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Caravel Forum : Caravel Boards : The Site : Two suggestions for the forums (AKA: quickly viewing threads/comments, and emoticons)
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Camwoodstock
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icon Two suggestions for the forums (+3)  
Apologies if these have already been requested, but since the forums have proven to be customizable to suit the CaravelNet platform, I think these ideas would be pretty easy to add.

1 - Show Threads/Comments Posted
Simply put, on a user's profile, there'd be two links next to your post count, that'd look kinda like this:

Posts Made: | 97 (Threads/Comments)

(Pretend that dash is the table separation, and that the blue is a link color)

From there, you could click one of two links, which would lead you to a specific page:

• Threads: It pulls up search results for all content by your username, and excludes all posts with "Re: " in the title. Essentially, if it would show up in the latter link, don't display it here. (For instance, if your username was "Puhpuks", it'd take you to a search for all posts by the Author "Puhpuks" and remove all posts with "Re: " in the title.
• Comments: It pulls up search results for all content by your username and anything containing "Re: " in the title. If it has that in the title, it's a comment by default. This is the only one I know you can emulate by the search tool as of right now; if you search your own username for the Author, and set the Topic Name to "Re: ", you'll see all of your comments.

Why?
•This allows people to get to threads they made quicker if they need them in the future. Say they posted in the "DROD Help" section, and needed to find their thread later. Rather than input that they posted it as the Author Name and that they posted it in the DROD Help boards, they could easily go to their profile, click "Threads", and see their threads they've made, and go from there.
•It'd help in moderation; distinguish which posts were made by a spambot, and which ones weren't. If they spammed a THREAD, they could see which comments they made and remove them from there, and be able to preserve the other comments made inbetween, as to not falsely delete somebody else's posts.
•It's just useful. If you wanted an easy way to see your threads or your comments, for whatever reason you wanted (need to refer to the thread, collecting data, or ego stroking), you could easily click these links.

Obstacles
• This'd require changing how profiles display. I'm not sure how difficult it is, but it might prove a hardy task to get these two links to display next to the post counter, and yet not have these two links qualify as being part of the post count.
• As far as I know, Boolean operators don't exist in the search system yet. The easiest way to do the "threads" link would to have the Boolean operator "-" (disclude results containing) and just have it input "-Re: " and remove comments that way. While it would certainly be easier than coding a different method of retrieving posts that don't contain "Re: " by scratch, it still might prove to be a bit difficult to implement.

2 - DROD Emoticons/Smilies
This one explains itself, really; just add emoticons/smilies of things from DROD! Stuff like Beehtro, the sword, the monsters, the basic tiles to give distinction of a trapdoor or a wall, the items, etc.!

Why?
• Visual learners who struggle with the recording feature have a lucky day; now, they don't absolutely require a demo to get assistance! These emoticons could have an option to be easily tiled, and so you could easily play out certain scenarios via way of these smilies. Just imagine how much better this'd look, and just how much easier it'd be to understand this scenario, with smilies:
Click here to view the secret text

• Besides that, it's just nice to have! They could always be useful for signatures.

Obstacles
• Well... If any post contained ":roach", ":beethro", ":swordnw", or ":wall" in the past for whatever reason, it'll probably break with the new smilies/emoticons.

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Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

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10-30-2016 at 12:14 AM
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Tuttle
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icon Not the same as the post above. :) (+2)  
The Threads/Comments distinction is a little more complicated than that. Individual posts can have individual titles, and the Re: is just a default. I'm sure it's still doable with appropriate tweaks to the search engine, but if stuff needs to be added then it's probably worth actually doing a proper first-post/reply distinction based on whether a post is the first in the thread or not.

Also, note that you already have a "Search for posts made by (name)" link on each profile page, and a little search icon under each post. Those don't differentiate between thread starters and replies, but do at least save you typing in search criteria. :)
10-31-2016 at 01:23 AM
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