Quote Originally Posted by AbsolutHokie04 View Post
Do it now! Don't let the people trickling back learn the wrong way. Make the switch now, and as people start coming back for whatever reason - coaching change, reseating, or as the season gets closer, they'll have to learn to function properly in the new format.
I agree. If going to topic mode is something you are considering doing, then now would be the best time, before people start coming back.

However, there are many sites out there that use both topic and threaded modes, so I'm not sure that forcing everybody to linear mode is necessary.

I do think the site does need a little tweaking, mainly in trying to make users of the two views live a bit more harmoniously. I think going to Reply With Quote as default is one thing that will make things a lot easier, and it's not a huge change. I think that's something that needs to happen, and relatively soon, though. I also agree with fitngobbler's suggestion about changing the "+ REPLY TO THREAD" to have it reply to the initial post. I use that every once in a while, and did not realize that it wasn't doing that. It should. If you do that as the same time as the RWQ change, then that should work nicely. These two are truly tweaks, and are nowhere near the magnitude of changes that we saw in January, so I'd be pretty confident that people wouldn't freak out too much about these two changes.

One other suggestion would be something to identify when a "TSLguru" or "TSLhost" has posted in a thread, in the Topic view (at the board page, not the thread page). You can see when they're the most recent response, in the Last Post column. Maybe having an icon displayed in the Thread title somewhere, which would alert users to the existence of their post (if not link to their first post in the thread).

Two other nits, one cosmetic and one logical. In the What's New and Subscribed Posts views (they're search results, I know), the thread title is cut off due to a smaller column width for the title, but there's no way to see the remainder of the title on mousever (you can see the first part of the text, but not the rest of the title). As a result, there's a bit of a gap. I'm wondering if the title could word-wrap better in the thread title column, or if the missing text of the title could be displayed on mouseover. Also, when you hit refresh on either of these views, the sorting isn't accurate. I'm getting results that are no longer ordered by time of last post. (This may be just on Subscribed threads, but I don't think so). Is there a different ordering mechanism for refreshes of search results?

Just my $.02. Keep up the good work! I'm sure people will be filtering back between now and football season. Hang in there.