I'd like to 'bump' this request for reconsideration and hopefully encourage some development. And offer a slight modification from what was initially proposed at the beginning of this thread.
Considering the two solutions put forth in this thread 1) posting a link back to the topic, a "shadow topic" and 2) moving the topic to a new sub-forum, leaving a link behind (another option), I think these ideas are not ideal for providing the best user experience. We have to keep in mind the variety of contexts that PHPBB is used and the experience level of some board users/noobies who may not be familiar PHPBB's hierarchical organization and functions. Given that there is the necessity to limit "noise" in the sub-forums resulting from an over abundance of topics, like adding links to topics as was proposed. In consideration of my audience, students, it does become important to streamline. I use PHPBB as a teaching tool so it becomes necessary to keep forums and sub-forums organized and pruned to minimize 'information overload' for students. Hence this extension request.
OVERVIEW
So my board is organized according to the following description and attachment:
Each class I teach is a forum...e.g. "Digital Media 101." Within that forum (DM101) there are 10 sub-forums that correspond to each week in the term...Week One, Week Two, Week Three, etc. Then within each sub-forum there are topic threads that are being categorized by
3DI's extension called "Topics Hierarchy." That allows me to separate topics by designating a topic as "Global Announcement', 'Announcement', 'Sticky', or 'General Discussion.' You'll notice from the attached graphic that I've also modified the PHPBB source code to clarify each topic category, e.g. 'Lectures, Lessons and Links' or 'Assignments.' (Sorry, but it's a configuration option that I need as well).
EXTENSION DESCRIPTION
It would be useful to be able to categorize a topic and then have that topic span all the sub-forums, similar to the way in which a "Global Announcement' spans all of the forums. So for example, I want a topic called 'Tech Support' placed within a particular sub-forum's 'Announcements'. But I also want that topic to span and be synchronized across all of the sub-forums (weeks) within a particular forum. It'd be nice to select which sub-forums that would include the new topic as well.
Such an extension would eliminate some confusion by introducing additional consistency of organization as my students move from week to week (sub-forum to sub-forum) of the course forum.
Who's up for the challenge? PM me for details and further discussion.
Using phpBB extensively to teach online courses. Always looking for extensions geared towards helping students.