smontanaro 

The forum interface is driving me nuts. I get notified of (some, many, but not all) updates to subscribed threads. I've learned to live with missing many interesting posts in subscribed threads. However...

I don't delete emails related to bikes, even BF notifications about new posts. Today, I wanted to find a couple posts I made in an enormous thread on the C&V forum, so I searched Gmail for this:

label:bikes-for-sale are you looking motobecane

I have a Gmail filter which adds the "bikes-for-sale" label to messages matching various patterns, hence the first term. The thread title is "eBay / CraigsList finds - "Are you looking for one of these!?" Part II", hence the "are you looking" bit, and the posts in question were related to a Motobecane. This worked, great providing me with an email message which looked basically like this:


So far, so good. However, notice the URL: "...blah blah blah ... &goto=newpost". This link makes the search results basically worthless because it will always take me to the first post in the thread which I've yet to read. There is no link in the email to the specific post itself. This thread has nearly 2500 pages of posts. Good luck finding this particular message.

The newpost URL is pretty worthless, even if that's what I wanted. If I want to go to the first unread message, there is a "View first unread" button at the top of each page, making the newpost URL superfluous. Is there some way those notification URLs can be changed to reference the specific post?

In this particular case, the Advanced thread search worked fine (constrain by user and date, only give a single keyword). For more complex searches, Gmail's search capability (or Google's more broadly) seems much more accurate.

79pmooney

Related - I find I cannot refer to my previous post(s) in a large thread without going through every page. (There may be a way to do this. Id so, I'd love to be clued in.)

Iride01 

I have all my settings not to email me unless I'm quoted. Then the link in the email takes me to that exact post I was quoted in.

When I want to just look and see new posts since the last time I visited, then I go to the BF sub-forum myself and click on the blue/white chevron on the left of the thread title.

Might not be quite the solution you want, but it's one work-around.

Iride01 

Do an advanced search on your username in another window. https://www.bikeforums.net/search.php

IBJoel

Go into thread.
In the top right, click "Search this thread"

smontanaro 

In simple cases that seems to work. My experience is that the forum search engine is pretty suboptimal. My request that the link in the update emails refer to the post referenced in said email still stands. Thanks...

IBJoel

What are your subscription notifications set to? I get links to individual posts.

smontanaro 

I'm sorry, but I can't find anything in my profile options which seems like it would affect the link provided in update emails.

CliffordK

I use the search function in threads periodically. It does seem to be functional.

However, I do agree with the OP...

I would prefer if both quoted text and replies gave two options: While one can use the thread search function to find specific posts, it would be easy enough to just provide the link.

Likewise with quoted text, I'm often more interested in finding the thread than the quote, so I'd prefer one-click access.

I find myself periodically searching my personal E-Mail for previous posts, and if I find one, then sometimes it next means hunting for it in the thread.