Mark / bookmark / remember a post?

[bmah]

I'm looking for some functionality that will help me with this use case:

I'm reading threads with unread messages, and I see something I want to comment on, just not right now. Maybe I want to be sure I read to the end of the thread before writing a reply (wow imagine that) or it's too hard to compose a post on my iPhone, or I don't have the time right now. In any case I want to be able to easily come back to one particular post, or at least one particular thread.

If the TMC forums were a mailing list, and posts were email messages, I'd do something like "Mark as Unread" in my mail client, to make that message stand out so I can find it again easily. I haven't found the equivalent of that for the TMC forum software. Is there any such thing?

I know that messages have permalinks so in theory I could use the bookmark functionality in my Web browser to find my way back to posts I want to revisit but this feels like overkill. Also I don't have a common set of bookmarks across all my Web browsing platforms.

Does anybody else read and write messages this way? How do you handle this?

Thanks for any insights...

Bruce.

 

[Mark Z]

The fastest way to not lose a thread is to click "Watch Thread" at the upper right corner.

I just added a tag called "bookmark" to this thread. The word "Tags" is located under the thread title at the upper left. Since the word "bookmark" wasn't used by someone else, this thread is the only one that appears when searching the tags for "bookmark". Anyone who is logged in can add a tag without posting to the thread.

To search only tags, click the advance search and click the Search Tags button on the far right at the top.

For a link to an individual post, I'd use the permalink feature to save the link to "Notes" or another cloud based editor that I could access from the iPad, iPhone or IMac.

Replying to a thread automatically will create accessible links after someone replies, quotes or clicks a helpful/like/information type button. Just click the "Alerts" bell icon to see the links. That is an automatic way to follow the thread and track the response to a post.

Thanks for asking the question. It got me searching for an answer and post some help for everyone. Hopefully others are creating tags that are understandable and usable for all.

 

[bmah]

The fastest way to not lose a thread is to click "Watch Thread" at the upper right corner.

I understand that, but I was asking about individual messages.

I just added a tag called "bookmark" to this thread. The word "Tags" is located under the thread title at the upper left. Since the word "bookmark" wasn't used by someone else, this thread is the only one that appears when searching the tags for "bookmark". Anyone who is logged in can add a tag without posting to the thread.

To search only tags, click the advance search and click the Search Tags button on the far right at the top.

For a link to an individual post, I'd use the permalink feature to save the link to "Notes" or another cloud based editor that I could access from the iPad, iPhone or IMac.

Replying to a thread automatically will create accessible links after someone replies, quotes or clicks a helpful/like/information type button. Just click the "Alerts" bell icon to see the links. That is an automatic way to follow the thread and track the response to a post.

Thanks for asking the question. It got me searching for an answer and post some help for everyone. Hopefully others are creating tags that are understandable and usable for all.

If I understand correctly, tags are shared for everyone. So for this to work for my use case, I'd need to pick a tag that nobody else is using. Also I would have to not mind the entire world knowing what messages I'm interested in replying to. Hmmm.

I think the "save a permalink" approach is probably the best of the alternatives you suggested, and (like the bookmark-in-the-browser idea I tried) this should work, I was hoping more for something that was implemented within the forum software itself.

Thanks,

Bruce.

PS. Missing the "good old days" before Web-based forums, where we used email lists and we could rely on whatever email clients we used to manage our interactions with the lists. That way we got to pick and choose our client and how to customize and tune it.

PPS. Although back then, you had to walk to school, barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways...

 

[f-stop]

I'm looking for some functionality that will help me with this use case:

I'm reading threads with unread messages, and I see something I want to comment on, just not right now. Maybe I want to be sure I read to the end of the thread before writing a reply (wow imagine that) or it's too hard to compose a post on my iPhone, or I don't have the time right now. In any case I want to be able to easily come back to one particular post, or at least one particular thread.

If the TMC forums were a mailing list, and posts were email messages, I'd do something like "Mark as Unread" in my mail client, to make that message stand out so I can find it again easily. I haven't found the equivalent of that for the TMC forum software. Is there any such thing?

I know that messages have permalinks so in theory I could use the bookmark functionality in my Web browser to find my way back to posts I want to revisit but this feels like overkill. Also I don't have a common set of bookmarks across all my Web browsing platforms.

Does anybody else read and write messages this way? How do you handle this?

Thanks for any insights...

Bruce.

I use Watched Threads to remember threads of interest, but as you noted, that doesn't get you directly back to specific posts.

you mentioned iPhone, but not whether you also use a Mac or PC...

if you only use iOS & Mac, you could use the built-in Reading List feature of Safari to save the permalinks to specific post#s. These sync automatically across all your devices.

Of course you could use Bookmarks, but using Reading Lists is a single click and these are stored separately from your bookmarks so you don't have to mess up your other important bookmarks up with these temporary links. So in a way you can treat Reading List like your unread items in your mailing list analogy, compared to more permanent filing for links using bookmarks. plus it's fewer clicks/keystrokes than using bookmarks.

The Reading List is easily accessed with 1 click and you can delete items easily with 1 quick swipe after you've gone back and replied to the post. It's not a built-into-TMC solution, but hope this helps

 

[bhzmark]

I see something I want to comment on, just not right now. Maybe I want to be sure I read to the end of the thread before writing a reply (wow imagine that) or it's too hard to compose a post on my iPhone, or I don't have the time right now.

Highlight a selection of the text in the message and then Tap quote.

Do that as you read through the thread then go to the window to enter text and hit quote msgs and it will insert all the quotes that you highlighted. Then even if you leave that page and return to it on your computer ( because you watched it) it will have saved your draft post with quotes from the other posts.

It's a pretty clever functionality.