Hi everyone,

I've been thinking about this for a while and i've finally decided to post a topic about it. Many times i post something in a topic and then i realise that the original post in the topic is completely irrelevant to what i just said. This is just an idea, but, wouldn't it be great if you could view the first post in a topic from the top of every page? Like the polls that are visible? so that our posts would be possibly more relevant to the topic. also to make it not intruding, it could be hidden like the forum categories with a "-" button.

I understand that there are issues about page loading, bandwidth, and website modification, but i guess the first step is to discuss about it with the rest of the community to get a better idea of the general perception.

So hopefully there will be lots of good discussion on this...

jhgenius01

That would be quite cool, but DJ Omnimaga does present a valid point.

Maybe there can be an option for the person who started the board...right next to "lock this topic" or nearby there could be another checkbox--"set as important post" or something like that?

I would need to check the SMF site to see if there's such mod available. My worry is that I may have to manually edit the 4 templates, though...

Oh, so you would have to do something to the website's source or something to make the post change?

True, i also thought about how it might be different and confusing to some people, it might be better when it is hidden.
not sure, because outdated info is a good point....
whoah lots of posts already...

Maybe there can be an option for the person who started the board...right next to "lock this topic" or nearby there could be another checkbox--"set as important post" or something like that?

that's a nice idea... it would solve the outdated posts thing...

I almost always read through the entire topic. In the case of it being a massive topic *cough* Axe forum *cough* I at least look back a few pages until I see what is currently being discussed. In my humble opinion, it's really not that much work to look through a topic and see where discussion is at, especially if you are interested. It's also worth mentioning that if it is a larger or popular topic the first post may not be as much relevant at this stage of discussion. Except in the case of the first post being regularly updated in which case you can just look at the first post anyway. Just my two cents. =)

I also kinda worry about newbies who aren't used to our system: in less active parts of the forums, like C and the non-calc dev sections, and during Summer in the BASIC/ASM ones, they might open old threads in the middle of the list and when they'll see the first post, they'll not realize at first and try to reply to the question, necroposting in the process.

For other sections I think necroposting is not as bad since the first page usually has posts from the last month or two.

Setting as important sounds like a good idea (if it's possible). We definitely can't have anyone be able to set their posts as important, though. If a lot of people did, the topic would get cluttered.