Any chance
you could have a feature to mark read posts, or to be able to sort by date posted ? Popular topics are a pig to read, as I can't easily see what was written when .... apart from that - Love it !
This week we introduced "Track this Forum", a membership feature for commentards and lurkers on El Reg and reghardware forums. Take this example: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2010/05/26/captain_cyborg_cyberfud/ See the grey star? See "Track this forum"? Click the link and log-in to El Reg forums, if you haven't …
Well OK, I hadn't realised that, but it's pointless with this new facility which is - presumably - intended to bring us back to read new comments.... we can't read "just" the new comments by remembering the last one we read and continuing from that point onwards.
So we have to start at the beginning & try and remember what we've already read?
B*gger that!!
Do what I do (I use Firefox for this):
1) use the "my forums" link on the top right hand side of this page. This will tell you which of the threads you have commented in have been updated. (Updated threads show up as unvisited links.)
2) Open an updated thread in a new tab
3) press Ctrl-f to bring up the search, and punch in your username.
4) Hit "next" a few times, and it will take you to your posts in that thread.
Voila: you have no skimmed a long thread for your posts, and can quickly check for replies.
If you stay on top of the "my forums" page, you can frequently check threads for updates.
The "my posts" page will tell you if your comments are being held in the queue, have been accepted, or rejected. They also contain links directly to those comments, in the context of their thread. (Look for the arrows and hash marks and the like.)
A little bit of exploration should have you finding most of the features you want already exist. The web team here has done a fantastic job with this site.
Cheers for the tip. That's pretty much what I do already as it happens, apart from going via "My posts" rather than "My forums". But it would be great if the "My posts" page had an indicator showing how many unread replies there are to each comment, to save all that messing with tabs and searches.
Not that any of this is vitally important or anything. I agree that whoever's written the comments system here has done a great job, it's already way better than most sites.