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20:53, 28th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Mute threads.

Posted by st_nougat
st_nougat
member, 381 posts
Thu 31 Jul 2014
at 12:18
  • msg #1

Mute threads

This may be beyond the capabilities of the site as it is coded.

but a mute thread option would be nice.  There a discussion going on that I no longer care about, Mute!  Now i dont have to worry about a new post indicator showing up for that thread.

also a mark as unread option would be nice
steelsmiter
member, 1111 posts
GURPS, FFd6, Pathfinder
NO FREEFORM!
Thu 31 Jul 2014
at 16:49
  • msg #2

Re: Mute threads

I could totally go for an x next to an individual thread kind of like how we can remove whole subforums from our stickies, so doing for an individual thread would be awesome :D
Maidenfine
member, 95 posts
Thu 31 Jul 2014
at 17:45
  • msg #3

Re: Mute threads

If you're talking about this for the RPoL forums, I'm neutral. But if you're talking about this for a game, I can tell you now, it's not gonna happen. They already changed it so that you couldn't just unsticky a game you're in and have it disappear from your list. Because people were disappearing from games and never even getting notices that the game was still going. If you went into a game and "muted" every thread in the game, you'd basically be back in that place where you could disappear from a game and never have to look at it again. It just seems like a backdoor path for disappearing players to me.
steelsmiter
member, 1112 posts
GURPS, FFd6, Pathfinder
NO FREEFORM!
Thu 31 Jul 2014
at 17:56
  • msg #4

Re: Mute threads

I hate those kinds of players, but really for me, I just want to go to Public forums (like CC or Gen RPoL) and not have to wade through crap I don't really care about.
st_nougat
member, 383 posts
Thu 31 Jul 2014
at 18:18
  • msg #5

Re: Mute threads

steelsmiter:
I just want to go to Public forums (like CC or Gen RPoL) and not have to wade through crap I don't really care about.


that was my intent by the mute option

the mark as unread was totally for games, rmail, and PMs
nauthiz
member, 269 posts
Thu 31 Jul 2014
at 22:51
  • msg #6

Re: Mute threads

As a player I could see this being useful for certain games where you have access to read all the game's threads but only want to be alerted to new posts in certain ones.  Maybe as options under your "Game preferences", being able to toggle the "new post alert" being triggered for individual game threads.

Obviously you wouldn't want the GM to be able to do it since they're supposed to read every post that goes up in their game and such.

For the main forums it seems like that level of granularity would be prohibitive (how many pages of individual discussions are there in Community Chat?) and it is easy enough to just ignore whether something is red or not if you don't care to check what's new or remove the entire forum as a whole.
steelsmiter
member, 1113 posts
GURPS, FFd6, Pathfinder
NO FREEFORM!
Thu 31 Jul 2014
at 23:00
  • msg #7

Re: Mute threads

nauthiz:
it is easy enough to just ignore whether something is red

Easy isn't mutually exclusive with 'not annoying'. I find it incredibly easy to insult others, but I wouldn't want to provoke suicide.

Players are supposed to respect GMs enough not to ignore threads, and if there's an option to ignore them all, that eliminates the need for the player to respect the GM and tell them they don't want to continue the game.

In any case, you also mentioned how that level of granularity is prohibitive, but I don't particularly understand, prohibitive to what?
ShadoPrism
member, 591 posts
OCGD-Obsessive-Compulsive
Gamer-Disorder
Thu 31 Jul 2014
at 23:39
  • msg #8

Re: Mute threads

In reply to steelsmiter (msg # 7):

Sanity ?
steelsmiter
member, 1114 posts
GURPS, FFd6, Pathfinder
NO FREEFORM!
Thu 31 Jul 2014
at 23:53
  • msg #9

Re: Mute threads

I only said it to prove a point, which was that something 'easy' can still be annoying.
nauthiz
member, 270 posts
Fri 1 Aug 2014
at 04:39
  • msg #10

Re: Mute threads

While I agree that if a player isn't actually, well, playing, it's generally a bad sign I don't think every game falls under the same sort of criteria.

Maybe you're playing some Slice of Life freeform game and one of the threads is "Jake's Apartment", and your character hates Jake and would never actually go to his apartment and Jake's player and his roommate's player each post 2 dozen times a day in small back and forth snippets mainly in the "Jake's Apartment" thread.  So you decide to turn notification for that thread off since what's happening there doesn't concern your character directly and they would never know about it anyway so now you don't have to check the game for new posts every time you log in because the indicator is red just to see it's the same two players communicating with each other.

As for that level of granularity being "prohibitive" in terms of the non-game public forums, I'd have to hazard a guess that the server runs various comparison checks when a user visits to determine whether a forum or game has had new posts since the last time the user visited, and then uses that information to choose whether to mark the forum as red/not red.  So that's 14 public forums plus whatever games you have on your sticky list and/or that you're a part of.

If you can mark individual threads in your game as being ones you don't want to activate the "new post" indicator, then that's likely another check the server has to run, so maybe you have 3 games with 10 threads in each so that's 30 checks instead of the 3 the server was doing.  Maybe a big deal, maybe not.

The Community Chat forum has roughly 1875 individual discussion threads in it.  So that's 1875 additional checks that might have to be run, which might start to add up.

So logistically/resource-wise/time-wise such granularity might be prohibitive.

Now, that's not to say maybe if they're implementing the idea they can't put an option, maybe in your "User Preferences", for each individual public forum.  So you can keep a forum like Community Chat on your list but you never get the notification that there's new posts.  That way you still have access to everything but it all stays nice and not red for the people who get annoyed by it.
steelsmiter
member, 1116 posts
GURPS, FFd6, Pathfinder
NO FREEFORM!
Fri 1 Aug 2014
at 04:49
  • msg #11

Re: Mute threads

It would be pointless rather than prohibitive to allow it for a game. Public threads, not so much. I don't know what sort of automated checks go on, but I can't imagine more than one check per public forum whenever you enter the forum.
elecgraystone
member, 785 posts
Fri 1 Aug 2014
at 05:02
  • msg #12

Re: Mute threads

In reply to nauthiz (msg # 10):

I have to agree with nauthiz. If this was implemented, I'd want it for a game. I'm in one game that has several groups running around and not interacting with each other. Being able to turn them off would be nice. And in some others, there are large sections of the threads I'm not in yet and it's be nice to turn them off until I've gotten there.

Now it's use in Public threads? I really can't see much use for that.
Tileira
member, 370 posts
Fri 1 Aug 2014
at 11:19
  • msg #13

Re: Mute threads

I don't understand the point of this. Is it that much trouble to open a thread you don't read to flag it as read or click 'mark all as read' once you've identified your threads haven't been bumped?
Gaffer
member, 1135 posts
Ocoee FL
40 yrs of RPGs
Fri 1 Aug 2014
at 12:22
  • msg #14

Re: Mute threads

I'm in favor of the 'ignore this thread' option for public forums. There are a lot of threads in Community Chat that I don't want to follow and a lot of game proposals in GPI&A that I don't care about. At the same time there may be discussions in either forum that I do want to follow.

When someone comments on one of the threads that don't interest me, I get the 'new comment' notice and look to see if it's something I want to see. Very often that's not the case.

It's not a huge annoyance or time-waster, but I have often thought 'I wish I could ignore those.'
st_nougat
member, 384 posts
Fri 1 Aug 2014
at 12:41
  • msg #15

Re: Mute threads

Gaffer:
It's not a huge annoyance or time-waster, but I have often thought 'I wish I could ignore those.'


No its not hard to open things up and click 'mark all as read' or whatever the link is.  but as Gaffer said: its a minor convenience thing.  If it wouldn't be to hard to implement then it would be nice, if it's more trouble than its worth then skip it.
SunRuanEr
member, 20 posts
Wed 3 Sep 2014
at 20:58
  • msg #16

Re: Mute threads

I don't think I can actually support the notion of hiding entire threads in games, because you - as a player - really should be paying at least a little bit of attention to every thread you have access to, because something might show up in it that concerns you.

...but god, would I love a means to re-order threads on a page, so that instead of just having the most-recent posts push their threads to the top, I could order threads the way I wanted them.

IC threads together, OOC threads together, threads grouped by setting and/or characters involved, etc. Wouldn't that be lovely? Even something as simple as a means to sort non-Notice threads alphabetically by thread title would be helpful, when looking for specific threads (and not wanting to look at other threads.)
This message was last edited by the user at 21:12, Wed 03 Sept 2014.
LoreGuard
member, 563 posts
Wed 3 Sep 2014
at 22:46
  • msg #17

Re: Mute threads

I suspect that it would be considered prohibitive to keep the red from popping up.  But there have been times that I wished I could mark a thread (or a player wanted ad) for ignore, because I read up on it, already applied, or some such.  If the fire lot that flags it as having a new post could be turned into an ice cube, it would help remind me that I decided it was no longer something of interest for me.  I'd be fine with them showing up, just with the cube as a reminder.  If I intentionally open it they could remove the chill flag.

And yes of course, the chill option would be unavailable for GMs.
DarkLightHitomi
member, 706 posts
Thu 4 Sep 2014
at 12:00
  • msg #18

Re: Mute threads

Honestly, in the public forums having a proper sticky list of threads (instead of forums) would be simpler, easier, faster, and less work for the servers (though a minor increase in memory usage), and would achieve the same goals.

However, already been such a sticky list isn't likely to occur, so this more intensive idea probably won't happen either.

As for individual games, the ones with location based threads could use it, but don't see much point otherwise (the gm shouldn't being giving you access to threads you have nothing to do with).
Further, this could be implemented within a game without to much effect, but having it apply to the main menu is another issue entirely.
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