Secrets revealed or what you can monitor on the forum - Posts and contributors, times and figures …

Now to the things I really wanted to “reveal” although there are many more then I could know that already know all this or there are also many more of you who those things are not of any of your interest at all but I also believe there are people who would like to see some data but they just aren’t aware of how to access them. You can monitor your own posting activities and “progress” that way too after all so let’s go to the land of topics/posts, posters and figures.

Where to begin? At the beginning of course. Where’s the beginning? Right here at the first listed topic you see when entering the forum. For the time being I’m writing this (as you can see on the above picture) it’s “Bootcamps 2016” which is the latest topic to which one contributed something. But let’s go from the beginning.  

The title of the topic

The title itself usually tells one what the topic is all about although we’re tempted to change the course of discussion and go very off topic quite a lot so one just has to bring us back on track with posting something what’s in the title/topic original context.

If you click on the title it carries you exactly to the last unread post. If you didn’t read the topic at all yet, then it will take you to the first post. This is handy feature since you can be assured you’d never read one post twice unless you wanted it to.

If topic is marked bold black it means you didn’t read it yet and if it doesn’t contain the number of new posts next to it it means you probably don’t follow it so you’ll never get the new replies mark next to it.

If the topic is marked grey(ish) this means you’ve already read it or at least clicked on it and there are no new posts for you no matter do you follow it or not.

If there’s a blue circle besides the title of the topic it means you’re following it and the system lets you know there are new posts for you to read and the number of them is also written in that blue circle. Hovering over that circle you’ve got also written how many of unread posts you have in the topic.

If you read only some post in the topic and then left it or you just shortly clicked on the topic to see breathly what’s going on, the blue circle will change into grey and the number of the posts in it will tell you how many old unread posts remained for you to be read. The topic remains written in black bold script what means it’s still not enitrely read. Clicking on that grey number or the title of the topic will carry you where you left it.

“New” besides the title tells you that the topic is new.

You also can see which topic is pinned in its own category and which topics you’ve bookmarked.

As you see, pinned is the first topic and bookmarked is second.

Clicking the pin mark at the pinned topic will unpin this topic for you but not for all the others and the pin will turn slightly to mark that this topic is unpinned for you.

You can pin it back whenever you want with clicking on that “turned” pin again.

Clicking on the bookmark sign will not “unbookmakr” it but will throw you at the beginning of the topic despite you’ve read everything already and only in the topic - at the very end of it - you will be able to “unbookmark” it if you would want to.

Well, I believe this is approximately all about titles.

Categories

I believe there’s not much to say except that the category part consists from two parts. One is color marks which mark in which main category and subcategory the topic belongs and the other is written part which tells you the same just more “understadable”. Color marks are always two parted if there are subcategories in main category. As you can see in Welsh main category the first part is marked with green (Welsh main category) and the second with color of the sub-category. Green for “General/Questions”, blue for “Meetups/Events, brown for “Bootcamp” and pink one for “Online Eisteddfod” category. As you see some topics are posted directly to “Welsh” main category so the mark - despite it’s similar to “General/Questions” category consists from one (only green) part.

Clicking on the category or its mark takes you to the “Latest” general page of the forum and hovering upon the name of the category with the mouse it shows you the description of the category.

Well, the things are more and more interesting, aren’t they. We’re comming to the contributors to the topics where some things were already revealed in “How to send personal message” part of my “how to guide” but there’s more to it so let’s do some scene sighting around here.

Contributors/posters

First listed member (from left to right) is always that one who created the certain topic what it writes also when you hover upon with the mouse but did you know that when that particular member is surounded with blue(ish) circle is last poster too? Yes, the light blue circle around the creator of the topic marks that this member also contributed the last post to the topic. (Those with the blue “avatar” (like Justin) can hide almost perfectly from this - haha). If you hover with mouse upon such member now it won’t tell you only that that member is the creator of the topic but also that he/she is latest poster aswell.

If there is no blue circle around the creator of the topic then the most recent poster is that one listed the last at the right. Clicking on any member in this “contributors” row opens the wonderland of their profile which tells you when they joined and when they posted last post, reveals the beautiful “visit card” background (if you set up any) and from it you can go to their profile with click on the profile picture or send a personal message with click on the “Message” button. Hovering upon the member icon in the row it will always tell you the name of the member and that they’re frequent posters.

All the rest regarding members you know already I believe.

And now to the right part of the list. As you see on the first picture, there are 3 columns which each reveals their own statistics data or there’s more? let’s see.

Replies

The number of replies tells you how many replies one particular topic has got and (I’ve written about this once already) note that original post is not counted into this number but the number of posts when you go to that particular topic does include it so there will always be the difference of 1 post inbetween those two looks. The color of number of replies tells you how high like rate this topic has what can be seen also if you hover with the mouse upon the number. Light red will tell you that the topic has extreamly high like to post rate and dark red that the topic has very high like to post rate and brown(ish) that the topic has high like to post rate. Black number tells you only the number of replies though.

Clicking on the number it opens that “time traveling machine” we’ve talked about already in previous “episode” of the series which shows you when was topic first created (upper number) and when the last post was written (lower number). If the last reply was written day or more ago it shows the day of its posting but if the last reply was posted in the same day it shows you exact time of its posting.

Clicking on either arrow it takes you to the related post (the first one or the last one).

Views

This is maybe the part which might interest you the most. Like numbers of replies the numbers of views can be differently coloured too but hovering upon them doesn’t reveal you what those colors mean. If you ask me it goes for the same things as with replies - extreamly viewed topic, very highly viewed topic, highly viewed topic etc … You’ll also see that numbers of views to 1000 are displayed with exact numbers but those at 1000 and more are displayed just with 1k, 1,5k etc. How can you then know how many people exactly have viewed one topic. it’s as with most of things - with hovering upon the number with the mouse. Doing this it reveals you exact number of views which (of course) doesn’t include the topic creator’s ones. If the number says 2,3k there are from 1250 and up to 1350 views. When number goes higher the count will say 1,4k. Clicking on the number doesn’t take you anywhere though.

Activity

Here’s actually not much to tell. You can see when the last post was posted and it is displayed like this:

• in minutes - if the post was posted within an hour but not more than that time ago
• in hours if the post was posted within 24 hours (no matter of if its time is split inbetween two days (yesterday and today))
• in days if the post was posted within one or more days but not more then 14 days
• with date (without the year) if post was posted within a year but not as fresh as 14 days ago.
• with date without the day of the mounth but with the year if post was posted last year or earlier.

hovering with mouse upon the number reveals exact date and time of the last post but if you go just a bit more right, where’s nothing written anymore (just slightly) you’ll discover one more display which tells you when exactly the topic was created and when exactly the last post was posted.

Clicking on this number will carry you directly to the newest post and not to the first unread post if there are any in the topic.

So this is it on the main Welsh category page. Scrolling down the topic list (if you are patient enough) will bring you to the very first topic created in 2014. You will also see that first topics were posted only in Welsh main category as probably subcategories were added only later on when the need to have them occured. That’s why I so passionately edit “wrong” categories when neccessary as I believe they are here with purpose.

So this is everything for today. Next time we shall take a walk though one topic and see what wonders can be found inthere.

Happy exploring!