Community Search & Tom Gutman

I decided to dip my toe in the site again, to see what has changed. I see that Read/Unread bold formatting is still flaky - identical threads are formatted differently depending on whether you're in Overview, All Content, or Discussions. It appears that you still have to select each sub-category (Mathcad Usage, Algebra & Geometry, etc.) to determine what is new since last login, other than a small list of the most-recent posts.

Nice to see you back Guy.

The only viable way of keeping track of new posts that I know of is to receive e-mail notifications from all sections of the Mathcad forum.

I see that the sub-category question is becoming moot (probably for the above reason) since the users post the majority of content in Mathcad Usage.

I have noticed this, but must add that most new threads have been general questions and couldn't really be placed in the sub communities, except Programming.

I also note that the search feature is lacking functionality, or is simply flawed. I was curious to see when the last Tom Gutman post was, so I tried searching under his name. In the Search box at the top-right, I entered Tom Gutman, sorted by date, and the latest post that shows up on my list is dated Apr. 23, 2010. By contrast, if I select Tom Gutman's avatar (after a people search) and hit the tab for his stuff I get a different list of "Recent Content." Annoyingly, the list is not and cannot be rearranged by date (huh?) It wasn't clear why the list was sorted the way it is. Surprisingly, though, if I look somewhere in the middle of the list I see at least one post dated Sept. 1, 2010. Why does the first search miss that one? Why is it buried partway down the displayed list?

Firstly, you could select Tom's avatar from the Top Participants list as he's still in the top four. If you click Tom Gutman's Stuff you can see a link of content where he has posted. I think it is arranged in an order of recent activity, not just Tom's involvement.

It is such a shame that Tom doesn't contribute to this forum, but someone did mention that he stopped contributing in the last forum at some point – he might be busy or away!!!!

Mike

As a relevant addition to your list is the fact that your personal email address (@nrl dot navy dot mil) is visible in the email notification of this thread, while your avatar says it's supposed to be private...

Another annoyance is that the profile page URLs are case-sensitive, so http://communities.ptc.com/people/TomGutman works, but http://communities.ptc.com/people/tomgutman throws an error...

TTFN