Expanding maneuverabilty within threads

I'd like to suggest adding a wider range of pages in terms of navigating through LQ. What I mean by this is simply that there is a maximum of +/-2 pages when it comes to paging through the posts within a given thread. For most of the threads, that's fine since they don't span multiple pages, but if you are trying to step through a very lengthy thread, with more than say 10 or 12 pages of replies, the +2 or -2 page limit forces the user to do an awful lot of clicking (suppose there are 14 pages of posts for a given thread, the user starting at the first post would have to go from page 1 to 3 to 5 to 7 to 9 to 11 to 13 and then finally 14.)

My request would be to ask LQ to consider expanding the "page count" interval from +/-2 to either +/-3 or +/-5. Thanks -- J.W.

That's actually a very nice suggestions. But, there just ain't enogh posts which get *so many* replies, to actually get this implemented.

But it would be helpful. Maybe implement it in the General section as I think that a handful of posts there have had 14 maybe more, pages of replies, which is no so common in other forums.

Agreed, there aren't that many individual threads that have, say, >10 pages of results, but there are other aspects of LQ that do have massive numbers of pages, for example the zero replies thread, the members link, or the search results page (if it's a general term you're searching on). For instance, if you wanted to find all "zero reply" posts that were created within just the last 24 hours, you would need to scan through 9 pages (!!!) of results (using tonight as an example) Similarly, maybe you might see a post one day that you're interested in, but don't have the opportunity to thoroughly investigate it until a few days later. Unless you made specific notes about who the original poster was and what the exact title was, you'll most likely just do a Search on the general topic (eg, "2.6.4 kernel") and you'll end up with dozens of pages of results -- even if you do restrict the results to just "the past week"

My point is only that if a particular thread is especially popular (such as a thread describing how to successfully install a video drivers) then the +/-2 page limit makes it more tedious than necessary to navigate through the postings, and therefore a wider range would become even more important. To say it another way, Yes, for most threads there usually won't be more than 1 or 2 pages of replies, but for the posts that do generate a lot of traffic, being able to jump ahead more than only 1 or 2 pages would be incredibly helpful. If that range could be expanded to +/-3 or +/-5 pages I think that would be really useful. -- J.W.

I'll looking into adding a few more options for threads over 10 pages or so.

--jeremy

I kinda like it the way you explained this.

Yea, that might be helpfull as J.W just explained.

Thanks for considering this idea jeremy. It's true that this kind of enhancement would only be applicable to a tiny, tiny percentage of all threads, however, for those threads that would be affected, I think it would end up being quite useful. Naturally, that's just my 2 cents but either way thanks for your consideration.

As an aside, I think it's awesome that LQ has grown so much and so quickly that this topic even comes up. LQ rocks!! -- J.W.

I've just read this, and i thanks jeremy for his efforts.
Can I mention that when a thread is very long, you only see it with the last page button. It'll give you the number of the page and the 2 others before.
Would it be possible to have the number of the last page (and it'll change régularly), to make our mind about the time needed to read all that particular thread?

Thanks for you attention, Marc A