Can we have Ignore option on topics, not boards, not users?

[OgNasty]

I'm all for being heavy on the ignore button when it comes to this forum.  It's necessary if you are anyone working on anything that has any effect here as the trolls are like packs of hyenas with missing teeth.  However, I personally would worry about a tool like this being a little heavy handed on the ignoring, leading to missing topics that you might actually care about just because some buzzwords were thrown around in the discussion.  It seems like to be done right it would have to be a bit complicated, and with a new forum a decade into development, I'm not sure we should be trying to reinvent the wheel here. 

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[dkbit98]

Hehe, yeah I'll look into this.

Thanks, there is no rush, just place it under ''do it later'' folder

I'm busy helping theymos with something that might keep me occupied for a while, and then after that I'd like to send him the 2FA patch that I've been talking about for months. Once those two things are done, I'll see about this proposal; haven't thought too deeply about it, but it seems like a good idea to me, and I think it's something that I would personally use.

Hmmm that is interesting, so you are actually slowly becoming main forum developer, and I was joking about that not long ago around April 1st 
I am really glad theymos started to positively respond to all your work in forum and apply this patches.

[Cryptomultiplier]

I have always had a concept in mind. I learnt it from one of my teachers in college. It is about picking out the sense from the nonsense.
As simple as it sounds, hitting the ignore button could actually prevent or cut down on the inflow of information one is exposed to.
 It could also make one lose interest in the forum as one's mentality may be tuned to the fact that only trash post is being posted.
It could also discourage those with the intent of getting better from both positive and negative criticisms, directed towards their post.
Everyone wants to learn and get better, that'd why this forum exists, if ignore buttons where introduced, it wouldn't make this any different from normal social media apps that promote malice by ingoring, blocking or limiting owners of an account from the contacts on its network.

[KingsDen]

Personally, I don't use the ignore button of the forum. I have never ignored any user, I have never ignored any board, I haven't blocked anyone from sending me pm.
Even on social media, I don't block people. Even if you send me a dm, I can read and still ignore you. I can chose not to read when it's from an undesirable person. That is how I handle it.

But for the sake of others and for the sanity of this forum, I support the idea of ignoring threads. If that is implemented, many people wouldn't put any board in their ignore list.
Recently, The Sceptical Chymist has been complaining about the spamming going on in Bitcoin discussion board. It is simple, instead of ignoring the whole board because of some shits, he could just visit the board and use 10mins to ignore some thrash thread he deems to be spam and that settles it.

[Pmalek]

However, I personally would worry about a tool like this being a little heavy handed on the ignoring, leading to missing topics that you might actually care about just because some buzzwords were thrown around in the discussion.

You are the one who will be putting certain discussions on ignore, so do it properly. Check what the thread is about, and if you absolutely hate it, remove it from your field of vision. It shouldn't be an automatic thing that relies on keyword filtering because there would be too many issues with it. 

[holydarkness]

If I may add another possible benefit of what "ignore a topic" may offer, sometimes we want to leave a topic we're previously engaged on, either because the topic no longer interests us or it has turned into a meaningless discussion filled with spam posts. I am not sure there is currently a way to "remove" these threads from our "show new replies" page. The ignore a topic button would be a nice thing if it means it will remove those threads from my new replies page.

We already have a button for that, you can simply unwatch topics you do not longer want to engage or get notified on anymore.

Eh? I thought that'll just remove the topic from "watchlist" page but we'll still get the updates of the topic on the "show new replies" page? Let me try that with this thread.

Yep, not working. Unwatched this thread soon after my last post above to test the theory, I woke up to this on my new replies page

However, I personally would worry about a tool like this being a little heavy handed on the ignoring, leading to missing topics that you might actually care about just because some buzzwords were thrown around in the discussion.

You are the one who will be putting certain discussions on ignore, so do it properly. Check what the thread is about, and if you absolutely hate it, remove it from your field of vision. It shouldn't be an automatic thing that relies on keyword filtering because there would be too many issues with it. 

I think what OgNasty tries to propose was the possibility that the thread we ignored because it became a mega thread or spammers nest at one point re-evolved back into a meaningful discussion.

Taking this into consideration, PowerGlove, how feasible is it to patch this ignore topic button but with the "last post [date] by [username]" still visible? I think it'll be quite signaling enough whether we should reinvest our attention into the ignored topic or not if we glanced at the author of latest reply.

[LoyceV]

Yep, not working. Unwatched this thread soon after my last post above to test the theory, I woke up to this on my new replies page

Then don't click "Show new replies to your posts.", and use the Watchlist instead:

I don't understand why anyone would not use the watchlist. You can configure the watchlist to be exactly the same as "show new replies to your posts" by configuring your posts to be auto-watched and adding your posted-in topics to your watchlist. After this is done, you can unwatch topics that you don't want to see.

[holydarkness]

Yep, not working. Unwatched this thread soon after my last post above to test the theory, I woke up to this on my new replies page

Then don't click "Show new replies to your posts.", and use the Watchlist instead:

I don't understand why anyone would not use the watchlist. You can configure the watchlist to be exactly the same as "show new replies to your posts" by configuring your posts to be auto-watched and adding your posted-in topics to your watchlist. After this is done, you can unwatch topics that you don't want to see.

[speechless]
Oh...? Yet another feature of the forum I didn't know. Thanks for this, I'll start trying this and unwatch the old topics. If if works nicely, I might start changing habit and visit the watchlist page instead of the new replies


Edit: ahh yes. I recall now why I didn't bother tweaking my watchlist before. It's because although I've set my profile to be automatically watch topics I've posted in [it's set like that by default, if I'm not mistaken?], it still displayed a very limited threads somehow and didn't show the threads like the one on show new replies. That's why I thought the watchlist page is something that need extra configuration. Watchlist posts button clearly helps this.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

Your suggestion Is good if @theymos would have the time to implement it, but well, PowerGlove is there to assist. Although I have not used the forum ignore button to ignore any board, I just chose boards where I deem them useful to me and where I can also make productive contributions without having to spam. I have just ignored a few newbies because they were creating irrelevant topics, but after some time I just decided to unignore them and use another method to handle their spam and shitposts, which is by reporting them to the moderator.

Some of these users topics are very misleading, so even putting them on ignore means some users could get misleading information from those topics. It would not take me two minutes to report any post or topic to a moderator. So if I already put any user or topic on ignore, I would not contribute to clearing up the forum from some trash, and to see those trash, the ignore button is useless to me.

But for the sake of other users, your idea is still good. "Don't ignore the whole board; just an annoying thread/topic." Great idea.

[PowerGlove]

(...) Taking this into consideration, PowerGlove, how feasible is it to patch this ignore topic button but with the "last post [date] by [username]" still visible? I think it'll be quite signaling enough whether we should reinvest our attention into the ignored topic or not if we glanced at the author of latest reply.

I'll consider this more deeply when I get around to actually implementing it, but my knee-jerk is that that won't work out very well.

What would suit me best (as a user) is for the topic to become totally invisible once I've ignored it. I agree though that there should be some mechanism to take a peek at ignored threads every once in a while to make sure that you're not missing out on anything important. I think maybe a "show ignored" toggle-link (in the same strip as "new topic") that adds/removes ";showIgnored" to the board URL would probably work out nicely.