[bk]

Is there a way to do this?: sort threads by date of the original Author's first posting of each thread (from old to new; and new to old)? (either in an individual topic, or across all topics mixed together?) Doesn't seem to be an option, currently. If it's currently not possible, how easy or hard would that be to implement? For instance, clicking on "Food" category, looking at, say, just the first three threads (ignoring the "Sticky"), they are currently, in order: • Cheerios, Feb 6, 2017 • Farmstrong Brewery, Mar 1, 2017 • Best Coffee, Dec 30, 2016. Of course, they're in that order totally influenced by "Last Post" value and the order has nothing to do with the date the original Author started the thread (in the Author column, below the author's name). At times it would be useful to list threads in order from old-to-recent or recent-to-old from the Author's original post date. Thus, old-to-new, for the above list, would sort like this: • Best Coffee, Dec 30th • Cheerios, Feb 6th • Farmstrong, Mar. 1st If easy to add, that would be great.

[Tom]

Certainly doable but not likely to be implemented as I can't imagine it being useful to most folks. Seems like old threads with new replies would get buried. If you are searching for something in particular wouldn't it be more efficient to use the search feature?

[bk]

This would be for browsing, not searching. For example, in Nov. or Dec. of 2016, there were four or so important topics that stood out to me that merited further study, but during that time, did not really have a chance to spend time on nwhikers.net . . . only enough to note that there were four or so topics started around that time that were of great interest to me. (For instance, the "surviving cold weather" topic, and a few other topics which escape my memory.) So the point is, not to make it easier to "find" topics which I remember what they were about (or titled), but to make it easier to go back and find those four or so topics during such-and-such a busy timeframe when the only thing remembered is the time frame (and not even the subject matter) and just that there were some number of interesting things to go back and look at. Another example: Say, late summer or something (could probably say that for any given year) . . . say, August, say of 2016, was a busy hike month . . . and could only glance at nwhikers.net to make note that there were three or six interesting topics to go back and spend time reading . . . and let's say no free time happens until late Sept. or sometime in Oct. There's no way to go back in time to view anything close to that original post-order and refresh my memory as to what stood out to me. So if you don't continually monitor the posts in real-time, you can never seen how discussions evolved (how threads were created) as the seasons pass. A third example is just to go back in time to earlier years . . . to see the order of posted topics for any given year or season. Again, just to see what's what. Are there interesting patterns, like the same old topics get brought up each winter (or fall, etc.)? Are there different topic patterns during particularly dry summers? Or wet summers? Or early snows when a lot of PCT-ers get introduced to snow unexpectedly, etc.? There are many reasons why browsing articles (threads) chronologically would be interesting. This isn't for the searching for "that certain topic" [which works fine] but more for the "what was missed?" Can't speak for how others do, or do not, use the system, or how they'd like to use it.