If I may, I'd like to may a brief comment on the organization of the message board. I've been on Easternuswx BB (weather = wx) for a couple years, and they use the same software as Unmannedspaceflight. On EUSWX, rather than having multiple forums for "winter weather", "hurricanes", etc.., they have one large forum for weather and an equally large "Off Topic" forum. It keeps the discussion very exciting and vibrant. As a newbie to this fine board, comparing the two, I have a hard time finding recent discussions given the large quantity of seperate forums here.

I don't mean this to be rude in any way and am only trying to be helpful!




http://www.easternuswx.com/bb/index.php?showforum=15

My handle on EUSWX is WxUSAF.

About a year ago I switched from browsing the forum looking for new posts, to using the 'view new post' button every time i log in. That way I can see all the new posts and the whole board becomes like a single giant message board, albeit very deeply threaded.

Further info about why the current board structure was chosen can be found in the I Want A Section, Forum, Subforum on thread in The Forum Management section.

Cool cool, that helps a lot, thanks.

The problem with one large "catch all" forum is that we have some very varied topics that do not overlap that much.

For instance - people reading up on Cassini do not want to have the Opportunity route-map thread in the way, or people following New Horizons do not want to scroll through the threads of STEREO etc etc.

Getting it right is not easy - but I much much prefer this way to having them all in one bucket. I think it's probably just a matter of getting used to things. The forum I frequented the most before this one had over 400 sub forums within it...some of which I never visited because the content didn't interest me and as a result it saves me a lot of time when i go there. The majority of sites I've visited do seperate content up into sub forums and I try to resist the creation of a new subforum where possible ( i.e. recently people wanted a new thread of extra solar planets, and I simply gave extra solar planets a home within an existing forum )

Paxdan is right - the "view new post" button is great and essentially does what you want - makes a large virtual forum with all the new content in it.

Thanks for the comments - and I'll certainly pop into the Eastern US WX BB just to see how things feel when clumped together.

Doug

"View new posts" is exactly how I use this place as well.

Chris

> "View new posts" is exactly how I use this place as well.

... and then click on the orange square to the left of each thread of interest.

View new posts for me too, please, but I usually click on the "last post" link to the right of the screen just to get a quick sense of where the discussion was headed.

EDIT - unless of course there is some big mission going on, then it's into the breach real time and refresh refresh refresh! I will never forget the Huygens or Hyabusa nights, and I will never think of Lipovitan the same again.

Likewise. I think that this gives us the best of both worlds - sorry total UMSF addicts (like me) can follow the whole thing and purist's can pick and choose selectively.

Yes, view new posts, hit last posts, try to find the last one you've red by scrolling up (we had like 2 pages only last nigth in Oppy's last move!) and when your' back from vacation select "last week" (or "last month" for the one that get LOT of vacations like Tesheiner )

I saved my 'view new posts' pages after I got back from holiday, because I knew I couldn't see them all at once What can I say, I'm easily addicted...

Thanks for the explanation, Doug.

My only problem with view-new-posts is that I can be called away from the keyboard when I'm partway through the new posts link, and it resets itself after about an hour if I can't get back immediately, losing all the new post links. <sigh>

I normally start at the oldest new posts and work up to the newest.

What I would suggest in those cases (or in dial-up connections) is to open each thread in a new window, and only reading them once all are opened.

I use the IE7 Release Candidate http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx and simply open all the interesting links in different tabs. (You use Ctrl-click instead of a regular click.) This is much the most civilized way to get your UMSF fix. :-)

COUGHAHEM FIREFOX COUGH AHEM

Doug