Ok, I know I'm adding to it here, but:

This BBS is FULL of useless noise. It's amazing how threads named "what software should I rip with?" become discussions about the RIAA and copyrights (that's a hypothetical call there, don't want to insult anyone).

I checked the BBS yesterday, and today there are over 1000 new posts??!?! Is this correct?

I know this is more of a social forum and all, but it's lost its utility for me...

There are quite a few posts in General that belong in other places (Installation in particular).

Please guys, think where you should be posting your new thread. It makes life a lot easier, even for those of us who read all the boards.

Yes, folks. If you see a thread fall off topic, and you're inclined to post, start a new thread in the Off Topic forum and put a note at the bottom of the original thread pointing people over there, as it often doesn't make sense to move the whole thread (not that that's ever been done, to my knowledge). In fact, it may make sense to respond to posts in an off topic manner by making such a link, if you think it might lead to a number of responses. I think everyone would agree that one-off jokes are okay. Doing this should help everyone who reads this board.

Are you sure it was 1000? not just 100? Maybe you've gotthat bug that everyone talks about with unread messages. I check this board all the time, and between yesterday and today I don't think I saw that many new posts. Could be wrong though...

err.. useless posts. Like this one?

This is, as has been stated, a result of the price drop. The turnover rate of this BBS is nothing compared to others. Once the riocars sell out and everyone stops asking questions that can be answered with 'it's in the FAQ', things will get better.

Shouldn't this post be in off topic maybe?

Agreed, this probably should have been put in Off-Topic. I'll duct tape my glass house together later on

It's interesting, Tony, myself and my business partner Wallace went snowboarding together yesterday and we got into a discussion about bulletin boards, communities of practice and how to keep discussions on-topic without a need for a dedicated human moderator.

Unfortunately, we didn't come up with any kind of answer. The best one could do would be to force a poll of the relevance of a certain topic, but many boards try that and the lack of good responses to the polling skews the hell out of the relevance anyway.

You've got to remember that some of the people that post here are newbies (me included) and find this BBS a great source of info. Especially when you're not sure how much confidence the rest of the world has in your new headunit you've just shelled out for.

You've got to remember that some of the people that post here are newbies (me included) and find this BBS a great source of info.

Tod's a newbie too. The "noise" to which he refers is any post that's not directly related to the car player but isn't in the "Off Topic" forum. He doesn't have time to read through a 100-post thread that started out with a valid player-related question but diverged into a pointless discussion of some other topic.

Once upon a time, the amount of traffic on this BBS used to be low enough, and the clientele sharp enough, so that even when threads did go off-topic, it was still a good thing. Lately, though, it's getting hard to read the BBS without running into noise.

Yeah it's getting to that point again when a nntp interface would be real handy.

What method do you old hands use to read all the new posts in a day without having to reopen and skim through the entirety of every thread that has a new post?

Like in a newsreader or mail client if it's a mailing list, i can just go next next next to read each new message by thread.

At the moment i am going to the general index, waiting a minute for that to load, then clicking on a thread waiting for that to load, then i either go next wait wait wait next wait wait wait next. Which doesn't go to just the new messages, but goes through all of them. Or i click on flat and wait a minute for that to load and still have to skim through all the messages, but at least i don't have to wait for them to load one by one.

The other thing i've been using lately is the all new messages in the last 24 hours feature. But then when i click on a message i still end up clicking on flat so that i can see the context in which it is written. And viewing them by last 24 hours, you can't sort by thread so all the messages get mixed up and i end up reading threads twice etc etc

What method do you old hands use to read all the new posts in a day without having to reopen and skim through the entirety of every thread that has a new post?

This method right here.