It sounds like you want to chain nodes together (that is, to provide a logic progression from one to the other, in addition to the chronilogical done by Newest Nodes, and the hyperlinking of nodes). This isn't a bad idea, though I'm not sure that the mechanism that we currently have would already cover it.

You're looking at 3 possible ways of doing this:

  1. Following up with posts in the same thread. This is the most logical place to put them without modifying PM's backend, but it's the most unlikely place that people will look for additional questions after time; I try to browse all newest nodes regardless, but I know some don't, and sometimes I don't have the time to do this. So a followup question that's posted a day or two later will be lost in the noise.
  2. Following up posts in a new thread. As recently discussed, you should never be worried about hurting PM's resources as the amount of disk space that new questions take up is not a limitation. You can easily backwards-chain questions since you can refer to a previous question in your new one, and to complete the forward chaining, it should be possible to add to Editors Requests to include a link to the new question. The only disadvantage this method has is that it puts more work on the Editors to keep the chain alive; the followsup will be seen by most everyone moreso than replying to the existing one.
  3. Modifying PM's structure to allow users to chain their posts. This satisfies both the lack of any extra work to be done by Editors (though vroom would have to implement it), and keeps followups at the Newest Nodes level. But again, this is the only possibility that requires vroom to do significant coding, so it's not the greatest solution.
My preferences would be #2 above, where you can maintain backwards chains, and ask editors to help with forward chains. Alternative, you can always post a followup in the original thread that points people to the newer node; I typically read all replies in older threads when Super Searching for answers, so including a pointer to a followup would help here. This also requires no extra work by vroom and minimal work by the Editors, but it does also put the brunt of the work on the user to maintain such chains.

Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain

In reply to Re: Flagging Follow-Up Questions by Masem
in thread Flagging Follow-Up Questions by Sherlock

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.