Finding Replies to Posts...HELP!

Hello. I have been on ATS since Christmas of 2007, but in all that time I have found one particular thing very irritating, and I would like some feedback or suggestions.

As the title implies, I am having trouble searching for replies to posts I have made in various threads. I like to post all over the place, and at the very least and as a simple gesture of courtesy, I like to go back and see if anyone has replied to any of them, so I can answer any questions they might have or whatever. I often do not have time to sit in front of my computer and refresh pages and stay on top of a conversation, so going back and re-replying is often my only choice.

The thing is, when I go back, if I haven't memorized where my posts were located, I get stuck scrolling down through tons of material or using Edit>Find in my browser and still going through till I find any replies.

[pause for breath][/pause for breath]

Is there some way of looking for replies more efficiently that I have yet to discover? If not, howzabout we discuss adding a new feature that can be accessed under My ATS that will produce a queried listing of all particular replies to recent posts?

Is this possible? Anyone feel this is a good idea? A bad idea? Is there some better way? Thanks.

--
obilesk

Here you go mate:

View your posts

To get here. Just go to your profile. Look right under the ATS headlines (Right now its ATSNews) and you will see Profile- Posts- Threads. Click Posts which is in Green and there you go...

[edit on Jun 6th 2009 by TheMythLives]

This has been brought up hundreds of times by hundreds of members including myself.

It is a very annoying thing to have to go through all the pages to get a reply or find a post I know.

But it's impossible to have a system that would instantly find your posts. With the ammount of traffic and the ammount of posts being done everyday, the coding for somethign like that would be ridiculous.

Feel free to put in the Complaints section however.

~Keeper

reply to post by TheMythLives

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Sweet! Thank you.

reply to post by tothetenthpower

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Here are your posts mate:

ToTheTenethPowers Posts

reply to post by TheMythLives

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Yes I know about that feature, I don't think that's what he meant however. Unless they've updated that system so it takes you directly to your last post.

Before it use to just bring you to the first page of the thread.

~Keeper

reply to post by tothetenthpower

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Yeah I figured it was an old complaint, so I did a search and nothing came up. I imagine it would be a coding nightmare. I did the pseudocode for it, and it seemed doable. But real code is definitely a bit worse!

reply to post by obilesk

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No problem. Sorry ToTheTenthPower, I thought thats what you meant. Unfortunatley the only way to remember your posts on a specific page is to get the PID#.

To get the PID number click the "THIS POST" At the very top of your posts after the post date and Single post buttons. Just remember that URL and save it somewhere. When you want to check it: put the url in and there you go...

[edit on Jun 6th 2009 by TheMythLives]

Yeah it shows in the list that I made a comment, but it just takes me to the first page in the thread...

reply to post by TheMythLives

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Hmmmm lemme give it a try...

reply to post by TheMythLives

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yeah, that's the way to do it. But you'd have to safe that number or that URL in general, and then come back to it later once you wanted to check the replies.

Thanks for the help Myth, always a pleasure .

~Keeper

reply to post by obilesk

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Well that certainly does help in finding my posts. In turn it will help in finding the replies.

Honestly, if the IT guys wouldn't mind, I could help write the code that would allow for this idea to work. It would take forever, but time is on my side (unemployed Michigander).

reply to post by tothetenthpower

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As always mate.

Maybe one day in the near future it will be a new add on...

Thanks to both of you! What a relief to cut down on my wheel time on my scroll mouse!!

It's not impossible to find all replies - it would require basically the same kind of MySQL and PHP commands&functions as to display all your posts. But until that time you can still get the pages that contains replies to you:

Here is a Google search which returns all replies to you on thread 359427 (My name is Nick and I'm new here at ATS., page 1). The search term is made out of three parts:

site:abovetopsecret.com - only return results from ATS
"reply to post by obilesk" - return all pages with replies
inurl:thread359427 - get replies from a particular thread

complete search query:


Be sure to click on "repeat the search with the omitted results included".

If you leave out the inurl part, you get all replies ever made to you as such.

Have fun!

[edit: fixed links]

[edit on 6-6-2009 by scraze]

reply to post by obilesk

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Not a problem.

Glad to help a fellow ATS'er...


And Scraze that AVATAR fits you too well...lol

No it wouldn't.

You could just create an extra column in the SQL database and join a few tables together; the user could then have an 'Alert me' button in the members section.

If someone clicks reply to your post, then it just sets a boolean flag to true and the 'Alert me' widget/button is invoked. That posts ID then gets written to the new column in the database.

When a member sees a green icon for example, in their flagged threads, then they would know someone has responded to that particular post.

Minimal code but it would be a head scratcher.

reply to post by scraze

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Yeah thats about the only way to really widdle it down. I wish we had a pre- coded engine though to speed things up and help non techie types.

reply to post by PrisonerOfSociety

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You're right, I wasn't saying that the acutal "coding" would be difficult. I just don't think that ATS is set up in that average way that you can just add the SQL database and everything works perfect.

Not when we have ATS, BTS and now the ATSNEWS all rolled into one.

I dunno, perhaps SO has been working on it for years .

~Keeper

reply to post by PrisonerOfSociety

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Exactly what I was thinking. Editing the database is really all it would take. Just a few Yes and Nos against a table or ten and it would work. It would have to be limited to a very few recent posts IMO, as the server space could get eaten alive and processing power and therefore cash would explode if it wasn't limited.