Tag what forum a posting is listed under

I see a recent post column on the right side of my iPad screen. It just shows the title and how long ago. I'm not sure what you would have different. Some forums include the author and the last person to post. I like those forums for that reason.

Some people just want you to look, so they post " I was wondering..." And hope you will click into there post. I only look at those when I've exhausted the list of other posts.

 Forums are funny, not funny haha, but funny strange.

RRMAN, I submitted this as a suggestion to the Hoopla folks on July 5, 2017. So far they have not received enough votes from other Hoopla users to justify making the change.

I just posted on that Hoopla thread again, asking about progress. I'll let you know what they tell me.

OGR Webmaster posted:

RRMAN, I submitted this as a suggestion to the Hoopla folks on July 5, 2017. So far they have not received enough votes from other Hoopla users to justify making the change.

I just posted on that Hoopla thread again, asking about progress. I'll let you know what they tell me.

Thanks Rich.

I thought each Hoopla forum was unique custom made rather than "cookie cutter" for each user, so that with a little money a Hoopla software person could go into the bowels of the machine and add the feature.

Obviously not so obvious.

The same underlying code that runs this forum also runs hundreds (thousands?) of other Hoopla forums. We can tweak the layout, colors and a few other things, but we cannot change the underlying code that controls what gets displayed where.

A change like this requires a change in the core Hoopla code. For changes like this, Social Strata, the owners of Hoopla, make it a "Suggestion" on their tech support forums. If it gets enough votes, they consider it. You can see that tech support thread here.

This only helps if the person posting the thread posts it in the right forum.  From what I see, that's a bigger issue with most forums.

rrman posted:

Sometimes a Recent Post column topic is not clear if someone is wanting information, or buying or selling or modeling pictures etc.  Some topics are obvious like "What wire size to use" is obvious electrical. But "Want curve bridge", is that a want to buy, or looking for prototype information, or how to make curved bridge?

Would help when looking at recent post column so not waste time in something reader not interested, or vice versa if title not clear.

A solution might be more informative titles? Some are so short and non informative you have no idea the subject matter of the post is.

Good suggestion RRMan.  I do understand what Rich is saying about the core code needing changed, and thank you Rich for posting the request with Hoopla.  That is about all you can do.

I do agree with both John, to make sure to be in the correct forum, when posting, and BobbyD pointed out the need to make the post title more descriptive.  I use the side panel for the latest and greatest most of the time, and the forum a topic was posted in is not shown.  I try to make my titles descriptive enough so someone seeing it on the side panel will know if I am trying to sell the item or asking for help because it isn't working, etc.  For now, I think we just have to gracefully encourage posters to make their titles more descriptive.

Rich, when a person wants to publish a post, would it be possible to have the forum that the person selects, be included in the subject box where the person would type their title? That way when we look down through the titles of the recent post in the right hand column we would know immediately what forum we're going to be heading to. One problem I see is the way some people post an item for sale, they give no indication of that in their title. Or, when an engine name is the title, there is no way to know if their talking real trains or model trains. I know once you click on a recent post there is a very narrow white box, under the flashing advertisements, with very small lettering telling us the forum where now in. If there is no way to add the forum in the subject title, is it possible to add the forum name above the title when were directed to the post page, to make it more visible then the little narrow box?

Several comments surround the idea of making the titles more descriptive. What a great idea! Some folks start their for sale ads with "FS:". I think that is helpful.
While others post mysterious titles like: "what do you think?"
Sometimes I look at them, other times not.

I am not saying that there should be rules about these titles, I am just saying.

Dave, everything you have suggested in your post involves the core Hoopla code, which I cannot change.

C. W., making thread titles more descriptive would certainly be a help, but that's up to the individual poster, not us or Hoopla.

Thanks Rich. From now on when I post, I will start the post with the forum title ahead of the subject title. Hopefully a trend will begin to get regular members to do the same. 

I agree. I tend to view the threads that have more descriptive, informative titles. You don't have to write a book, but at least give us a clue. You would think Gary Cooper was writing thread titles sometimes...

John

While I agree with the concept of author's making attempts to make things more clear would be great (many good points on useless thread titles are described above), I hope people don't start typing the whole forum section name as an opening for their thread title with every post!

Having half the posts start with an intro of "High-Rail, O27 and Traditional 3-Rail O Gauge" would swing us into the other direction where there is too much clutter that would now be attached to each thread title (all IMHO).

I do admit that back years ago when the forum got sub-divided into so many different categories, I stopped looking in each forum as a full list of topics to view.  I then migrated to primarily only scanning down the "recent posts" section, and I figure anything interesting enough will appear there at some point.  (though if I have something I want to ask about or try to look up, I will then search or do a focused viewing before asking something that might be a duplicate).  I probably miss some threads this way, but it got to be too much time (for me) to go through all the different sub-sections.

-Dave