List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

[PaigeMiller]

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@PaulHomes wrote:

BTW I use NewsBlur as my RSS reader - I like it because it show lots of information in a single view (no excessive use of white space) and it allows me to access it, and maintain the state of what I have and haven't read, across which ever device I have to hand - desktop browser(s), iPad and iPhone etc.

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I have gotten used to viewing many forums from many different software manufacturers without using RSS, and I don't feel that I want to go that way just because the SAS forums don't have a feature I am looking for. Nevertheless, RSS seems to be a valuable suggestion if SAS can't provide this feature.

I agree with your point about "excessive white space". While this is very subjective, and probably different people will have different opinions, it does seem to me that there is a lot of excessive white space in the list views I have seen here in the new SAS forums. Furthermore, I don't see an option to change the space between items on the list, or change the font size, or change the fact that part of the first sentence of the actual forum post appears in the list view. So, in my web browser, after I scroll down a little so the SAS header is gone, I can see 10 or 11 posts without scrolling further down. At the Adobe forums, I can see 14 posts without scrolling down.

[PaigeMiller]

So, with regards to this topic of having a list of posts that have recent replies, this is what happened today.

I got into work and checked the Forum. I replied to a post that was several hours old. As the day went on, I wanted to check to see if there were additional replies, but becuase the Forum does not have the feature of sorting by recent replies, I had to scroll through three pages to find this post.

This is not a good use of my time. And furthermore, the quantity (and possibly the quality) of replies that this post will get is low, and the value of the Forum is also lowered without this feature.

Of course, since the problem we are discussing also applies to this post, I don't know how many will read this, including the bold paragraph above. I specifically bring this to the attention of @LainieH, who it seems does read these types of posts, even though the likelihood is low that anyone else will page through ten or twelve pages of posts to find that there is a new comment to this thread.

[LainieH]

@PaigeMiller, I just saw your post. I hear you - I will see if I can escalate the solution - to be clear: you are saying that it would be most helpful to have recent posts (that includes replies) in a prominent location). I agree this would be helpful. I will get back with you asap. Thanks

@ChrisHemedinger

[PaigeMiller]

@on 9-9-15, @LanieH said:

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@LainieH wrote:

@PaigeMiller, I just saw your post. I hear you - I will see if I can escalate the solution - to be clear: you are saying that it would be most helpful to have recent posts (that includes replies) in a prominent location). I agree this would be helpful. I will get back with you asap. Thanks

@ChrisHemedinger

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Still no ability to sort on 5-9-17, more than 18 months later, even though every other forum I use has sorting by recent activity as the default. I conclude that this simple change to the user-interface is not going to happen, for some bizarre reason, SAS feels that posts in a jumbled order is just fine. I consider this un-acceptable.

[Quentin]

I agree.   I still find the organization of posts cumbersone and difficult to monitor, whcih probably leads me to less participation here than I would like.  It's probably partly a volume problem, but I think more organizational features could help.

I tend to use this URL to view all messages (not threads) with most recent first:

  https://communities.sas.com/t5/forums/recentpostspage/post-type/message

But the volume is so high, the ability to view threads sorted by date of most recent message would be a big help.  And seems like default functionality in most fourms.  The equivalent in S.O. would be: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sas?sort=active&pageSize=30 . 

On a separate note, I also don't like that replies like this show up in the middle of the discussion.  I suppose it's intended to make it easier to see which post a message is replying to, but I think it makes it harder to the latest post in a discussion.

Grumpy Tuesday....

--Q.

[Tom]

IE10 works with that RSS feed without having to install any extra add-ons.

I like the format better than the main page since it does not include all of the extra headers and sidebars.  But in IE10 it still does seem to include a little too much white space between the entries.  Perhaps some other RSS feed browser would work better than IE10.

[PaulHomes]

Hi Tom,

This is how I see SAS Communities via the NewsBlur web site - just quick snippets (title and part of the first line) of unread posts. If I see some thing I'd like to read I click on it and see the full text. If I have something to contribute I can then click on the URL to go to the site itself. I like this view because I get the same consistent experience across a large number of sites/blogs/forums (currently 88 sites). I find RSS readers (the few that don't try to emulate a magazine experience) provide a great format for scanning lots of posts in a short amount of time.

I discovered this particular RSS reader after trying a bunch of different ones when Google Reader was shutdown (and have been a very happy customer since). RSS is not for everyone, but I'd be lost without it - having to visit individual sites to get news is too inefficient for me.

Cheers

Paul

[Quentin]

Thanks @LainieH for escalating. I am planning to try the RSS approach. But still worth having a feature to sort threads (all threads or all in a specific community) by recent activity.

[Quentin]

Hi @LainieH et al. 

Wondering if there is any progress on a feature to allow one to view threads sorted by the most recent activity/response within a thread?  (Ideally both within a community, and across all communities).

Thanks,

--Q.