While BE Communities offers much more content than Usenet, I find the Forums are far less convenient for accessing and monitoring content of interest. A newsreader allows us to quickly browse the content of forums by picking a forum in the list and seeing the posts list in a seperate window for immediate review. Any flagged topics are highlighted and easy to isolate and review. Reading the threads under a topic are easier to review since replies to a particular comment can be placed under the comment in the comments tree. While I don't expect we will return to Usenet, at least it would be helpful if some of it's advantages could be implemented here.
A couple of suggestions I would like to see implemented are:
1) A forums browser with list of content like a News Reader. Currently we have to jump into a web page to view the posts to a forum and back out to access a different forum. This results in lots of waiting for pages to reload. Content is much less accessible.
2) The ability to tag topics of interest and be able to filter them and have them highlighted when browsing posts. I am aware of the ability to list topics I have posted to but the list does not include topics I want to follow even though I made no comments. Email subscription to a forum results in constant emails which become a distraction and a nuisance. Subscribing to individual threads is cumbersome since we have to access email to see if any topics have been updated.
I only have this to say "Anything Bentley has involvement in is not user friendly." I find the site has no easy helps to get a person wanting to understand microstation better any general help. Everything is designed to make a person take more classes.
No wonder I like autodesk better, at least they do not block groups from teaching each other on how to use the software.
yes I noticed how the communities are pulled into this site then nop information can then be found.