HelpThing›Talk

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LibraryThing's Forum/message boards - for discussion of the site, of books, or just for socializing with other book-minded people. Discussion happens within Topic pages, or "threads", which are organized within various Groups.

[edit] Topics list

Shows the 100 most recent talk topics; the "next" link at the top right corner allows you to page through for older topics.

[edit] Sorting

The default is to sort with most recent post on the top. Click on the "Topics" or "Unread/Messages" column headers to sort alphabetically by subject name, or with the most number of unread messages first. None of these sorts are reversible.

[edit] Topic name

All threads belong to a group. Thread names are listed as Group Name : Topic. Clicking on this link will take you to the top of the topic page.

[edit] Favoriting

You can mark threads that you find interesting so that you can find them more easily. To the left of the Unread/Messages counts there is a small light-gray star: . Clicking on this will turn it yellow and will mark that thread as a favorite. Clicking again will remove the star.

[edit] Unread Messages

This column contains the number of unread messages over the total number of messages in a thread. Opening a thread page marks all of the messages as read - there is no way to mark partial pages as read. Clicking on the number of unread messages will jump you straight to the first unread message in the topic page.

[edit] Last message

Shows who posted the most recent message in a thread, and when. Clicking on a user's name will take you to their profile.

[edit] Ignore

If there's a thread you're not interested in and want to remove it from your list, you can set it to ignore that thread. On the right side of each line there is a small gray "x": . Clicking it will turn it red and remove the topic from your list. If you click it accidentally, you can see a list of all of your Ignored topics (see below); clicking on the red "x" will return it to gray and return the thread to your list.

[edit] Which topics do I want to see?

• All Topics - Like it says. All topics from all (non-private) groups.
• Hot Topics - This list pulls the most actively discussed topics from all groups.
• Your Books - All topics in which yours book are mentioned using a touchstone. Basically a compendium of all of the work conversation pages for the books in your library - so can take a while to load.
• Your Groups - All topics from groups of which you are a member, as well as groups that you have marked as "watch this group."
• Your Posts - All topics to which you have posted a message.
• Your Starred - All topics which you have marked as favorites.
• (more) - brings up Ignored. See which topics you've ignored, and un-click the "x" if you've made any mistakes.

[edit] Post a new Topic

Allows you to post a new topic. You have to pick a thread title (this is not editable, so double-check your spelling), select which group it should be posted in (also non-editable) - you're given a drop-down menu listing the "standing" groups as well as the groups of which you are a member, and write the first message of the thread.

[edit] Search Talk

Talk search is finicky and unreliable - it doesn't handle phrases particularly well, and works best searching for a single, relatively uncommon word.