Message order in topics.

[Geit]

First sorry, if this is the wrong area to post this. Feel free to remove or kill my post if needed.

Ok, since this forum is taking up speed and posts numbers are raising, I stumbled on some problem I usually easy get rid of elsewhere.

The latest post is always at the end, which means you need to enter the page number or click through until you reach the last page, which is quite annoying, if you just want to read the latest posts.

Is there a way to reverse the post order in general or set the forum up to automatically jump to the last page at the bottom? Usually you can setup that somewhere in personal settings, but I cannot found anything like that here. Maybe I am just blind.

This would improve usability a lot.

[Vassili Finellis]

I don;t think this is from us users, i think this is from the admin

[Ender5r]

I agree. A 7 page thread would be easier to read if the posts were sorted LIFO.

[irvshapiro]

Let me look into it? Irv

[irvshapiro]

On the top of each post are two tabs, one is labeled "posts", the other is labeled "latest activity". This is basically the sort order of the posts. I am still trying to figure out how to change the defaults.

[Geit]

On the top of each post are two tabs, one is labeled "posts", the other is labeled "latest activity". This is basically the sort order of the posts. I am still trying to figure out how to change the defaults.

Oh, right. Did not notice you can actually click that. Odd design of it having the same color as the disabled UI elements.

However. a way to change the default in settings would be great. Thanks for looking into it.

[Ender5r]

Yes, thanks Irv. Besides what Geit said, it's also a little odd that the format changes between Posts and Latest Activity.

Also, if a Reply is added to Latest Activity, it isn't automatically placed at the top of the list of posts.

[irvshapiro]

I noticed the same thing. I believe when you refresh the page it will move to the top.

[Ender5r]

Yes, it does. But a simple change to the script should make refreshing unnecessary. A shame they didn't add it.

[irvshapiro]

You can set your default post order in the following way.

Click on your icon in the top right corner and select My Profile.



Then select user settings. In the user setting towards the bottom, you will see "Display Mode". Change this to "Latest Activity".

Unfortunately, I have not yet found a way to do this for everyone automatically. The support folks at vbulletin have offered to do this on the back end with a database query but that does not sound very supportable. It is interesting that in earlier version of the SW it seems the administrator was able to change this.

[Ender5r]

It does seem a little silly. Obviously, the display preference is an account-specific setting (as it should be). That being the case, allowing the administrator to determine what setting to use as the default on newly created accounts seem trivial. And, a script that could change the setting on existing accounts shouldn't be difficult. OK, changing existing accounts does run the risk of upsetting the users of those accounts, but it should still be available to the administrator. Of course, there should be multiple levels of administrator accounts, with each level being given certain specific rights.

[irvshapiro]

The default for new users is now "stream view" which is what the call this option. It seems that vbulletin is in the middle of changes to this capability because the sort order is called different things in different places.

I am going to also add something about this to the new user welcome message.

Thanks for pointing this out.

[Ender5r]

First, your welcome. Second, thank you for looking into it... much appreciated.

[Geit]

I found an issue with that.

A couple of days ago I noticed the lack of pictures posted here as attachment as people were talking about them. Back than I though they were already removed.

Just now I posted with images and the pictures where gone.

The reason is the sorting order. If "latest activity" is enabled no attachments are shown.

It does not matter if selected manually or in settings.

[Ender5r]

Certainly I would agree that the forum software is not a finished product: there is quite a lot of room for improvement. What's a little disappointing is that there seem to be quite a few issues that I would have thought would have been addressed way back in Beta; some of them even in Alpha.

[roon4660]

It seems to be the same as it was over ten years ago when I was mucking around with it. I don't see any improvements.

[Ender5r]

That's pretty disappointing then.