I would like a quick link to the oldest message. As forum administrator for the very active angel request forum, trying to clean out older messages is really trying when you have to scroll through numerous pages.


It would also be great if there was a button for “DELETE AND MOVE TO NEXT OLDEST MESSAGE” or some such. The “RETURN TO FORUM” button takes you right back to the most recent message.

It would be great if accounts inactive after a certain amount of time (say, five years) are automatically put on vacation and their wish lists are deactivated. I see accounts with and (mostly) without books that have remained dormant for almost a decade that aren’t on vacation, and it stinks when I list a book that’s been wishlisted by these accounts.

I've noticed that some people (possibly newbies) have been creating new forums to post a question/suggestion/complaint rather than posting a message in another more appropriate forum. Is there any way for a forum admin to clean up these forums by moving the messages to the appropriate forums and deleting the newly created forum? It would make it faster and easier to read through all the forums. It would also make the messages in question more likely to be answered since some of us only have "my forums" visible and therefore don't see the newly created ones.

Is it possible to add a Poetry book topic to the browsing list? The Literature and Fiction topic is huge, of course, and searching for "poems," "poetry" and what not are a clunky way to try to pull out those books for browsing.

Thanks,

I would like to see a sortable "UPDATED" column included in the Forums table which would show the date and/or time of the last message/comment. It would make it so much easier to scan recent messages/comments and will become more and more relevant as forum usage continues to grow.

If there is a limit to the number of columns, for me at least, the UPDATED info would be far more useful than the forum creation date.

Thanks, John, for the time and effort you put into this never-ending project. Your labour of love is very much appreciated.

So far I've only found backtracking or going through my Member Home, so if there could be such a link ?

This would help me with the Angel mooches.

I noticed a strange bug when browsing John's official "BookMooch blog" forum: I had received John's "Downtime fun" message itself by email, but the comments people had made to it were not sent to me.

I unsubscribed from receiving the forum by email and resubscribed back. Let's see if that corrects the issue.

Taneli T

What I mean, it would be very useful to be able to see only the messages posted by me in a forum. Now, if I want to find some older post I have to go through all the pages in some forum.

This would be most useful for people posting to Angel mooches and Inventory deals forums, because when an angel mooch is completed or a deal's time is over, you have to delete it. It would be much faster if I could see only my own posts.

Also, if it's not too complicated, there could be an option to filter messages by any member, just by their BM id.

Forum administrators now have the ability to move a message (and all its comments) from one forum to another.

This feature is most helpful when a message thread starts on a forum which really is better served on another forum.

A friendly email is automatically sent to the message author letting them know that the forum message was moved.

Note that there already exists a feature where a forum administrator can "upgrade" any comment into a full message, when a comment is deemed substantive enough to merit its own conversation.

Erm... that's pretty much it. Default sort by last comment posted time, rather than thread created time.

It can be quite hard to notice and find topics in which current discussion is taking place without email notifications.

Rob

Now that it's possible to place BookMooch user id's in brackets and create links to our own and to other users' bios easily - like this: Taneli T - it would be useful if I got an email of a message every time someone mentions me this way, regardless of whether I subscribe that particular forum or thread by email or not.

This way, I could easily notice a discussion that concerns me and participate in it if I wanted. Otherwise I might never come across a discussion that might interest me too. Thanks!

Taneli T's inventory (worldwide)

the forum seem to be O.K. for Mac but doesnt read or upload in UBUNTU linux.
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your right---- i had to add java codeing to get it working.....its an older system.

computers arghh! it loads now.

thanks much

Miles

what it was doing before was bringing up a URL of page not found.
now it brings up the page and all the content. Ubuntu software search of free codeings and gave me an upgrade that switched it. now everything loads great! thanks everybody.

The "your forums" and "all forums" pages have been completely redone.

Most importantly, these pages now track when you last visited the forums and only display what's new since then. This should make it much easier to keep up to date with "your forums"

For example, if you visited two days ago, only forum statistics for the past 2 days are show. You can change "XX days" choice with the pulldown menu to view any number of past days.

The "your forums" page
http://bookmooch.com/m/forums
now displays in tabular form:

1) number of comments on that forum in the past XX days
2) number of messages on that forum in the past XX days
3) the subject lines of those new messages, each linked to the full message itself

The "all forums" page
http://bookmooch.com/m/forums_all
now displays

1) the number of comments on that forum in the past XX days
2) the number of messages on that forum in the past XX days
3) the date it was created in "3 days ago" format, rather than a hard-to-read date.

Note that when you change the "XX days" ago on the pulldown, it is remembered across all these pages, even when you visit later that day:
1) your forums
2) all forums
3) all "recent messages" pages

As requested on this forum, I've changed what happens when you click on a BookMooch user name or photo.

You used to go to a "forum statistics" page for that user. People didn't find that helpful.

Now, you are directed to that member's bio page.

If you still want to see their forum statistics, there is a link to that on their bio page.

As discussed on this forum, I've changed the way comments are displayed.

On the "recent messages" overview page, comments continue to be shown in a "newest comment first" fashion.

However, if you click on the _comments_ link on a message, all the comments are displayed, and they're displayed in their original (oldest first) order, which makes it much easier to follow the conversation.

When you write a new message, there is now a checkbox option that reads:
(X) Email me replies to this message

A similar checkbox now appears on the "leave a comment" box:
(X) Receive this thread by email

If you check this option, you'll receive email copies of replies (aka comments) to your message, and only your message. You'll also receive a link in each email to optionally stop the emails (unsubscribe)

This feature strikes me as very handy when you don't want to receive all the email from a forum, but do want to hear back about your particular question.

Note: this option does not appear if you are set to receive all emails from the forum.

You can also choose to receive/stop email for a thread from the pulldown menu when ready any message thread.

Ick, yes...some people who are used to "top-quoting" email defaults in clients like Lotus Notes or Outlook may like this newest-first comment sort, but I'm another one who hates it -- it breaks up the logical question/comment-and-response order. Personally I'd prefer the old order, but if you can make the sort toggleable so folks who do prefer reverse order can also sort messages the way they like, that might be best.

As for the switch to usernames/icons now linking to forum stats rather than the user's bio page -- that's also suboptimal for my usage patterns. I've mostly clicked on those wanting to see a user's bio, inventory, or wishlist because they sounded like interesting people I might want to friend, had similar tastes so I wanted to see if they had anything good to Mooch, etc.; seeing how active they are on the forums really isn't terribly useful or interesting to me. Two possible ideas -- perhaps you could simply add the forum stats to the bottom of the bio page, and link everything at once that way? Alternately, right now both the username and usericon are clickable, and take you to the same forum stats page. Perhaps instead of the redundant links, pick one of those items to link to the bio page and use the other to link to the forum stats page? (You might need to put in a default "NO USERPIC" placeholder icon for folks who don't have one of their own uploaded to make it a little more visually obvious that there's something clickable there in the photo column, of course...)

I would love to have something similar to the LibraryThing forum where the first messages are at the top so you can follow the thread, but each time you log in the new messages since your last visit are highlighted in a different color so you can immediately jump to where you last were and read from there.

I LOVE the recent change in format! It is so easy now to follow the threads and find the most recent posts. It is so nice to participate in a site that is so responsive to the requests of the users. Great job!