I do not know what "flatlining" means

The two methods of viewing posts are known as Threaded Mode and Flat Mode. Proponents of these modes are known jocularly as threadnodists and flatliners respectively. In Threaded Mode the Subject Lines of the individual posts are shown in an arrangement that reflects the logical order of the posts, that is, with a given post beneath and indented to the right of the post to which it is a response, or, at least, the post owning the Response Icon that was clicked to enable the response. In Flat Mode, all the posts are visible and are arranged in strictly chronological order. The advantages of Threaded Mode are that the individual posts load somewhat faster and it is easy to tell to what post a given post is responding to without counting on the somewhat lax attitude towards changing Subject Lines. The advantages of the Flat Mode are that a large number of posts will load quicker and it is easier to tell what the chronological order is. Confusion can result when a flatliner is responding to two posts which are chronologically close to each other but may be very far apart from the threadnodists point of view, such as when someone responds to an early post and someone else responds to a recent post and a flatliner, seeing the two posts right next to each other alludes to something in each post. On the other hand a flatliner can be confused when a threadnodist responds to an early post without clearly indicating what is being responded to and the flatliner sees it on a different page.


Added to almost immediately after posting

The very long threads become an annoyance to flatliners because they start to take a prohibitively long amonut of time to load. I haven't done any great studies but I suspect that this might be alleviated by having fewer posts per page. This is settable and defaults to 20. I suspect that tsuwm has his set at 100 since he complained about the Omegatist thread going to page two. Or was it 50 because he complained about its going past page two? He may find it beneficial to cut that number down a little.