[RFC|Merged] Last topic title in forum list

[Vinny]

This RFC has already been merged?

[imkingdavid]

Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I'll move it to the merged forum in a moment.

[VSE+]

Maybe its just me, but I think those topic titles would look better in BOLD. Right now, they just kind of disappear and just add visual noise. If they were BOLD, they would stand out a better and have better impact.

Example:

[naderman]

I agree, looks a lot better. Want to create a ticket and send a PR?

[VSE+]

I agree, looks a lot better. Want to create a ticket and send a PR?

Done:
https://github.com/phpbb/phpbb3/pull/924
http://tracker.phpbb.com/browse/PHPBB3-11025

[KnocksX]

I would strongly recommend stripping out the "Re:" for both SEO and aesthetic purposes. For forums that choose not to use the meta description field, this will create an additional bunch of "Re"s in search engine results while pushing out actual useful information. And for visitors who are already looking at the forum index, it will just be a few dozen Re's cluttering the screen (just look at the index of Area 51).

The original purpose of this UI element in forum packages was to engage the visitor and introduce him to what's happening in the forum. The reason we went with displaying post title instead of topic title was to avoid an extra MySQL query, so it's technically a hack, which requires an additional clean-up step.

[imkingdavid]

The thing is, the information contained there is about the last post. It would be inaccurate to display the topic title and then say it was by the user who made the last post (unless that user also made the topic, but even still the time would be wrong).

If you don't want the Re: to display, you could remove it from automatically being appended to new replies. That would not affect old posts, but would make sure new posts have the topic title to display on the forum list.

[KnocksX]

It's actually not inaccurate. Last post: "General phpBB development discussion" by Johnny, Today 12:52 pm." This simply means that Johnny made a contribution to the topic at 12:52 pm. Yes, it's missing information about whether Johnny was the OP or not, but that information does not belong on the index page anyway.

Just because the name of that column is "Last post" does not mean that you necessarily have to display the subject of the post instead of the subject of the topic. This is just a hack after all, and by implementing this feature we are essentially emulating other forum software (I just confirmed by quickly scanning vBulletin, XenForo, IPB, and myBB) none of which have any Re:'s in their board indexes.

I don't want to get into whether post titles generally are necessary at all (I believe they are completely unnecessary--OK, I got into it), because I'm sure there's an RFC somewhere to kill it and lots of arguing.

But the main point is that all these Re:'s on the index page are just litter--they are unsightly, look strange, and are bad for SEO.

[Senky]

+1 for not displaying "Re: " on the index

[MichaelC]

I think the post title should be shown, not the topic title as it simply shows that its a reply, not a new topic.