you-are-fined-five-credits-for-repeated-violations-of-the-verbal-morality-statute (resized).jpg

How about having some other way of classifying forum posts other than thumbs up/down?

I remember Slashdot being one of the first sites to have flags for Insightful/Offtopic/etc. I don't remember the specifics, but it does look like their original moderation charter is still accessible. [1] Here's a slightly different explanation with a comparison to Reddit's policy. [2]

If there was an easy way to set a user's tolerance level ("Only show me on-topic posts" or "I feel a little silly today, show me everything"), you could effectively filter out unwanted posts completely to make it look like they never existed. Of course, as you probably already know, hiding quoted posts in on-topic replies can be tricky. In the past, doing something like this would require a significant amount of extra server processing, but you could experiment with pushing that down to run on the client browser.

This relies on both user and moderator participation to flag the posts. You could even allow the original poster to self-moderate, for example: she's in a goofy mood and she's going to flag her snarky animated GIF post as "Offtopic" and "Funny".

I stopped reading Slashdot a while back, so I don't know if they abandoned this form of moderation or not.

[1] https://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml *and*
https://slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/386c75/sourceforge_locked_in_projects_of_fleeing_users/crsw1e5/

That's good to know, and that addresses the severely off-topic and potentially harassing posts but it doesn't let people classify posts in other ways like the Slashdot system attempted to.

I also think that being able to see which specific users up-voted or down-voted a post can lead to vindictive retribution ("You thumbed down my post, now I'm going to go do a drive-by on your posts!") and further bickering among sensitive individuals.

I've never put someone on ignore, so I had no idea what the UI looked like. For grins, I set Iceman to ignore (he was the closest user physically for me to click on, bring up his user profile page and click Ignore) and this is what it looks like:

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I'm always impressed at how modern and how much functionality this custom forum software has. It's much better than most of what's currently out there on forums, boards and sites like Reddit. Robin manages to hide both posts and quoted posts inside posts from users you haven't explicitly ignored.

CrazyLevi what would you suggest? Should all references to the ignored user's post be hidden completely (and not even mention that a post was hidden)? Show the "Ignored user post" or "Ignored user content" text but let you hit a button (icon) to show it? Something else?

I was trying to think how that would work in real life when you were with a group of people and it included a person you just couldn't stand? Would you avoid the discussion completely? Tune them out while they were talking and hold your tongue like a Buddhist Monk? Convince everyone to lie and tell the jerk-off that your group meets at a different bar across town?

I guess there are probably always going to be some people that can't play well with others and for the greater good of the group (and themselves), need to be disembodied (aka banned) and forced to roam the depths of an Albanian forest.

If you feel the need to take a self-imposed break, you can de-activate your account. If you change your mind, and want to come back later, you only have to take a timeout of (I think) 30 days. Once re-activated your account is just as you had left it. I don't know if accounts are purged (and no longer able to be re-activated) after a specified number of days or not?

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Take the sage advice from the Disney ice princess and just "let it go" if someone says something you don't agree with or is trying to bait you into an argument.

I don't know how that would work because you can browse Pinside anonymously (without signing in) and see just about everything except the Off-Topic and Basement threads.

If you Ignore someone using the forum tools, the forum software does a pretty good job of hiding their posts (Ignored user post), even when other people you aren't ignoring, quote them (Ignored user comment).

ignored-post (resized).png

Flower that!

It seems like some people are really sensitive about being downvoted. A quick fix would be to keep the downvote tally and the resulting sum (upvotes - downvotes) that's shown in the pop bumper, but hide the list of who downvoted a post. (You'd have to display some indication to the current user whether or not they downvoted the post, so they can change their mind or correct an errant mouse click.) Nothing good really comes out of displaying who's been down-voting whom, because it's used as anything from "Sir, I most respectfully disagree" to "I'm going to come and find you in meatspace, and blankety-blank your blankety-blank!!!".

First they purged the Trolls, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Troll.
Then they purged the Price Police, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not in the Price Police.
Then they purged the Downvoters, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Downvoter.
Then they stopped purging— because all of the problems had been solved.

The mods should get a free Magic Girl as a reward for all their hard work keeping this place tidy!

I'm only a few Upvotes away from trading my 7,000,000 Upvotes in for a Magic Girl.