RuthC wrote: The more I try to read every tax post, I get frustrated, especially during this tax season, to figure out what each new post is about without actually going into it, especially when someone doesn't have subject listed.
I've had a functional addiction to various internet discussion forums for several decades, but even I don't feel the need to read every post. Especially if you don't plan to reply very often in a thread, what's the point? They can't all be relevant to you and your practice.
I've actually found that subject lines here lately seem to be fairly accurate as a guide for what might be of interest before opening. Sure, in Penalty Free Zone people are free to use "teaser" subjects that are complete opaque, but in the technical forums, I think the best solution is for the contributors here, all professionals, to just have at least a tiny bit of discipline when it comes to describing their initial post accurately, making sure a few keywords are included. This also helps a lot when searching for older topics. When composing your topic, just ask yourself, "what terms would I use if I were searching for this?"
I usually use the "view unread posts" search by default (it's on my bookmarks quick access menu bar), and after a few days, when I've accumulated a long list of threads that I don't need to read, I just "mark all forums read", then I can start again just looking at the newest posts I haven't yet seen.