Online Community - Comments, Improvements and Feedback

Sorry to moan again, but I simply cannot cope with thread streams as they are currently posted.  I see a new posting and my natural impulse is to go to the end of the stream to see the last comment... only to find that it isn't there, but has been posted in response to someone else's comment, and is therefore nested away.  So, I have to then go through all the 'Load more' sub-headings until I find the appropriate post.  This is bad enough on a short thread, but on one which has had, say, 30 replies?  Forget it.

Is there any way that a recently-posted comment can be seen at a single click, without having to go through (possibly) loads of nested replies?

I'd also been finding it difficult to find the new posts in an old thread. In a list of threads, if I hover over the title of the thread, the status bar shows a link to the main post which may be months old, so that's no use as you then have to scroll through and expand everything looking for what's new. On the other hand, there are times (like '2 hours ago') listed on the main community page and those show an anchor '#' that takes you to the latest post in the thread. Good. However, if there have been several posts you haven't read in different parts of the thread, you may miss some of these (this is the drawback of a threaded view). A feature to highlight new posts since your last visit would be useful.

Then there is the list of notifications that you get by going to the lightning icon and going to view all.  Here again you have links to the top post, and have to click outside the links in the body of the notification to see the newest post. But instead of an anchor, this is done in Javascript. (I appreciate not having too many scripts on a page, and generally only allow scripts for trusted sites.) One drawback of this is that I can't right-click and open the link in a new tab. It would be far better to have the notification be a link with an anchor as from the main page. These are pretty minor modifications to help usability, not a request for a major change.

I doubt the mods will ever see this, as it's hidden in a sub-thread that's 5 months old.

I'd also been finding it difficult to find the new posts in an old thread. In a list of threads, if I hover over the title of the thread, the status bar shows a link to the main post which may be months old, so that's no use as you then have to scroll through and expand everything looking for what's new. On the other hand, there are times (like '2 hours ago') listed on the main community page and those show an anchor '#' that takes you to the latest post in the thread. Good. However, if there have been several posts you haven't read in different parts of the thread, you may miss some of these (this is the drawback of a threaded view). A feature to highlight new posts since your last visit would be useful.

Then there is the list of notifications that you get by going to the lightning icon and going to view all.  Here again you have links to the top post, and have to click outside the links in the body of the notification to see the newest post. But instead of an anchor, this is done in Javascript. (I appreciate not having too many scripts on a page, and generally only allow scripts for trusted sites.) One drawback of this is that I can't right-click and open the link in a new tab. It would be far better to have the notification be a link with an anchor as from the main page. These are pretty minor modifications to help usability, not a request for a major change.

I doubt the mods will ever see this, as it's hidden in a sub-thread that's 5 months old.

My last email notification was 28:02:2018,

Email notifications only work if you receive them in the first place,,,,NAS did repair the upissue after telling us it must be an issue at our end,,,,when found the error was rectified and a stream of notifications did arrive, but! ,,,,,since that time none at all. I go on and on about it as I found it very useful to check emails when out and about of any new replies to threads I was interested or part of,,,,having to log on with a mobile device is pretty much pointless as user experience using an older Samsung smart phone is ridiculous,,,small and unusable,,,,,

Once you have turned reply notifications on for a thread you receive a separate e-mail for each posting.

I have just logged on to my e-mail and there were six messages relating to this thread. Each message contains the reply and a 'View online' link.

I use an RSS feed to help filter those threads in which I am potentially interested and then use the notifications to follow a thread in which I am interested. Sometimes, I turn off the notifications for a thread because it no longer interests me.

There is an RSS feed (e.g. http://community.autism.org.uk/f/miscellaneous-and-chat/rss?Threadless=1) for recent posts for each section of the forum. If you do not wish to subscribe to the feeds, perhaps you could just use the links to view the activity.

Thanks. I don't really want email notifications. This is a place I come to sometimes, but don't want to be interrupted by notifications at other times. Do the e-mail notifications list every contribution to a thread, even if there have been several at once?

What I'd like to do is open each thread with new activity in a separate tab.  I can as you say open http://community.autism.org.uk/user/notifications its own tab, handy if I'm composing in another window.  But from that page only the head postings are links, not the notification entries that clicking takes you to the latest posts (that is, they don't show any URL, let alone the full URL including anchor).

Cassandro said:

A feature to highlight new posts since your last visit would be useful.

E-mail notifications do this.

Regarding the notifications covered by the lightning icon, I thought it was possible to right click (or middle click) to open in a new tab. I do not have any unread notifications to test this, however, I can right click (followed by 'Open Link in New Tab') and middle click to open the list in a new tab.