Reply To: Lets nuke the computer whiz. . .

It is not that Fin.

Have a look at the format of this forum:

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum

Three things in particular:

1. Message Board gets ‘flushed’ regularly. You cannot reply to an old thread, and promote it back up to the ‘top’ of the message board like you can here.

Possibly not relevant to Archiseek discussion content, but interesting as a concept nonetheless.

It makes for very quick, decisive type of discussion rather than the long drawn out, ‘holding a grudge’ for too long aspect that can develop here at Archiseek.

2. You can cut in anywhere in the thread. This means, that stray discussions, on sub-topics can be almost conducted without affecting too much, the nature of the discussion in the first place.

But here at Archiseek it is totally sequential, making it too easy for people to spam out a thread very quickly and mess it up totally.

It normally ends up in someone saying something about a political party and that is the end of the thread basically, as in my chit-chat with Helloinsane.

It would be fine if my chit-chat with Helloinsane just developed into a sub discussion, like you can do at Aceshardware forum.

Then I wouldn’t delete anything. I HATE the sequential, ping-pong nature of this boards format.

It pre-dictates and defines too much the way in which people here post, discuss and how they explore issues.

It is completely useless as far as I am concerned as a medium for meaningful discussion.

Of which I am very capable of, but I simply cannot do it, by using this format of message board here.

3. You can look at a thread from the outside first, without actually going into it. New posts made since your last visit are marked with a red NEW sign.

Posters have the ability to change the header of their posts, telling you exactly what they want to say in their posts.

Sometimes, all they post is the heading part, and put NT (no text) after it, and thereby manage to conduct brief one line replies.

There are a lot of things about Aceshardware which make sense, and work and make the Aceshardware forum the really educational site it is to visit.

Of course some of the quality of the posting is very good over there too, about computer hardware etc.

Notice in the general message board overall view too, how you can see exactly which board members conducted the discussion and who was doing most of the talking etc.

Which makes it very easy to pick out threads with posters whom you are interested in listening to.

Brian O’ Hanlon.