Message index and most recent messages

Admin(s),Currently, the message index for each member shows the most recent message in each of the threads they've been participating in. This makes it cumbersome to go back through old posts if you're looking for a particular message, as the poster is more likely to have posted several times on the same thread, and only the most recent post is shown.I think it would be more useful if it simply showed their most recent messages in order, irrespective of thread. This would make referencing prior discussions and going back through recent posts by poster far easier.Knowing next to nothing about compooters though, I've no idea how easy / difficult this is.PE

I agree that it would be better to list all posts. This change is on my list, but isn't likely to happen soon as we just completed a major development cycle last month.There *is* a pretty good workaround, though. Click on the "search" link in the upper right hand corner of many webpages, enter the name of the person in the "Username" field, set the forum field to the forum you're interested in, or you can set it to look in all forums, then click on "Perform Search". You can leave the "Search Words" field blank. You should get a list of all messages from that user with most recent at the top.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

Thanks - that workaround was exactly what I was after.PE

I was aware of the "search by member" powers of that search engine, but I didn't fully realize how elegantly it worked (as opposed to that other search engine - wink-wink).I do find the "most recent in each forum" pages to be useful in their own ways, and suggest that they be preserved as is. Just add a guidance message, to the search page, to the member index page. Or better yet, have a "search by member" feature right on the member message index page.Moose

I agree with this, also, and that's one of the reasons this isn't a simple change. Current features do not make it easy enough to peruse posts by user. For example, you can click on the message index for a thread, but if what you wanted was all messages by one user then you can't get that. What is really needed, often enough to be annoying that you can't do this, is a page with all the messages of a thread from just one user.I'd like to address all the "make it easy to peruse a thread" issues and the "see list of messages by a user" issues and the "are there any messages I haven't replied to yet" issues in a single update, so it won't be an easy change and is unlikely to happen soon. But the suggestions you and others make will be factored in, so keep those cards and letters comin', folks!------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator