to use all that it offered without having long learning curves. The forum just has SO MUCH MORE to offer participants than a plain old message board has, even a paid version with log ins, options, private messaging, etc. like this one offers.

The forum allows posters to create personal lists to notify them by email once a day of any threads or topics that interest them or they participated in. Plus lists of all new posts made on every board in the forum so no one had to peruse them all to find new posts. It has all kinds of options to make their own experience of the forum fit their individual needs - like colors, font sizes, time zones, avatars, post order, and so much more. Much of the options offered, like on this message board, are dependent on personal log ins to be able to set options.

I had been working on, tweaking, and learning HOW to do everything there for a few months before opening it up for posters to use. I wanted to know how everything worked and what extras it had so I could answer any questions and shorten the learning curve significantly.

So yeah, I was disappointed that nearly everyone would rather have threaded posts like on the message boards than to have non-threaded conversations that line up in a row. All they had to do was use the "quote" function to establish what any post was in reference to.

Oh well, such is life.