Unanswered Topics column?

[#1]

Two things n this subject:

• It's not clear (to me at least) what purpose this column serves for the average User to justify the amount of space it occupies. I can see a value for Plusnet staff and Mods monitoring the Forum, so why not make it a selectable item under User preferences and remove some clutter to improve overall readability.
• Some Topics by their very nature will not justify a response, a good example being a "Moved" Topic yet they fill up space in the report.  Could some coding logic exclude these posts and thus save the hard working Mods a bit of effort?

Maurice

[#2]

A  bit of help needed - What unanswered topics column

Ignore the above - I have never looked that far down - and having done so I can't see the point either

[#3]

Glad you found it @Oldjim  Part of my observation should have been "Its so far down the page most Users will never see it"

[#4]

Well I use it, @Townman I'm sure uses it, and there will be others, to see if they can help with whatever it is.

Posts that go unanswered for any length of time is not a good thing. But maybe to answer one aspect of your point the Unanswered and Unread Posts modules could have their positions swapped?

[#5]

It can be useful for seeing those issues which await some input.

Sure those that need no response can defeat its use: some means of marking such topics would be useful.  Do locked items appear in there?  If yes, they should be filtered - or the maybe the mods could create a response post when they move and lock a topic?

[#6]

They soon disappear from the list when new ones come along, but in any event if you've read them, they won't be highlighted and you know you can't help or don't need to post in them.

[#7]

Apologies if my initial post appeared as an attempt to remove the functionality, far from it as I do see its value.  What I am challenging is its use of prime space for the relatively small number of Users who need it.

In the original post I did suggest making the functionality available as a User preference setting (defaulted to OFF).

On reflection, this just adds complexity to the Preference setup so how about this as an alternative?

Add a new Tab 'Unanswered Topics' to the existing 'Unread Topics / Posts' page.  This will retain the functionality in a usable common space for those who need it, whilst decluttering the existing pages for the majority of Users.

Not a 'bug' more a 'usability' suggestion and therefore lower priority.

Maurice

[#8]

Well I've asked the question. The difficulty I can see with your  initial suggestion is that it would need to be hidden, but because of the other modules on the page, you'd just end up with a big space where it was, and as you rightly say, you'd need another user preference setting. Your latter suggestion might be something that would need a change to the core product and as other equally sensible ideas have been requested from Lithium (from other users of their product) and they haven't been forthcoming, I don't hold out much hope on that one. But let's see what the Dev. wizard has to say about what he can do when he's back from holiday.

Edit: There may also one minor fly in the ointment, both the Unread Topics and Unread Posts modules disappear from view if you don't have any Unread ones.