Ringing Forums

... or to the right when viewing lists of discussions.

Thanks I see it now. I suppose that folks who know about these things, know about this feature. To the rest of us its use is as transparent as pea soup! Why don't people design this sort of thing in a manner that makes its use completely intuitive and transparent, rather than having users waste a lot of time and intrude upon the time and goodwill of people like your good self? Thanks again,

I just discovered that the both the forums and conversations are paginated, which I hadn't realised, and which doesn't seem to be ideally implemented.
First, I saw a reply and tried to scroll up to see what it was responding to. It wasn't the comment above, and there were no others shown. After several attempts to scroll failed to work I spotted the tiny 1 and 2 at the bottom and realised the were pages and got to the earlier page.
I can see the benefit of hiding older comments from initial display but it would be more helpful to show the last 10 (or 20 or whatever the limit is) rather than cutting off at a fixed point.
Then I discovered 5 similar tabs at the bottom of the list of conversations. I assumed that like the lower ones listed on the first 'page' they would have no 'new' comments, but out of curiousity I had a look anyway and discovered a handful that did have 'new' comments.
I realise that 'new' means 'I have not read them'. The system obviously keeps track of that and uses that information to open each conversation at the first comment I haven't seen.
So why can't the same logic ensure that the list of conversations I am shown includes any with comments that I haven't seen?

I just got caught out by the pagination again. I opened a discuion showing it had a post, read it and closed it, but couldn't understand why it was still flagged as having an unread post. I opened it again and only the post I'd seen was there. Then the penny dropped and I realised I was on p2. So I had th switch to p2 and then scroll down to the bottom. All rather sub optimal.
Also, I wanted this to be a reply to the previous post, to which it is directly linked. But for some reason the only option was to make a link.

I just got caught out by the pagination again — John Harrison

Modern World; total nightmare.

no, that's not an adequate excuse.
Some things the Forums do very well, for example opening a discussion at the first post you haven't read.
But whoever got that right didn't think about how it would interact with someone else's decision to break conversations into separate pages.

The forum software is a hosted, commercial product called PlushForums as far as I can tell, if you have complaints I suggest you direct them to the developer, I don't think there's much to be achieved by griping on here.

And personally I don't have a problem with the pagination.

the conversation is headed 'Ringing Forums - your thoughts. Those were my thoughts..
As a user I can't tell what features are designed in and what are the result of how it has been configured.