A long stretch of my two cents on a few of things discussed in this thread:
Most active vs most recent posts: For starters, “most active” can be a bit of a misnomer. Assuming you define “most active” as the threads with the most responses, then you could have old threads with many responses in the past which are not really “active” in the present. Yet, they would stay at the top of the list indefinitely if threads were arranged in order of activity. That makes no sense to me.
As is, posts are listed as the most recent (other than the few stickies). This makes sense since most of the time that is what we are looking for, not something that was active last week or last month or whenever. If a thread continues to receive responses even every few days or so, it will still remain near the top of the list of threads.
Link to start of thread or last post: I suppose it would be nice to be able to choose where you wanted to go, beginning or end, but … wait, you can do that fairly simply as it stands for those listed on the front page or not. If you click on the individual threads listed under a group, then that will take you to the start of that thread. But if you would rather go directly to the last post of that thread, then you’ve got one additional click, but lots more options from there. Instead of the individual thread, click on NEW FORUM POST under the Premium group or GROUP FORUM under other groups. From there you get a list of all the threads under that group and you can choose if you want to start at the beginning or end of the thread. If you wish to start at the beginning, then click on the title of the thread. If you wish to start with the last post of the thread then click on “Last Post” to the far right which surprisingly will take you to, ta da, the last post of that thread.
Show Your Posts: One thing to keep in mind regardless of how posts are listed now or may be in the future is that you can click on Show Your Posts to quickly see threads in which you have participated and may want to browse again. I use it quite often, but from comments, it doesn’t seem to be effectively utilized in the search for older threads.
Shelves: I would agree that shelving the shelves would be an easy fix to free up more space for more forum links on the front page. And since they are ones listed by our connections, they could easily just be attached to our connections pages should we be interested to take a look. But I’m not sure why we actually need to free up more space for forum links and if we do need more space, why not simply have one link to a group forum rather than list that group’s individual most recent posts. More times than not there is not any activity even listed under the forum groups other than Premium. There are four other groups listed on my front page and no new threads have been listed in any of them for at least two days and some lots longer. That is a major waste of space if that is a concern. Still, it is not in itself a big deal imo.
Central Forum Issues: I agree wholeheartedly with Linda Lee that the most meaningful and entertaining forum is something like the old site central meeting place. Although I am well aware of the possibility, yea, probability, that “issues” will/do develop, the pros greatly outnumber the cons in this scenario. Of course differences of opinion are going to arise and words sometimes exchanged in the heat of the moment, but very rarely does it come to the point where the entire thread needs to be shut down. Most folks remain at least tolerable while defending a position. And if the “enter at your own risk” (so to speak) experiment in the latter days of the old site doesn’t always work, then a last resort solution to curb overzealous remarks could be imposed on a case by case basis with whatever moderator option is deemed necessary. A bad apple here or there shouldn’t spoil our appetite for the other delicious fruits of our labor. As far as changes to the number of links to forums on the front page (or other suggestions within this thread), if it is a simple/economical fix for Sol, and it is a priority for a lot of folks, then I would say do it. For me personally though, the greatest and bestest fix would be the Central Forum discussed.
Just my opinion as always. Take care. Vern
