Forum's mechanics: autosticking adjacent threads. How to prevent it? Thread - Dominions 3: The Awakening

This forum sticks two adjacent messages from the same author together.
Sometimes such a behaviour is highly undesirable. I can't create several separate header sections(messages) when I set up new MP game.
If my message was last in the thread, and I need to make some announcement to players, this text autosticks to the last message, so no new messages is generated (thus it is quite probable that players will miss this new information).

Is there any way to have a control over autosticking forum's feature? Any mean to turn it off or somehow prevent?

I think it cannot be turned off. I myself am not a fan of the way the forum here works.

Its a pity to hear that.
Sometimes this tiny and basic piece of forum's mechanics is missing badly.

How do you even get a line break or a blank line in your posts?This is typed after a single
Blank line supposed to be above
??

Actually its not missing.
It was put in on purpose and very difficult to do.

for a blank line try using the invisible character alt-255.
Its an old internet trick

Then it was quite an odd purpose I would say.
And even if such a purpose is somehow justified, it is simply ridiculous that there was no option left to make separate messages for those who needs it.
If I post a week later a message on a different subject - I probably don't intend it to be sticked with old message on another issue, do I?
I'm not 100% certain, but it is probably the first time in my life when I encounter such an odd 'feature' among various forums/social networks of different kind.
Edit: the closest I remember is that Skype sticks adjacent messages as well. But damn! Skype is an instant messenger.

Edited by: chelubey

It tends to be a choice between fast discussion or long-term documentation.

Many sites do it. They keep their load down by allowing a person only one login. Then they added software to look at a post and see that you were also the last person to post, then attach it. This keeps that one login from bumping up their own stuff. Then when older threads roll off the screen for awhile they lock it, and later they archive it (or just delete it). Many sites do it.

This site does offer an alternative since we each get a blog here that we can use to post reviews and how-to guides. They seem to like those.

>This keeps that one login from bumping up their own stuff.

If someone sends senseless information for whatever reasons, it is a common problem for moderators to deal with.

At the same time if there are some deep reasons for players to care about bumping their threads (e.g. some game with clan-structure, when clans are interested to keep their threads-advertisements), then such a basic mean as sticking messages won't prevent two (or more) players to bump the thread one after another in turn.
So this mean supposed to counter certain bad behaviour doesn't truelly help as long as there is any decent motivation behind such a behavious.
Remarkable idea, indeed.

>Then when older threads roll off the screen for awhile they lock it, and later they archive it (or just delete it). Many sites do it.

Yes, definitely. Especially in late 90ths, when there could be problems to keep the data.
In modern world however problems to keep people's texts are much less.

And which kind of general "many sites" are you speaking about?
Some chats? Maybe.
Twitter where people don't remember what they were discussing the day before yesterday? Maybe.

>This site does offer an alternative since we each get a blog here that we can use to post reviews and how-to guides. They seem to like those.

If I'm game's admin, I need a mean to keep players informed about events/changes.
How am I supposed to do it? Players are not obliged to constantly read threads marked as already read over and over again to check if there was something added to the end of the last message.

And even if I'm not admin, it is sickly disgusting to make two replies to two people and see your messages glued to each other.

Edited by: chelubey

Apparently Desura's preference is a not an info site. They support their games with a site where people can ask a question and get an answer. And where old information rolls off. Considering some of the complaints that the old Dom3 site had that would have some advantages. And it would seem to work fine for most of their games.

Im not arguing that it sucks. Many games of Dom3 are still setup and played. Just not here.

I still like the old Shrapnel site better and continue to use it. The forum is much better. And having a private chat room available for each game is fantastic. If they take that down then the game servers themselves might have to step up. I could easily add a forum to www.Dom3Minions.com if needed

Edited by: gp1628

gp1628 wrote: I still like the old Shrapnel site better and continue to use it. The forum is much better.

As far as I remember Shrapnel's forum was supposed to be closed after an year since some date (somewhen in the end of last winter). So we'll have Shrapnel's dom3 forum for just several months more. Is it right? I have quite vague remembrences about that.
Actually with dom3wiki unavailable I found myself to address shrapnel's forum quite often (via targeted google search). Modinspector with all its tremendous use still lacks a lot of significant information. Pity if we'll lose shrapnel's data soon.

Edited by: chelubey

We dont know. Actually its already over the date that Shrapnel promised to keep it open.
Now its up to them. But they still have other forums open for games that left years and years before

Thanks for the information.
I guess I'd better check what I could backup last winter when this issue was hot.
I don't know about others, but I find it still a lot of stuff there to be very useful whatever the degree of imperfectness and obsoleteness it has.

Yes. Particularly the threads with mods, maps, and 3rd party programs attached as zip files.
I grabbed things like the Dom3 Parody Songs, and Limericks,
I want to go back and get some of the beautiful UI themes and source code that did cool things to map files (both of which should still work in Dom4)

Edited by: gp1628