'Must Read' discussions

Minisweeper

So I'm just gonna toss this out there incase anyone's bored and wants to work on an extension (I'm feeling a bit lazy right now and still puzzling over multi line panel methods) I'm also sorry if it's been said before cause i dont think it has but i might have got the idea from someone here, then forgotten about it, now posting it as my own

All it is is a sticky thread which stops being sticky (on a per user basis) when it's been read. Ok?

russlipton

Ohhh, very nice.

Toivo

You could always just create tag or category named as 'Must read'. ;)

Minisweeper

But people wouldnt read them...if it bugged them they might.

takai

Awesome, looking forward to this one. It would be perfect for site announcements and such. Or even rules/info for new members.

nathan

You'd have to be sure you didn't have the "Mark All Discussions As Read" (or whatever it is called) extension on as well but it sounds like a great idea. EDIT: Would it be slow though? Presumably, it would be a database call every time the pages load to see if it need to be displayed or not. It would be the same speed hit that Whispers has basically. If you had BOTH on, and it was a busy forum, you might notice a fair hit to perfomance.

Thomas Heath

...but it would be a really nice feature!

Minisweeper

Oh aye it'd definitely slow things down a bit i imagine. It depends how clever the author was with their queries. I cant even begin to get my head round the query which would be needed. I suppose what might be better is tieing it in as a feature of the announcement extension? And make the announcement only disappear once the user had done something? What about that?

Felipe

Here is two situations I have encountered on other forums: - one sticky post with many links to 'first quality' topics (pretty obvious on many forums), no other topics allowed on these subjects or there would be thousands of topic asking for the same things again and again. - a big link 'Are you new to this forum?' visually not too integrated with existing categories and posts, that disappear after you've posted N times, 10 by example, in order to avoid annoying regular users. Your idea can be useful but you'll always have members opening the subject and not reading it. Damn users! :) With the tools already existing in Vanilla, moderators can edit the title of sticky topics for [NEW] [EDIT DD-MM-YYYY] (but not everybody will see the change), make topics sticky for N days (if it isn't important anymore, will it still concern new or members coming back?) and one can Bookmark an interesting discussion. There are also blogs and newsletters (but one can read the forum and never read the blog posts). Well, still a useful extension idea I think :)

garvin

Here is a thought. When you turn on... I think the poll extension. And you make on availalbe, a message appears at the top of the screen saying, "There is a poll available to you. Click here to go see it." or something like that. You also have the option of turning that off. What if you handle it like that? Make a post that you want everyone to read, and have a message appear after they login, that would tell them its necessary to read it, and once they click through, the message would disappear?

Mark

That's a cool idea, garvin. We could just do it like one of those notices for administrators when they first install Vanilla, but it appears for users until they turn it off and just links to a discussion.

bugsmi0

I like that idea too, as captain pacard would way "make it so"

garvin

I'd really like to see something like this, maybe even tied into the "ToDo" extension, as I can use this for my client management vanilla. When my project manager assigns a task (inside a discussion), he can set a deadline and I can keep it above my discussions list as a constant reminder that I have to get it done, and then close it out, like the ToDo extension, when I finish it.