Peter, I was investigating for myself whether this subforum (not this thread) might be a place for members to offer their facilities to through travelers. In doing that, I noticed that getting back to this here thread by going to Forums>SpyderLover Rider Map Discussions (
https://spyderlovers.com/forums/spyderlover-rider-map-discussions) is not an easy thing to do
because the subforum doesn't seem to list threads in any particular order.
So this latest thread we're on now for instance
doesn't show at the top of the list (which it would if threads were shown in reverse chronological order) and sometimes when I go to that link, it doesn't show at all and I have to scroll through to find it. And, that's me looking for a thread I know is there. So, I reasoned, a casual visitor looking for information about members along a route they were planning wouldn't know what to look for, even if they look in the "SpyderLover Rider Map Discussions", because those relevant threads wouldn't be apparent.
I'm not saying that this Discussion/Subforum couldn't be used for members to list their facilities. I'm just saying that it might not be worth the effort if members seeking such info can't readily find it. When I searched through this Discussion looking for instances of members offering up their facilities, I found only one, and that was from 4 years ago, I believe. I replied to that post, not expecting the OP to respond, but curious as to how it might work for our purposes, and you immediately deleted it because it was so old.
That's okay because it confirmed my suspicion that posts by members offering their facilities on this discussion have been extremely rare (for whatever reasons) and pretty much ignored (because, I suspect, they're not easily found or understood for their significance).
So, to summarize, in that post I was expressing my opinion that this Discussion group may not in fact be the right place for members to start listing their facilities for through travelers.
Why do you say
this bit?? Doesn't it do
that for you?? It does for me, and it's meant to do that - show the most recent post at the top of the index (immediately after the 3 Stickies) in descending chronological order; and for me, that's exactly what it does.
IIRC, that may be something you can set in your preferences, but I
believe it should be the same single setting for the entire Forum and all sub-forums, so if this is the
only sub-forum that doesn't show the most recent posts at the top of the index list for you, why is this so??
I also wonder, is there anyone else out there who has this same issue??
All that said, I think the map itself was a reasonable idea, but it was always pretty hard to put a pin in anywhere near the right spot; most members ended up with a spray of multiple pins and threads in their attempts to get it right, and the map never really worked as it should've anyway, nor was it seemingly ever used that way...
AND, you
REALLY don't want to tell (or show) the whole world your
actual address, let alone tell them what sort of Spyder, tools, gear, etc that you might have at that address; and then post here (or anywhere else on the entire internet!) that you're going away for the weekend/doing a trip, cos that's effectively giving some crim or a whole heap of crims a written invitation to come and clean you out (and
Yes, that
HAS happened!
) So the map thing died a natural death.
That's not to say the idea itself isn't a good one; and for most, a single thread &/or a collection of threads in this or another sub-forum could well work -
if those members prepared to help added a simple post
using the same format telling everyone their Region/State/Country and detailing what sort of help they're prepared to offer then it
should work - the search facility here will search on '
Everywhere' (ie. the entire Forum); it can be restricted to
threads alone, not every individual post; it can be restricted to just
this forum (ie, this one sub-forum called Spyderlover Rider Map Discussions); or if you've already selected and opened a thread, you can even search just
this thread - so theoretically, if members so inclined would use a proforma and follow the instructions about what Region/State/Country detail to include so that the search facility could readily find them, it might work...
However, pulling on both my Moderator's & Devil's Advocate hats here, there have been a number of other attempts to do this sort of thing on other subjects, none of which have been truly successful simply because few other members actually bother, and even fewer of those can be bothered to use a pro-forma or even post in a similar manner to everyone else so that it allows the thread/s to be readily searched by those seeking help/info... And as you've surmised, we, the Mod Team, have little capability to 'modify' ie. add to/adjust the functioning of the Forum itself, at least, not beyond using/managing the facilities that are currently present and in use; and as we found on previous platforms, pulling in even just one or two 'Add-ons' to do things like this firstly opens the door to all sorts of similar requests; and secondly, even one 'Add-on' makes it very hard & more expensive to maintain &/or update the entire platform, something that I don't think any owner willingly does too often!
So, back to the first question... why aren't you seeing the posts in this sub-forum (after the Stickies) in descending order from the most recent??
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