The way these topics are set up

[Crosby87]

I love this website but am I the only one who finds it annoying to have to scroll from millions of pages just to comment on the latest topic on certain issues? Take Robbie Keane for example, I believe the first entry was made at the time of the LAST World Cup.
Just saying, is this mandatory? I mean the whole point of a message board to me is to get on current events. For example, instead of having to click on most recent then having to backlog, just simply have categories that are current. One example would be, "Robbie Keane Misses". That would be one for today. For last week, it would have been "Robbie Keane 2 goals today." I mean just having one topic for a player is comical, annoying, hard to navigate, and taking away from current issues....This is the only message board I have seen that does this, and I think it takes away from posting current stuff. Agree/Disagree?

[tetsujin1979]

you know, there is a search function?
also if you open a thread like "robbie keane's miss today", more than likely one of the mods will merge it with the main Robbie Keane thread

[tricky_colour]

I love this website but am I the only one who finds it annoying to have to scroll from millions of pages just to comment on the latest topic on certain issues? Take Robbie Keane for example, I believe the first entry was made at the time of the LAST World Cup.
Just saying, is this mandatory? I mean the whole point of a message board to me is to get on current events. For example, instead of having to click on most recent then having to backlog, just simply have categories that are current. One example would be, "Robbie Keane Misses". That would be one for today. For last week, it would have been "Robbie Keane 2 goals today." I mean just having one topic for a player is comical, annoying, hard to navigate, and taking away from current issues....This is the only message board I have seen that does this, and I think it takes away from posting current stuff. Agree/Disagree?

Yes I am fully aware of it an I have been complaining about it for sometime but I keep getting fobbed off with what I consider are pretty poor excuses
so I am pretty much flogging a dead horse, maybe we need to flog it harder though, two floggers are better than one

I totally agree with the points you raise.

This will probably be bunged into one 'complaints tread' I suppose

I am not sure why it is done as I think it ruins the forum, you never see anything of current interest or relavance in the thread titles just 'Robbie Keane', Aiden Mcgeady (that's a big one), and Stephen Ireland.

I mean I could come to the forum after, for example, Robbie Keane had died in a car crash, and all I would see would be the the rather meaninglessly
title 'Robbie Keane Thread'.

Now I suppose I could search the forum each day for "Robbie Keane is dead" but obviously thats pretty riduclous, as he looked OK the last time I saw him on the telly (apart from that glaring miss of course ).

Mind you, that's a fairly obvious one, I would never have thought of searching on "Stephen Ireland's Grandma Dies" for example.

Also if you did want to read all the threads about Robbie Keane you could then use the search function in the way it was intended to be used.

As it is, it is like using a knife as a fork and a fork as a knife, which is just about possible, but I don't think it is how the inventors of those utensils
intended it to be.

It also means one thread about a person immediately gets 'hi-jacked' by the latest news on that person so that topic gets buried and lost.

Still, apart from that it's fine.

PS Would have liked to used a 4th 'smilie' there, but you can't do that either, as they are rationed, which means when you quote a post with 3 in you can't use any!!

Why not just bung the entire site into one thread? - That would be fun.

[theworm2345]

New Yorkers...

[tricky_colour]

New Yorkers...

Chicagoans....

[theworm2345]

Chicagoans....

Oh, I'm sorry, are you a New Yorker? No really, I'm sorry

[Plastic Paddy]

I'll put my hands up and admit to starting the consolidation of threads when I was a mod on this board. My reasoning was simple - too many posters were starting threads on the same subject without ever bothering to check whether others had posted similar or exactly the same point in a different thread, whether that day or weeks/months previously. I figured that it was better to have one thread of five hundred posts on a subject than five hundred threads of one post, a position that was endorsed by all the other mods at the time. You evidently disagree, but I still think the approach taken is better than the alternative. In any case, it can be quite interesting to see how often the same points are made in relation to a player over the course of time - just see the threads on Aiden McGeady and whether he is good enough to play for Ireland, Kevin Nolan and whether he wants to play for Ireland, Robbie Keane and his constant moaning when playing for Ireland... you get my drift.

PP

[NeilMcD]

Does this not belong in support

[eirebhoy]

well first of all...

This is the only message board I have seen that does this, and I think it takes away from posting current stuff. Agree/Disagree?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=151
http://kerrydalestreet.co.uk/forum/15914/

Those 2 websites, along with this, are the 3 I use regularly. This site to talk about the Irish football team, KDS to talk about all things Celtic and Boards to talk about the most popular football topics with other Irish people. Now all 3 of those sites have the exact same system as this and they're all very popular.

If you're used to the other type of forum where there isn't any merging, closing or any real moderation then this place would probably take a bit of getting used to.

If we're using the Robbie Keane thread as an example, I'll tell you what types of thread I would merge with it.

"Keane on fire tonight!"
"Keane's miss against Bolton"

topics I would leave open:
"Keane's worrying recent form"
"Keane voted player of the month"
"Keane injured in training"

etc, etc.

there's actually not many threads I'd merge in with the big threads. I'd probably come on the morning after a match and find a thread about Keane's performance in the match last night and every time it'll just descent into a discussion on the big topic of Robbie Keane and everything about Robbie Keane. I think this should be merged with the big bad Robbie Keane thread.

If a thread on "Keane injured in training" which is 5 pages long and 2 weeks old is bumped up to talk about him scoring a goal on his comeback then maybe this thread will then be merged in with the Robbie Keane thread. I personally might just merge the most recent post into the big thread and leave the injured Keane thread alone to float into oblivion.

When I come onto this forum, which is most days, I see all the threads which are bolded so obviously they've had new posts in them since I was last on. I click the middle button on my mouse on all the icons and I'm left with a few threads opened up as tabs in my browser. All Starting at the last unread post in that thread. Basically I won't be missing any posts that I'm interested in and I won't be guessing what page number to click on.

It's different for those that haven't got the time to read all the topics they're interested in. I had that experience when I had no PC for about 3 or 4 months early this year. I still got to read a fair bit of what I wanted. Clicking on the icon to bring me to the last unread post in the Robbie Keane thread would have left me a fair few pages back but if I wanted I could catch up on all the chat about Robbie Keane. Sure there's only 30 bloody pages in the Keane thread in the last year. So if you're missing for 4 months there might be 10 pages of updates and chat on Keane.

I am not sure why it is done as I think it ruins the forum, you never see anything of current interest or relavance in the thread titles just 'Robbie Keane', Aiden Mcgeady (that's a big one), and Stephen Ireland.

Oh my jesus. Almost every single game I make a small post about how McGeady played. If he's mentioned in an article it'll be posted up. Anything. Seriously if you think there's nothing of interest or relevance in those threads then you really are on the wrong forum. The Stephen Ireland one is completely different because anything about Ireland pretty much has to get kept to that thread unless he's talking about a come back for us.

It also means one thread about a person immediately gets 'hi-jacked' by the latest news on that person so that topic gets buried and lost.

This is where you seem to be going wrong. You seem to be thinking that when a thread gets merged in with another thread that we now have 2 threads in one. If I merge a thread into the Robbie Keane one it's becomes a few posts in the Robbie Keane thread. It might have been a thread about his performance last night, it'll now be a few posts about his performance last night. If of big enough interest, anyone with a brain should know that when they open the Keane thread people are going to be talking about his performance last night. When Keane scores his next goal or misses his next sitter or is in the papers for whatever reason the thread will then descent into discussion on that.

If I feel it should have it's own thread then I'll leave it as it's own thread but I'm just one mod.

[eirebhoy]

btw, if you haven't been on here since, say, Monday, these will be the topics being discussed in these threads since you were last online:

Cillian Sheridan - His goals and performance vs Kilmarnock.
James McCarthy - Billy Reid on his exclusion from Ireland squad.
Andy Reid - Roy Keane on his omission from the squad and general discussion on his exclusion. Then yesterday an update to say he came off the bench vs Blackburn.
Robbie Keane - his miss against Bolton.
Keith Andrews - his performance vs Sunderland.

I really don't see this big mess and jumble that tricky colour keeps describing. All of the above is what these threads are there for. If we started opening separate threads for all of the above topics the place would be a mess.

[tricky_colour]

Cillian Sheridan - His goals and performance vs Kilmarnock.
James McCarthy - Billy Reid on his exclusion from Ireland squad.
Andy Reid - Roy Keane on his omission from the squad and general And
Andy Reid - Start from the bench vs Blackburn.
Robbie Keane - his miss against Bolton.
Keith Andrews - his performance vs Sunderland.

The above is useful and tell me something

What is below, is completely meaningless, it is just a list of Irish players,
as I know who they are already, it tells me nothing.

Cillian Sheridan
James McCarthy
Andy Reid
Robbie Keane -
Keith Andrews -

So if I want to find anything I have to search through all those messy threads, which is ad extremely inefficient way to do it.

As far as I am aware none of the users requested the forum to be like that.
If the users wanted the forum like that then that is what they would have done themselves, without anyone doing it for them.

OK if there are two 'Robbie Keanes howler' threads you can group them togeather if you must, but taking it any further than that basically just ruins the usability of the forum.

[Billsthoughts]

Is it possible to merge threads when archiving them, while keepin the more blatant ones under the main threads?

Ireland forum bit stagnant due to the uber threads...

[eirebhoy]

As far as I am aware none of the users requested the forum to be like that.
If the users wanted the forum like that then that is what they would have done themselves, without anyone doing it for them.

What users? Those recent topics I listed above weren't merged into anything........

People post in those threads all the time. You seem to think that we just merge a load of threads in there. Someone wanted to comment on Sheridan's goals so they opened the Sheridan thread and posted. Someone wanted to post Keane's comments about Reid so they posted it in the Reid thread. Someone wanted to post about Andrew's performance yesterday so they posted it in the Andrews thread.

You see how it goes? You see the way 95% of people use this forum? That's the way it is and that's the way those other 2 forums are. Plenty of people like it that way. You don't. I'm sure there's other forums out there.

Every topic is not worthy of a new thread. Full stop.

It's a joke that you think we should have a new thread when Cillian Sheridan scores or when Andrews plays well. Jesus.

Is it possible to merge threads when archiving them, while keepin the more blatant ones under the main threads?

Ireland forum bit stagnant due to the uber threads...

Sorry, don't really know what you mean. I don't do any archiving but maybe other mods do. I'd just merge the odd thread that doesn't merit a new thread which tbh I don't really have to do very often (other than match days).

[paul_oshea]

just back from a couple of days and loads of threads are in the dark green colour. It makes me not want to read half the stuff, and if there were more threads around the one subject point i.e. the player then I wouldn't want to trawl through each one. By clicking on robbie keane thread i know i will see all things related to robbie.

I dont usually agree with the status quo of this site but I have to say if you like to read every thread and if you are a frequent visitor then the way the mods do it at the moment is the best in my opinion. I know exactly where to go to read about what I want to read about.

[boovidge]

whilst i think the mods are a bit too trigger-happy sometimes, i generally like how this site is run.

It's much better than other forums where you have to trawl through masses of new topics with one or two posts in making the same point.

Also the lack of the dreaded "cliffhanger" titled topics (e.g "what if...") is great.

[Paddy Garcia]

Is it possible to go directly to the last post you have read on a thread - if this happens not to be on the last open page ?

Unread posts are marked on the last page but I don't think on previous pages!



I think its a good site, actually very well run, but again that threads can be locked prematurely at times, sometimes if they don't hold an interest for an individual mod.

[paul_oshea]

ya well said paddy.

i thought that used to happen on this site that you coud go directly into it but you cant it sees. At least on the page, I mean how can a computer tell whether or not you read post 5 of page 7 or al the way up to post 19.

[geysir]

I rest secure in the knowledge that the Mods who have being doing an excellent job running this Ireland forum will continue to do so, making it easy to navigate with a minimum nr.of new threads and an overall rational and appreciated sense of structure.

[elroy]

I love this website but am I the only one who finds it annoying to have to scroll from millions of pages just to comment on the latest topic on certain issues? Take Robbie Keane for example, I believe the first entry was made at the time of the LAST World Cup.
Just saying, is this mandatory? I mean the whole point of a message board to me is to get on current events. For example, instead of having to click on most recent then having to backlog, just simply have categories that are current. One example would be, "Robbie Keane Misses". That would be one for today. For last week, it would have been "Robbie Keane 2 goals today." I mean just having one topic for a player is comical, annoying, hard to navigate, and taking away from current issues....This is the only message board I have seen that does this, and I think it takes away from posting current stuff. Agree/Disagree?

Does not clicking on the button that brings you to last unread post in a topic not solve your above mentioned problem???
In that case you bypass all the old posts and onto the upto dates posts and issues etc.

[SkStu]

Does not clicking on the button that brings you to last unread post in a topic not solve your above mentioned problem???
In that case you bypass all the old posts and onto the upto dates posts and issues etc.

exactly. It is what it is and its fine. Works very well.