Some other vBulletin forums I’m on have a live topic feature where the thread is automatically update if there is a frequent rate of responses.
Basically when you click on a thread that is live when someone posts a response it appears at the bottom of the tread without the reader needing to update it.
I've done a bit of research into it and it sounds like an interesting feature. The only concern I have is that the site isn't necessarily busy enough (bar from 1 or 2 threads during peak hours) to have a couple of members posting in it simultaneously. Even when a discussion is going on between multiple members, the timing between posts is likely too long for a thread to qualify as 'live'. I can see why it comes in useful at uber active forums that have quick flowing thread discussions, but I rarely see EC's threads moving at a quick pace. Saying that, it would be useful in future if and when the site does increase its activity further. Does anybody else have any thoughts on it? The reception a suggestion gets is the main thing I look out for when looking into them. Martin.
Speaking only for myself, I can see the use in it, but I say that as someone given to verbose responses, and I've learned by now to check for replies to the thread manually before I post my reply when my reply starts to hit the multi-paragraph mark, and even then, most of the time, there isn't a new reply. So I'm not particularly strongly in support of or against the idea; if it could be implemented without risk to the forum, I'd have no problem with it, but if it isn't implemented, I won't resent its absence.
I am pretty new here but I could see the uses. For me it would be like the perfect mix of a chat room and a forum. You wouldn't use it as much if your posting a mega-post but say were having a casual-informative chat it would work nicely for that. Although if it is a real pain in the butt then I'd say we can still make do with what we got.
I think it's something we should look at adding, but I'd suggest we wait until we do the major upgrade to vB4. vBulletin just officially announced end-of-life for 3.x (and we aren't even running the latest version of vB3, because to upgrade would doubtless break things). I think it could be semi-useful, but as others have already pointed out, EC posts tend to be fairly lengthy, limitiing the value of immediate updates.
