One of our staff members for one of our forums posted this message today. I have been trying to think of how to describe this request myself and the way he has worded it made the most sense to me. One of the problems we have encountered with this new system of allowing both flat and threaded viewing is that in flat mode, many of the posts get confusing. If you can add a feature that matches the one described in this person's message, it'd solve a HUGE issue we've been having to date. Here's his post:<font color=blue>
Originally on the public boards I viewed in flat mode because people were treating the board as if it were unthreaded like it was when it was UBB (ie replying to the top or bottom post regardless of which post they were replying to). More recently, I've noticed that most people are realising the threadedness of the boards and are replying to the post they want to comment on. People are also quoting less, possibly because of this.
One upshot of this is that the flat view, which sorts the posts by date, makes following a properly threaded discussion difficult. So I switched to threaded mode, but that only shows one post at a time.
So, longwindedly, what's the chance of a flat view but with the posts in threaded order. Something like what Slashdot does (although I don't know if the indenting design they use would be required).</font color=blue>
I liked his message so much because it makes perfect sense, the key here is being able to show the posts in a flat view, but have the messages listed in the order in which the replies are made. I'll provide a visual example below:
<pre>Topic Header (post #1)
Reply A (reply to post #1)
Reply B (reply to post #1)
Reply F (reply to post B)
Reply C (reply to post #1)
Reply D (reply to post C)
Reply G (reply to post D)
Reply H (reply to post #1)
Reply I (reply to post H)</pre>
But since this is flat mode, there are no indentions, just the order in which the messages are listed is the only difference. I really do not believe that indentions are necessary because they'd squish the text too much after five replies. In any event, I hope this makes sense. The way the current flat more works, any posts made by users using threaded mode really get confusing.
