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With all due respect, John, you're STILL missing the point. You have to know that you'll have some interest in that topic. I may be lurking around and see the topic "Recall of Tom Ament"...if I don't know who he is, or have any idea of the issue, I'm not going to care and will simply move on.

The open State boards provide the opportunity to glance at ALL the info on ALL the issues and then the individual is able to decide if this is a topic for which they intend to become involved.

I can 100% guarantee that the recall effort in Milwaukee (from a FReeper's standpoint, an important standpoint to consider since some of the instigators were FReepers) would have been ignored by many Wisconsinites past earshot of the Milwaukee area had this open forum not existed. It is my understanding some of them became involved and donated money to help the recall.

I will repeat again...the majority of people will follow the path of least resistance...your forum will simply be stop signs in that path.

In other words, the attraction to the state boards is the fact that they're just one thread, upside down (reverse chronological order.)

I saved a piece of my article body that ended up on the cutting room floor. I knew it would come in handy, but didn't want to steer the discussion until I confirmed my suspicions.

The only particularly unique feature about the state message boards are, well, their lack of features. I mean, that they are not threaded... every message posted is easily accessible, no clicking necessary. It's as if they are one thread listed in reverse chronological order.

Is this the attraction?

If it is, I can embed a standard forum thread into the individual state page but show it in reverse order. That would allow for paging back through earlier comments as well as the ability to address specific comments (Post Reply) and to address comments in private (Private Reply) etc.

I'd still like to push for use of the state topics, however. And possibly state forums in the future. But if it is this upside-down thread that is all the rage, then by all means, let's have an upside-down thread! It'll be fun.

In earlier mock versions of the forum, I had topic "home pages." And recently I've been toying with the idea of having a topic "cork board" which is essentially the upside-down thread idea.

In other words, I'd really like to replace the state message boards with a topic, and yet retain __ALL__ the features that made the state message boards desirable.