Howto browse LMR! (A guide to oldies)

Well folks,

A dear LMR friend recently drew my attention to his ignorance regarding the way this site works for him. This person, who shall remain anonymous, has been a member, like, for ever (in fact only 23 members joined before him). So I assumed he would know by now how threading works. And how to keep track of the latest updates.

Nope. Nada. Niks. He just reads pages marked as "updated" on the Recent posts page - struggling to find the comments that are new to him. If you recognise your own browsing habits in this, read on. You need to know this! If you are doggedly refusing to reply "in thread" to a comment because that would bury your comment in a long list of older replies, read on. You need to change that behaviour!

First of all, when using the Recent posts or Unread posts pages, do not click on page's title, instead click on the phrase 1 new. This hyperlink uses an anchor that is generated just for you. And it will bring you directly to the (first) comment on that page that is new to you. The one that is marked as new on that page.

This example would bring me to http://letsmakerobots.com/node/6712#new which is a direct route to http://letsmakerobots.com/node/6712#comment-21447. Well, it is in my case. And only this once. Now that I visited that node, the LMR database no longer considers that comment to be new to me. Or any other comment on that node. It is a very volatile service!

So, you no longer have a reason to shun replying "in thread". This means: PLEASE respond to people's comments directly via the reply link. Don't start a new thread when you're responding to someone's comment. That way the "flow" of the discussion remains and it will allow everyone to read it in the correct order.

Beginners stuff really ...