Suggestions to make browsing forums more efficient

I would like to request the default for the groups/forums to be an alpha listing, not random as it currently seems to come up, for ease in browsing.

After a couple of weeks I finally realized if I clicked on "groups," below "notifications," the list would re-jog to alpha. But I don't think a lot of users have discovered that.

---

Same is true for "people." It would preferred if the default is alpha listing and there was some way to search for a real name, even if the person goes by something different on the site. (opt-in of course, not mandatory.) Especially for someone who wants to get teaching gigs, a real name is important to make the connection.

Many thanks for your consideration of these issues.

I would like to have the option to  mark all threads as read.  Some of the threads I am not interested in reading, but if I don't open them up and scroll down they forever show as new entries.  Being able to mark everything as read would be a great help.

I just wanted y'all to know we are listening and taking note of your suggestions.

We have an upgrade to groups and forums which we hope will be ready for prime time in a couple weeks.  The process is slow and we want to test it for a while and make certain it is working well before we put it on the live site.

Thanks, keep the ideas coming.  We're young and new and learning as we go.

Claudia, co-founder, Weavolution

Thanks Claudia!  I know it's a slow process changing things around and really think you are all doing a great job.  I have great  expectations that Weavolution will develop into a fantastic community given some time to grow and evolve. :)

Thank you Claudia and the Weavolution team for taking on this difficult task that aims to bring weavers together.  I think that because there are so many groups, so many projects and forums I sometimes feel lost and don't really have the time to browse as much as I'd like.  It would be great if there were different ways of searching so it's easier to find what you're looking for, like the way handweaving.net is organized so that even though there's so much stuff there it's not hard to narrow down and find what you're interested in.  You're doing a great job and I'm sure in time it will get better and better.

Eva

Thanks for the compliments Eva.  Have you tried the Advanced search?  I find it helps narrow things down if you are looking for one specific type of item.  In fact, I used it last Friday when I was debating how wide to make the rug I was planning on weaving.  I was able to search for rag rugs and found several then looked at the sizes on each.  I took that information to the weaving calculator under the Resources tab.  I put in all the numbers for the size and the weight and wpi and epi and when it looked good, I printed it, took my little printout down to my studio and started winding the warp.

Now to find the time to weave!!

Claudia, co-founder Weavolution

Hi Claudia, yes, the advanced search is really great, thank you!  I think I will take time out to study all the great options you have here - I'll try to check it all out at the "help" section.  Keep up the good work! 

Eva

I think we've actually managed to add almost all of the functionality that's been requested here.

You can get to the unread posts in a thread by clicking on the thread or on the number in the unread column.  Groups are now in alphabetical order on the Forums page(s), you can mark a thread as read (though I think we may need to change the label on the button).

If you have additional feedback, or need to report a problem with the new functionality, please add it to this thread:  http://www.weavolut ion.com/node/ 6806