Remove posts threshold control at bottom of topic

[crabpaws]

This control (A) appears at the bottom of every topic:

Currently viewing all posts. Change threshold?



This is a feature that would be useful only very rarely, maybe never.

This feature would be valuable only to a site with these characteristics: Very large forums, lots of posts in each topic, a heavy use of the rep system, lots of garbage being posted, and motivation for users to want to skip content by those with low rep.

Even in forums like slickdeals.net, a heavily modded IPB site claiming 830.9K users and 25.8M posts that depends on a rep system, or these IP support forums, you wouldn't want to screen out newbies with fewer rep points because they still might have good tips.

This non-worthy but distracting feature is stuck right in the middle of a high-traffic area -- the golden path to Topic Reply. Compounding the offense, the entire blue bar in which it is embedded is hot. A careless click on the way to Topic Reply opens the Posts Threshold widget.

The user experience crimes of this element are manifold:

1) It visually interrupts perhaps the most important user action of all: Topic Reply.

2) An accidental click will cause it to jump open in a most distracting way.

3) It is almost always useless.

4) It occupies prime real estate that can be utilized for something unquestionably valuable and useful, the essential Add Reply and Start New Topic buttons (B), which inexplicably are relegated to the slums beyond some nice-to-have-but-not-crucial nav and Share This Topic.

I suggest the posts threshold feature be removed as a default and included in the ACP as a global option, and be relocated somewhere more obscure, like Hoboken.

Personally, I wouldn't spend the development time on it. I'd get rid of it and put Add Reply and Start New Topic in that bar, where they belong, instead.

(In the meantime, Kessler suggests ways to edit out the posts threshold feature in http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/334089-how-to-remove-posts-threshold-control-at-bottom-of-topic/page__gopid__2097513#entry2097513)

[Matt]

Crabpaws, it might be better for you to wait until you see 3.2 before you post any more interface suggestions. :)

[crabpaws]

I am so looking forward to 3.2. ;)