My apologies for what may seem like ignorant questions, but I'm not familiar with this type of message board system, so I'm having a bit of trouble.

How does the system know when to mark a thread as read, only when I access the thread itself or even if I only access the category? For instance, I went to the Disneyland Resort category. There were about half a dozen threads with unread posts in them. I only had a little bit of time to read, so I read two of the threads that I was interested in and decided to save the rest for later. When I went back, however, everything was marked as read, even the four threads I had not read.

Also, how does the system mark a particular post as read? I'm having a hard time figuring out which is the first unread message in each thread. I know there's a checkbox on the left hand side bottom of each post, and I presume that when it's darkened, the post is read, and when it's lit, the post is unread, but I've seen cases where the third from the last post is lit, but the last and second to last posts are unlit.

I was told that problems can arise if you read from more than one computer, so I've eliminated that problem by only restricting my reading to one computer, so that shouldn't be an issue.

If there are instructions somewhere, please let me know, and I'd be glad to put myself through a tutoring session.

Sorry, I'm just confused. Thanks in advance for your help.

Your not alone.. I have the same thing happen to me. if there is a solution i would love to know.

THanx

My understanding of the current Read/Unread system is this:

When you load a forum listing it will show you anything new since the last time you read. Once shown as "new" it will continue to show as new for ten minutes, regardless of how many times you read it or reload the page.

After ten minutes, that thread will no longer show as new, even if you have read it.

The system is not actually tracking what you have read (through cookies) but rather is only tracking whether it has ever presented you with that thread before, and if so how long ago was the first time.

I agree that this is not the best way, but I haven't looked at the systems options well enough to know if there are settings that would make this work better.

The big problem is that if you are in the forums list and it tells you that there are new threads in "Administration" then the clock is ticking on those, even if you don't go into Adminstration.

I'll look into this, and see if we have better options. It seems to that other vB systems I've used don't work this way.

So that means you have 10 minutes to read everything that's new, otherwise it marks everything as read? And you can't save some threads to read for later? That doesn't make much sense to me...

Originally posted by Alex Stroup
My understanding of the current Read/Unread system is this:

When you load a forum listing it will show you anything new since the last time you read. Once shown as "new" it will continue to show as new for ten minutes, regardless of how many times you read it or reload the page.

Is there any way to extend the timeframe to say, twenty minutes or even half an hour? Ten minutes is not really very much time to read through very many posts, even when I pick and choose threads, especially if you're responding to anything, and then it's really difficult to figure out which threads have unread posts since everything is then marked read anyway. I think it would make the boards much easier to navigate.

Just thought I'd ask. Thanks.

I agree completely with that suggestion. 10 minutes isn't nearly long enough to read through the messages and reply to the ones that warrant it. In fact, if the subject of a discussion has any depth at all, it isn't uncommon for a reply to take me at least 10 minutes to compose. That often results in all of my "new" flags being gone by the time I finish writing my post.

If this isn't something that can be fixed, I'd almost be inclined to think that this might warrant looking into other discussion board software. I don't think a board can really fully take off with this kind of restriction in place.

-Jeff

I agree, ten minutes isn't nearly enough time, especially when we are replying. I would prefer that unread posts not become marked as read after any amount of time (there is a "mark all messages as read" button--we could hit that before leaving Mousepad).

We have just increased the timeout period to 20 minutes. We'd like to give this a try and see if this helps to solve some of the problem you have encountered.

As a clarification: The 20 minute countdown resets each time the board loads a new screen for you. It does count down while you are reading a single screen or are composing a reply.

The system only notes which threads/posts were new since your last visit. It does not actually track which thread you have or have not read. Thus, setting the countdown to never would mean that you would see all 9000+ posts as new every time you login. I know this is not an ideal method, but it is a trade off that significantly reduces the size of the database while maintaining its speed. Imagine if we had to track every single post for every single reader. It would slow the system down to a crawl.

Hope this helps, and please let us know if this time increase is insufficient.

Tony

I didn't know that--I definitely don't want to slow the system to a crawl or make more work for the moderators. But thank you for the extra ten minutes! That should help.

Originally posted by Tony
As a clarification: The 20 minute countdown resets each time the board loads a new screen for you. It does count down while you are reading a single screen or are composing a reply.

Is there somewhere either on MousePad or maybe vBulletin's site that explains all the ins and outs of this system? Apparently, I'm just not getting this.

Thanks.

Originally posted by cstephens


Is there somewhere either on MousePad or maybe vBulletin's site that explains all the ins and outs of this system? Apparently, I'm just not getting this.

Thanks.

vBulletin maintains a very good collection of information. There is a thread in their support forum that describes the behavior of this part of the system in detail (better than I ever could). You can find it at:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=11075&highlight=unread


Tony