Discussion:We need a better board

1. I just got a message from someone who signed his real name and I don't know who in the hell it is. In case you are reading, I am close by Fayetteville.

2. The personal message system stinks. Why can't I just click "reply" and send them a return message?

3. When I press return 2 times, why does it show up on the next line and not double space.

4. Can we get automatically sent to the last read message?

5. How about a pop up that shows you have new messages?

6. How about a button to click when you want to quote a message?

Insert your other improvements suggestions here below.

2. While you're in the history, click on the username of the person you want to reply to (if they've signed the message with their user name, just click on the link there). Go to their discussion tab, click to leave a message. It's not that tough, and doing it this way means no need for the developer to program a different "script" for "buttons" that rarely get used. Keep the source code lean, and things tend to work. Get all fancy, and things tend to break.

3. Press return 3 times for a double space. Or put in a bunch of dashes to actually get a line displayed across the page. Your "why" question is answered here - one of the many helpful pages on formatting and editing linked from the FAQ.

4. If you've got cookies enabled, you should see a color difference in read vs unread messages.

When I come back to the site, there's a definite color pattern (even if some "newer" ones show as read, as they're continuations of older threads, there are enough unread that I can recognize where I left off). Or if you have a special interest in that one "last read" thread, use bookmarking (click "bookmark this page" at top of page) - then it'll show up in "my bookmarks" (well, yours!) next time you sign on.

5. No pop-ups! A message does come up, in a different color if I remember correctly, at the top of the page. Caught my attention.

6. No quotes! The message boards that make it easy to quote end up with more quotes than responses in the later posts. Yes, there are some times that quoting a part of a post makes your response clearer, but highlight, copy, and paste is so quick and easy, I'd just as soon have people doing that when absolutely necessary, rather than clicking a button so I have to read again the very same thing I've already read.

Sorry, I guess I disagree with each of your six items, and with your conclusion that the board is inadequate.

I do think there are other things that could be done to increase usefulness - like adding the "Tax Almanac - the free online tax research resource and community for tax professionals" logo on the user signup page, since many people arrive at the site, sign up, and ask a question, never having clicked on the Main Page to see it there; doing even more to make searching the most obvious first step for new users, and adding the ability to limit search results by date (e.g., search last two months only); limiting the length of user names (or the # of characters between spaces in the user name) so the board format isn't as likely to get messed up; and maybe color coding the dates of posts so it's easier to tell when two-year old threads get bumped (2006 and 2008 look way too alike!)...

But I don't feel like any of the items on my wish list are big issues - they're just things I'd like to see in the continuing evolution of the board.