Okay, so, have two requests, in case you people ever grow bored:
1. It would be neat if the OP could add posts to his thread beneath the first post after replies are made. In short, it'd be cool if you removed the need to reserve posts when making a sticky or whatever. The biggest hurdle with this is probably how to manage post id's so that they aren't all jumbled up. They would also ideally be appended at the bottom of reserved posts, but before any actual discussion, so you can't just put it straight after.
2. I would find it neat if I could flag a forum section as read without having to flag all the threads within. I assume that the unread post sticker on sections is derivative of the threads in the forum section, so it would need some restructuring. However, you could probably use the number of total posts to great effect, and just check that it has changed. I'm not sure how you would flag the forum section, but I imagine you could just click the un/read image to toggle it to default or unread.

Cheers.

Yeah, unfortunately 1) is impossible. To do that, we would need to adopt a thread structure like reddit, where you can reply directly to a post/comment and adjust it somewhat so that the original author had priority when replying. The way this and most forums work, the post ID (and therefore post order) is tied to the timestamp within each thread. Inserting a new post would require manually editing the timestamp of any new posts added under the first, and I think it would also ruin any existing links to any later posts in the thread, including quote links, although I'm not sure about the last.

2) is currently possible, although it must be done manually. You can just mark all threads read within an individual forum (the button is at the top of whatever forum you are in, including the main forum index page.) It might be possible to have a user setting that always marks a forum read at the user's option, but the easiest way to do this currently is to just minimize that forum.

With regards to 1, let me check something...

EDIT: Okay, so I was right; just like on vBulletin, there's a mod-tool workaround that can be used to effectively insert additional posts into a thread. So while it's not possible for posters to insert new posts into a FAQ themselves, we can do it for them if they ask. It's messy, and it's not perfect, but it works in a pinch if it's needed.

Now that I'm thinking of it, I can also think of several other potential methods of effectively creating new posts in a thread; some require advance setup during thread creation, some don't. That whole expression about cats and methods of skinning them definitely applies. I'd still recommend reserving posts, though. It's cleaner and just less work all around.

Just a random thought to make the workload easier on the staff...

What about giving ownership of a thread to the thread creator? That way they have the right/ability to delete posts in their own thread. This would significantly cut down on individual needs for staff to moderate. Obviously everything would be logged and you could review if anything is worthy of a warning/ban, but the majority of the work (and cutting in things in the bud before they escalate) would be much quicker and easier.

And since everyone has this ability, and everyone of course has the ability to just ignore a thread and not post then there at least theoretically should not be people whining about posts being deleted.

Especially given the majority of the staff is from on the continent of North America and you don't have round the clock surveillance, this could be helpful.

Honestly, doing that creates more work that it helps, I think, and leads to issues where someone is pruning people's posts without them noticing. It will be a headache, I think.

Or you could have 30 active moderators to moderate the 90 active posters.

Giving users to delete posts by other users would cause a huge issue indeed. Even if it is 'their' thread.

Not only would it open a whole new can of worms with people arguing back and forth but would allow for loss of staff visual on what was said and what was deleted. With out current method, any member of staff can go in and see what was originally said by a user, what it was edited to, or what was deleted. With the system you're proposing it would be a whole lot more 'wild west' and I'm quite sure that the time cleaning up the arguments would be far more substantial than the time spent moderating with the current system.

Why are you assuming the posts would be deleted forever and not logged (like I specifically suggested they be)?

I mean it was just an idea, but it seems silly to make that your sticking point.

Wild west is fine by me...

Because when a post is deleted, it isn't logged. It's removed from the database entirely. The fact that there was a deletion is logged, but the content itself is not retained.

The reason the mods currently have a log of deleted content is because we aren't actually deleting anything. We're just making it disappear by moving it someplace non-Mods can't see it.

Okay, still semantics.

Forget I said delete. Replace delete with "moderation delete" or "move to garbage bin".

Okay, so lets say you make a second 'Scrap Bin' for all users to move things to. You still have a huge can of worms in giving average users the power to move (but not delete, edit, split, etc) posts. And then have to trust that they'll only use the power to move posts that need moving, and only move them to the right place, instead of moving anything and everything they want to remove from the thread or throwing posts to random places that arent the scrap bin, or improperly organizing things in the scrap bin so that it takes even longer to sift through who did what when someone inevitably moves something they shouldn't have.

Dont get me wrong, I'd love a system where users could simply police themselves and mods had no work to do. But I already know that such a utopia doesnt exist, and to go 'wild west' doesnt in fact mean less work for the staff, it means more work. Its quite a bit of work already making sure that all members of staff are thinking on the same page, and moderating with consistency...but to try and instill that same consistency into every single person who starts a thread... yikes.

I know I can mark all forums as read, but that removes the integrity of my browsing history.
Okay, let's state intent, rather than discussing functionality:
I want to know when there's a new post to a forum section I have visited, without having to mark every post as read each time I visit.
Use Case, whee.

Oh I see what you mean. I'll have to get back to you on that.

The only problem I see is that you assume whenever you visit, you log on. I lurk a lot, and between 3 different devices, and as far as I know there's no way to account for something like that.

Much the same as if you surf Reddit all day at work on your phone or work computer, then get home and log on your own PC all the links will be blue and you wont know what you've seen.

Thanks for looking into this!

Well, of course not, but that goes for the default un/read functionality as well. I always log in whenever I browse the forum, both my tablet and computer.
Although I wouldn't mind if you made it session-only. I primarily only want it to know if there's a new post while pressing f5, not when I log on in the morning.

May I ask someone to please delete This thread in the M:EM Archives, please? Slow internet connection led me to accidentally making a copy. Please and thank you.

sure, I'll get it for you.

edit: already gone. I see Alth is online so I assume he got it.

for future reference, you can also use the "report post" feature for this sort of stuff. Just indicate in the comments that it's an accidental duplicate thread that you'd like to get deleted.

Sarnathed on the post, but I actually did it first.