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There don't seem to be any posts from within the past two months, which is a bit surprising. Have the forums fallen out of use, or am I just reading them wrong?
Are the BC forums dead?
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Blogs tend to be used more than the forums
for just about everything. Rare is it to see the forums used at all, even for things they'd make the most sense for -- like my contest announcements and the like -- simply due to the ease of doing blogs instead.
Melanie E.
Forum usage
There is a bug which causes random stuff from story posts to get added to the list of forums, which means that it can be hard finding anything there.
Do this: First, only look at entries which have non-zero topics. These will be ones that have actual content.
Second, troll down the list, looking at the dates of last posting. Anything within the last day or so (depending when you last looked) will indicate that someone has added either a new post or a new comment.
Third, click on the entry in the left column. Now, the posts in that forum will be displayed, but unfortunately they are sorted in a stupid order, which makes it hard to find anything.
Click on the "Last reply" column twice to get the latest entries sifted to the top. Anything new (to you) will have a link in the rightmost column, click and enjoy!
Thank you!
I'll give these tips a try.
None of the suggestions worked.
None of the posts with responses show anything more recent than a year and x months ago. And clicking the last post column just highlights it.
Either I'm doing this completely wrong, or the forums are REALLY broken. (Or maybe Rasufelle is right, and the forums are basically dead.)
When I open the "Forums" link
When I open the "Forums" link the page, among much cruft, has some more recent activity.
BC Website 35 249 By Gianna Michelle 2 days 15 hours ago
Hangin' Around 611 4426 By Nuuan 47 min 35 sec ago
Helping out 6 38 By erin 3 months 1 day ago
Outside The Closet 136 1452 By Beverly Taff 1 month 2 weeks ago
Questions about BC 1 7 By erin 4 months 12 hours ago
Readers / Reading / Comments / Feedback 5 54 By Missy Mousey 7 months 3 weeks ago
story titles 3 12 By joreymay 4 weeks 1 day ago
Just the FAQs 253 1884 By KelseyR 5 months 2 weeks ago
Writers' Forum 377 3489 By Aljan Darkmoon 4 months 2 days ago
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
Following posts
In the main Forum screen, you'll have to click the leftmost column, not the right column. That is a link which will take you to forum entries for that topic (allegedly). Then you have to do the double sort thing.
As someone else pointed out, there are some very recent dates on the right hand side. If you can't see these, then you have something else wrong.
No, the Forums really aren't used much
Penny Lane gave a good summary as to why the forums aren't used much.
I've attempted to use them a couple of times in the years I've been here.
I don't believe I ever got a follow up.
It was also a bloody pain trying to track down the posts I'd made, to see if there was a reply.
There didn't appear to be any rhyme or reason behind how the topics and threads are ordered. This made it very hard to track down an appropriate existing thread, or even determine which threads had been active recently, if any.
I hadn't realized that random posts from elsewhere on the site would spontaneously become forum posts, as Penny Lane mentioned, but that would explain quite a number of them.
It would be nice if they worked, as while many things are suited for blog posts, there are those where it would be best if they were in a forum thread, as it would then be possible to locate them at a later date without too much difficulty, and it would be possible to have certain topics grouped together; lost story requests, story recommendations, questions regarding the status of various members, etc, it would be very nice if somehow they were easily located for future reference, and forum threads allow for that when they function properly.
As it is, if I don't check with a fair frequency, I won't see all the posts on the left hand side of the BigCloset home page, and that's all we really have as a substitute for a functioning forum.
Yours,
John Robert Mead
Forum cruft etc
As I understand it, things put on the "Other Keywords" or "Taxonomy upgrade extras" lines when posting (Add A Story) can get turned into forum entries on the first page. Every so often Piper used to go through and nuke all the empty entries but lately they have other things on their minds. I think the current version of Drupal isn't helping.
To find stuff that I have posted here, or that I have replied to, I find the "track" function very useful. When I log on, the first thing I do is My Account (in the right hand bar), then Track (roughly in the center), and it will give me a list of everything (everything!) I have ever posted or commented on. On the right side will be a link to any new comments on those postings, should there be any. It is one of the most useful functions on the site (to me).
Penny
I, too
Have made frequent use of the track function. I'm still learning how to get around, but it seems to be one of the most useful means of keeping up with specific pages.
Track?!? Whoa!
Penny,
Thank you ever so much for mentioning what the track function does; I'd never looked at it, and had no clue.
Yes, this is a very useful, powerful, tool; I will be making use of it.
In re the problems with freestyle keyword entries creating new forum entries:
I wonder if this is something that the organizations Drupal initially targeted wanted? The idea being, that if it warranted a new keyword, the organization should be made aware of that topic and discuss it.
That we consider it a problem doesn't mean someone else might not have considered it a plus.
At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with for it other than abysmally sloppy coding...
If that is the case, I just wish they supplied the option for the site admin to turn it off.
Yours,
John Robert Mead