New Feature Request

I second that request.

I know some people don't like what I have to say sometimes and would have liked to block my posts. However, there are just some posts by people that I really don't want to see but sometimes can't avoid.

Thanks for listening even if its not possible.

  Yep.

Yep.

Ya know, if you guys have a problem with me I wish you'd just talk to me about it instead of having ronmadaddy spend hours coding a workaround.

Heh.

We can name it the "oneword enhancement"?

But really, you think that would make CoJ uncluttered and manageable? Isn't that what CoJ is for, a depository of all that is useless? Just avoid it altogether and you won't miss much.

edit: if you hadn't specified CoJ, I too might have taken this personally, a la' Jim.

Here's another thought: can we get the feature to keep statistics, like in the BT Blogger, so we can see/vie for "Most Ignored"? 

Good one. I like that name.

And actually, I know (from real life) some people who post in Tri Talk that have no business giving advice and tell stories/suggestions that have no business doing so. Basically complete posers who...anyway, you get it. I would like to be able to block their posts as it takes restrait every time I read one of their posts.

Bear, why should you take it personally. Everything you say is great!

Except, ya know, all that red bike crap.

I like the "most ignored" stat idea. Then we could change the name of the site to www.beginnertriathletewithacomplex.com.

I'd be the first to admit the red bike stuff is crap, I've done so on multiple occasions. But it's fun, stir-the-pot stuff, entertaining to see someone take it personally when you say their black bike is ugly and slow.

IMHO, the ones appearing on said list came into this site with a complex or two.

WHO TOLD YOU THAT? Wait...nevermind.

And ditto on the red vs. black stuff.

hiccup

Very, very soon, I hope... 

Methinks that Ron and marmadaddy already have this feature, and are using it on us and this thread.

I was thinking the same thing. Why do they think we're just joking about this?

Really?  I think it's a little midevil...unless bears little smiley after his first post is sarcasm, my gut is with his comments.

Anymore input?  Anybody want to give me their feelings as coredump has instead of blanket agreement?  It just seems counterintuitive to a public forum.

Put up a poll, would definitely look at it some more once the numbers come in.

Dumpster said everything I would have said. The only other thing I could elaborate on is naming names and specific examples but thats just not right.

Thats fine if you don't think its a good idea. Staying away from those areas works fine.

Not ignoring this thread, I was on a camping trip over the weekend with the wife and kids and am just catching up.

Here are my thoughts. I look at it from 2 perspectives, practical and personal.

Practical:
On an open, public forum like BT implementing a feature to mark specific threads, or posts from specific users, to be ignored isn't really workable. Partly this is because it would be too easily circumvented by someone creating a dummy account with a throwaway email address.

From a technological perspective there are quotes. User names in quotes aren't indexed, they're in the text of the message. We'd have to scan every message before displaying it and then what do we pull out, the whole post or just the quote from the ignored user?


Personal:
As long as something fits in with the general guidelines of the site, I'm in the "if you don't like it, don't read it" camp. There's lots of stuff that gets posted in CoJ that I don't agree with or think is just plain pointless but as the bear pointed out that's what it's for.

Comet, when you say "there are just some posts by people that I really don't want to see but sometimes can't avoid.", can you elaborate? Maybe we're missing something about the nature of the problem and the need for a fix. We definitely want to understand what's going on. PM me the details if you're more comfortable with that. 

Practical: Thanks for responding and letting me know its not really possible. All I needed to hear.

Personal: Thats the conclusion I've come to also (just don't read it) and thats fine. Nothing really offends me so none of the content is worth a fight to censor or anything like that. I

Again, thanks for hearing us out. I think the others feel the same way I do for the most part (about the content being appropriate) so its just a personal thing. If not I guess they'll post otherwise.

Keep up the good work, I hope you had a good trip.

I just wanted to cast my vote for the "blocking" ability.  But I do understand that it may not be a viable option, therefore I will continue to do what I have done the last month or so and that is to avoid COJ as much as possible.  It is bad that I prescreen any topics to see who authored it, no matter the subject, but that is the case.

Great idea Dumpster!

So says the guy who banned the innocuous phrase "bike porn" because all of three prudish members were offended.

No, my original statement wasn't sarcasm, Mr. Smiley was there to soften it a little, but, yeah, that's what CoJ is for. Just a shame that some of the good discussions on there get lost in the postal diarhea expelled by a few who barely train, barely race, and are only here on a ruse to fill some wannabe void in their unfulfilling lives, posting pointless articles, inane comments in every thread, and countless pictures of themselves, all while obviously and desperately trying to hook up with the opposite sex.

Phew!

I'm sure there are those here who feel similarly about me, and I certainly would have no problem with them turning me off if they had the capability. But if it can't be done, I'll continue to exercise the internal "ignore" feature.

Being a fellow computer geek/programmer, I certainly appreciate the complexities of implementation.  I'd settle for being able to ignore posts by, I can live with quoted replies.

I used to enjoy reading and participating in CoJ.  Lately though, not so much.  It seems to have been overtaken by a few posters, with no intention of actually discussing anything.  Basically junk posts, devoid of any actual content or original thought.  They've even stated several times that their intention is to inflate their post count and/or attract attention to themselves.

Perhaps a moderator could point out the part of the Guidelines for Healthy Discussion:

- write your own posts with care and deliberation
- don't hog...keep your posts to a size and frequency which allows others an equal place in the discussion
- respect the intention of the person who originally posted and keep discussion relevant to the topic or question if that is his/her expressed wish, or the wish of others engaged. Always feel free to begin a separate question yourself if a tangent seems particularly interesting or important.

The tragedy of the commons serves up another example.   

word.

My solution? post/peruse forums less, train more. I also like the feature where, when you click on the specific section title in forums, you can see the OP as well as the most recent poster. That helps me decide what to read... Certain starters are instant "no reads.."

A couple thoughts...COJ is first a self-policing entity - even though we've got marmaron to help us when the doggies get out of the pen. 

With the current forum structure, if someone's posting too much, or the posts and discourse is crap, there are a couple choices:  ignore it, boycott them, tell them what you think  and ask them to change their behavior, or other?! Bottom line...if it's worth fighting for, if the old COJ is what we like, then we can choose to be fatalist - "it will be what it's going to be", or activist "it will be what we want it to be".  You choose.

We could also create a separate forum for the 'junk'; if someone's looking for a relatively 'serious' off-topic post,  they could use COJ.  If they want to just shoot the bull, then you could direct them to the 'post count buffet' forum, where, of course, the posts wouldn't count.  Now...to devise the ruleset....

Lastly, if it's just post count that's driving the behavior, then maybe consider changing the criteria for the user ratings/rankings to include a 'quality' and/or 'humor' metric, depending on what behavior we want to drive.  For instance, when someone posts, you can rate the post for 1-5 stars for humor or quality.  This would distinguish between some CRRRRRAP drunk posters or post count whores with no content, vs. people with well thought out questions, responses, or entertainment. 

There is almost no community on the web that's grown large that doesn't try to segment it's content and contributors by quality....one easy example is eBay, which doesn't solely track number of auctions to rate it's sellers; it tracks feedback which includes activity AND positive/negative feedback. iTunes also tracks iMix quality, although it's done it poorly.  Amazon tracks top xxx in each category based on user reviews.  And most blogging sites allow you to 'rate' blogs as well, taking user input rather than just pure measures of activity. 

Great points, Rick.

I do like the self-policing nature of CoJ. From my point of view, the less time spent on that is more time for other things like answering questions from new folks and working on new functionality.

One option that could be implemented is to not display post counts.There's a switch in the forum to just shut it off across the board. I believe this is seperate from the user ranks (and stars). I'll check this to confirm if we can shut off one and keep the other.

Posting for the sake of driving up one's count is fairly common on a lot of boards which is why the option is there in the software. There are lots of reasons people do it. "Guerilla marketers" on all kinds of boards have been known to drive their post count up to give the appearance of legitimacy and after a period of time they start "recommending" whatever they're marketing. Happens all the time. We had one recently doing exactly that with his online tri store.

As to rating posts, it's doable but that's getting into customizing the forum software itself which is an off the shelf package called MegaBBS. The organizations you mention all happen to have market cap numbers in the billions, so creating that functionality isn't a big deal for them. BT isn't quite at that stage yet. We're working on it though.

I can check with Matt to see if there's any plans to include post ratings in a future release of the forum.

Interesting thread. I never really got the 'woo-hoo! I turned 'x' number of posts' threads. I don't know why post count is something to be proud of....

Anyhow, my personal opinion is that I can think of many examples of people who were irritating when they were newbies to the site. Heck, I was probably one of them. But 95% of these people get a feel for the unspoken rules of ettiquette for the site and become part of what makes the site so great. I think a lot of people who've been here for a long time express some yearning for BT's 'good old days' at one point or another (and Welshy's good old days are different from mine, which are different from Comets). But I think our brave leaders, Ron and Marma, have an awesome vision for the site, which is to always make it hospitable and comfortable to newbies, rather than letting it turn into an elistist site where people are afraid to post (like another site I can think of...). That attitude from R & M, I think, contributes to wonderful attitude and character of the boards, whereas pretty much only the cocky and brash begin posting on other sites... Of course, that also means you'll get some pretty darn obnoxious folks from time to time....

The site will always evolve, but I think it also has a way of balancing itself out.

All that said, I think the ignore feature would be more damaging than good to the site (although, I'm really with you guys in sometimes wanting it). Ranking posts would be a good idea, however. Turning off post counts entirely would be good as well, IMO.