Mod request- Ignore/hide unwanted forums

Joined: 2003-09-10 Posts: 1263 Location: Bristol WI

While I welcome some additions to the WGA Forums, there are others I would rather not see at all.

It would be nice to be able to "check a box" to hide forum threads that were not of interest to the user.
For instance, I would choose to not to be able to see the "Off-Topic" and "Milestones" forums when viewing the main forum page. If the option was there, I might choose to hide all the regional forums also. This would enable every user to customize the forum page to their own interests.

Thanks!

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 8:29 pm

I think this is on the agenda for our webmaster...

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:34 pm

Great suggestion Russ. We kind of figured that something like this would be needed as soon as the regional forums were introduced... so it has been on my to-do list since then.

The plan was to release this feature with several other forum changes as part of a single "Forum Enhancement Package". But given all the activity in the Off Topic forum as of late, we probably want to introduce it ASAP. Smile

Question for Russ and others that intend to use this feature: Would it be OK to completely hide the specified forums (so you could even not read any posts in it if it were hidden), or would you want/need some backdoor method to access your hidden forums?

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 1:05 pm

I would use this because I regularly use the "view all posts since last visit" and it would be nice to not have certain ones pop up. But, I would like a way to see those forums when I wanted to to - like to directly click through the front page of the forums to get to them.

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 1:09 pm

I'm guessing an "Ignore Thread" button is not an option?

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 2:26 pm

bnb wrote:

I would use this because I regularly use the "view all posts since last visit" and it would be nice to not have certain ones pop up. But, I would like a way to see those forums when I wanted to to - like to directly click through the front page of the forums to get to them.

If a forum were hidden, its new posts would definitely not show up in the "all posts since last visit".

If I add the "backdoor", all the hidden forums would appear at the bottom of the front page (forum index) of the forums, probably in a drop down list to save space. This would allow you to enter any forums you had hidden to see what was going on (or to unhide the forum). But it sounds like you still want them to appear in the forum index where they normally go Ruth? This may be another level of "hiding"...

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 2:32 pm

Lostby7 wrote:

I'm guessing an "Ignore Thread" button is not an option?

Anything is possible... though this would definitely be more involved than hiding a forum, so maybe this is a "phase 2" feature.

If a topic was ignored, what would that mean... that it would not appear at all in the list of topics for a forum, or that it would be visible but somehow would not impact the new posts indication/list? How would you propose allowing people to undo the ignore topic operation, especially if you couldn't see the topic anymore?

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 2:33 pm

Jeremy wrote:

But it sounds like you still want them to appear in the forum index where they normally go Ruth?

No, that wouldn't be necessary. I think I can find them if they are below everything else, even in a drop-down menu. It's even better for making it obvious which forums I have "turned off". I just want a way to maintain a way to access them. I'm sure I will occasionally check on their contents to see if anything is interesting, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as often as I read the rest of the forums.

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 2:34 pm

Jeremy wrote:

Lostby7 wrote:

I'm guessing an "Ignore Thread" button is not an option?

....How would you propose allowing people to undo the ignore topic operation, especially if you couldn't see the topic anymore?

Ah a good question to be sure....but then again there are some threads that just beg to be hidden in perpetuity.

Joined: 2003-09-10 Posts: 1263 Location: Bristol WI

I'm a bad programmer so the mod seems complicated to me. Smile

I wonder if it might work better to make "hide/unhide" selections in the "Account Preferences" section instead on the main forum page?

Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 7:56 pm

When I think of "ignore thread" it should not show that there are any new post. A "hide thread" should make it disappear altogether.

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 3:59 pm

I see you have this already on the fourms. Could you put a little more space between "Hide this forum" & "Mark all topics read"?

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 11:20 am

"Ask, and ye shall receive." As my website posse and PCFrog already know, you now have the ability to hide selected forums on the WGA site.

The feature itself is pretty easy to use... from the main forum page (forum index), click on the name of the forum you wish to hide. On the page for the forum, you'll see a link in the upper right labeled "Hide this forum". Click it, confirm the action, and then the forum should be hidden. Once hidden, the forum no longer appears in the main forum list and its posts don't appear in the "posts since last visit" list.

All hidden forums can be accessed via a "backdoor" mechanism at the bottom of the main forum page (forum index)... select the name of the hidden forum from the dropdown list to view it. Once you go to the page for a hidden forum using this backdoor, you should see an "Unhide this forum" link that you can use to make the forum visible again.

Thanks to the website committee for the beta test bug reports and feedback on this feature.

WGA Friend Joined: 2006-09-28 Posts: 118

Great Job JV! I too found the board getting a bit "noisy," this has allowed a little better focus for me. Very Happy

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 11:50 am

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jeremy!

(Since I whined about this more than once, I thought I should thank more than once.)

Ruth