How do I most easily see replies made to posts rather than to the topic?

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I am active on a number of different forums and this is the only one that requires me to scroll through an entire topic in order to see any posts made as a reply to another post.  What recommendations do you have regarding the easiest way to see posts made since I last visited?  In other forums I just go t0 the end of a topic, scroll up to the last post I read, and then read down from there.  Continuity is maintained by quoting relevant parts of previous posts.

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Peobody wrote:

What recommendations do you have regarding the easiest way to see posts made since I last visited?

On the right side menu you have under ‘View the Forum’ : ‘Recent Replies’, and under ‘Search for Topics’ : ‘New posts since last visit’

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There are two ways:

• When you post a reply, check: Notify me of follow-up replies via email
  
• Select: https://www.askwoody.com/forums/view/topics-freshness/

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Thank you both.  I am aware of the options you have mentioned.  The “New posts since visit” option is TMI when I just want to follows a specific topic.  Email notifications can be confusing because they can lack content.  Finding that post within the topic can require scrolling through the entire topic to find it if it was made as a reply to a post.

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Peobody wrote:

Email notifications can be confusing because they can lack content.  Finding that post within the topic can require scrolling through the entire topic to find it if it was made as a reply to a post.

The “Post Link:” in an email notification takes you to exactly that post wherever it is (unless you lose patience, because the server can seem slow on very long topics).

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Do you want to see topics you started or replied to? https://www.askwoody.com/forums/view/with-my-reply/

Otherwise “new posts since last visit” may be overload, but it is indeed the new posts since you last visited.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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I want to say that I want to see topics that I have subscribed to although I don’t know that “subscribed” is the correct term.  They are ones that I must unsubscribe from to stop receiving notifications, but, the “My subscribed topics’ option does not display them which I why I question whether “subscribed” is appropriate.  I don’t click links in emails so perhaps the fact that I won’t click a link in a notification is the route of my problem.  Still,  I would like to be able to open a topic and then easily identify and read posts made since I last visited it, regardless whether I am subscribed to it.  That doesn’t appear possible based on the responses to my inquiry.  A scroll through the entire topic looking for new replies to posts is required in addition to reading new topic posts since last visit to the topic.

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As Cybertooth points out you should see visible indicators that there’s a new reply.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

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Peobody wrote:

Thank you both.  I am aware of the options you have mentioned.  The “New posts since visit” option is TMI when I just want to follows a specific topic.  Email notifications can be confusing because they can lack content.  Finding that post within the topic can require scrolling through the entire topic to find it if it was made as a reply to a post.

When you land on that “New posts since X” page, the topics that you have read previously will show a “New reply” badge in green, and the topic title will show up in purple type rather than the standard blue. I rely on this color scheme to quickly eyeball the topics I’m already interested in. (I’ll also skim through the topics in blue, in case there’s something new that sounds intriguing.)

In addition, when a topic I’ve been reading has a new post, there will be a little square cartoon-style balloon with three dots inside it at the end of the thread title. Right-clicking on this balloon will then give you a context menu with a choice to (among other things) open the thread page in a new tab, which is what I do.

Once you’re on the topic’s page, any new posts since your last visit will sport a “new” badge in black at the top of that post, next to the post’s date and time. If the discussion is especially lively and there are lots of new posts, you can use this visual cue to quickly scroll through the long page and identify the new posts that way. Or you can do a CTRL-F for “new” to search for the posts that are thus tagged.

Hope this helps.

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Peobody

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Peobody wrote:

in order to see any posts made as a reply to another post.

If I want to see the replies to a post made by “poster X”, I use CTL-F to search for “poster X” and that will put me within range.

Maybe this is too simple an answer or not really what you are asking, but then again you might find that it can help navigate a thread.

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Cybertooth wrote:

In addition, when a topic I’ve been reading has a new post, there will be a little square cartoon-style balloon with three dots inside it at the end of the thread title. Right-clicking on this balloon will then give you a context menu with a choice to (among other things) open the thread page in a new tab, which is what I do.

I have now spotted this (tooltip: First new reply).  This is ingenious, and it helps, but only in a limited way.  If the first new reply is a reply to an early post then it is near the top of the topic posts.  From there I have to scroll through the remainder of the topic looking for any other new replies.  Am I missing anything?

BTW, the “Recent Replies”  link is currently opening “Recently active topics”.

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Peobody wrote:

I have now spotted this (tooltip: First new reply). This is ingenious, and it helps, but only in a limited way. If the first new reply is a reply to an early post then it is near the top of the topic posts. From there I have to scroll through the remainder of the topic looking for any other new replies. Am I missing anything?

This circumstance, where there are multiple new posts and some of them are not at the bottom of the page, leads us to the method in the last sentence from my post above (emphasis added):

Once you’re on the topic’s page, any new posts since your last visit will sport a “new” badge in black at the top of that post, next to the post’s date and time. If the discussion is especially lively and there are lots of new posts, you can use this visual cue to quickly scroll through the long page and identify the new posts that way. Or you can do a CTRL-F for “new” to search for the posts that are thus tagged.

This method is not perfect since a commenter may have used the word “new” somewhere in their post, but as far as I know it’s the quickest way to accomplish what we want, which is to locate posts that are new since the last visit.

Another way to do it would be to leave the thread of interest open in a browser tab, and then refresh the page the next time you want to check out the discussion. At the top of the page, you will then see information telling you how many posts there now are and how long ago the most recent one was posted. This is the method that I use (before refreshing, I make a mental note of the number of posts and the hours and minutes since the last one, to compare to what it says after the refresh).

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I vote for changing NEW to something like NEW ON THREAD so one could search on the whole phrase that would not be in use elsewhere.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Cybertooth

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