Likes are finite in order to convey information - this is good - rather than signalling as a flag - this has been read.
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A bot-check could do the same without being exposed to the user.
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That’s true. On arXiv.org there used to be a link called “Robots beware: initiate retaliation” that would start a DoS against your IP address if you clicked it, as a way of discouraging web spiders / crawlers from trying to download terabytes of data. I’m only being slightly serious when I say that Discourse should have something similar
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Ok, in the interests of “asking forgiveness instead of permission” I added a link to the boing boing homepage to the top right of BBS:
Is this ok @beschizza ? We can add it on mobile as well if it is approved. (edit: hmm, would white be better here to match the other nav? up to you)
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I’ve been over this with @jlw when it was implemented, this is not a Discourse thing. but yeah, I can’t stand that, either.
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If it is a recurring author, they need to:
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have a BBS acount matching their wordpress username
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be in the editors group on BBS so they have permission to post in that category
That is what is required for the BB wordpress author to match with the BBS user in the #boing category.
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lemme fix … and done. Sorry about that, for some reason I thought it would be a desktop-only change. I should have checked in the f12 emulator.
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I like it…and I like the red.
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Excellent. That works.
Holy smokes! I might go back to reading the front page. Nice.
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Problem not solved, because the problem with block lists is that they affect the overall tenor of the discussions. A rough analogy is movie ratings: You can choose to ignore them, but the fact that they exist affects how movies get made and shown.
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I think it is highly unlikely a personal mute would affect discussions.
My concern was that a bunch of people might mute a bad actor and then “problem solved” from their perspective, but the bad actor is still posting and harming the overall community; rolling up mutes into de-facto flags and an automated mod action (with appropriate thresholds) solves that problem.
And if someone is only muted by a few people, or a single person, how does that harm the discussion in any meaningful way?
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When there’s a BoingBoing post with no BBS comment thread, I would like a way for regulars to be able to point the orphan post’s comment button at a thread they create, but only if the thread hasn’t already been created. This would solve the all-too-frequent problem of seeing a banana and being frustratingly unable to wax poetic about it. It would also mean you, Jeff, and the mods fielding fewer distraught ZOMG NO Comment Thread messages.
That’s all I can think of, other than block lists. I wouldn’t use them, but I see no reason why other people who would shouldn’t have use of them.
Generally you folks do a commendable job here, IMHO. Muchos gracias 
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Love it! One small OCD request…Can you fix the kerning between the magnifying glass and the hamburger to be the same as that between the aforementioned and the avatar/BB logo?
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exactly! Exactly that!
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Has anybody else been confused by the Summary column entitled “Most Replied To” ?
I never knew whether it was users who had replied to me or users to whom I had replied.
Google informs me that it means “who you reply to the most.”
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Your idea about rolling up mutes is mostly a good one, I think.
My concern with muting/blocking is that it risks balkanizing conversations. You don’t know what users other people have blocked, so there could be overlapping discussions ostensibly about the same thing but with individually-tailored lacunae. Somebody objects to, say, a gun owner calling out factual errors in a writeup and now you’ve got at least two conversations, one of which is unaware that semiautomatic does not mean machinegun, another unaware that this has already been pointed out, and maybe yet another who wants to talk about 3D printing large-capacity magazines. And nobody knows which comments any other commenter is blocking. Everyone should be on the same page talking about the same things. Grossly objectionable abusive posts are few and far between here, IME, and well-addressed by the existing moderators.
I feel like the people calling for a block function mostly have personal issues with specific other users who are, apparently in good faith, advancing POVs antithetical to those of the block-advocates. “I don’t want to hear anything from gun/Israel/market/whatever apologists.” You don’t need a fucking button to ignore someone, you just plain ignore them if that’s what you really want to do. As long as you’re not being threatened or harassed, grow the fuck up and pretend to be an adult.
Don’t try to apply technical solutions to social problems.
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Sometimes people can just push your buttons without necessarily being abusive, and it’s better if you don’t respond to them. If something they say turns into a longer discussion, you’ll see evidence of it in other people’s comments, but it seems like a pretty good way to avoid annoying discussions and say that you’re done interacting with that person (at least for a while) without asking everyone else to do the same.
(FWIW, I’ve never muted anyone – I just don’t think the potential disadvantages of people repeating points outweigh the advantages of fewer personality clashes).
If we made that a rule, we’d practically never use technical solutions at all. Technical solutions like locking out trollies make social problems like maintaining a non-abusive atmosphere on the BBS much more manageable.
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