Problem children / punch list for fixes / TIPS AND TRICKS

[Senegoid]

I just posted this in the “vBulletin or Discourse” poll thread. FWIW, it may be a useful tip or trick for someone, so I’ll re-post it for posterity here:

@Senegoid

@madsircool

We can all be Discourse Einsteins but we are losing some features. For example, we cant preview posts with our mouse, we lose posting numbers which makes it harder to find individual posts in long threads, no more pages, maximum number of characters in a post etc.

Actually, you can get directly to any post in a thread, with just a little bit of trouble.

First, you have to know the post number you want to find. For example, if somebody posts a remark like “See post #9 above” and you want to go there.

Now, go to the address bar at the top of your browser. It may have an address something like:
“https: // boards . straightdope . com / t / vbulletin-or-discourse / 912161 / 15”
(I’ve added some spaces here so it will show the actual URL.) Notice the 912161 and the 15 at the end. The 912161 is the thread number. The 15 is the post number you are currently looking at. Just modify the address to have the post number you want to go to (e.g., 9 instead of 15) and it will take you to that post. To be sure, would be nicer if this number was displayed with each post as in vB.

If you are looking at a post and want to see its post number and entire URL, click on the links icon at the bottom of the post, and it will pop up a box showing all that. For example, THIS post is #20.

(ETA: Interesting that a quote box copied from one thread into another thread gets the quoted user’s name wrong, and also loses the link-back. It put the thread title there instead.)

(ETA-2: But if you click on the thread title at the top of the quote box (where the quoted user’s name should be), it does take you to the correct post of the correct thread. Go figure.)