wishlist: starring of threads/posts

[mackal]

I would looooooove B&B even more if one could mark/tag/flag/star various threads and individual posts in the forums, sort of in the style of Google (i.e., GMail, Google Groups, Picasa all have such "star" functionality). So often I browse the threads and think to myself, "wow, this post is a gold nugget, I wish I could mark it for further reference"! For example, I've recently seen a recent/first post by GlassJoe talking about a tip for using a Slantbar... as I don't have one yet but plan to get one in the medium future, I wish I could mark this post so I can come back to it later, rather than having to dig for it using the Search function, which may or may not find me what I want.

The added bonus of such a feature would be that it would allow for an automatic "best of" list, something akin to what has been proposed on a different thread, whereby "classic/best" posts would get their own subforum, so that newbies could see/read them right of the bat, rather than stumbling on them by coincidence many months later. Something of this kind could be achieved very simply by creating a subforum or a search which returns the threads/posts which were flagged/starred by the most users... sort of a Google search mechanism in a way, minus the search words. If desired this could then be extended even further in the longterm, such as searches for keywords, sorted according to the popularity/star-ranking of the posts. Also, if need be, rather using a simple star, posts could be given a numerical ranking by each user, something like between 1 and 5.... although I am a great proponent of K.I.S.S., and doubt this would give that much more benefit.

[Jim]

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?t=21053&nojs=1#goto_threadrating

As requested!

[Wil]

:shifty:

[mackal]

:blushing: Didn't see that there... :biggrin1:

Alas, this doesn't seem to be useful for marking threads for yourself... unless I am mistaken, I cannot at a later time find which threads I have rated, can I? And this does not help in with marking particular posts, rather than threads (which becomes important if the thread is very many pages long...)

[Razorburne]

you could subscribe to the thread and then have it in your UserCP all the time, for future reference, right?

[mackal]

you could subscribe to the thread and then have it in your UserCP all the time, for future reference, right?

... and turn off the notification. Yes, that's what I've been doing, but as far as I can tell, this doesn't help with very long threads... In any given thread only a few posts are actually worth saving (usually when I subscribe a thread for reference, I only care about a single post in that thread), and with a thread spanning say 10 pages, you can't easily tell what it is you wanted to flag about a thread when you come back to it later.

[mackal]

But maybe I'm going about this the wrong way, and overlooking some other functionality. So, when YOU guys find a post that you want to mark for future reference in some way (see the example scenario in the original post), how do you go about it? I mean within the confines of the forum mechanism, of course (i.e., aside from printing the post out, writing down the URL somewhere external, etc.).

[Jim]

I save the link in a favorites folder in IE.

[Kyle]

1.) Create a folder on the desktop (location is optional but desktop is easier)
2.) When viewing a thread you want to "mark", click on the badger icon in the address bar (next to the url) and drag it into your folder.

If there is a specific post that you want, click on the post number. This will open the post by itself in a separate window. At this point, execute step number 2.

This isn't a perfect solution, but it works pretty well.

[mackal]

RE: IE favourites/shortcuts to URLs

I guess then there is no better way, like I was hoping. I will probably end up using your suggestions, but it's worth pointing out that this only really works well if you only use one computer (meaning that the original proposal made, of making posts "starable", still holds some benefits); if like me you do your browsing on a number of computers (e.g., 3 at home, x at work, y at friends and family, whom you may wish to initiate into wetshaving... :biggrin1: ), then you have the problem of having to handle copying/synchronizing of this data (i.e., favourites or shortcuts) by yourself. I guess one could always go everywhere with a USB stick and keep the data there, but this is nowhere near as painless.

Ah well, can't have everything... :wink2: