Suggestion Box

 (This message was edited by tehuti_88 on 07-24-02 @ 1:43 am EDT)

Firstly, re: message threading; I can see why it's not possible the way it's usually envisioned.

Instead of that, however, to avoid confusion--there have been times when I have replied to posts that I thought were meant for me, and have greatly embarrassed myself when I learned they were not. I thought perhaps to use a Yahoo! technique might be good. They use threading, but they also have appended to every message, something like

This message is a reply to Message 397 by tehuti_88

Only in this site's message format, instead of "Message 397" it would give the post number. Would something like this be feasible? It doesn't seem like it would require threading, just a little note on every message that is a direct reply to another message. It would reduce confusion, yet it wouldn't force other messages off the page, nor require extensive site overhauls, as threading might. On glancing at the page, users would STILL have to go through all the posts "conversation style," but they would also be able to view the different threads of conversations and would not put their foot in their mouth when it isn't warranted. :( As a bonus, the little note could provide a link to the message in question.

Now my own suggestions for author searches:

Author search by most items rated: Go and find which authors are more dedicated to rating and reviewing items. Not sure though if the search should include simply most items rated, or highest ratio of ratings to reviews. Either way, it would be a good way to highlight users who are dedicated to rating and reviewing others.

Author search by genre: I prefer fantasy and sometimes I wish I could search authors by which ones write fantasy most, rather than to just search through fantasy items. This is harder than the one above though so I'm not sure how it would work. Search for who has written the most fantasy items onsite, total? Or search according to which genre appears most in a user's portfolio? The first one seems more doable. Say someone has written 2000 fantasy items and has the highest number of them so they'd be number one, and so on down the list to who has written the fewest. I am hoping that if this were instituted it would also include the secondary and tertiary genres in the search, if fantasy were not the primary genre.

While I'm on that subject, I just wish to ask, does power search include the secondary and tertiary genres when searching? For example, say I decide to search for STATIC ITEMS in the FANTASY genre, then sort them according to LONGEST FIRST. Would it also bring up all items that have "fantasy" as the secondary or tertiary genre but not the first?

Answer to that question!--I just tried searching for an item of mine that is in the genres "Mythology, Romance/Love, Tragedy." I used power search to search for static items in the "Tragedy" genre (my item's tertiary genre) and then sorted by which was longest, and mine didn't show up where it should have (it should have been the second-longest item), so it seems power search only looks for the primary genres. I really wish it could search according to genre, no matter if it is primary, secondary, or tertiary. The power search is good for narrowing a search down, but it appears to do it too much by cutting out a lot of potential results.

Hope this made sense.