Oh I hadn’t looked at the time out period. Hopefully it will either just go away or get a clue when it comes back.
Yeah it was only the one post when I went to bed which well if the user was unaware of the history I can excuse. But then it went and doubled down.
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Ooh… “You must score 100% on this multiple choice quiz to comment.”
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If we can just point to the moderator comment in the thread pointing out that this particular conversation has had the bar raised that’d be a huge start. If somebody continues to ignore that then it becomes really obvious they’re not in it for the community and they should be able to be removed from the thread or whatever.
That way it’s a universal thing rather than just pointing at one specific person, which should help stop the gradual escalations that are just as much of a problem.
Do you or another tl4 / mod tend have to keep a watchful eye on threads generating many flags (and being auto-closed) or is it more efficient to be reactive than pro-active? Probably not a binary thang…
I think my whole predictive spiel is either impractical or just totally shit for more fundamental reasons, given the response here.
I blame the flu… and my brain.
I scrolled through a few recent controversy-ish topics and it was surprising to me just how few new users there were in them. I was digging for a screenshot of a new user with the light grey “ghostly” name and I had to visit a lot more of the large (by volume of replies) topics than I thought I would.
So maybe this reinforces the evidence that it’s a big influx of new users that is the strongest signal of something possibly going off the rails, and we should key off that.
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I had an idea! 
I originally said:
Then I saw
And I thought… hey, forget warnings and blocks … we could simply show, next to the new user’s display name, how much read time / posts seen in the current topic that new user has. Ambient info style! I had not considered this!
That’s not a warning, it’s just ambient information, ala the Steam example – how credible is a game review from someone who only played the game for 1 hour? 30 minutes?
Unfortunately it does nothing to prove the commenter actually read the source article, which is kind of a bummer, but you see where this is going. A new user who took the time to read most of the topic, versus drive-by new user who read almost nothing and began posting.
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Yes, that is a awesome idea!
I love how sometimes something can be so deceptively simple and obvious in retrospect! (only in retrospect mind you ;))
Perhaps you’ll take a few of my idea’s / suggestions:
- A color coding of the read time based on the average read time in this thread by other users (taking in account how far they got, ok, that may get really complex fast)
- Maybe also, somewhere else, hidden in a tooltip or something, the time it took for a user to construct his/her reply
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Brilliant - As long as that doesn’t somehow turn into a constant game of pick on the newbies. While it’s fair to say none of us like drive by trolls, I for one would hate to see legitimate new users “scarlet-lettered” into humiliation and driven away. Remember, we were all new once.
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The info doesn’t actually relate to whether you are a newbie or not, it tells you how long the person has read this particular thread. So if someone jumps in after 100 posts have been made and their reading time is zero, then you know they haven’t bothered with the discussion up to this point.
I still think it’s a little bit limited. Different people read at different speeds, people get up and go to the bathroom, etc. Still, it might be interesting just to see how that information can be used. For the analogue on Steam I use it more to see how much playability a game has than to judge the review (lots of thumbs up with 4 hours played means I’m probably only going to play the game for 4 hours, for example).
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Oh. Wow. I did not know that.
I also would not have noticed it in the screenshot unless pointed out.
It is supposed to be subtle, I suppose…
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I tried! You stayed anyhow.
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We got rid of you… for a while.
;-P
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This is now implemented. Replying to the same person over and over in a topic will generate a gentle reminder that conversations tend to be better when they involve many voices.
edit: we added one more condition; there must be 5 or more people talking in the topic for it to fire.
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