Removing categories

[Anthony Pigott]

Christopher

This is as easy as I can make it....

If you want to 'View Active Topics' as your first page, put http://www.fernforum.net/bb/search.php?search_id=active_topics in your browser instead of just http://www.fernforum.net/bb/, or save it as a 'favourite'.

If you want to go straight to 'View New Posts', then http://www.fernforum.net/bb/search.php?search_id=newposts.

Best wishes

Anthony

[Chris Fraser-Jenkins]

Thanks - I'll try that! Should help a bit. Easier still might be to remove the categories, though! I wonder why we'd need them at all?
Chris.

[Chris Fraser-Jenkins]

No, unfortunately those new "addresses" do not lead to the list of postings, but to some complicated pages of something else.
Actually I'm afraid this Forum is so darned obscure and difficult to use I doubt I'll be trying very much now. The major difficulty being the division of everything up under categories.
I didn't quite understand when you said that this is as easy as you can make it - Do you mean it is actually electronically impossible to remove the categories, or do you mean that you yourself do not like to remove the categories? If it is the latter, seeing as it is the BPS website, I'd really like to put it to the vote at the next AGM I'm there for, as I am convinced it makes the thing so complicated to have to search in many different places - and I think others may have found it so, too. It is nothing like as easy and clear as the other Forum, for example.
I cannot understand why anyone would want to split our subject up into various different, often rather contrived categories - pteridologists really should aim to be less compartmentalised, rather than more, don't you think? Of course some people love manipulating IT thingies - but for me I'm more interested in the subject itself and would like to have to do as little page-searching and fiddling as possible. You hardly have millions of posts which might therefore require division into categories!
How about considering it, Anthony? Unless, of course, the site cannot physically be designed in any other way - but I can only doubt that very much. I just want us to end up with the easiest, simplest and clearest website - but obviously categories within the subject can only obstruct that aim!
Cheers,
Chris Fraser-Jenkins.

[Administrator]

Christopher

I don't know why you can't get the direct links to work - they do for me and I've not heard of anyone else having trouble. In any case, they only save you one keystroke / mouse click.

The whole point of a forum, as opposed to a mailing list, is that it's structured and categorised - that's why people built them and that's why people use them. There are thousands of them on the internet, on all sorts of subjects used by all sorts of people. Some have thousands of members and millions of posts. They work very well because they are structured, categorised and searchable. I've never heard anyone suggest that one should be reduced to a simple chronological list. It surely goes without saying that the BPS aren't going to go to a lot of trouble setting up a forum only to cripple it to make it behave like a mailing list - that would be stupid.

Ultimately it's a matter of personal choice: if your priority is simplicity, then there's no doubt that waiting for posts to drop into your inbox is always going to be at least a bit easier than using a forum. Most people seem think the advantages of a forum are worth a little bit of effort. If you don't, that's fine, nobody's forced to use it. I've tried hard but I don't think there's anything more I can say or do to help.

Best wishes

Anthony