It’s probably our fault on the BB wordpress template side. Posts aren’t cleanly < article >'d out in the HTML with a nice identifiable this-is-the-content class
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Another “our fault” thing. There used to be one but I minimized the header on BBS past the point of sanity.
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Trying to keep things open for the readable content, eh? Makes sense, but there should be a nice design compromise that allows a link to the Blog as well as BBS. Maybe move the thread titles a bit right and use Jackhammer Jill as a hot point for the link? She’s got a nice blocky form that shouldn’t chew up too much space… Or maybe just a square with a black-on-red bb in your logo font - that would be more explicit.
But if the feature exists, you don’t have to use it, even if others decide to use it.
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OH, I change my answer: ^this^
and the thing where embedded videos won’t go thru the WordPress-to-BBS-“Show-Full-Post”-wormhole. that particularly kinda sucks.
@PatRx2 , this is my kludge solution:
where the “bb” bookmark is the blog view and “b” is BBS/new
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That was exactly my point above. I mean, you and I don’t get along a lot of the time but I don’t want to silence you forever so I never see your posts because…then I only see shit that I like, etc. etc., making that echo so much worse. Then we’re like Facebook! 
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Well, ruleslawyer-approved “badness”. Persons have “polite” but shitty, callous, and rather gross opinions that they have little interest in ever examining to the point of where they come off as a poe. Sincerity/insincerity seems a false choice, they just don’t care.
Yes, those users do rile persons up and there is little reason to “tolerate” their bad opinions, so why not just avoid the slapfest for the good of the forum?
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Don’t use 'em. Problem solved!
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I have definitely considered what you are proposing – local user mutes as implicit flags, eventually rolling up into some other action if enough of them happen (in a given time frame) across enough unique users. it has a number of advantages:
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a local mute doesn’t carry the psychological weight of a flag, as we know people (not just here, everywhere) are hesitant to cast flags even when they really should. So perhaps this would get invoked more than a flag and thus be more useful signal in aggregate.
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if enough cumulative mutes occur, it could automate the mod action, at least the first part of it (warning pm, then if it continues, a short suspension, etc) and freeing up mods to work on other more pressing matters. Less work for mods, thus crowdsourcing moderation, has always been an explicit goal.
As always please flag when things get out of hand. This is critical. Reminder that enough flags can hide a post or even close the topic, if there are enough of them by enough users. This is how you, the community, can moderate.
It is like voting. If you say, well, that one time I flagged something bad happened, let me tell you I voted this year and some seriously bad shit still happened. It will never stop me from voting in the future… we can’t expect any of our systems to work if we stop using them.
As for my advice on tough moderation scenarios it is here:
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I don’t like this, FWIW.
Good threads get closed because of one trolley. Maybe lots of flags on one post/person in a thread could lock them from posting in that thread, not kill the whole damn thing.
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That happens as well, but generally requires the target user to be TL0. If the flagged user is not a new user we don’t view it as safe to auto block them.
Another thing that is coming in 1.8 is timed closes, so it could be a cooling off rather than “closed forever until mod intervenes”.
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The flags are being used. You still need more mods. You don’t want to close the topics if at all possible.
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Not talking about totally blocking them, or auto-deleting spammer types, just a localized (temporary) ban from one thread until mod intervention.
See this one:
https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/generic-2016-us-election-cycle-recycling-bin/65103/2288
It got closed 10 days ago because of one person (who eventually got a timeout). But the thread never got re-opened, we ended up with a continuation topic.
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One thing I have proposed is nominating a moderator from the community here. It is not up to me, but if it was, that is what I would do. Meta topics could cover the voting for the community moderator, the terms, etc.
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I suppose I could kludge it like that. I could also open bbs in a separate tab with a judicious right click. I would prefer to keep the number of open tabs down. Part of this is I don’t really want more than one tab open per site: I sometimes need to backtrack quite precisely, and that is much easier when I have the history of only one thread to worry about. I know I’m not unique in browsing the bbs main page for articles, so it is probably something bb should look at.
Consider my input as backing for that, then, Jeff.
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I also don’t find block lists desirable.
It wouldn’t be that This is a short term block, which expires. An echo chamber should be of your own daily making, not built into the site. It should take work, at least as much work as misunderstanding my well and now thrice explained point would take.
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yeah that!
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Things Discourse can do:
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buff mute (disallow PMs from mutee, to start) with an eye on eventually rolling up mutes and taking action on them* -
nerf restrictions in blocking new users who get flagged a lot (I think our defaults here are maybe too high)
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look at what we can do with Show Full Post (bear in mind, if the whole post is a video… not much we can do, I mean posts with actual text in them) — see the dedicated topic
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better navigation back to the main site
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nerf auto-topic flag close by making it default to a timed close vs a permanent close (added in 1.8)
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look at adding an “only allow PMs from trust level x and above” setting* (arrived in 1.9 beta)
Things that have to be taken up with BB staff proper:
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flag handling issues
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additional mods, even trusted volunteer mods from the community if such a thing is possible
Things I don’t know what to do with yet:
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mod deletion notifications, because loss aversion is one a hell of a drug and this adds mod friction. Lots of downsides here with little upside. Follow up in the dedicated meta topics on this if it is really important to you.
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mutes disallowing all forms of reply to you, not just PMs
So there’s at least 3-4 things we can get done in the next week from this list.
* in Version 1.8 and beyond. Discourse 1.7 will be released early in Jan, but you guys are always running a very recent beta version here so you effectively have 1.7 already.
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Fix the ellipsis/show full post bug.
Transparency when posts are deleted by mods.
Square user icons.
Community-based promotion for valued members that aren’t as active as us Regulars but still deserve “status” (@jilly I’m looking at you).
One boxing still not super reliable.
Notifications supported natively in IOS Safari (not sure if this is a platform limitation)
These may not be Discourse specific but here goes anyway:
Stop the 5 day auto closure on BB topics.
Fix entries that are by @boingboing with no further author linkage.
Fix the “some blog posts not making it to the BBS” bug.
More participation from the BB editors in the forums (thanks, @beschizza and @jlw for participating!)
No more petty and unfair bans of valued community members.
Clear disclosure for adverposts.
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