Hi,

I have been around TER for about two years and one thing really gets my goat: the tree/flat option in the forums. Why do we need a default "tree" view in most forums? I know it's not a huge deal but if I want to read all the responses I have to click on "flat." Can we please make the "flat" view default on all forums?

I have heard from older folks that at one point forums in their nascent state had a "tree" display mode to save on bandwidth. Those days are gone, let's modernize people.

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum. But geez, get rid of the default "tree" view!

You can't follow a damn thread, and have no idea who is replying to who. Tree mode is very functional. I wish they would dump flat and just leave tree.

Would rather have to click on each individual response to read it versus just clicking on flat and reading down the page, boom and your done?  Wow!

Yes, I've noticed that some forum replies are a bit out of order. But I think that's a result of when they are approved and not when they are posted. I wonder if TER uses mySQL for the forums?

Perhaps it's a personal preference. I like flat and hate tree. That's why, it's a forum!

threads I have already visited.

each individual response FallonKelly. I'd much rather use "flat" but in "flat" on this thread natashalynne's response to perfectstorm would show up at the bottom after wetweasel2010. That confuses things. Imagine all the longer threads on these boards and all the little side responses to individuals not the OP and you can see how the confusion is multiplied. I would like "flat" to keep the order of the discussion the same as the tree format. Then I would only use "flat". The way it is now (as a previous poster stated) flat only works well for photo threads or when there are no replies except to the OP.

If you are looking at a pic thread, you don't have to open each post.  Otherwise, I don't use it.

Swim

You don't have to click on every post to see the pics.  That's the only time I use flat.

Swim

so..I'm also not a huge fan of the current forum behavior either.

A thread that is 1-2 days old on a particularly active forum is lost and updates to that thread are rarely seen (the view count shows us that...which IS a nice feature).

Personally, i'd like to see the threads all be flat, OP first, with 20-30 posts allowed per page, etc...

quotes/replies wouldn't really change...but...you'd lose the nesting thread stuff that causes many of our threads to smoosh up against the right margin....which also means that unless you quote...you won't know that someones post is related to a previous post, etc.  (it's a trade off)

THEN....

in the main forum where you navigate through all the different threads...

If someone adds to any thread...no matter how old it is...that thread bounces back to the top of the forum.

This would allow some fun threads a little bit longer life and encourage more to engage.

I get that the forums are a side show to the main act here...

but, there are several really inexpensive forum tools that do just what I'm suggesting with little to no extra development.

anyway...2 cents deposited FWIW