phpBB Ignore list

[Lazloth]

thread[/url]"]I really would like to start ignoring a lot of people that show an overall poor level of quality in their posts for the sake of cleaning up the board.

Adding moderating features or ignore lists would be a great addition to this list.

Would be something for Brix to test and implement, but the mod is available.  http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24052

[Anonymous]

Forgive me, but I just think its very funny to think that the staff would invest the time and money to implement a much nicer GDB and then they would turn around and implement a way for us not to interact.

Its kinda like buying the postman a nice new truck and then chopping down mailboxes....

Honestly, I don't think of myself as someone with a tremendous amount of willpower or personal strength, yet I am able to use the scroll bar to ignore people pretty well.

[Shinigami]

Suck it up.   :lol:

No, really... I'm with CRW here.  Scrolling past posts is a fine way of dealing with posts that you don't care to read, and by ignoring someone, you are not only depriving yourself of making out threads in which they posted, but also depriving them of your insight.

We don't all agree, we aren't all as eloquent as some in our prose, yet here we are... the ArmageddonMUD community.  Live it, learn it, love it.

[krelin]

This may have some value if whoever owns www.zalanthas.org pays for their bandwidth.  Allowing the server to filter out posts from people I don't have any interest in would probably over the long-run (and spread across however many users the board has) save a fair chunk of bytes.  And it's a patch that already exists.  I like the feature, if Brixius is willing to implement.

[Lazloth]

[edit:] Added a worthless poll.  Though I respect where CRW & Shinigami is coming from, I wouldn't mind seeing this feature.

[deviant storm]

I agree with CRW. The GDB isn't broke, it doesn't need fixing.

If you don't like what someone has to say, don't read it. Or argue against it, for that matter. As long as people dont personally attack others, it's all good.

[DrunkenSalarr]

There I plenty of people I ignore, but every once in a while they actually post somethin worth reading.  I wouldn't use a coded ignore feature becaue it would deprive me of (just a very few, mind you) good post.  Just scroll past it, We do it in game, we can do it here.

~Drunken Salarr

The short figure in the red, mexican wrestling mask mutters, in sirihish:
"Scroll it down, Just scroll it down, Scroll Buttons 2.0"

[Fedaykin]

Even the ones who makes posts that are typically "worthless" in the eyes of others do explound kernels of wisdom or insight, or at least get people thinking now and again.

Imagine trying to have a discussion on a topic where everyone is ignoring a varying group of people, and as such a coherent discussion is impossible because people will be missing chunks of the discussion others are seeing, or perhaps restating views already expressed by someone on their ignore list.

This could cause more trouble than it would be worth.  I think people will just have to deal with the minor incoveniences.  Besides, you can always pm someone, tell them you hate them and their posts and ask them to tone it down    j/k

[gfair]

The ones who want to read all the posts are free and clear to do so - look at Slashdot, for example.  Slashdot gives contributors the ability to filter out the low-quality posts, or read every single post, flames, beastiality links and all.  It's your choice.  Slashdot's system is much more complex than the ignore list I would like to see here, but the result is the same: you read only those messages deemed to be of the high, or low quality you are looking for.

This has nothing to do with any notion of a broken GDB list.  My comment, used by the person to start the poll, says NOTHING about the list being broken.  It is simply something I would like to have, to cut down on the number of posts in any given thread, for whatever reasons anyone wants to choose.

[Fedaykin]

In other words, you would be able to arbitrarily cut out the posts made by anyone whos comments you deem as "low quality" leading to you viewing threads with points, valid or not, being missed.  This leads to the possibility of anyone with people on ignore reposting points already stated that they missed, causing those of us who are not using the ignore options to endure further spam and clone point posts.

While we aren't all American here, I still believe in a fundamental right to the freedom of speech, regardless of the quality of that speech.  I  also don't think this board is suffering from an over abundance of low quality posts, flames or bestiality links at the present time.  We have board users numbering in the few hundreds, most of whom don't even post.  This sort of board is not the place for this sort of option.

For all of the above reasons, I am against an ignore option of any sort.

[gfair]

Even the ones who makes posts that are typically "worthless" in the eyes of others do explound kernels of wisdom or insight, or at least get people thinking now and again.

No, not really.  The entire world of usenet forums serves to prove this.  Inevitably, on any list of more than a few people of like interest, there are readers who invariably begin ignoring the contributions of certain other people.

Imagine trying to have a discussion on a topic where everyone is ignoring a varying group of people, and as such a coherent discussion is impossible because people will be missing chunks of the discussion others are seeing, or perhaps restating views already expressed by someone on their ignore list.

Unlikely - again, there is so much participation on this group, that chances are not all people will be ignoring all others.  The subset combinations are just that unlikely to match.  You may see a post from someone responding to a person on your ignore list, and respond to that, so any posts that a group of people deem worth responding to will still emerge out of anonymity to come to your attention.

Even better would be Slashdot-style moderating... it's a great concept, and works incredibly well.

This could cause more trouble than it would be worth.  I think people will just have to deal with the minor incoveniences.  Besides, you can always pm someone, tell them you hate them and their posts and ask them to tone it down    j/k

Actually, it will be very easy - as Lasloth points out, the mod file is already available on the phpBB website, which is going to save a lot of work.  The testing and debugging might be a bit harder, but I doubt it is too much of a challenge considering the file is made for this forum software and has already been implemented.

[DrunkenSalarr]

Speaking of bestiality links, AC hasn't given her opinion yet.

Drunken Salarr, who is giving a good example of a post worth skipping.

[gfair]

This leads to the possibility of anyone with people on ignore reposting points already stated that they missed, causing those of us who are not using the ignore options to endure further spam and clone point posts.

There are always disadvantages - there are also tons of dup posts all the time.  This really isn't a big issue.

While we aren't all American here, I still believe in a fundamental right to the freedom of speech, regardless of the quality of that speech.

Unfortunately, Fedaykin, not only does being American, or living in a democracy have nothing to do with freedom of speech, but this is not a public board, and the admins reserve the right to delete any posts. More than that, they have deleted at least a few posts. For your review:

<a href="http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2316&highlight=thread+deleted">Example 1</a>
<a href="http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1477&highlight=thread+deleted">Example 2</a>
<a href="http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=981&highlight=thread+deleted">Example 3</a>

Unfortunately, this is a simple reality of all forums.

Nothing about an ignore list does anything to tarnish your freedom to speak.  In fact, Slashdot's moderating features mean that they have never deleted any more than one single post on their forum, tolerating any content.  They only once deleted a post, and that was after a lawsuit when someone decided to post copyright material to the board, and the copyright owner sued.  Whether or not the Admins choose to implement that moderating system is up to them - but with it in place, and with active participation, they have the option of never needing to delete anything, unlike in the current system where they delete IC information and flame wars.

So in actual fact, supporting moderating features may help you defend freedom of speech, given that the admins buy-in, rather than choosing to withhold the option to delete posts.  Personally, I'm fine with either decision, but your support for Slashdot-style moderating would only make it better.

[Shinigami]

We do have moderators... they're called Staff.

Beyond that, I personally find comparing our playerbase and our GDB to usenet highly offensive.  Needless to say, Staff will -never- allow the board to become such an unmonitored place, so the point is invalid, in my opinion.

This is, of course, my opinion.

[creeper386]

I'm guessing your idea of moderating is every post posted has to go through a staff members hands before it gets into public eyes. Which if it is, it's really a terrible idea. The staff may be the staff, and could filter out IC things or major flames and such, but they are still a small group, if the whole board had their hands in on the moderating system theres a good chance having them decide what is GOOD enough wouldn't really be a good idea.

Now with ignoring people. Not that good of an idea. Sure, lots of people say they would ignore me. Then scroll past my posts. I'll assure you there are quite a few people out there that I tend to just barely skim or completely skip when I see them post. It's quite easy.

And for the terms of bandwidth... I don't think it'd really save much over all to make a grand amount of difference... But I don't know much about that whole thing so it's just a guess.

Creeper

[gfair]

I'm guessing your idea of moderating is every post posted has to go through a staff members hands before it gets into public eyes. Which if it is, it's really a terrible idea.

No, no way would I ask this to be a staff thing, and it isn't. I think I mentioned it in previous posts on the thread, but the Slashdot moderation system is 100% performed by readers, and it frees up a lot of time for the Staff to devote to other things, like growing the reader base, and increasing overall quality of the website.  Slashdot is a massive success, and its experiment in moderation is a major factor in that success.

This is a distributed system based on "karma" (the SLASHDOT style of karma, and NOT Arm Karma), which is earned by having their posts "moderated up" in levels, after they prove to be consistently capable of not flaming, not trolling, and contributing valuable items.  The things that get moderated down (again, all by the users) are flames, and other rubbish.

So to answer your question - no.  No way would I ask the Staff to review every single post - the Slashdot system has its readers review the posts, and the posts go up immediately after the writer hits the submit button, the moderation happens whenever a moderator comes along.

Now with ignoring people. Not that good of an idea.

So be it... the ability to ignore people was a simple system, Slashdot-moderating features are a more advanced system.  So long as we get either one, I'll be happy, and they are two separate systems, by the way.

And for the terms of bandwidth... I don't think it'd really save much over all to make a grand amount of difference... But I don't know much about that whole thing so it's just a guess.

The slashdot system has the ability to avoid huge amounts of data - if you read at level 5, reading only the highest quality posts, the ratio of level 5 to all posts can literally be 1:10 or much higher on some issues, so you are only getting 1/10th the amount of data transmitted to read what you are interested in.

[creeper386]

Oh, alright. I now know what your talking about by moderation. Still don't much like it, but that could be because I don't trust people at all, and hate little cliques and such that tend to develop in such enviroments(Not saying it would here. Just saying thats what tends to happen and it's rather lame) I remember back when the idea was all brought in...

And even if you toss out the cliques problem and everything. You well still have the problem of missing alot of things. If you only read 1 out of 10 posts, even 1 out of 2 posts... It'd be a good chance you'd miss alot of things, have troubles figuring out where the discussion is going and where it's came from. As well as the other things people have mentioned alot such as repeating things(Which happens ALOT already) and so on and so forth.

Creeper who still thinks the scroll bar works quite well, even better if you have a mouse with a middle wheel and a browser compatible with it.

[Fedaykin]

Unfortunately, Fedaykin, not only does being American, or living in a democracy have nothing to do with freedom of speech, but this is not a public board, and the admins reserve the right to delete any posts. More than that, they have deleted at least a few posts. For your review:

<a href="http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2316&highlight=thread+deleted">Example 1</a>
<a href="http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1477&highlight=thread+deleted">Example 2</a>
<a href="http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=981&highlight=thread+deleted">Example 3</a>

Ahh, so you're saying that in instances of extreme "low quality" posts in the past, the owners of the board have taken the initiative and deleted such posts?  That is certainly further reasoning against the need for an ignore feature if they're handling such matters on their boards themselves.

The simple fact that I pointed to the fact that I believe in the freedom of speech despite us all -not- being American should tell you that I wasn't pointing to the first ammendment of the U.S. Constitution and stating that this was a legal issue, or had anything to do with living in a democracy.  Belief that what I consider to be fundamental rights should be protected transcends American or democratic government.  I believe, and apparently the staff seemingly believes that people should be allowed to express their views, as often as they like, provided they do so in a reasonable manner.  The fact that this is a private board is not an automatic reason to allow people to be ignored in discussions.

The lowest quality posts on this forum do not even nearly reach the level of quality displayed on much larger forums.  As such you have to balance the following:  You having to skim a few posts now and then vs. alienating a group of people from discussions.

I'm sorry, but given that choice, I think its pretty clear that you or others enduring such a minorly inconvenient burden of skimming those posts is a betther choice when compared with the burden of individuals being ignored in discussions.

In addition, having not seen the slashdot system in action, I believe you're saying that readers review such topics, perhaps by voting etc.?  In that case, it seems like we'd be subsituting one minor time consuming inconvenience for another.  I also very much agree with Creeper's reasoning for not liking such systems stated in the above post.

The board may not be perfect, but it is by no means broke, so there is no need to fix it.

[krelin]

How does freedom of speech enter into this discussion in any way?  My wanting to ignore people programmatically, in no way infringes on their right to freedom of speech.  They can still talk, it's just easier for me not to hear it.  As for the concern that people will post repetitively, covering things that have already been covered, those are -JUST- the sort of people I'd like to ignore.  This feature isn't a negative one in any way.  If you are opposed to it, don't use it.  The only valid negative argument to implementing it is that Brixius might not feel like putting the time in.  That's entirely up to him, though.

[DrunkenSalarr]

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST MAY SOUND HARSH AND COME OFF TO SOME AS A FLAME.  THIS IS NOT MY INTENTION.[/list]

So be it... the ability to ignore people was a simple system, Slashdot-moderating features are a more advanced system.  So long as we get either one, I'll be happy, and they are two separate systems, by the way.

There is a third system, and it's already in place, It is the ignore system that is in your head.  I can think of a few people I know IRL that I just tune out because I've never heard them say anything meaningful.  This is text, it doesn't take up that much bandwidth.  The overly long post are few and far between.

There are always disadvantages - there are also tons of dup posts all the time. This really isn't a big issue.

IMO, It is a big issue.  Yes, there are dup post now. And we, as the readers of the board (staff and players alike) try to keep those down to a minimum. Dup post will always happen.  But right now they don't happen too often.  The number of dup post will increase if an ignore feature is implemented.  For those of you worried about bandwidth, the ammount of dup post will cause more of an issue, IMO, than the ignored posts.

...look at Slashdot, for example.

I don't think that is a fair comparison.  That would be like Philomath, GA (actual place, home of about 7-12 families and maybe 100 people) saying that they need a SWAT team because Atlanta has one.  The total number of users and posts is so massive that they need a system like that.  Currently there are less than 500 regestered users, many of which are inactive, don't post at all, or secondary accounts for the same people.  As I mentioned above we currently police ourselves for content, dup post, etc, without any seperate utilities.  Until our playerbase grows to the point to where we can no longer do that, then lets consider things.

Now, if we had a feature that would let us ignore an entire thread, I think that would be much more useful.  I know some threads just reach a point to where I click on them just to remove the unread flag.  Something to ignore those treads would be useful (at least to me).

~Drunken Salarr, who wishes to appologise to gfair, we both seem to have very strong views in opposing directions on this issue.  I may disagree with you, but I respect you.

[gfair]

Oh, alright. I now know what your talking about by moderation. Still don't much like it, but that could be because I don't trust people at all, and hate little cliques

Little cliques are dwarfed by a readership of hundreds, fortunately.  And also, Slashdot moderation has meta-moderation - where you moderate the moderations made by others.  So if there is a clique that mod down all the posts from one person, eventually they lose their ability to moderate, by having the community take away their privileges to moderate.  So... no cliques can influence what is seen.

And even if you toss out the cliques problem and everything. You well still have the problem of missing alot of things. If you only read 1 out of 10 posts, even 1 out of 2 posts... It'd be a good chance you'd miss alot of things, have troubles figuring out where the discussion is going and where it's came from.

Not at all - you know where the discussion is by reading the first post in the thread.  The only things removed are the responses, which are moderated, so you always know what the topic is.  And you choose to read on level 5, level -1, any level you want.

As well as the other things people have mentioned alot such as repeating things(Which happens ALOT already) and so on and so forth.

No, again, in the Slashdot system, the original post (the one that is duplicated later) is moderated up or down.  Duplicate posts are generally not moderated, or if they say something better, then they should be given equal consideration. Shoot, the Arm admins could even add a -Duplicate flag so if people want to consider posts duplicates, they can moderate them as dupes, and then the Arm admins can go and do a batch delete of the duplicates every now and then, which would eliminate all dupes that have been flagged.

It's an end to all duplicates, and saves bandwidth AGAIN.

[Fedaykin]

As for the concern that people will post repetitively, covering things that have already been covered, those are -JUST- the sort of people I'd like to ignore.

Sounds like a paradox then.  You want to ignore those who post repetitively, but run the risk of becomming such a person yourself when you start posting ideas or comments similar to those of people you might be ignoring.

[Malifaxis]

I can't guarantee that I'll control my language on this one.

What the FUCK kind of an elitist mindset do you have to be in to believe that only what you consider to be important should be shown?  So F'ing what if you don't think that poster blahdeblah has a shred of grey matter between the ears?

Maybe I'm an elitist, but in my mindset (which, by the way, I will never try to push on anyone else) everyone has a goddamn mouth, and a set of ten (average, mind you) fingers to type with.  And the fact that they have been given these things makes them a contributor.  And therefore, no matter what the hell they have to say, I'm interested in listening.

Maybe it's because my greatest hatred, my only personal bias, is f'ing ignorance.  And actually, even ignorance isn't that bad... because X person simply DOES NOT KNOW about something.  What really trips my fucking trigger is when people WILLINGLY make sure they're ignorant of some form of knowledge.

To use an example, I'm going to utter that phrase which almost always brings bile to the mouths of the friends I have in RL:  "Well, lets take a look at the Nazis."  You can bitch and moan all night about how the Nazis were evil, and how they should be shot, and blah blah blah... I'm not saying I disagree, mind you, I'd put a bullet through anyone who was trying to shove a friend in to a gas shower, but that's not the crux of this point.  What is the crux is that while the Nazis were vile (for the most part) and sadistic and racist... they had something to say.  And they said it.  And you know what?  (A *lot* of people aren't going to like this) They saved a LOT of lives through the experiments they held.  Like it or not, much of our medicinal world is now based heavily on the findings of the Nazis.  Hence, while they did kill off some bajillion obscene amount of people, they also benefitted all of mankind.  But the forces of good defeated them.

How did we do it?  We knew about them.  We studied them, and we learned weaknesses and we struck at them.  

If a pro-Nazi bastich gets up on stage to spout his racist views, it's stupid and inefficient to boo them off.  Let them speak.  Hear what they have to say, and learn from it.  I'm not saying agree with it, I'm saying take the information and fucking process it in your goddamn brain.  Learn something, for fucks sake, about what you hate.  Then oppose them in a manner which will be effective.  Express your views, and if they have even a shred of intellect, they will listen to you as well.

I know that by posting this, I have made the possible 'ignore' list of several people.  Fine, I don't give a flying fuck.  Live in ignorance of my views if you want.  Won't affect me a damn bit.  But you know what?  When I'm discussing pkill tactics on a public forum, and your character ends up walking in to one of the umpteen bajillion traps I may relate publically, you've no one to blame but your damn fool self.

Knowledge is power, no matter where it comes from.

But I wouldn't expect you to know that...

F'ing wankers.

[deviant storm]

Heh, don't hold back, Malifaxis. Tell us how you really feel.  :twisted:

[krelin]

I can't guarantee that I'll control my language on this one.

What the FUCK kind of an elitist mindset do you have to be in to believe that only what you consider to be important should be shown?  So F'ing what if you don't think that poster blahdeblah has a shred of grey matter between the ears?

I see that this is a subject you're sensitive to.  I don't think that the intent of an "Ignore" feature to to exclude people from contributing, but instead to allow other people to filter the contributions they'd like to see.  I'm sorry that you seem to be so personally offended at my desire to avoid a few people.

Maybe I'm an elitist, but in my mindset (which, by the way, I will never try to push on anyone else) everyone has a goddamn mouth, and a set of ten (average, mind you) fingers to type with.  And the fact that they have been given these things makes them a contributor.  And therefore, no matter what the hell they have to say, I'm interested in listening.

Yes, certainly everyone is welcome to contribute.  That's sort of the point of the internet in general, and discussion boards in particular.  However, most modern, computer-based discussion mechanisms provide "filtering" functionality for a variety of reasons:  convenience, bandwidth, harassment, idiocy, disagreement.  It may be convenient for me to ignore Rindan because his posts are historically long, or ShaLeah because she's -always- posting porn (which would be fine except maybe I have a slow link?), or you, because you curse too much for my taste.  None of these are personal attacks.  I might even want to ignore COGATO...  but nevermind that.

Maybe it's because my greatest hatred, my only personal bias, is f'ing ignorance.  And actually, even ignorance isn't that bad... because X person simply DOES NOT KNOW about something.  What really trips my fucking trigger is when people WILLINGLY make sure they're ignorant of some form of knowledge.

If you feel I'm ignorant, you should perhaps consider ignoring me (using the new feature, if Brixius is kind enough to implement it).  This will spare you becoming upset over this and future posts of mine.

Long tirade about Nazis snipped
Live in ignorance of my views if you want.  Won't affect me a damn bit.  But you know what?  When I'm discussing pkill tactics on a public forum, and your character ends up walking in to one of the umpteen bajillion traps I may relate publically, you've no one to blame but your damn fool self.

The desire for an ignore functionality is really a simple convenience.  It has nothing to do with Nazis or ignorance.  It has to do with hoping to increase the signal to noise ratio to an effort to hear only "signal" that is interesting to me.  When you listen to the radio, do you try to tune in every channel at once?

Knowledge is power, no matter where it comes from.

But I wouldn't expect you to know that...

F'ing wankers.

I don't MUD for knowledge.  I don't participate on this discussion board for knowledge.  If you do, I can suggest a number of significantly more effective resources on the 'net.[/i]