BuzzerBeater Forums

Every suggestion is good, even if the specific suggestion content is not that good, as any suggestion is a door for others to think about other related suggestions. :)

A forum message bookmark feature has been suggested several times. That would achieve the same thing and provide some additional uses. The bookmarks are currently a supporter feature, though, so I assume the same would happen with forum bookmarks (if they are implemented).

It is not exactly the same.
Forum bookmarking is for a full Thread.
Mark as unread is for a specific Message inside a thread.

In addition, i would suggest (upon what you've wrote) I would suggest for the benefit of the site to divide the supporter features "extras" from the following important two directories - Suggestion and Bugs.
The site will benefit from it, both those features should be supported for all users for those folders.

It is not exactly the same.
Forum bookmarking is for a full Thread.
Mark as unread is for a specific Message inside a thread.

Bookmarking can be implemented for a single thread or a single message in a thread or - gasp - both. The feature does not exist yet, no need to consider the specification somehow limited or even fixed.

Anyway, the way the unread messages in a thread are currently handled presents an implementation problem for a "mark message as unread" feature: Only the information about one point in the thread seems to stored. This means that all messages after an unread message are considered as unread. However, it is not the first unread message in a thread that is stored, rather the last read message. You can see this by following a link to a thread, say to message number 50, you have previously not read. After you have done so, also messages 1-49 are considered read even though you never loaded them. Of course, I don't know exactly how this is implemented, but it is pretty easy to deduct this based on thread behaviour while using forums.

Relating to your opinion that this would be "very simple", there are two problems that would need to be solved in addition to implementing the feature itself. They follow from the description above. Firstly, you could not mark more than one message per thread as unread (every message after the first you mark as unread would also be considered unread; and should you first mark message X as unread followed by marking message X+N unread (where X and N are positive integers), message X would be again marked as read because you just read X+N to set it as unread). Secondly, you could not find again the point where you stopped reading the thread after marking one message unread (unless it is the last message of the thread).

As you can probably tell, a separate bookmarking feature would be more useful because it would allow direct access to interesting messages without affecting the way how read and unread messages are logged in the threads currently. I can naturally be off regarding the technical details of the forum software used in BB and its current features (I have never seen the source code of any forum software, let alone this one), but my explanation seems pretty solid based on one minute of testing the thread behaviour and several years of using the forums.

I would suggest for the benefit of the site to divide the supporter features "extras" from the following important two directories - Suggestion and Bugs.
The site will benefit from it, both those features should be supported for all users for those folders.

I do not follow. Bugs are fixed for everyone, not just Supporters. Some suggested features are implemented for all users, some only for Supporters. The Supporter features are generally those that require more from the servers. And all Supporter features are such that they give no in-game benefits.

Last edited by GM-WallyOop at 10/23/2011 1:03:21 PM

Bookmarking can be implemented for a single thread or a single message in a thread or - gasp - both. The feature does not exist yet, no need to consider the specification somehow limited or even fixed.

In web browser the term bookmark is used to define booking a page.
I previously presumed you've meant something similar - bookmarking a full thread.

I would suggest for the benefit of the site to divide the supporter features "extras" from the following important two directories - Suggestion and Bugs.
The site will benefit from it, both those features should be supported for all users for those folders.

I do not follow. Bugs are fixed for everyone, not just Supporters. Some suggested features are implemented for all users, some only for Supporters. The Supporter features are generally those that require more from the servers. And all Supporter features are such that they give no in-game benefits.

As you wrote previously that the bookmarking feature is being implemented for the Supporters only, I've suggested that at least for those two folders (as they are importnat to the site as much it is important to the user) this feature will be available regardless of Supporter "issue".

Regarding the difficulty of the feature, it depends what they will implement.
They can give it in 2 ways;

The one you have pointed and exampled about - selecting different messages on a thread, which is a little bit more difficult but not much as I see it.

Or, just marking a single Message as Unread in a thread.
From that point all messages will be marked as unread.
This is a easier option, and also a reasonable one, as usually messages on a thread which disscuss a single specific object will be read upon messages order.
This is deferent from what you have in mind - Emails - because each email as deferent topic.

Last edited by Pini פיני at 10/23/2011 2:05:50 PM

As you wrote previously that the bookmarking feature is being implemented for the Supporters only, I've suggested that at least for those two folders (as they are importnat to the site as much it is important to the user) this feature will be available regardless of Supporter "issue".

I don't know if it is being implemented. It is only an assumption that forum bookmarks, like all bookmark features in BB, would be a Supporters-only feature if implemented. I agree that the forum bookmark feature would be very useful for all users.

This is deferent from what you have in mind - Emails - because each email as deferent topic.

No, I meant the forum threads (the BB mail already has a feature for marking a message unread).

I agree that the forum bookmark feature would be very useful for all users.

It is not exactly what I've said.
The "Suggestion" and "Bug" forums are needed to have this feature for all users, as it helps the site itself.
The other folders may have this feature for only the Supporters users.

No, I meant the forum threads (the BB mail already has a feature for marking a message unread).

This is not what I've meant to point out.
What I've meant is that you thought Email-wise. There you want the ability to mark message regardless of the time you received it, as each mail as different topic.
When thinking about it Forum-wise, it is easy to understand that there you can mark all the thread as unread from a specific message and from there untill the end, as it is a single topic, and most of the time (almost always) there is no reason to open later message before a former one. So, marking as unread from a specific message will cover most casses needed.

What I've meant is that you thought Email-wise.

No, I was very much thinking about forum threads, and in no sense whatsoever was there any email thinking involved. The BB forums have dozens of messages I would be interested in reading again, while I have no need or time to go through the whole thread or every message after these specific messages. This is critical because in many cases where I would like to bookmark more than one message per thread they are several pages apart, so marking a single message unread would not help much. I am not alone here.

OK...
Anyhow, I never had a case where I had in a single thread several NON-CONSECUTIVE messages that I didn't read.
There where always consecutive.

In any case, agree with me that most of the times the unread messages are consecutive.
Due to that, and due to the fact that it should be easier implementing a feature for the consecutive unread messages, what I wrote is that this is also a solution that we all can benefit from it in the first step...

This is ridiculous. I am not talking about unread messages per se. I am talking about messages you would like to view (again) later. This is the use case for which you made your suggestion in the first place. The bookmarking solution is a more general solution, and therefore generally a preferred solution. Your suggested solution is fairly limited in usefulness, as you can see by reading my messages in this thread.