Organization & Navigating Talk4TV

The contents in Talk4TV are organized into Forums, which is a collection of discussions about a particular subject area, and then the Forums are grouped into overall Categories. To "expand" (open) any Category to see its Forums, click on the Category title. Expanding one category collapses all the others to make it easy to see where you are.

In this example, the Chit Chat category is expanded so that the Forums in Chit Chat are visible.

Click the Forum name to enter and see the list of active topics. Topics are ordered so that the ones that have been posted to most recently are higher on the list. The list of categories isn't visible any more, but the "Breadcrumb" links along the top show where you are in the heirarchy. The Breadcrumbs can be used to jump to the forum, category, or to main page.

Posts in the topic are in order down the page. Each shows the Games4TV member name of the poster, the date of the post, the subject, and what was posted. For active Talk4TV members, there are controls for participating in the discussion and to contact the poster by Private Messenger. Most Talk4TV forums may be read by anyone, whether or not they are an active member, but only active members may post or use the Messenger.

When the posts in a topic span more than one page, there will be links to the additional pages at the bottom. There also is a control to allow you to select the age of the oldest post you'd like to see, and to order the posts as either oldest or most recent first. The Breadcrumbs and the post controls are at the bottom of the topic page, as well as the top.

In most forums, older topics which haven't been posted to for more than a couple of weeks will disappear off the board. If a topic has grown very long, or if several different conversations develop within a single topic thread, the Talk4TV Moderators who are managing the forum may split it into multiple topics. Talk4TV Moderators also may move topics to more suitable forums.

What the folder icons mean

Announcement! These will the first topics in the forum. Read these first, especially if they're yellow (new since your last visit)!

Sticky - permanent info Topics with a sticky don't age and fall off the board. They're often used for Frequently-Asked Questions, "How to" topics, and other things that need to stay around.

Ordinary forum or topic.

Locked forum or topic. No new posts in locked topics, and no new topics in locked forums. Topics may be locked so that they can be used just to present information, or a moderator may lock a topic to prevent further posting to it. Forums are usually locked to make their topics "read only" -- for example, if they're used to convey information in a number of topics, like an online manual. If a forum is mostly locked instructional topics, there will usually be an unlocked topic where you can ask questions.

New Posts in Forum or Topic. If the folder is yellow, it contains material that is new since your last visit. The yellow markers are not 100% reliable at this point, so you should also check the "posted since last visit" or "display topics for last 2 days." (see next page)