC, tablet). This description of another possible way to navigate struck me as someone wanting to be able to navigate using a keyboard only, and when combined with the "I would be very grateful for any suggestions on how best to sequentially read all unread messages across all subforums" part gave me the distinct impression that someone might really be asking about how to scrape the entire forum database content. I cannot understand why anyone would be interested in reading any posts on the forum, except as part of a continuous thread to ensure context was maintained.

[Ashton]

Originally Posted by invincible

He wants to sequentially be able to read new posts, almost by post order. I suspect every post on this forum has an ID number and each additional post added to the forum database could have an ID number sequentially increased by 1 from the previous. I don't believe it is possible, at least from this vBulletin user interface

For threads:

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=1

or for this one

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum/...ad.php?t=88409


For posts:

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=1

or for this one

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum/...t.php?p=327798

[Bailey]

Interesting Invincible - I like to think that's my type of analytical thinking - before the Rum. Lets see how that's responded to

[invincible]

Originally Posted by Ashton

For threads:

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=1

or for this one

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum/...ad.php?t=88409


For posts:

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=1

or for this one

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum/...t.php?p=327798

Okay, so it is apparently possible. All one needs to do is use "http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=#" where # is 1 onwards. Other than for grabbing the entire forum, why would you wish to do it "by post"? You'd lose all context. "By thread" would retain context and you'd need to assume that every post within each thread was unread, which if you been naturally reading the forum on a previous occasion wouldn't be the case. The "New posts" and "Today's posts" queries exist and are displayed so prominantly because they are likely to be the most useful to users browsing the forum in a normal manner.

[rob]

Some 'mericans or old skoolers love reading forums in 'flatboard' view.

I dont, I think its barmy.

[invincible]

Originally Posted by rob

Some 'mericans or old skoolers love reading forums in 'flatboard' view.

I dont, I think its barmy.

Maybe. I cannot remember from my days with USENET about being able to read articles out of context of a thread with my newsreader software (I tried many different ones). I'd get to see which threads had new posts within them each time I pulled new articles but I still had to read each thread in context (although I'd only be required to read new posts within each thread because any I had previously read would already have been marked as such). Maybe I was jumping to conclusions earlier. However the web isn't USENET and cannot be read in quite the same way because the posts (articles) aren't downloaded locally first (BTW I miss nom-steer!). How does this forum appear in the lynx text only browser, I wonder?

[Bailey]

Perhaps a 'ticker-tape' type delivery request - that should impress Acorns owners