Games I run tend to have a lot of "Notes" threads stickied up at the top of the game.  Rules, character creation/request guidelines, maps, party status, game synopsis/timelines, and so on. Typically, I'll have up to four of these per active gaming party within a game, and it can get a bit messy when there are more than to active adventures going on. Especially if I have to add to or change a thread, and it inadvertently gets bumped out of place.

The one thing I'd really like to see is an assignable "display priority" value, or some other means of conveniently re-arranging these threads.  The way I currently have to do it is to edit all the threads and "bump" them individually, in just the right order, so they are listed how I want them to appear.

Is there a way to simply assign which threads should go where, and have them stay there?  It's a feature that would reduce a lot of headaches on my part.

Lock thread position prioritization, hell yes, that'd be nice.  Not all notice threads are dead and inactive, meaning that simply bumping it into a specific spot would solve the problem.  You want your rules to always be #1, even if you just posted something new in your city overview thread, which is important, but never more important than the rules.

I think I would agree that this could be a useful feature.

I like having my Notice threads in a specific order :P (What can I say, I'm a perfectionist/OCD)
This message was last edited by the user at 21:25, Tue 31 Mar 2009.

I agree this would be great.  The trick is finding an elegant implementation.  How exactly would this work?  The devil may be in the details.

Right next to Groups, add Priority.  Just like Groups, a little numerical menu pops down, you set the priority, it stays in that position on the main page until otherwise edited/removed.

OK, so it adds one new field to the Thread_Attributes table (or whatever) and it adds one new drop-down to the message.cgi screen.  That's not too bad I guess.  Then of course there's all the backend code for displaying it properly.

Ultimately, compared to some things, it should be simple.  If we already have notices to make things stick to the topic above normal threads, then we're only a step away from prioritizing notices that don't move at all, ........ dude, if you think about it, this should be easier than having Notice threads move up with new posts because those threads have the code that bumps a thread up, prioritized threads would effectively lack that code lmao.  Right?

Erm, not quite.  I think you'd be able to put multiple threads with the same priority, which would then be sorted by bump order.

I agree - I am a stickler for having information in the order I need it in. I can re-order threads, but it's very clunky and time-consuming. Being able to assign priority easily would rock.

The nearest thing to this that I've seen is on the photo gallery site I use, Pbase.com.  When you edit a directory's details, every item in it (both photos and other directories) has an arbitrary number listed next to it.  By default, these start at 100 and increase by hundreds, but you can assign any number you want.  When you've saved your changes, the viewer sees everything in ascending numerical order.

Imagine a "Game Display" GM option screen that displayed a list of all the threads, with a sort-number next to them.  Like this:

[0100] Game Rules
[0200] Requesting to Join
[0300] Posting Style and Play Suggestions
[0400] Adventure Notes
xxx1 OOC chat thread
xxx2 Kill the rats in the cellar (The Journey Begins)
xxx3 OOC combat rolls


Now if you decided you wanted to add a map thread between Posting Style and Adventure Notes, you could just create it and assign it, say, [350] as its sort number, and it would show up where it was supposed to.  Maybe one day, the admin decides to reorder all the threads.  It would be as easy as just going to that index, and entering the priorities all at once.

I agree this would be useful, to be able to prioritize or re-order threads. However it seems like it would add complexity and confusion for something that seems rather minor. IF we (by 'we' I mean 'jase') added this functionality, it should be tucked out of the way, not something we'd see every time we post or whatnot (possibly when you post or edit the first post in the thread).

Yes it would definitely be an extra level of complexity (both in the back-end and for the users) which would really only benefit few.

It's a nice idea but definitely won't happen until I convert the thread database to mySQL, which is on an unknown timeline.