FINCHforum

So on the main forum tree, you have marked icons that are supposed to show if there are unread messages on a particular forum.

However if you go into that forum it turns out that there are threads that are months or even YEARS old that are marked as unread and keep that indicator "on" on the main forum tree.

I've tried going through and just clicking on supposedly "unread" threads to turn that indicator off but there are just too many of them.

This makes the "unread messages" indicator useless.

Is there a way to mark every post in a forum (not just individual threads) as "read"? Or could it be implemented to automatically consider a thread read if is it older than, say, 30 days?

It would make it a lot easier to tell where there are new posts on a forum that are actually new, and not just so old they're pages and pages back into the forum.

Old posts will pop up if there has been a new comment. I don't have a problem with posts showing as new when I hit the mark all posts read.
I click "view unread posts" after I read through the list and read the articles of interest I click "mark forums read".
Works very well for me

Sojourner

All posts at some point or another end up showing as un-read or un-answered, as the topic is more or less exhausted.

If I'm not sure, I'll usually check the date of the last post, or the date of the initial post in that topic to give me an idea of how old it is.

The thing is, that some threads may be old, but still contain important and interesting information, which can be helpful to someone looking for an answer to a specific question.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong but if you click "mark forums read" every single post is marked read, there are no posts unread (even old ones)

debbie276

Where is the "mark forums read" ?
I am not seeing it on my screen, or am I just brain dead this morning ?

This is what I see on my screen....

View unanswered posts
View active topics
View unread posts
View new posts
View your posts
View your topics

Sojourner Many times the unread threads are older, but are continued by the members. I'm a bit unsure what you are wondering about as there haven't been any issues with this in the past. As far as I know, there isn't way for you to make whole forums as read because there will be new threads in that forum that will be made. I will check this out for you and let you know what I find.

Brian

lovezebs wrote: debbie276

Where is the "mark forums read" ?
I am not seeing it on my screen, or am I just brain dead this morning ?

This is what I see on my screen....

View unanswered posts
View active topics
View unread posts
View new posts
View your posts
View your topics

click "view unread posts" ... all posts you never read pop up
then when your done looking over all posts click "Mark forums read" ... left side under "board index" and "view unread posts". Even if you go to the board index now there should be no new posts highlighted.

Every post on the board should be marked as read. Now when you come back when you click "view unread posts" all the new posts and COMMENTS since you were last on should be all that you see as new

When I log on, I just click on 'View New Posts', so that is all I see. When I have time, I read all of them; when I don't have the time, I skim through to see if there is anything that needs to be answered right then.

To clear out the forum, you can click on Board Index, and below the Announcements, on the right, you will see "Mark Forums Read".
When you click on that, then you shouldn't see any thread marked as unread.

debbie276 wrote: Old posts will pop up if there has been a new comment. I don't have a problem with posts showing as new when I hit the mark all posts read.

I click "view unread posts" after I read through the list and read the articles of interest I click "mark forums read".
Works very well for me

That's not the issue. What I'm talking about are posts that are months or even YEARS old, as in the MOST RECENT POST is that old. I went 4 pages deep into one forum and was still finding posts that were marked "unread". But its fixed now (see below).

lovezebs wrote: Sojourner

All posts at some point or another end up showing as un-read or un-answered, as the topic is more or less exhausted.

If I'm not sure, I'll usually check the date of the last post, or the date of the initial post in that topic to give me an idea of how old it is.

The thing is, that some threads may be old, but still contain important and interesting information, which can be helpful to someone looking for an answer to a specific question.

Oh I understand about archiving older posts. The problem I was having was with SO MANY posts in threads I don't normally read much (like Marketplace). OF COURSE they are unread, because I didn't want to read them in the first place, and thus piles and piles of unread posts dating at least back to when I first joined the forum, if not before, LOL!

The only way I knew to get them to be marked "read" was to actually click on them - and not just once into any particular thread, but you have to click every single page in that thread to get the whole thread to be marked "read". Hence I was looking for a way to mark the entire forum read - but I was looking under each individual forum for something in the sidebar.

My memory is terrible. I rely on the "new posts" indicator on the main forums tree to tell me if there is actually something new in a particular forum - otherwise I end up reading the same posts over and over and over again. Sure, I recognize them once I read them - but by then its too late, LOL!

I read by forum. I never use the "new posts" link because many new posts are not interesting to me. Hence, looking for a way to mark threads read without having to actually look at them would be a plus.

Apparently you cannot do this on a forum-by-forum basis, but only for ALL forums at once. So I'll just have to be careful to do the reading I'm interested first, and then click the "Mark forums read" link. I never noticed that before, just always kind of scrolled past it without seeing.

lovezebs

Yeah, you and I were looking for that link in the same place, weren't we? LOL!

Sally

Thanks, I found it now. I just never noticed it there - I was looking for a link under each individual forum. That would be handier, but I can work with this. I will just read everything I'm interested in and then click "Mark Forums Read" when I'm done to take care of the stuff I almost never look at and all the stuff I didn't care to read so they don't confuse me next time I log on.

Thanks to everyone. I've got it fixed now.