Why not a reddit-style arrangement for the forum?

grog m wrote:I have a lot of time at work to read through the forums and what I see is most of them devolve very quickly. There just aren't lots of constructive threads on here that last very long. Most of them quickly become a personal battle within a page or two. The current forum setup really supports people being assholes, myself included. It isn't a horrible set up but most threads are the same circlejerk over and over. I really encourage people to consider a change, even a small one.

The reddit approach is not a solution to this problem.

grog m wrote:I really encourage people to consider a change, even a small one.

It takes a fair amount of effort to modify the underlying software. To go through that effort and cost, it is important to know that the small step being taken is the right one. That is the problem.

In the category of "no suggestion is a bad suggestion" while "not all suggestions should be implemented" ...

Maybe all that is needed is a 'hide' vote that works something like this:

• a user can vote that a post has reached their level of something they do not want to see;
• hide counts are never displayed;
• a "significant" number of hide votes will by default hide that post;
• any user can choose to turn off the hiding feature, or later turn it back on;
• hiding / un-hiding posts does not change the page boundaries so that toggling does not get too confusing;
• no re-ordering of posts;

The challenge might be defining "significant".

There would probably be a minimum number of hide votes needed before evaluating whether to hide it. Probably too a minimum number of posts in the thread.

The evaluation might also factor in something statistical like a post count rising to some percentage above the average counts per post in the thread. And, maybe, once a post qualifies for being hidden, there is no going back.

Bill Lawry wrote:In the category of "no suggestion is a bad suggestion" while "not all suggestions should be implemented" ... Maybe all that is needed is a 'hide' vote that works something like this: * a user can vote that a post has reached their level of something they do not want to see; * hide counts are never displayed; * a "significant" number of hide votes will by default hide that post; * any user can choose to turn off the hiding feature, or later turn it back on; * hiding / un-hiding posts does not change the page boundaries so that toggling does not get too confusing; * no re-ordering of posts; The challenge might be defining "significant". There would probably be a minimum number of hide votes needed before evaluating whether to hide it. Probably too a minimum number of posts in the thread. The evaluation might also factor in something statistical like a post count rising to some percentage above the average counts per post in the thread. And, maybe, once a post qualifies for being hidden, there is no going back.

Let's throw in some background spam filtering for posts, too.

In this context, the filtering would be relative to the individual thread: the "ham" would be the on-topic discussion, the "spam" would be the off-topic nonsense.

maybe some kind of optional filtering once the thread hits 5(?) pages, so people can read the relevant comments in a much shorter time.

A few thoughts to consider:

1. Software absolutely sucks at human language content and meaning, still. Asking it to filter same is a big mistake. "You were on a single strand", my crucial answer, will never come up if I ask about a 'repel'.

2. Humans being allowed to censor or control content delivered to other humans, beyond a very low, agreed upon level, is almost always a really bad idea. Do you want headline news highlights or journalism? Personally, both are vital

I think what would actually be doable and useful are options for the individuals who are using the site to tailor a thread to their liking while they are reading. If a user can block another user, just from their own view, or sort comments by user and time, then the different conversations could be (mostly) pulled together. "Sort" is almost always far more useful than "search" or "filter", IMO.

Sort and / or search and / or filter: I imagine all could be useful.

Personally - I would rather not work very hard at grooming a thread for my consumption.

I'd remove intra-thread search other than already afforded by most browsers. And I prefer posts to be in order of any actual conversation. So I'd also remove sort. Last - yeah, I wouldn't suggest automated filtering other than to the degree last mentioned - to count votes and apply very basic logic about whether to hide a post.

Simplicity too - a user has just two related decisions: 1) does that post strike me as not worth viewing? and 2) do I want to enable 'hiding' or not for my browser session? MP.com already has the latter at the thread level for threads about items for sale.

Just my two cents.

Why not enable voting on posts and have sorting by votes as an OPTION, but leave chronological sorting as the default?

Someone probably suggested this already, but I didn't feel like reading through 3 pages of drivel to find out. Now someone else can duplicate my suggestion 2 pages later. Gotta love the repetitiveness of traditional forums.

Old lady H wrote:A few thoughts to consider: 1. Software absolutely sucks at human language content and meaning, still. Asking it to filter same is a big mistake. "You were on a single strand", my crucial answer, will never come up if I ask about a 'repel'.

What are you basing this on? As someone who's studied natural language processing, sentiment detection, and other forms of "smart filtering" I'd say that software can do pretty darned well at these tasks...

Old lady H wrote:2. Humans being allowed to censor or control content delivered to other humans, beyond a very low, agreed upon level, is almost always a really bad idea. Do you want headline news highlights or journalism?

Yeah, I'd agree on this :-).

Might have been said already, but I think it's important that whatever changes happen that it's maximized for mobile use as well as desktop. Question: does Reddit always have the sub thread view where you get several subs in and the space for text then becomes so small that only a couple words fit before going to the next line (when viewing from a phone with small screen)? Like those terrible forewarned emails that show one letter per line because it was forwarded so many times.

Kent Richards wrote: What are you basing this on? As someone who's studied natural language processing, sentiment detection, and other forms of "smart filtering" I'd say that software can do pretty darned well at these tasks... Yeah, I'd agree on this :-).

Ahhh, see, I am a user, not a developer or student of. Truly huge applications, I admit, are getting in the neighborhood of reasonably smart. But as soon as you narrow that applied use down, stoopid creeps right back in. Why, on a climbing site, do we see "repel" so often? Is it stoopid climbers or an idiot auto complete? My "smart" phone is a moron quite often, as am I, especially pre- coffee. : ) By the way, the second stoopid was spelled stoopud, and was corrected to the incorrect spelling I used first. I've been thinking of writing a short story using only the phone's suggestions and random letters picked from scrabble tiles. My favorite substitute to date was zombies for zinnias!

youtube.com/watch?v=ohyfNPK…

just posting music, please downvote me

No opinion on the "rank" up/down stuff. But the visual layout of reddit is absolute garbage. I won't go there unless I've searched for something and the info is only available there.

The idea that it is "easy to read" is baffling to me. I think it looks like something off geocities via AOL circa 1998.