This is a great website with an excellent group of contributors, but the one problem I see is that the volume of new postings pushes items under discussion to the back pages at a tremendous rate, taking them out of circulation in just a couple days. Today the front page in both view formats is almost completely taken up by items posted in the last 24 hours. Is it time for a format change to provide topic categories and keep items current for a bit longer?

I agree with this concern. On the antique Caterpillar forum (ACMOC), for example, the messages stack up in the order received just like they do here. However, every time a message is replied to on that bb, it moves back to the top of the stack. That way they tend to hover around the top of the list while there is interest in them, and then drop out of sight naturally as interest fades. That seems like a really logical, beneficial feature. I can't see any downside to it. There are probably a lot of people who look at this bb on a regular basis, but skip days or weeks. They might then go back to see what they missed, and find something they would reply to. However, if the topic has already moved back a few pages, they feel that a reply would go un-noticed, and therefore be pointless. So even though there is continuing interest in the thread, it becomes self-extinguishing.

I also concur - the format of the forum limits the ability of a discussion to develop over the long term. Using the Flat View does help, as newly updated discussions are moved directly to the top of the list. However, if a discussion is older than a month, it will not be moved to the top. This makes searching the forum for information much harder as the answer to a question may be in two or three seperate threads. Whatever format is used for the forum, the posting of multiple "look at this" threads at a single time - that generate little or no discussion - makes it hard to find the threads that are being actively discussed. Tom Cornillie

Funny you mention that, I was just thinking about the same thing.I'm just going to come right out and say that as much as I appreciate Bob Yarger's efforts, his multiple photo link posts are quite annoying. Often, I have seen discussions that I am interested in pushed off the first page. Sometimes I remember to look for them on the other pages and sometimes... well... out of sight, out of mind.Perhaps a separate area for posting photolinks? Just a thought.

The disadvantage of today's internet is that there are bulletin boards and mailing lists on just about every subject, so it is difficult to pick up on things that may interest me, even if it wasn't what I was originally looking for, because my interests are fairly broad. I know, for instance, that most of Bob's posts are photolinks - if the subject line doesn't sound interesting I don't bother to look. I view this forum by clicking on the "view posts since last visit" which shows everything new, including every post that has been updated which is great because I can quickly scan the list - if I see nothing of interest I can pass on to other things.........G

one sets their priorities in life (and their preferences on RyPN).me? my browser has RyPN as the opening home page. I look to see if there is a new brief or article--read or scan it, then move on to interchange. Once on the Interchange page, I too, call for the postings since my last visit.this more than adequately keeps me up-to-date with the discussions here on RyPN.my gratitude to the moderators, etc.sc 'doc' lewisPS keep postin' em, Bob!

Good points. I can see the value of a post that contains a link when it is about an upcoming event or other matter where there is substantial additional information, schedules, or forms available on another site. However I sometimes wonder if there is some other agenda behind photo link posts that immediately divert the viewer to another website, and what value they provide on this site. Most of us know how to use internet search engines to find topics of interest on our own.

Second your thoughts.As much as I may like some of Bob's links, I find it hard to keep up with various discussion threads.

Hi Everyone,If you havent noticed on this forum everything does bubble up as new posts are made to the topics and If someone replies to a post that was made several days ago it does come back to the first page and up to the top of the pile. If anyone sees a post that you want to reply to and it is several pages down It will migrate back to the first page.As was mentioned before, RYPN is an all Volunteer run online magazine. If you want to help out to make things better then contact Hume Kadin who is the owner and volunteer your time to work on it.I am helping as best as I can but like everyone else I have a regular job, a wife and 2 kids and am also putting together a Preservation group in between everythings else. And I am not by myself in this either.Andrew MartinLinks Admin, RYPN

There are some settings you can make to work this system better. "Flat view" is one good setting. Also, if you set your browser to remember and automatically log you into the site every time, you will find that the topic list automatically displays new activity, including new posts to old topics, at the front of the list.Having said that, I too am annoyed at posts, from anyone, that are simply indexing content on other sites. If you have a real content contribution to make, great, but please do not simply post links to other sites because you think they are interesting.

Question: If you look at this thread, the posts are in different order depending on whether they are viewed in flat view or thread view. Flat view is in order of time received. Thread view is not in that order. Why is that?

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We are currently working on getting the entire Interchange archive, going all the way back to 1998, on line in a single searchable format. (Taking longer than expected, but we are making significant progress.)I think most of the issues addressed above are addressed by using the flat view and the new messages since last visit feature. Flat view is the basic format of this software and the way it was intended to be used.However, our users prefer the threded view by almost 2 - 1. The thread view is a mod added on to the basic softeware, and it's use for the Interchange as currently configured is only made possible because we have an SQL and PHP literate assistant in David Collison. It causes us lots of extra work when we upgrade the Interchange, and/or move it.Would be nice if the thread view would bump things to the top as they get posted but it doesn't. I guess I could write the Moby Threads people and ask if there is anything on the horizon to fix that serious deficiency.Regardless, one thing we can do that would help some is increase the number of posts visible on a page. Right now that limit was set by experimentation at the highest number possible without causing the board to time out too much (SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE). The new consolidated Interchange will be on a different server where hopefully the bandwidth will be wider and we can up the number of posts visible per page.That's the best we can offer for the short term.In the meantime I really encourage people to try the flat view. Again, it's the way the software was designed and intended to be used. I agree it's not as intuitively user friendly as thread view, but if you learn how to use it I feel it's vastly superior.

Kelly:Excellent idea. I hope Bob will not be offended and will follow it.

apparently not. :(Scot